"Chained Melody"

Author Debbie Martin recently sent me an email asking me to review her recently published love story which crosses the frontiers of transsexualism. For what ever reason I was not able to open the file on my computer.
Since she went to the trouble of finding me on the world wide web, the least I could do was pass along the info to all of you from Goodreads.com. 

Here's an intro of sorts:
" Even with the sexual revolution of the permissive seventies and eighties, men remained men. But as childhood friends Tom and Will enter adulthood, for one of them maturity isn’t just growing from boy to man. He develops into someone completely new as surely as the butterfly emerges transformed from its chrysalis, irrevocably and chaotically also transforming both their worlds in the process. Through battle ground bravado in Northern Ireland, drugs, sexual betrayal, IVF, transsexualism, and ‘forbidden’ love, they each search for courage to live life their way. Can love be strong enough to fly in the face of the chains of convention? The answer only becomes clear after events transpire to ultimately create a simple choice for them both; life or death, and they have to face the consequence of their choices.'

There are a couple of great reviews on the link above. Perhaps in the future I can pass along more!

I Ru The Day

Very few things make me recoil as bad as RuPaul. To me the "thing" represents a huge part of what I'm fighting against as a transgender women in today's society and specifically in the LGB world.
Ever the one to joke at our expense to make a ratings point or an extra buck...the thing did it again last night:


Last night, October 29th 2012, on RuPaul’s All Star’s Drag Race, gay male entertainer RuPaul once again used his show as a bully pulpit to mock and misrepresent what the medical condition transsexualism actually is, despite the last few years of transsexual and transgender advocates protesting his use of offensive pejoratives such as “tra**y” and “she-male” . Comedienne Vicki Lawrence asked, “Hey Ru, what’s the difference between a drag queen and a transsexual?” RuPaul laughingly replies, “About twenty-five thousand dollars and a good surgeon.” Ha ha Pauly...old joke buddy...ha ha...have a sense of humor Cyrsti. I do. But I'm tired of this jerk even having a platform to open his clueless mouth at the expense of us. This fake makes my skin crawl and has for a while!

.Here's what you can do.
TAKE ACTION In 3 Steps:
 1: BOYCOTT RuPaul’s Drag Race: - Urge your friends and family to stop watching this show -
 Post MAGNET’s boycott announcment in your social networking sites and email to ally groups: Link
2: JOIN CONVERSATION: - Join Facebook Group: ‘Boycott RuPaul’s Bullying, Transsexual-phobia & Misgendering’ :
 3: WRITE & CALL RuPaul & His Production Company, World of Wonder Productions: - EMAIL World of Wonder Productions CEOs Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey: Barbato: rbarbato@worldofwonder.net Bailey: fbailey@worldofwonder.net - ADDRESS (World of Wonder): 6650 Hollywood Blvd # 400. Hollywood, CA, 90028. - TELEPHONE (World of Wonder): 323-603-6300

 For more information/press inquiries: Contact MAGNET: MAGNET.Advocacy@gmail.com Media Advocates Giving National Equality to Transsexual & Transgender People (MAGNET) is an anti-defamation organization dedicated to educating the media about transsexual, transgender & intersex issues, as well as pushing for more authentic and positive portrayals of transsexual, transgender & intersex people in the media.

I would call for boycotts or protests of Vicki Lawrence's career but if she is on with thing there is nothing left of her career to boycott.

Jenna Steps Up...Again

Jenna Talackova is proving once again she is so much more than a beautiful transsexual face:


Canadian beauty Jenna Talackova knows firsthand the affects of prejudice toward transgender people. Most will recall her triumphant battle with the Miss Universe committee earlier this year, eventually being allowed to compete in the international beauty competition, after much debate about her eligibility given her status as a transgender woman. Now Talackova is tackling larger issues in this vein by asking the World Health Organization (WHO) to remove transsexualism from its list of mental disorders. Her petition, at Change.org, has gained over 40,000 signatures thus far, and joins an international initiative backed by celebrities including Vladimir Luxuria and Maxwell Zachs. Sign the petition at www.change.org/notsick, and after the jump check out the international video in support of the campaign. http://yout
u.be/3qomHE9qkG4

Read more here at Passport Blogs

Test Tube Transsexual

I spend a lot of time here in Cyrsti's Condo dwelling in the past. After all I'm an historian by degree and believe in what happened yesterday may help us to understand today.
Recently, I ran across an article called the Subtle Process of Transformation by Eva Hayward.
She goes through an in depth look at the physical changes which occur when you start changing such a basic human trait such as gender:


"Like the change from summer to autumn, changing sex is more than a conscious choice or an act of will. It may be that change comes on a scalpel of desire or along a hormonal riptide, such that the body is legibly sexed, but this describes only a fraction of what is at play. Hormones, for instance, have ranging impacts. Taking estrogen can cause fat deposits to uproot and travel to new sights of colonization so that hips widen, breasts grow and lactate, and musculature softens. Estrogen can also alter the eye's structure, affecting vision. It can modify the body's heating and cooling and olfactory systems. I remember sitting on a subway train, feeling so disoriented by smelling layers of place, saturated funk and perfume that I got off the train and walked six blocks to my stop. Estrogen has health consequences. Annual mammograms and regular breast exams are recommended for transsexual women. If, like me, you started hormone therapy with Premarin (complemented with progesterone), derived (wickedly) from horse urine, how much of that early transition was about becoming horse-like? And later still, with soy- and yam-based estrogens, vegetal? Hormones are a complicated business, and they're just one plot line in the relentless narrative of sex. Transsexuality not only is more nuanced than it is typically described, it breaches the defended territories of sexual reproduction. Thomas Beatie became a national sensation as "the first married man to give birth." Although other men gave birth before Beatie, he was able to capitalize on curiosity and voyeurism, an irresistible tipple, and start a public conversation about the limits of sex: "How can a man have a baby?"

