Happy New Years!

Happy New Years to all you readers of Cyrsti's Condo!

2012 a Transgender Odyssey

As I look back on a very active and exciting year in my gender journey, I thought a time line may be appropriate to attempt to put the year in focus:

New Years Eve 2012...took my first Estrogen and Spiro. HRT begins.
February...Breast changes starting.
March...My private Doctor increased minimum Estro dosage and told me he was changing practices- not good as I was to find out. The VA would not pay for his services.
Skin going through amazing changes. Discovered the value of taking a bath in 10w-30 oil to take care of it.  Woman aren't just being girly with all their skin products they are a necessity!
May...VA told me there was no in house specialist to prescribe my meds but they would continue to fill them. That sounds better than it was because I had "hit the wall" with my changes and I wanted more. So, I scheduled another VA therapist appointment to pursue options..which she did and told me the magic word "Patient Advocate". At that point I decided if the system is supposed to take care of my needs, I would fight to get them..
June...I pleaded my case with a "patient advocate".. She was positive I would get the outside treatment! But...
July...estro and spiro running out. Still stuck in the VA bureaucracy. Found out my body had it's own new summertime furnace but experienced the true need (and fun) of short sleeved and sleeveless feminine fashion. Women just aren't showing off. They need all the cooling they can get.
August...New in house VA Endo Doc refused to see me. VA agreed to keep my Meds coming until I could get approved for an outside Doc. Problem was the meds were half what I was taking.
September...outside Doc finally approved.
October...BIG MONTH!
Saw the new Doc and he renewed my older Estro prescription to begin the serious changes again.
My Daughter gave me a birthday gift to get my hair colored and done at her hair salon. Quite possibly the biggest change to my girl self outside of starting HRT.
Last but not least, went on a mini 4 day trip with a girlfriend- all as a woman.
November...rediscovered the pleasure of doing drag again in a gay bar as a transgender woman. It was truly fun. Met two new friends whom I still chat with and see.
Went to benefit AIDS drag show with my daughter and 6 of her girlfriends...as a girl for the first time ever.
December..
Whew! I found out why women are always cold. My furnace broke down when I needed it!
The month came and went with me butching it up and having a great time at my family's get together knowing full well most of them know my "secret".
New Years Eve...heading out with my friend who started it all with me last year and planning a great evening.

Finally, 2012 was an incredible year. From my old friends to my new ones, I have much to be grateful for.
Perhaps a statement I heard many times from all my genetic girlfriends rings true: "Welcome to our world!"
I am!
Again, thanks so much for being along for this fantastic ride in Cyrsti's Condo. There is no way I could have ever imagined arriving here.
All the best to All of you in 2013!!!

Cyrsti

Before Transgender?

As you all know, some of us who have been on this planet for awhile grew up in the information dark ages and what I called the gender "black out".

I found this story from The New York Times Magazine about Ethel Person by Stephen Burt.

" In the 1970s,  she one of the first mental-health researchers who tried to meet cross-dressers, transsexuals and (as we now say) transgender people on our own turf, or on our own terms. She visited cross-dressing societies and drag-queen balls; she interviewed all the transsexual patients of the celebrated Dr. Harry Benjamin, and she drew on those visits, those interviews and on hard-to-find publications, including porn. At once a sexologist in the tradition of Alfred C. Kinsey, a psychoanalyst in the tradition of Freud and a writer sympathetic to feminist critique who knew a sexist culture could change, Person asked how we come to see ourselves as men or women, gay or straight or neither, and how to help people whose sense of self causes them pain."

To out this in perspective, I was close to graduating college in 1971. Here's another excerpt:

Person's results make unsettling reading." In papers like “The Transsexual Syndrome in Males” (1974) and “Homosexual Cross-Dressers” (1984), Person and her collaborator, Dr. Lionel Ovesey, distinguished “core gender identity” (whether we think we are truly men or women) from “gender-role identity” (whether we act macho or demure, no-nonsense or girlie-girl) and both from sexual-object choice. Those distinctions can seem obvious now, but they had to be explained at length back then, when those explanations — for psychoanalytic thinkers like Person — often led to broad claims about unconscious origins."

For all of us who lived through this era, this is a good short read. For those that didn't this is a great look at a few of the processes which have opened transgender information doors today. Follow this link.