International Woman's Day

Sisterhood with cis women? What exactly does that mean to you?

For me, it means several things. I know I share a sisterhood because cis women made it possible for me to play in their sandbox. Although, some never knew to what extent and some did  not so willingly.

Cis women also taught me how to communicate in their feminine world, often with non verbal communication.  Indirectly. women taught me how to dress to fit in with their world also.

I know too, a number of cross dressers and/or early transgender women who wanted into the sisterhood so bad, they were sure they needed a cis woman to make them up to be the beautiful creatures of their dreams. Most never made it and learned on their own. For me, ironically, it was a cis male make up artist who helped me out with my makeup the first time so many years ago.

And speaking of men, their attitude towards transgender women (for the most part) is one of distrust while women have a tendency to be more curious. Again, lending a welcome hand to the sisterhood.

I know my time in a feminine lifestyle makes me far from an expert but it has shown me very emphatically what cis woman go through in their lives. From employment, to being talked around (or down to), all the way to feeling physically threatened, I have been in the sisterhood.

Although it is never as easy as it seems, my hope for the future is women continue to advance in all key areas of society. Perhaps finally, they can bring some sanity to the world as we know it today.

Such is my salute to International Women's Day. It's great to finally be part of the "sisterhood."

The Future is Female!

To Be or not To Be

During our Cyrsti's Condo discussion on Mtf gender transitional walls. I am considering using this one as my second wall.

I am using cross dressing as my first wall. After a point (which differs in all of us) a transgender person feels comfortable enough with her make up and clothing to consider the next step...going out in public. Or, should I say, uncomfortable enough. I know in my case, just dressing up for the mirror wasn't enough. There had to be more.

Once I opened the door and began to climb the public wall, I found out people wanted to interact with me and what was I going to do then? Essentially, dealing with the public pushed me off the wall and towards the next one. Interaction meant learning more than looking like a woman, I had to learn to communicate as one too. Since I had the benefit of working with many primarily cis women populated employees over the years, none of this was too difficult to relearn.

Something else I had to learn was in most all situations, other women read me for what I was, a transgender woman or cross dresser. Passing at this point became "personality." I found when and if I returned to the same location, people would have the tendency to remember me. So, to not be friendly labeled me as a bitch. Or worse yet, someone who was doing something wrong.

I found too, scaling this wall turned out to be easy, compared to the walls I would face in the future. After I became more comfortable in my feminine role, I found more and more I didn't want to go back. This also was the point in my life the term transgender was appearing for the first time and HRT was beginning to become more available.

In the distance, I could begin to see my next wall to climb and it was a scary one too! Going full time as a trans woman.

Could I or would I? Increasingly, my feminine lifestyle told me I could and the naturalness of how I felt told be I probably would have to.

Rest Room "Groupies?"

Recently, I saw this story about a gender fluid LGBT activist using the women's room at the Oscars.

From the Los Angeles Times and reporter Robin Abcarium: 

"On Sunday night, in a restroom at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, I was washing my hands when someone in a crimson ballgown swept past me toward the stalls. There was something about this person's energy that was different than that of other women who were milling around, redoing their lipstick, chatting about the Oscars show.

I felt I knew this person in the crimson gown. Or had seen them somewhere before. So I left the bathroom and waited outside, in the lobby. And when this person left the ladies room, I stopped them to chat.

Sure enough, it was Sam Brinton, 29, an unforgettable, gender-fluid LGBTQ activist whom I'd met almost four years ago at a conference in Las Vegas for educators who work with LGBTQ students. There, Brinton spoke about the degrading experience of undergoing reparative therapy as a teenager.

Today, Brinton, who has a master's degree in nuclear engineering from MIT, works for the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention group for LGBTQ youth."

For more on the story, go here.

The story reminded me of the "old days" when I would go out to the same venues (mostly straight) and normally always attracted the attention of a cis woman or two who were curious and/or just wanted to chat. Plus, from socializing with the other transgender women in one of my support groups  and hearing their conversations, I know the same thing still happens with them.

The reason why, I think, is very complex but mainly revolves a cis-woman's natural curiosity concerning why we trans women would ant to play in their "sandbox" at all.  Any other reasons would take another blog post to go into now!