Civilian Gender Crafts

I operate a shop at "Etsy". If you have never heard of it, it is a arts,crafts and vintage collectible sales site.
As I searched it the other night, I came across an interesting post about "gender specific" crafts:

"Gender crafts still exist partly because of past generations taking their sons to the 'shop' and their daughters to the 'sewing room.' Without any conscious effort my grown sons have sat at my sewing machine more than my daughter, who has learned the skill of tile setting. If we allow the next generation to be drawn to their own interests and not steer them to gender appropriate work it may well come back full circle as gendered."
Here is a portion:
“Women’s work.” It’s a phrase that’s often applied to tasks viewed as simple, routine, and “soft.” It’s a point of view made plain, surprisingly, at an avant gárde training ground for architects, artists, and designers: the Bauhaus.
From 1919 to 1933, this influential school in Germany combined fine arts and design with a craft-based curriculum that included metalworking, cabinetmaking, pottery, and typography. The result was a kind of utopian guild where artists and craftspeople together created functional and beautiful objects. Well-known architects and painters including Mies van der Rohe, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky were among the faculty."
"Those who led workshops at Bauhaus were called masters, and part of Bauhaus philosophy was an easy-going relationship between masters and students. But for all its modernist thinking and many female students, there was only one female master: Gunta Stölzel. In 1927, after significant complaints about the male weaving master, Stölzel was given the title of young master and entrusted with the leadership of the weaving workshop precisely because it was considered “women’s work.” She had been a Bauhaus student for six years"

Check the entire link for the whole story but the end of the article says it all:

In the year before taking over workshop leadership, Stölzel herself wrote: “Weaving is primarily a woman’s field of work. The play with form and colour, an enhanced sensitivity to material, the capacity of adaptation, rhythmical rather than logical thinking — are frequent female traits of character stimulating women to creative activity in the field of textiles.”
What do you think? Have attitudes have changed significantly since the days of the Bauhaus? Do gendered crafts still exist?

What a surprise!

Quote of the Day!

If you shoot for the stars and miss, you may just hit the moon which is way above most people!
Unknown!

Worse Than Tranny?

I so agree the use of the "T" word for a person such as me is the same as the "N" word for an African American or any other of the racial slurs.
There are other words however I see as worse. When someone calls me a  "Gurl" or "Grrl" it just drives me crazy. 
To start with both words just sound so gross.  I call them "grinder" words which roll off your tongue like a piece of gravel.
On a much deeper level the words question my true gender identification. Label me anyway you must Gender Queer, Transgendered or whatever but not Gurl, Grrl or Tranny.
I equate it to a person I ran into not so long ago that I told about the hormones I'm on and they said "Oh, you are taking this seriously!" Really? I wasn't serious before?
Thanks for reading my rant! It's nice to get it off my chest which is finally starting to mean something!

Transgendered Taxation Without Representation

Over the years as an American I have taken my right to vote very seriously.
I have continually told friends who didn't vote, they didn't have a say-even when they said it didn't matter.
As an educated citizen, I have tried to cut through all the smoke screens and BS to vote the best I can.
Now, I have seen my future and have read this article which I'm about to pass along and realize my history of voting could be in jeopardy.. Check it out here.
How sad is it when my civil rights and other transgendered brothers and sisters can't even vote?  It's especially wrong that many such as I have served in the military to supposedly  protect the rights that are being denied?
Just an aside. It is tax time and I'm sure if I didn't pay my taxes because of my transgendered status I would be penalized.
I would like to thank one of my Canadian friends for passing this along!

Fun Thrifty Shopping!

What is more feminine than a girls day out shopping? Surely very few other expereinces scream "GIRLY GIRL".
Unfortunately, most of us don't have the freedom or the finances to really enjoy a shopping day out!
Fortunately though, there are many ways to start down the road to "shopping till you drop".
I'm going to try to cover a lot of ground here, so stick with me!
First of all, I'm going to rule out Internet shopping in this post. Absolutely no problem with it if you have a fairly decent idea of your size and what you look good in.
If you don't, and are just beginning your quest to build a wardrobe lets start with a very inexpensive way to begin.
In my part of the world, spring produces a profusion of yard and garage sales as plentiful as spring flowers. These sales are wonderful spots to find different sizes and styles of women's fashion for as little as 25 cents per item. These sales are where I learned what size I really wore and was even able to buy more than a few items that I found I should never wear. (I recycled those to a thrift store.)
Now, speaking of thrift stores-that's where the fun begins!
Thrift shopping really began to take hold around my area when the economy went down the tubes.
If you are lucky, you can go with friends and make a fun day of shopping and lunch in several stores. Then judge who found the best bargains. OR, you go can alone and take advantages of benefits such as very unsupervised **dressing rooms to discretely try on your potential purchases and no prying clerks.
(**Dressing rooms are like restrooms. Nothing is ever the same from store to store. It is wise to observe before moving forward.")
Bottom line is you can find classic additions to your wardrobe at a fraction of the price from thrift stores. They are becoming so popular that (of course) a reality show is coming called "Thrift Wars" on the Oxygen Network.
Whatever stage you are transitioning from you can feed your inner girl and have some fun doing it at garage sales or thrift stores!
All the nuances of places you can go would make a small book alone and we will look at more idea's later!

