Sleepless in Cincinnati

Quite a few things happened yesterday which led to a sleepless evening. By "sleepless"  I mean my usual eight hours of slumber was reduced to an hour and a half. The main reason was we had strong storms in the Cincinnati metro area and our electric power was knocked out for nearly twenty four hours. No electric meant no fan in the evening heat and humidity. As I have mentioned before, we live in a non airconditioned house. Worse yet, I had no background noise at all to help me go to sleep. Normally leaving me alone with my thoughts leads me to face more than a few of my deepest anxieties head on. 

Before I get to a few of them, I heard from Connie recently and she is facing desperate health issues. So if you all can take a moment and wish her the best I am sure she would appreciate it. To make a long a very personal story much shorter Connie was subjected to the medical paranoia we non

Photo courtesy Connie Malone

operative transgender women fear the most, the total un-robing in the prep room in front of strangers, some of which who don't seem to be completely approving. Regardless of all of that, again I wish her the best trip back to being the sarcastic fun person she can be.

Plus there is Stana's wife who seems to be on the road to recovery. My best goes out to her also. As my father in law always said growing old isn't for sissies.  

Getting back to last night, for some reason my thoughts seem to basically zero in on my deceased wife and a few of the times we had as my desire to pursue a life as a transgender woman was not met with any acceptance from her. Ironically Liz who is my current ten year partner and Cindy (my deceased wife) are completely the opposite in how they approach my gender issues. Cindy fought it saying marrying another woman was not what she signed up for but Liz says all she ever saw in me was feminine. As I struggled with becoming my authentic self, I did make many self destructive decisions. Many of which happened due to my not so secret desire to have my feminine ways discovered. 

One of those was trying my best to "pass" as feminine woman and not as myself around people who knew me. It wasn't too long the word began to get around about what I was up to and certain DJ's would start playing "Dude Looks Like a Lady" when my wife and I went to parties. In other words, I was doing my best to burn every bridge I could to my old male life.

Slowly but surely I was successful and for some reason those burning bridges came back to haunt me last night when I couldn't sleep. 

Finally I became upset when my feelings began to gang up on me and I finally was able to fitfully fall asleep. It helped when I was able to wedge in a couple pleasant memories when we attended cross dressing - transgender mixers at a friends house in nearby Columbus, Ohio. On occasion Cindy would go along but just as often I was left on my own. Leading me to good times which I will write about in another post.

In the meantime, I hope the strong storms stay away long enough for me to catch up on my sleep. 

Queenly.Com

 I received this email from Jamie  Coker Robertson concerning information about Queenly.com.

" I would like to introduce you to Queenly.com, one of the most inclusive online marketplaces in the world for trans women (and all those who identify as women). Owned by two AAPI women, the popular re-sale formalwear app is a staunch advocate for diversity and inclusion for the trans community in every vertical, including inventory, marketing and social media. 

Queenly regularly hires Trans models for their advertising campaigns and provides the ideal platform for trans women and drag performers to find the formalwear that works for them. 

Trisha Bantique

"We know that a lot of trans women and drag performers have a hard time finding dresses/gowns for their size and body shape, and so they have to usually make their own clothing. There's nowhere that they can buy off the rack or brand new where it'll fit them perfectly...until now. Queenly stepped in to make it easier to buy from one another in a more convenient and efficient way.” - Trisha Bantigue, CEO and founder of Queenly. 

Queenly has an exciting upcoming Pride Month partnership with Slay Models, the premier management company representing transgender fashion talent. As one of the main sponsors of their televised Model Search Competition on June 18th in L.A, Queenly aims to be a part of positive change and awareness for the trans community. "

They went on to write : "Whether it’s for a wedding, cocktail party, pageant, or drag ball, Queenly.com has over 90,000 “pre-loved” dresses to choose from, by over 40 different designers. Not only can you buy your dresses from Queenly, you can also sell them back on the app, recouping your investment."

Sounds like a wonderful place to virtually visit if you are looking for a formal gown. They even feature a selection of wedding dresses for the eager transgender bride to be, 

Follow this link for more and thanks to Jamie for thinking of us.

Toxic Masculinity and the Trans Girl

Over the years when I was trying my best to exist in an ultra masculine world, I encountered too many men who would have been described as being toxic masculine. In essence they were the ones who tended to dismiss women as basically only emotional people who were only good for sex and/or having kids. 

I can truthfully say I wasn't an active part of their mentality but on the other hand was ashamed when I went along with their childish actions. I had two excuses. The first was in the business I was in I had to manage to the best of my ability a group of macho redneck cooks in a kitchen. I had to appear tough. The second was on the other hand I had to manage a group of mainly female servers, hostesses and bar tenders. Even then I was studying women intensely to learn how they really maintained in society so in many ways it was a labor of love. I learned my guys in the kitchen worked better when I could manage them as a team and the women worked better when I understood they were going to form their cliques anyhow, so adapt to them and hope for the best.

Further more I had to watch for frontal confrontations from the men and passive attacks from the women. Lessons which would serve me well later as I transitioned genders.  

Lessons I wish I had paid attention to didn't take long to happen. One night very early in my transition I found myself with a group of men discussing a topic I considered myself to be well versed in. Very early they shut me totally out as if I was never there at all. I thought it was one of my first opportunities to learn first hand what my life was going to be like as a transgender woman. I was right and on the other hand, my lessons learned from my work world worked well too. 

I also learned quickly the amount of  non verbal communication women use. It is no wonder most men say they can't understand women when they can't pick up non verbal cues. 

Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

Ironically I had to change my stereotype of what a toxic man even looked like. When I began to explore the world, I attempted to stay clear of any man who looked like the macho type. not unlike my former self. It got so bad I couldn't even try to buy tickets for a sports event from a street "scalper" because they thought I was a cop. Slowly but surely I learned many of the "macho" men didn't seem to care much about me at all and weren't going to verbally attack me. My theory was they were more secure in their sexuality than the normal man. 

Of course recent political activities have made it possible for toxic masculinity to come out of the shadows and even thrive in some areas. Unfortunately the trans community, women and men, has been potentially the hardest hit. The attacks aren't just coming from cis men, they are coming from cis women as well.    

The future is not a given for anybody. Especially not the trans girl.  As always we are going to have to be better and fight for what we have.