Pageant Photo

One of the contestants from last November's Miss International Queen womanless beauty pageant in Thailand.

Transgender Self Help

On too many occasions, I hear from transgender women who are painfully stuck in the closet.
There are ways out of your dark room and every once in a while someone steps forward with a great idea.
This one comes from Toni D'Orsay and her Dyssonance blog.
(Disclaimer. Sometimes Toni gets a little "wordy" for my tastes but she does incredible with this!)


"Idea: for the month of March, volunteer for 20 hours with an organization or project that specifically deals with trans folk, or solve a local problem. Without getting involved in politics. When I say without getting involved in politics, I mean without becoming embroiled in the online arguments we see, without lobbying for a law to change, without going to see a politician and getting them to vote for something. Kinda different for a request, isn't it? It is a suggestion to you in order to get you to help yourself. The difficulty is that the way that it helps you is indirect -- far more so than working on some change in law. It is going to affect other trans people, and that, in turn, is going to affect your life and make it richer, make it better. You might wonder why I am doing this now, as February comes calling, but the reason is that I want you to take a month a research the organizations in your area that do things for Trans people other than the political. You will have to research them. You will have to hunt for them. Well, that is unless you live in New York or Boston or San Francisco or Los Angeles. Some of the organizations will be doing political work as well, and that's ok. Just say you want to spend 20 hours in an entire month doing whatever it is that they need done. I haven't talked about this idea with any other organization. This isn't part of some secret trans activist effort carefully coordinated behind the scenes. Yes, those things happen. They have to if we are going to get some things to change. No, this is just me, by myself, asking you, personally, to stop for 20 hours in March and volunteer your time to help trans people. And I am asking you to start looking for that trans organization now."

For more on the post and Dyssonance go here:

A Case for Transitioning Young

I have subscribed recently to a blog called en gender written by Helen Boyd of My Husband Betty fame. As with most of her posts, this one is compelling:

" The other day I published a brief interview with Christine Benvenuto, who wrote a book about her marriage to and divorce from a trans woman. I blurbed her book, let me admit up front. I blurbed it because despite some transphobic tendencies (not respecting her ex’s change to feminine pronouns, most notably), I think it’s important that partners get their stories out there – as important as it is for trans people to do so. I’ve been enabling the latter for a long time, and I’m proud to have done so. But I see so often that partners who are having a hard time or who are bitter about a divorce or angry about transition are told – in trans community spaces – to STFU, pretty much. And that really sucks, a lot. The thing is, nothing about her memoir struck me as patently false. I’ve known a lot of trans women and a lot of wives of trans women over the past 13 years. A LOT. And Benvenuto’s story, just as she told it, is pretty goddamned typical. I have seen behavior by trans women that is sexist, misogynist bullshit. I have seen trans women spend their kids’ college money on transition. I have seen 401Ks emptied. I have seen all of that, and more. I have also seen the wives of transitioning women take out all their rage on their trans spouse – financially, emotionally, even physically. I have seen rage that I didn’t even know was possible in the wives of trans women. And I have seen them be unwilling to let it go. That is, I have seen a lot of awful behavior on both sides of this coin. Trans people are not excused because they’re trans just as women are not excused because they’re women. We are all faced with loss and betrayal and heartbreak and all of the emotions that accompany those things. How you choose to express them is entirely up to you."

Of course there is much more to her post which you can read here. But it finishes partly like this:

"So if we as a community want trans people to be happy, people need to know what kind of devastation a late transition can cause on families and wives and communities and of course on the trans people themselves. There is so, so much pain, on everyone’s part. People need to know it. People need to transition younger so that some of this can be prevented."

I'm sure you all know I'm a late transitioner and have even be called "yet another old guy on hormones". We all have compelling reasons or even excuses why we didn't transition earlier in life. Certainly none of us can go back in time so making the best of this situation is now all we have. Helen Boyd's ideas make sense.
I have added an en gender link here in Cyrsti's Condo plus another look "at the other side":  The Cross Dresser Wives" Monthly Newsletter. Don't expect warm and fuzzies there but worth a look!