So Simple, So Powerful, So Sad

The Future is Now?

For a transgender person of my age demographic, stories such as this from Yahoo News  simply are amazing.  It seems, groups of younger people are working to broaden or eliminate the whole idea of the gender spectrum.  All of the sudden, the old transexual, transgender and crossdresser hierarchy, is becoming irrevelant according to Genny Beemyn, director of the Stonewall Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst who recently wrote:  " the vast majority of students who identify under the trans umbrella identify in some way outside the binary, and that's really causing a shift on college campuses" .  Of course there is much more to the story from Yahoo:

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — The weekly meetings of Mouthing Off!, (left) a group for students at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, always start the same way. Members take turns going around the room saying their names and the personal pronouns they want others to use when referring to them — she, he or something else.

 It's an exercise that might seem superfluous given that Mills, a small and leafy liberal arts school historically referred to as the Vassar of the West, only admits women as undergraduates. Yet increasingly, the "shes" and "hers" that dominate the introductions are keeping third-person company with "they," ''ze" and other neutral alternatives meant to convey a more generous notion of gender. "Because I go to an all-women's college, a lot of people are like, 'If you don't identify as a woman, how did you get in?'" said sophomore Skylar Crownover, 19, who is president of Mouthing Off! and prefers to be mentioned as a singular they, but also answers to he. "I just tell them the application asks you to mark your sex and I did. It didn't ask me for my gender." 

Of course the transgender topic was involved too:

The nods to novel pronouns and nonconformity are an outgrowth of campaigns for gender-neutral bathrooms and housing that were aimed at making campuses more welcoming for transgender students moving from one side of the gender spectrum to the other. But as fewer young people choose to undergo sex reassignment surgery, such students are slowly being outnumbered by peers who refuse to be limited.


What's the world coming too??? A MUCH better place!   And just when you think this pronoun/language issue is getting to be a bit too complex:

Mel Goodwin, youth program director at the gay and lesbian community center in Las Vegas, said getting the hang of alternative pronouns can be tricky in conversation. Goodwin, 28, claimed they as a preferred pronoun four years ago and it took time "to unlearn what I had been taught about gender." Yet when people object to they as being grammatically incorrect, Goodwin counters that modern English is to blame and that scholars, writers and linguists have spent more than a century trying to come up with gender-neutral pronouns that stick. In public presentations, Goodwin also refers to a map that shows historic and contemporary cultures around the world that have recognized more than two genders. "This is not about young people in the U.S. over the last 20 years kind of coming out of the woodwork and making up labels that aren't real," Goodwin said. "This is a real variation among humans, period."

Well, it's time for old dinosaurs such as me to head off for my nap- feeling good about the future!

A Trans Guy's View of the Rest Room

I was pretty naive and thought for the longest time, as rest room usage goes (no pun intended), transgender women potentially have more issues than transgender guys.

I continue to think that from an emotional viewpoint we trans women do have more potential issues than trans men.  Men consider the restroom an utilitarian place and of course women attach more of a "sanctuary" tag on the room. Many times if someone has an issue of you being trans, they will draw an imaginary line at the door of a restroom and think enough is enough.

As with all transition issues, trans guys do have their own unique set of restroom problems and this morning I read a definitive answer from Trans Man Matt Kailey : 

" A reader writes: “I have read many articles about bathroom etiquette. I understand that you are not to linger around the men’s room. My question is about a situation where there is only one stall in the men’s room. What do you do when it is occupied? “You don’t just want to stand there and wait. If you wait outside of the men’s room, you look a little creepy or like you are trying to pick someone up. So what do you do when the stall is occupied and you are not comfortable or able to use the urinals?”

(Matt) " I run into this situation all the time. Sometimes I do wait – not outside the men’s room, but just hanging around inside, generally washing my hands or otherwise busying myself. However, if it looks like it’s going to be a while before the guy comes out, I generally leave and either come back later if I can wait, or try to find another restroom if I can’t. When I first started using men’s public restrooms, I learned quickly that you don’t smile at anyone, you don’t make small talk, and, for the most part, you don’t look at anyone at all. But I never did learn what the acceptable thing to do is if you need the stall and it’s occupied. So I just did what came naturally, which was hang around a little bit and see if the guy was ever going to come out, then leave and seek out someplace else if he didn’t.

 Since I wanted to get this right, I just asked a non-trans male friend about the rules. He said that he would not hang around inside the restroom if he didn’t have anything to do there. He said he thinks it would be better to hang around outside the restroom than inside, but if he needed a stall, he would try to go somewhere else or go back to his table or wherever he came from and wait for a while, then go back in. He said, “Nobody wants someone standing outside the stall tapping his foot."

Good advice! I have a couple ways for you to access this post. You can go here  or follow my regular blog links here in Cyrsti's Condo.

Transgender Reality in a Small Town

All too often I think we have a tendency to focus too much on the transgender women and men who have the benefit of looks and/or location to ease their transition.

Here's a look at a different side of life on the Cyrsti's Condo big screen:

Dedicated to the ones I Love

I have two very close friends embarking on a similar journey:

Success in Ohio

From the Columbus, Ohio Dispatch:

"Returning to work after a long vacation can be a shock, but when some top brass at the Columbus marketing company Resource came back from the beach last year, a true surprise was in store. Shelly Moss, a creative director at the company, had some big news for HR director Jamie Barcelona and company founder Nancy Kramer: Moss is transgender and was transitioning into a man who thereafter would use the first name Decker. “My initial reaction was, ‘Wow! This is a day I thought I’d never have,'" Barcelona said. “ Then you instantly go into, ‘How am I going to handle this? What do I need to do?'"

"Decker (center)"

At Resource, that was definitely OK. For decades, the marketing company has been in the forefront in dealing with such issues. Resource was one of the first in Ohio to offer same-sex partner benefits; and in 2007, Kramer testified in front of Congress in support of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA. This revelation was entirely new ground, however, and Moss didn’t know if anyone had ever presented a similar case. Legally, he was in somewhat murky territory. Transgender status is not explicitly protected under federal or Ohio anti-discrimination laws, said Jim Petrie, chairman of Bricker & Eckler’s labor & employment practice group. However, “the U.S. 6th Circuit has held that persons identified as transgender may be protected under Title VII if the employer discriminates against them based on their inability to conform to sex stereotypes,” Petrie said. “Moreover, a Columbus city ordinance expressly prohibits employers from discriminating against a person because of his/her gender identity or expression."


Interestingly,  as most of us know who navigate society as a transgender person, what does the term mean to others?  Barcelona echoed that thought and said  the biggest thing was understanding what does transgender mean and going from there.

As always, there is more and you can read it here.