Bo Derek and The Female Priviledge

Remember actress Bo Derek in the movie "10"? If you don't, she starred in the 1979 movie which was instrumental in establishing a numerical rating for feminine beauty. Very simply, the beautiful "Bo" was at least one man's version of the perfect woman-a ten.
Hey, it's a movie. Right?
My point is two fold. Is there a female privilege which extents past the external which Bo Derek enjoyed and as transgender women how does it fit with us?
One of the raging debates in the radical transsexual and feminist community is the concept of male privilege. My goal here is not to get bogged down in all the semantics of the argument. I just know growing up, the concept of benefiting from being a white male was far outweighed by the expectations. Again, another story.
The question? How do the so called "gender privilege's" effect trans women or trans men in any stage of their transition.
Let's refer back to "Bo" and use the very shallow example of physical appearance.
Appearance is indeed shallow but indeed very important as studies prove. From sexual attraction to job advancement facts show appearance is important.
As transgender people the "A" word certainly effects us deeply. I recently contributed to a  thesis survey which asked questions on appearance and fashion. Basically how does my appearance effect me and on a larger scale how do unisex fashions and the such effect overall gender stereotypes?
The point all of this is taking me to is what sort of before and after number do you put on yourself as either gender and how do the numbers effect your confidence.
More ideas coming in the next post!

Weekly "Horrorscope"

I do a lot of talking to myself and even answering myself. This "HorrorScope" is for the birds!
"Libra (September 23- October 22)
The truth will be subjective this week, putting you and your honey on opposite sides of the fence. You’ll say tomato, he’ll say to-mah-to. Thankfully, you don’t have to let this place a wedge between you, if you just take out your aggressions with more time out in nature. Yes, time to commune with the birds. At the very least, they won’t talk back to you."
As always (for the birds or not) this "HorrorScope" is from theFrisky..

Oh Canada!

Big mistake. I mentioned Canadians, hockey and Tim Horton's but forgot Jenna!
Bobbie, Janie and all you other Canadians! I'm sorry!

"Jenna Talackova"

She's Baaack!

Yes there is more of me somewhere else (sorry!)
Approximately a month ago, I started to write a weekly column for "TG Life.com" For the most part I'm writing some original content which focuses on the dynamics of how I became the female me. I actually pull material from my 40,000 page book on the subject which is laying around here in Cysti's Condo somewhere!
It's free to become a member at TG Life and the site has a lot of fun features about crossdressing all the way through transsexuals. You need to become a member to view some of the material in the "TG Reporter" area of the magazine-where I write.
I have added a link in the blog list here on the condo.
Cyrsti

Thinking of You Mom!

For many of us (in the U.S.) Sunday is Mother's Day. Sometimes I'm pretty ignorant. Do you UK folks have "Mum's Day" in Great Britain? How about you Canadians? You folks to the North are pretty independent with all those Tim Horton's coffee shops, 2$ coins and hockey.
At any rate the day should be a time to celebrate the unconditional love your Mom has always given you with flowers and dinner of some sort.
Hopefully that is true for you! Was she was the first to step up and say "that's OK dear, I'm happy you have come to grips with your cross dressing-just so you are not gay and not one of those transsexuals!"
Of course Mom's do run the spectrum in transgender acceptance.
I've written about my Mom. Here are the basics. She has been gone for nearly 20 years, was part of the WWII/Depression "Greatest Generation" and recommended electro shock therapy when I tried to come out to her.
Do I hold it against her? No-she was doing the best she could with her past. After our little chat that one night, the gender subject disappeared like the Nazi's to Argentina and was never brought up again.
She never knew I wanted a doll one Christmas instead of the BB gun my brother used on me. She never knew my fascination with her application of makeup when I was very young. She had to have known I was playing in her clothes and makeup later in life and chose to ignore it. We all know it was just a fad that would go away! Especially if you don't talk about it!
Through all of this Mom and Dad were incredible providers. He was a self made man who actually was the youngest son of a man born in 1869. Talk about spanning generations! I never knew him. He passed away in 1949 before I was born.
We were far from wealthy but never lacked for a good roof over our heads, food and education. On the other hand we always lacked emotional support.
So Mom, happy Mother's Day! I would have loved you more if I would been taught what was love was.
I do respect you though and I know you would see the irony the daughter you almost never had resembles you a lot and inherited your restless personality.
I wonder if you would be proud of me still trying to completely feel what that love thing is all about!.

