Man Up

I am fortunate to call a couple trans men my friends and one of them has started performing as a "Drag King".

Recently it seems the Drag King culture is gaining publicity and I can see why after a few performances I have seen. As with drag queens I just don't believe a great majority of drag kings are trans.  So with all due respects to transgender men,  I'm  going to pass along an article from The Independent called "Man Up". Here's an excerpt written about Holly Williams Drag King adventure:


"The doorbell rings. I hesitate, then head down the stairs to answer it, taking them at a wide-legged stomp, a goatee sprouting a shade too darkly from my chin, a bulge between my legs. It's not the only thing bulging – when I answer the door to the unwitting postman, his eyes fairly stand out on stalks. "Er, flat two?" "Yep," I growl. "Mrs Holly Williams?" he asks, flustered. Confirming my identity with the barest grunt (it's 'Ms' actually, but I think he's got enough gender confusion to contend with without a lesson in semantics), I grapple the large package – quiet in the back! – with manful ease. Back in my flat, I fall about laughing, but I may have just made Lenna Cumberbatch a little bit proud. She's a drag king – a woman who performs masculinity – and she's been helping me find my alternative male persona, donning men's clothing, sticking hair on my face and socks down my pants, as well as teaching me how to walk, stand and speak. I don't think I convinced the postie, but by the end of an hour playing around, Cumberbatch does say, "I think you could pass".

I'm am just fascinated about why any woman would want to present male as I am sure genetic women are about us!

Read more here.

Carmen Carrera

Carmen is a fairly well known name in the transsexual community and even was featured on a "What Would you Do" show where she was abused as a transgender server to see how the public would react. Here's a 2013 YouTube video on the Cyrsti'sCondo vid viewer:

Sunday Morning Reset

Nearly all of my working life I have worked Sundays so now having a Sunday morning with essentially nothing to do is still special and I assume it always will be.  From my paper route to a radio DJ gig to many years in the restaurant business working Sunday was never an option.

These days, since I'm semi retired people think I'm kicking back and doing my nails. Ironically, I have had to set a day off up from posting vintage items I sell to my three shops, organizing my book and contributing to Cyrsti's Condo. 

What that means is I get a chance to reset on Sunday morning and step back and look at my life, my gender transition and plan into the future.

This morning in my part of the world, March ( per norm) is refusing to give any ground to Spring and the snow is flying. Plus I live in one of the old Midwest Ohio "rust belt" towns which is finally making a transition of it's own. I'm always interested in driving around and seeing the non preservable old and ugly giving way to inner urban land to be developed. I'm a history freak and I am not always sure new is good. In this sense it is.

If you are considering the transgender path, the same could be good for you.  I'm often asked about an inner transition from cross dresser to transgender or even transsexual. Of course there are the "easy out" crowd who think you are placed in the trans trilogy at birth and any deviation from CD to TG to TS is blasphemy. In my mind those individuals are as narrow minded and stuck in the past as the traditional gender binary  male and female believers are.  If you are similar to me, you have spent years trying to figure out just what you are. Moving dirt and building new ideas in your noggin.

So this Sunday reset for me is time to look at my gender reconstruction so far and glancing at the blue prints of the future. My problem is I have never been good at reading blueprints. I have been good at charging ahead to test the waters. Another test is coming towards the end of April when I do a workshop on "Transitioning Later in Life" at Trans Ohio in Columbus. I'm honored and humbled to have been chosen and the last thing I want to do is mess it up and I won't. As we all know though, there is a huge difference in the written and spoken word. So I'm a "jabberer" and have to be careful I'm making sense.  Plus, the last thing I want to do is be a role model instead of an example. I am an example of my personal transgender history and as you know I am not shy about communicating it. Learning anything from my experience is a huge positive. Following the same path to get there may not be.

In the meantime,I will have to rely on my "resets". I know my heavy moving is over and perhaps the reconstruction will go as long as I'm allowed to be on this Earth. I just hope I can chose the right paint colors.