Passing Privilege?

I saw a post somewhere the other day about the importance of a person's "passing privilege."

First of all, I am not a big fan of the passing comment at all and always like to refer back to Stana's Femulate comment referring to how she always passed with care, by using her horn, flashing her lights etc.

Long HRT Hair

As far as I am concerned, I go back to what a transgender woman friend told me years ago. She said, I passed out of sheer will power. So many years later, I still do. If people don't like me, it's their problem.

I was never blessed with being a "natural." It took me a long time to realize the compliment "You make a great looking woman," was missing the rest of the comment...for a man. Even though I grew up desperately wanting to be a girl, I lived in a male dominated world and had precious little time to express my "feminine side."

My real inclusion into having any passing privilege at all came after I made the decision to go on HRT. All the good things happened like hair, breasts, soft skin and a rounder face. However, I do believe sometime in the future I will get a health pay back in return for messing around with my body's hormonal basic's.

In the mean time though, I will continue to put my best feminine foot forward to the world the best I can. Out of sheer will power.

Hopefully I won't wear my horn out when I get the chance to pass.   

Pooya!

If you haven't seen or heard, Pantene is starring a 41 year old transgender woman as one of it's models:

"When Pooya Mohseni was 19 years old, she was walking around a park in her hometown of Tehran, Iran, wearing a simple black T-shirt and white jeans, when a group of policemen approached her.

The officers took issue with how Mohseni, a transgender woman who was presenting as masculine at the time, wore her hair. To them, it was too long.

Pooya Mohseni

"My hair was down to the middle of my ears," Mohseni, now 41, tells Refinery29. "Not very long at all. If I pulled it all to the front of my face, it would come down to the middle of my nose." 

According to Mohseni, the officers' real problem wasn't her hair. It was what her hair signified.  Almost two decades later, that very same head of hair is making its debut in a new Pantene campaign called "Don’t Hate Me Because I’m #BeautifuLGBTQ," which was born out of the brand's new partnership with GLAAD in honor of Pride Month. In a video for the campaign that can be seen on both YouTube and social media, Mohseni recounts her arrest and declares that "hair is the most visibly transformative part of your body."

I agree and still feel so fortunate I was able to grow my own hair. It forced me into going all out to adopt a stable feminine persona. The drawback of course is making sure I keep up with it at my stylist!

Bored

After every up moment such as this weekend, there naturally comes a period of "what now?"

I have nothing going on this week until Friday when we have our monthly transgender-cross dresser social at the Mexican Restaurant we go to quite a bit.

It's still too early to decide, but since we are still baking in our mini heat wave, I probably will wear my other maxi dress.

Other than that, I will be riding along with Liz to her doctor's appointments, which require no special preparation to speak of. Just the normal jeans and minimal make up.

All the Prides in the area are now done, so it's a let down too. Most of the euphoria of Pride can be tempered with all the tragic violence against transgender women around the country and the world. Pride is a powerful example of what is possible...if we all stick together and make it happen.