Sunday, June 7, 2015

Cyrsti's Condo "Sunday Edition"

Kerplunk! Another edition of our Sunday edition is hitting your virtual front porch. Here in Ohio we are going through another couple rather chilly days. Yesterday was only 69 (Fahrenheit) here where I am. During my pre HRT days I would relished this kind of weather but not so much now as I reach for my nearest long sleeve shirt. So, the "Joe" (coffee) is of the hot style this morning-let's get started.

Page 1.- The Week that Was -or Wasn't: On the heels of the Trans Ohio Symposium and the Caitlin Jenner reveal we basically had a week to step back and reflect on what had happened. In a sense, Jenner to me was a "be careful of what you hope for moment." For years I have struggled to educate any and all of the public I encountered. Then BOOM - they got educated all right or in some senses all wrong. But you know, I am not complaining. I just think it is diligent to remind "civilians" Caitlin Jenner has been blessed with transgender privilege most of us could ever dream of. Bottom line is though-no sour grapes here. I will take Caitlin's splash of  public relations and run with it. Not far though. I am not a jogger/runner and I am sure it won't take long for her epic publicity machine to crank out more publicity. Rumor has it, if you want to book Caitlin in for a speaking engagement, you can for a "mere" 100 grand. (100,000 dollars)

Page 2.- Transgender Ally's Are Alive and Well. At least they were-in force-at the Trans Ohio Symposium this year. It was cool, they wanted to know what made us tick in some ways and wanted to reach out to us in others. After all, we were their closeted next door neighbors for years and sadly often the ones who tried and succeeded at suicide. Just as sad to me were the nearly total lack of trans women who were willing to give back. Then again, our trans hope lies in our future and there were several very visible examples of the different types of our youth. If you remember the overall surprise when Facebook came out with their new gender choices, at Trans Ohio you saw why. They use them. Binary's were out for the weekend.

Page 3.- Trans*forming the Dialogue: Recently Simmons College announced an initiative to open yet another line of communication for the transgender world: (In their own words)

 "Trans*forming the Dialogue is a blog carnival and social campaign aimed at raising the voices of those within the transgender community. We are asking bloggers and social advocates alike to offer their perspective on how we can foster a more progressive and productive dialogue about trans*lives."

I encourage all of you to check it out and participate! To take a look, go here.

Page 4.- The Back Page: Thanks so much for taking your precious time to stop by Cyrsti's Condo. It has always meant the world to me. Have a great week and if the Goddess is willing, we will do it again next week!!!

I'm Hurt

Last week, I wrote a post here in Cyrsti's Condo about a "day trip" vacation Liz and I took to Ripley, Ohio and Augusta. Kentucky. Augusta is just a short small ferry boat ride across the river. I wrote at the time (I paraphrase) "Augusta was/is a charming sleepy little Ohio River town. As it turned out I was wrong. Augusta was just sleeping that afternoon after the CSX coal train rolled through and we ate lunch. My apologies to Augusta. Turns out I missed all the action.

0605-amal-george-clooney-splashNow, fast forward to this week and I saw a story on a Cincinnati television station about movie star George Clooney and new wife Amal visiting George's childhood home in Augusta. Now, I knew George grew up in Northern Kentucky, but never knew exactly where and he still has immediate family there.

According to TMZ, George put out the big money and treated new wife Amal to "Poor Man's Pie."

I'm hurt because no one mistook me for Amal when I was there. Must have been the accent?

Saturday, June 6, 2015

Advanced Training?

I picked this up through Stana's Femulate blog and similar to so many other excellent posts I see from her, this one really resonated with me. It was actually posted by Monica:

"I recently went to SF and then on to Denver to go to Art of Feminine Presence (AFP) Training.

This was my fourth time going to AFP. I am still amazed that our community has not taken to this; it really is the best way I have found for getting in touch with my feminine essence.

My companion for the training was my friend and well known voice coach Kathe Perez

I was surrounded for six days by loving caring and sympathetic cisgender woman who treated me as one of their own.

I have a theory, if you want to learn Japanese, you do not go to Japan and hang around with Americans. Similarly, if you want to get in touch with you feminine essence, hanging around with cisgender women is likely to be more productive than hanging around with transwomen. I am just saying! Get outside your comfort zone and you will be amazed at what you can achieve and learn!"


This post resonated with me for several reasons. First, I went through similar trials and tribulations as I was coming out of the closet. Unlike Monica, I couldn't find any trans women to hang out with if I wanted to. There were plenty of what I call "predators in dresses" but no true trans women.  Similar to Monica, I began to hang out with nothing but cis women who consistently accepted me and pushed me out of my comfort zone. In fact they flat out tossed me off a gender cliff.  I too was amazed on what I did (and have) achieved and what the future holds.

I love the line "I have a theory, if you want to learn Japanese, you do not go to Japan and hang around with Americans." I do think if you are going though, I think it is impossible not to bring some of your male past with you to spice your feminine essence!

In the Passing Lane

JJ Hart. Early on in my life as a very serious cross dresser before I came out as a transgender woman, I obsessed about my presentation as a...