When Fetish Became Style

All the years of looking at women and knowing my reactions were different were obviously very confusing to me.
Most certainly my interest sexually was more fetish than anything else. In my teen years I dated a tall girl who always entranced me with how she slowly crossed her legs in my car. I wondered at the time why I wasn't more into her from a male sexual view point. I wanted those long hose covered legs teasing someone like she teased me.
I know now she had a couple other factors in play other than just "teasing" me.  Fashion in those days was the mini skirt so she was trying to sit in the car as modestly as the skirt would allow.  Add in those long legs and the problem of snagging her hose on something and the process was not so easy for a person who was essentially a farm girl.
As the years progressed panty hose became just an accessory and I'm still working on the smooth all in one motion a woman uses when she slides into a seat and crosses her legs in one motion.
In essence I've really have used hose as one example of a larger process.
Fetish became style for me years ago and  now the first thing I may notice about a woman is the bag she is carrying.
The process carried an understanding of why both genders look at women. Men for obvious reasons and women too.
As with most things in life though,  a woman's view of others is much more complex. Just one is style and many factors go into a woman's sense of style or lack of one. Going through that style process myself has finally led me to a greater understanding of my feelings so many years ago.
I simply was in a struggle to discover my own style in a feminine sense.  In a much deeper sense the whole process could be one of the demarcation points between a cross dresser and a transgender person.
It all boils down to if I only knew then what I know now then life would have been so much simpler.
Then again, I'm sure I would have found something else to stress about!

"Horror Scope"!

Somehow I feel this new "horror scope" from theFrisky is the most fun, entertaining and uniquely feminine one I have seen for a while.
Check it out:
"There’s nothing wrong with telling a few little lies that make you out to be greater than you are right now, as long as you are consistent. After all, no one is the wiser by knowing the truth; why not just put that aphrodisiac out there for that other to sense? Besides, if they want you, they will want you regardless and this little deception will only make them hop to it faster."

A Transgendered "Forward Pass".

I've talked and written often here in the Condo of the benefits of "paying forward" experiences to others in the transgendered culture.
A trans woman who has taken it to a whole different level is Chicago's "Gloria Allen". The Chicago Tribune  has the story of 66 year old Gloria:

"About a year ago, a retired Gloria Allen thought having lunch at the Center on Halsted with other lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender senior citizens was simply one of the highlights of her week.
But while at the center, which offers an array of youth services for the LGBT community, Allen, 66, noticed that some of the young people arrived dressed inappropriately. Young men wore scandalously short shorts; young women sported baggy pants that sagged way below their waists.

"Mama Gloria"

So Allen, a transgender woman, got permission from the center to start a charm school. Allen, who's called "Mama Gloria," teaches youth etiquette along with how to dress and carry themselves — things they might have ordinarily learned at home if their parents understood how to guide their LGBT teens and were supportive enough to do so.
"I may be sounding old-fashioned, but I would see these young people wearing negligee-type clothes on the street and I would say, 'How could they leave the house looking like that?'" Allen said.
She said she felt strongly about helping because she understands how difficult it can be when a person has been socialized to be one gender but feels as though he or she is another. Also, she said she believes they have to set a good example.
"When you're a part of a minority community, what you do reflects the whole," she said. "It may not be fair, but that's reality. There are children out on the street. I don't want kids to say, 'Look Mom, look at that.' I don't want people to look at us like that."

Take a look at the rest of this wonderful look at a woman trying to pay forward in our community. In addition, her "words of wisdom" ring true for all of us!

Shades of Pink

One of my more subtle shifts in thinking suddenly became more apparent to me recently.
Slowly but surely many of my more aggressive thoughts are becoming more mellow.
It's not as if I suddenly became an angel but suddenly I have a tendency to see the other side a little more.  There is not a finality to my angry reactions I used to experience. Let me try to explain it:  Now someone doesn't have to be an idiot-they might be one! Also, of course any confrontation ideas are becoming a thing of the past.
Now, I'm not suggesting genetic women don't have any of the feelings I described. Aggression is just different. In addition, I'm not ignoring the feminine "passive-aggressive" nature which in time I would guess will be a natural progression for me too.

Other changes I'm experiencing  are curious changes in my skin which is definitely softening on my body and drying up on my face. Never in my life has my facial skin been so dry.  It feels as if I just spent a couple unprotected hours in a sub zero wind.
Finally, I think I starting to feel a little extra "padding" in my rear.
So, as impatient as I am. Change seems inevitable as I'm getting closer to four full months on hormones.