Heart and Soul

This recent comment from Connie just happened to work in with a chapter I am writing for my second book , so I thought I would share it: "My new job, watering the hanging flower baskets in downtown Seattle, has given me an opportunity to do a lot of people-watching. Women definitely come in all shapes and sizes! Of course, I was already aware of that, but being on the sidewalk from 6:00 AM to 1:00 PM allows me to see all kinds of women: from the homeless early in the morning, the working women a couple hours later (and again at lunchtime), to the tourists who are on their way to Seattle's "famous" Pike Place Market. No matter what the women are doing, there are still all shapes and sizes within each group. And there I am, blending right in with all of them (despite the ugly orange safety vest my boss told me to start wearing today). I may not be as sleek and chic as the business workers, but I don't have to wake up on the sidewalk, either. The one thing I know, though, is that, if I asked any one of the thousand women I see every day, they would tell me that there is something about their bodies they don't like. It was good enough for me when a woman stopped to say, "It's so nice to see a female doing the watering for a change." To possibly be but average on the feminine body scale does not mean I can't be intensely feminine in my heart and soul, just as with most of the multitude of women I observe every day."

The chapter is called "What is a Woman" and fits in with the war transgender people everywhere are fighting with "gender bigots" who can't get it through their "pea" brains that trans women are men in drag invading women's rest rooms to pee.

Thanks as always Connie for a thought provoking comment!

From Change.Org:

"My name is Blair Durkee and I'm a South Carolinian trans woman, born and raised in Greenville, earning my graduate degree in Computer Science from Clemson University. I am one of many transgender Americans who is harmfully targeted by anti-LGBT legislation like the discriminatory S. 1203.

S. 1203 sought to prevent schools and municipalities from allowing trans people like me from using sex-designated bathrooms. While the bill, thankfully, was defeated, the anti-trans animus behind it is still very much alive. This is true of one of my state's elected officials, state Senator Lee Bright, who sponsored and supported S. 1203, and for the many like him across the country who have supported the more than one hundred discriminatory anti-LGBT bills that have been introduced this year, alone."

Follow the link to sign. Thanks to Liz for passing this along. With young up and coming transgender women entering the world, like Blair Durkee the trans future will be bright!

BIG Changes Coming?

According to Time Magazine:" The Department of Veterans Affairs has quietly proposed lifting a ban on sex reassignment surgery that has been in place since the early 1990s, in what would be a major shift in its coverage of medical treatment for transgender veterans.

The V.A.’s proposed rule would follow in the footsteps of a similar change Medicare made in 2014, and would align the V.A. with the latest research on treatment options for transgender people, which has evolved since the V.A.’s ban was instituted more than two decades ago.

“At that time some of these surgical procedures were not as well developed as they are now,” says Jillian Shipherd, a co-director of the V.A.’s LGBT health care program. “The science about what the international standards of care are was very different from where we are today.”

However, as discussed here, a "proposed change" rarely moves quickly within the Veteran's Administration, and the actual approval within the VA could take up to 22 months.