It's NOT That Difficult

I am in Cincinnati, Ohio. Today, on the heels of yesterday's mega coverage of  Prez Obama coming out against gay/transgender conversion therapy-the local tragic(local) Leelah Alcorn suicide story was featured. Then today, yet another story of a teen trans suicide went public.
It occurred to me (again) we are missing something here (other than the obvious). Maybe missing the forest for the trees. If I was writing my own version of "Parenting a Transgender Child for Dummies", here are my basics:

1. You face a Very REAL 41% chance of your child committing suicide.  COUNT on it.
2. YOUR Child will be bullied- COUNT on it. Remember too-bullying is a multi generational institution. Others kids learn it.
3. Monitor your child's social media. Bully's live like cock roaches on social media and often are just as intelligent.
4. Religion may help YOU-but not your child. Jesus is not walking down the hall at school with your child. 
5. Each case/child is different but you and your child are NOT alone-increasingly so.
6. Remember the "P" words. This is not a phase but then again your child can grow into the many different layers of growth. If protected and nurtured.
7. Understand you are raising a very unique and special child.
8. There is NO luck to this. It's what you make of it.
9. The chance of you mourning a child you never really knew is VERY real. 
10. You CAN help.

Rest assured I am not qualified to write a book such as this. On the other hand if we are ever going to stop this insanity, we are going to have to go to the parents with grass roots efforts. - and make the parents of bully's criminally liable.  

What's Wrong with those "Aussie's?"

Catherine McGregor transitioned from male to female in 2012. (Photo: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

"Australian military officer Catherine McGregor, considered the most prominent transgender woman in Australia, functioned as a male until just after her 56th birthday, she shared in a speech at a National Press Club event in Canberra, Australia this week.

“I choose the term ‘functioned’ advisedly, because my relationship to my birth gender was fraught from a very young age,” McGregor, who is a group captain in the RAAF Reserve, said during her speech, reported Buzzfeed.

For people who are transgender, there is a difference between that person’s physical gender and the gender he or she actually identifies with. Gender dysphoria is a diagnosis included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which says, “for a person to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria, there must be a marked difference between the individual’s expressed/experienced gender and the gender others would assign him or her, and it must continue for at least six months.” 

It can be hard to describe what it’s like to actually live with gender dysphoria (“Grammar fails to express" what it’s like to live with it, McGregor said). The writer of the Tarnished Sophia blog, who says in her “About Me” section that she has gender dysphoria, explains that it’s like being ready and comfortable with playing Romeo, and then on opening night being told you must play Juliet. “You haven’t played this part before, you don’t know the lines, the costume doesn’t fit at all, and you feel no connection to this character whatsoever. You don’t understand what her motivations are, and the director can’t explain them in a way that makes any sense to you.”

McGregor said in her speech that before she transitioned from male to female in 2012, her inner conflict was unbearable. “I suffered from it acutely and consciously at intervals over the course of my entire life,” she said in her speech. “I now believe my entire life was spent repressing and compensating for my gender variance.” '

Go here for more! 

Don't the Australian's know how damaging an active transgender military person can be? 

Of course you Cyrsti's Condo regulars know I am a trans vet and I feel the continuing discrimination against trans military members is the height of hypocrisy.

WGAL - Lancaster/Harrisburg

What is gender dysphoria?

What is gender dysphoria?

J Edgar and the White House Potty?

Quite the amount of activity going on to write about here in Cyrsti's Condo-much different than not so long ago when I used to primarily write about what I was wearing or how much passing privilege I thought I had.

First, there is the deal about the Prez coming out against gay and,or transgender conversion therapy and the announcement trans visitors to the White House would no longer have to pee in the bushes outside. (Wouldn't have to worry about the Secret Service these days.) Of course, the "more mature" (Connie) among us sent in a comment about former FBI Director (heavily rumored to be gay and even managed to toss a heel at Zoey Tur:

"The FBI building used to have a transgender-friendly restroom, but it was only for J. Edgar's use. 

I think that conversion therapy is, as you say, a brain washing technique - based on creating guilt. For many of us, guilt has done more to mess us up than any closet-full of ladies clothing ever did. I do subscribe to a 12-step therapy, however, where I believe a transgender woman should have to be able to walk, in a decidedly feminine manner, for a minimum of 12 steps in 4" heels before going out in public. Unfortunately, Zoey Tur did not get my memo."

Speaking of the media crowd, the upcoming barrage of television programming led by B. Jenner should be interesting. Not so sure if any of it will do the average transgender person just trying to get by in society any good. I want to see all of the shows address the issue of restrooms in our society. The one spot where society most wants to try to draw a line in the sand against the transgender community? Being the Biblical scholar I am not-I am still fairly sure restroom usage was not a priority for the Apostles. Then again, they weren't from Florida?

At the least though, we won't be  bored and was TMZ right when they speculated Bruce Jenner had a boob job under that big hot hoodie?  I am sure Zoey Tur needs something else to miss-speculate about.