Holy Cross to Set Up Transgender Scholarship

Alison Laing Circa 1956-65

The DTA is designed to increase the accessibility of transgender history by providing an online hub for digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world.

For more from the "Advocate" go here. 

Worcester Massachusetts,  K.J. Rawson, assistant professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross, recently launched the world’s first Digital Transgender Archive (DTA), a collection of transgender-related historical materials. Rawson’s project was recognized in 2013-14 with funding from the American Council of Learned Societies Digital Innovation Fellowship, awarded each year to a handful of academics to advance digital humanistic scholarship.

From left: Alison Laing, Ariadne Kane, Dottie Laing, Dallas Denny, Marilyn Volker, and Pam Geddes at Fantasia Fair.

Cyrsti's Condo "Sunday Edition"

Ker Plunk! Listen up! Another Sunday edition is hitting your virtual front porch! It's a chilly Spring day here in Cincinnati, so grab a cup o joe (coffee) and get started,

Page One: The Week that Was or Wasn't: On the national scene battles continue to rage on the local and state scenes on transgender rights. Good luck on yours, even though luck is secondary and activism is first. Speaking of activism, I was pleasantly surprised Friday night when the "Circle" Meetup group Liz and I are part of announced they would be supporting a table at this year's Cincinnati Pride weekend. Keep in mind, only about three out fifty members are LGBT orientated and I would have never suggested doing this.

Page Two: Seeing is Good: I mentioned earlier this week that I ordered feminine glasses for the first time in my life. Previously, I wore none at all or just wore my old male glasses. In a serious twist on a funny saying, A blind squirrel roots out an acorn, this squirrel found the acorn and I kind of like the glasses I picked out. More importantly, my fashion coordinator (Liz) approved too and Connie, the glasses actually hide some of my wrinkles. I do have bifocals without lines so as I write this with glasses is different. Not that it will be making my writing any better.

Page Four: The Back Page: Today's edition is short because it seems, every second of the day is planned, including a two hour meeting of my writer's meet up group. You all have a great Sunday and thanks for stopping by Cyrsti's Condo!

Gender Fluid?

Recently, I saw a comment on a blog I follow which I totally disagreed with.

Basically the commenter was totally against the idea of a person feeling one gender one day and another the next. The argument was essentially you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Obviously the person had not heard of, considered or believed in the idea of "gender fluidity." It's relatively new and tough on a lot of people who want to stay within the binaries. This time the gender ones.

For the longest time, I have felt I have been gender fluid more than a strict transgender woman. Now though, I am tipping the scale to the feminine side, except for a couple days coming up I know I will have to tip to what's left of my guy self.

So I find very little problem with claiming both my shares of the cake -and with ice cream!  Why? Because I deserve it for all the hell I have gotten over the years. Plus, it's fun to be dressed totally as a guy with Liz and be called a girl.

So those you reject the gender fluid term out of hand should feel fortunate they did not have to wake up most mornings trying to figure out which gender you were.