Nice Summer Dress

 On Saturday Night Live last week, as I was nearly dozing off during the latter parts of the show, I was surprised to see a figure obviously in a full  dress on stage before the show cut away to a commercial break.

I was surprised to see the show's musical guest "Kid Cudi" in the dress and ready to perform as the break was over.  Reaction was swift, This is from the "Guardian" :

"The dress marked the anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death, with Cudi saying that it was a tribute to the Nirvana frontman who had worn a similar dress on the cover of the Face magazine in 1993. While social media users praised the way Kid Cudi channeled Cobain’s gender non-conforming approach to fashion, they also pointed out a double standard.

On Instagram, model and activist Munroe Bergdorf wrote: “as fab as it is to see cis gender straight men embracing femininity through fashion … let’s remember that they also won’t face nearly as much hatred or the physical danger that visibly queer folk will when they do the exact same thing.”

In the comments, one user wrote "it feels insulting that cis hetro men get praised for what trans people get bullied and killed for. For them it’s a trend, a costume … for trans people it’s life and death.” Some 13 transgender people have been murdered in 2021 so far according to the Human Rights Campaign, which is a 333% increase from 2020 when three transgender people were killed."

Indeed the double standard runs deep. 

Not Trans Enough?

As I said in my last Crysti's Condo post, this paragraph explains why the transgender elitists of the world would not agree with the following "two spirit" Native American concept:

Rather than the physical body, Native Americans emphasised a person's "spirit", or character, as being most important. Instead of seeing two-spirit persons as transsexuals who try to make themselves into "the opposite sex", it is more accurate to understand them as individuals who take on a gender status that is different from both men and women. This alternative gender status offers a range of possibilities, from slightly effeminate males or masculine females, to androgynous or transgender persons, to those who completely cross-dress and act as the other gender. The emphasis of Native Americans is not to force every person into one box, but to allow for the reality of diversity in gender and sexual identities.


Read more here from the Guardian.

Professional "Women's Night Out"

Last night, my partner Liz and I went to a small Professional Woman's  Dinner "Meetup".  I have not been excluded from this one like the lesbians have from the "Loki" group here in Cincinnati.  It's an incredible time hearing how these other women approach their professional lives.  Of course each get together such as these have the initial "introductions."  As quickly as my old noggin could think, I thought I am not going to introduce myself as transgender with all the carnival barkers jumping on the trans band wagon.  So, I went with the "Two Spirit" name. 

Of course, my introduction confuses many "civilians" more, but it's simpler for me to say very little more and chat later-if anyone cares.

I have found many trans people don't know of, or don't embrace the Two or Dual Spirit ideas at all.
From the U.S version of the Guardian comes a look: This week's guest editor, Antony Hegarty, is a fan of the book The Spirit and the Flesh. He asked its author, Walter L Williams, to write a feature for guardian.co.uk/music on the 'two-spirit' tradition in Native American culture:
Native Americans have often held intersex, androgynous people, feminine males and masculine females in high respect. The most common term to define such persons today is to refer to them as "two-spirit" people, but in the past feminine males were sometimes referred to as "berdache" by early French explorers in North America, who adapted a Persian word "bardaj", meaning an intimate male friend. Because these androgynous males were commonly married to a masculine man, or had sex with men, and the masculine females had feminine women as wives, the term berdache had a clear homosexual connotation. Both the Spanish settlers in Latin America and the English colonists in North America condemned them as "sodomites.



Above, We-Wa, a Zuni two-spirit, weaving US national archives


Rather than emphasising the homosexuality of these persons, however, many Native Americans focused on their spiritual gifts. American Indian traditionalists, even today, tend to see a person's basic character as a reflection of their spirit. Since everything that exists is thought to come from the spirit world, androgynous or transgender persons are seen as doubly blessed, having both the spirit of a man and the spirit of a woman. Thus, they are honoured for having two spirits, and are seen as more spiritually gifted than the typical masculine male or feminine female.

Therefore, many Native American religions, rather than stigmatising such persons, often looked to them as religious leaders and teachers.

In my next post, I will tell you why many transgender elitists won't accept the idea at all.