Saturday, March 1, 2014

Behind Every Womanless Pageant...There is a Cross Dresser

Back in the day when Halloween was my only real time I could get out in the world and "strut my feminine stuff", the challenge was to come up with other "excuses" to have a costume party.  Of course Mardi Gras comes to mind as well as a few manufactured others which were less than successful.

In school and later in life, I remember exactly no womanless beauty pageant contests where I lived until they became popular with cancer fund raising events.  By then, I was exploring the world as a woman anyhow.  Every so often here in Cyrsti's Condo, we discuss the true dynamics of how some men simply shine in womanless pageants and would those of us who were hidden away in our closets cross dressing been too paranoid to compete?

I know for sure I would have in high school.

Just for kicks and giggles, I'm going to post this picture from a womanless pageant in Dover, Tennessee and ask you to pick the cross dresser out of the crowd. I think he did a pretty good job of not looking too obvious!  Or did he?

Six brave VFW Post 4730 are contestants in a recent Womanless Beauty Pageant to celebrate the retirement of Donuta Jeziorowska, who has served at the Post for over 22 years.

It's a Small World After All!

I was over at my ex wife's house (no misprint) with my daughter to lend what ever expertise I have to a couple of small house renovation projects.  To be clear, we all get along well and with or without my gender issues I was easier to live without.

I have mentioned here in Cyrsti's Condo that I am totally out to my daughter and amazingly enough, my ex wife never told our daughter about me and my gender struggles. Now my question is, has my daughter updated her Mom?  Truthfully, I really haven't given it much thought. If I'm not directly affected, I don't bother with it.

What led me to believe my ex and her husband do know is the conversation which magically appeared over a cup of coffee.  It turns out her husband has a nephew who is a trans man and I was told, was going "all the way."  They went on to say how supportive his parents were of the process. (His Dad has since passed.)

Rarely, am I at a loss for words but I was then. I finally blurted out how special it was and is for parents to support totally a transgender child. As it is and the conversation moved back into other mundane areas. Obviously it would have been the ideal time to not so casually mention the obvious-I too am going through the gender transition process. After all these years, I find it frustrating as of yet, I have yet to come to terms with telling the truth about myself. But I didn't.

I'm also fascinated by the numbers of trans individuals who turned up in a very small sampling of people I knew "back in the day".  Way back before I went into the Army in 1972, a woman I was engaged to's sister was very butch. I remember once they managed to dress her up as a girl and I thought even I would have looked better in that dress. Years later, she was living her life as a man, but I never knew if she identified as a transgender man.  Now it turns up there was another trans person in the works.

Before I sound like Jerry Springer, no, these two families are not related and never interacted at all. They are only tied together with me because I knew both of them.  I only found it interesting there were so many of us "bunched" together in such a small sampling of people I know. Maybe there are many more transgender women and men in the world than anyone knows about?  That idea, led me  to be a believer in the latest Facebook attempt to open themselves to different gender options.  I (for one) was sick of the simple outmoded male and female binaries and hoped the Facebook move would be more of a "census."

Regardless of all of that, I think I'm moving into yet another level of coming out to others.  They knew but were waiting for me to tell them.

Cyrsti's Condo "Cover Girl" of the Day

Today we feature female illusionist Allison St. John from the UK:

A Complex Day

  JJ Hart. (right) Mother's Day  last night. Liz on left. Another Mother's Day is here and as always, it presents me with many compl...