More than Meets the Eye

Certainly most of us are enamored with the glamour and glitz of the ladyboy culture in Thailand. Very seldom though do we get a glance of the day to day transgender culture there.

I have mentioned here in Cyrsti's Condo the year I spent in northern Thailand close to the Laotian border -back in the Vietnam non war days. I do get a chuckle when I tell someone I lived in Thailand for a year and they start asking SRS questions. If you weren't careful you could be a candidate for SRS and much more!

I was lucky. My occasional brush with danger during my AFTN days was when I had to drive the unit truck on Thai roads.  Forgetting I was navigating on the opposite side of the highway where the only rule was survival of the biggest could be dangerous.

So during my stay in Thailand, I was able to learn first hand the mix of Thai and Laotion culture. I found the people to be accepting and friendly of us and I loved the culture and religion. (For you trans vets, I had separate rations and lived off base.)

So when I'm able to find a bit of a different look at the transgender culture in Thailand, I can't wait to pass it along to you.

This YouTube international trailer is from a film called "It Gets Better":

 While I am on the subject of countries half way around the world from me, I received an email from a follower in Sri Lanka who wrote a piece about the blog. As soon as one of us can get it translated from Sinhalese I will pass it along. In the meantime, take a quick peak here to see a beautiful example of how the word Sinhala looks.

This brings me to another point. What is scary to me is my grand kids have not been taught any cursive writing since the second grade. The two oldest academic over achievers show it. My daughter is very diligent in insisting they write hand written thank you notes for gifts. Bless their hearts but I guess their schools figure they "don't need no stinkin hand writing!"

Divine Drag

From Straight.com 

 "She was overweight, outrageous, shocking, ferocious, brash, crass, and in-your-face. And she was beautiful.The iconic Divine, branded the drag queen of the century by People magazine, ripped pop culture a new one by challenging—no, assaulting—constipated standards of beauty, sexuality, and basically everything sacred and boring about mainstream American life."

In some ways I consider Divine's memory a simpler time in drag. What you saw was what you got-and more some. I like so many fans found Divine's defiance to be much more compelling than the drag mask he wore. I enjoyed watching a social revolutionary- straight or gay in drag or not.

Time has moved on.  All facets of the transgender and the LGB community are so much more complex now.

People magazine got it right about "Divine" who in all senses is the "Anti Rude Paul".

For more on the Divine life go here.

Fun and Games at the Docs!

If you have been following along with my HRT saga, I'm going to sneak one in here.

I still weave a path between the Veterans Administration and the private medical world to obtain quality hormonal care. My endo doc's bill is paid by the VA and he prescribes my meds and the VA fills them with my co-pay.

I didn't really expect to go to see him today and was making an appointment for later this month when the receptionist said they had an opening for today. I took it.

After the usual questions concerning my thoughts, the Doc surprised me by saying we need to double the dose of the "Spiro" I'm taking.  Spiro is used to decrease testosterone levels in men and a couple of my transgender friends "in the know" said my dosage seemed to be low. I was elated and said sure! Then he asked how I felt about my breast development. I probably screwed up and told the truth. I am sort of satisfied with my progress so far and we agreed to keep the estrogen dosage I'm taking the same.

So, the good news was he wrote me prescriptions for another six months worth of HRT meds. The not so good news is now I have to get the meds and process re approved with my recently named new VA primary physician. Yes, nothing is easy with this process-I know this.

Best case scenario will be if new VA Doc just signs off on the scripts like my old one did. Worst case is of course he wants to see me and decides to pass me off to someone else. My guess is I will end up somewhere in between the two.

At this point I really want to find the person who thinks this transgender process is a choice and all I'm trying to do is play dress up. Then I could use what is left of my declining "T" and go verbally postal on them!