Of course, most of us have heard all of this before or even are feeling it all for the first time. Eva though, took all of the process a step further:

"And now, with the first successful uterine transplant, in Turkey, and Britain and Sweden following suit, it's only a matter of time before other wombless bodies have wombs. But surgical interventions are not alone in transforming our assumptions about sex. Infants are being breast-fed by all kinds of lactating men and women. And last week, a friend sent me a photo of her "false pregnancy," in which the endocrine system produces hormones that physically express as pregnancy. She is a woman "with a transsexual past," as she would say, and still her body is compelled to reach beyond her history. Sex changes; remarkably and unavoidably. Sex is an unending process, not yet finished with any of us."

This is a fascinating look into what transsexualism is and isn't. Read it all here.

Transgender Stealth

Every once in a while here in "Cyrsti's Condo", I head to the library and dust off a volume of the "Trans Stealth Diary's"
None of the entries are mine. I have ran the entire spectrum of thoughts on the subject. From envy to disgust, I have thought them. How could my transsexual sisters run off and disappear? Then again, if I had the chance wouldn't I?
Here's the easy answer. No I wouldn't. In fact I'm thinking of jumping off the deep end and getting my first tattoo ever-with a trans logo-in a visible place.
Then again, I will be truthful and say this is a relatively new thought pattern with me.
As I so love to do, here's a little stealth history and perspective from another source: The Women Born Transsexual" Blog.
As always, I'm going to throw you some teasers and give you a link for more from Susan.

"Some folks have claimed the Doctors expected transsexuals to go absolutely stealth after they had SRS.
That absolute stealth represented the best possible adjustment  for post-op women in particular.
Dr Benjamin wrote some awfully Pollyanna sort of bullshit during the 1950s.
Actually it might have sort of been possible for a few people in those days to absolutely disappear because records were kept on paper and it was easier for people to build real identification out of some pretty sketchy bits and pieces of paper.
I know because this was still sort of possible in the late 1960s early 1970s.
After 2001 those of us in the US had the Department of Homeland Security, TIA and so many private information gathering agencies that Big Brother knew when you went out partying and how many drinks you had.
There are a whole lot of sisters I really look up to, mostly public figures like Andrea James, Jennifer Boylan, Julia Serano.  Not to forget lesser know sisters from the blogosphere like Mercedes Allen.
Most are more or less out, even if they don’t walk down the street wearing a t-shirt.
You kind of have to be if you want to do anything, including speak your mind on issues of public interest."

Susan is just warming up to the subject. Read on:

" I’m forced to wonder why so many of the trolls who hide behind aliases to spew hate while touting their own superiority due to their being stealth with perfect lives come off as so mentally ill and maladjusted.
As far as I can tell too many sisters have allowed themselves to be sucked into believing that they are somehow failures if they don’t manage to attain this ideal of absolute stealth.
I’ve known too many sisters who withdraw from life rather than accepting that which they can not change about themselves and moving on from there.
A friend of mine died a couple of years back.  She was incredibly flamboyant and knew antiques with Road Show Appraiser astuteness.  But she unhappily withdrew from the world nearly 20 years before she passed away.
Stealth doesn’t seem like a mentally healthy way to go about dealing with transsexualism.  It comes off as being ashamed of something one was born.
Not being ashamed doesn’t mean wearing a t-shirt, more just treating it like any other thing one could be born with that makes someone different from the majority of people."

Bravo Susan! Go here to read the whole post!

It is What it Is

Then again it may be to you but not to the person next to you. Sure, we are all humans and all different. No real problem with that until someone decides to not respect your difference
For transgender or transsexual folk-this is particularly true. We live it.
Jillian Page writes a very interesting blog for the "Montreal Gazette" .
Her latest post "My Identity, My Right" (in a round about way) addresses the "It is what it is" dynamic.
Jillian begins with a mention of recent progress made in Argentina — which allows people to change name and sex based simply on how they feel, without any forms of approval from anyone else.
Here's the good part:
 " I wish to remind all of my trans readers and their supporters that you don’t owe the general public any explanations or apologies for your transgenderism or transsexualism. Religious fundamentalists, RadFems et al are entitled to their opinions about trans stuff — to a point — but those opinions are irrelevant: You owe them nothing.There’s no need to try to convert them to your way of thinking, or to tell them to mind their own business. Just hit the “ignore” key, literally or figuratively, when their negativity gets you down.
Of course, when it comes to being oppressed by people who oppose transgenderism, that’s another matter. Then it’s time to take a stand. But trans people already know that . . . Smiles . . . You are doing very well, sisters and brothers. You are making progress by leaps and bounds.

So it is what it is- if you believe!
Thanks Jillian.