Transgendered In Southeast Asia

For obvious reasons, Thailand earns most all or the transgender - transsexual news coming out of Southeast Asia.
This story comes out of Cambodia from the Phnom Phen Post:

"She waited patiently at the office of the Women’s Network for Unity because she had a message she wanted to deliver to Cambodia through the media. “Stop discriminating against transgendered people because this discrimination forces us into sex work to survive,” Touch Srey Leak said, explaining that it was impossible for her to get a job in the formal sector. She also said she wanted to “suggest to local authorities and police that they stop raiding and arresting sex workers, because they do this work because they have no choice”.

She said this quietly and without anger – as though she believed that if people understood her dilemma they would change their attitude towards her. She also asked whether the interview would be translated into Khmer because this was the audience she wanted to reach.

“Because you discriminate against me as a transgendered person I am forced to do sex work, and then you discriminate against me again for doing this work,” the 24-year-old from a village in Kandal province reiterated in her quiet logic.

Like most transgendered Khmers, Touch dislikes the Thai word “Kathoey”, which is often translated as “ladyboy” in English, but is used pejoratively here, even though some scholars say this is the culture the term originated in. Women born as men here prefer to be called Srey Sroh, which means “Beautiful Girl”: a phrase that fits Touch to a T."

Follow the link above for more! In many countries around the world, the person and nation change but the sad story is still the same.

TranssexualTV star Poppy receives the award for Most Attractive Star at the Star Kingdom Awards earlier this year. Photograph: Pha Lina

Laverne Cox "ENDA" it All!

Can't write it any better than this:

"Laverne Cox"

I was so moved by and proud of President Barack Obama's history-making declaration yesterday with this sentence: "For me, personally, I think it's important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think that same-sex couples should be able to get married." This is great news. Marriage equality is indeed an issue for transgender Americans, as well, as evidenced by Littleton v. Prange, and recently by Nikki Araguz's case. But while I believe in and am a huge supporter of marriage equality, as a transgender woman of color, I recognize that there are arguably bigger issues for my trans brothers and sisters, issues like employment and health-care discrimination and violence against transgender people, particularly trans women of color.
This is why I went to Albany, N.Y. Tuesday for Equality and Justice Day. I wanted to lend my voice to the support of the passage of the Gender Expression Nondiscrimination Act (GENDA). Many transgender folks are fighting for our lives and basic civil rights all over this country, and to have those rights acknowledged by our legislature in the state of New York right now. For the fifth year in a row, the state assembly has passed GENDA, but the bill has yet to come to the floor for a vote in the Senate. This bill is about acknowledging that trans folks should have the same rights as everyone else. That's all. It's simple. This is America. Equal access and opportunity are what we're supposed to be about.

Laverne Cox Actress, producer and transgender advocate; co-creator and star, 'TRANSform Me' from the Huffington Post.

Being a Political Transgender Person

By nature I am a political person. Raised in the shadow of the Kennedy's and Martin Luther King's assassinations, I felt the hypocrisy of a truly great country which over the years had been very slow to equalize basic rights to all it's citizens. The so called "white male privilege" did buy me an all expense paid trip to Southeast Asia and infantry training.  So why should I complain?
Now it seems, I occupy a unique political spot. I'm old enough to be the offspring of a true "greatest generation" parents and even older grandparents. My paternal grandmother used to tell us stories of going to the Ku Klux Klan meetings in a wagon. Of course I was wondering about my own gender and why people couldn't look past color to co exist as she was talking.
Then there were those old pesky ideas of equal rights. It took until 1920 for the Nineteenth Amendment to give women a national right to vote and the 1960's to get the Equal Rights Bills passed. So what the hell, why wasn't this country practicing what it preached as far as freedom went? It was always too easy to say- well we are better than any other country. Just exactly what does that mean?
It means to me as I read news about the Canadians, Argentina and others making progress in transgender rights I get upset.
I get upset because I feel essentially powerless.
I do join on line causes,  write this little blog and do my best to present myself as a proud transwoman to the public.
On the other hand I see many of the bigger mainstream transgender blogs who seem more interested in endlessly debating terminology than making any significant difference.
Finally, I have never stopped being a competitor and I want my country to be the best it can and the belief we can get there!

It's On!

When President Obama endorsed same sex marriage yesterday, the expected backlash did not take long to materialize but as they say in the old country-"we ain't seen nothing yet"!
By the way, I'm writing another companion post on politics.
For what it's worth, here's my take on the situation:
I believe the President caught all the conservatives off guard with his timing and responses started immediately in the House (of course) but I would bet the "Romney" campaign was burning some serious "midnight oil" trying to figure out their next move.
Romney ends up with the chance to get pushed into a conservative corner most feel he was in anyhow.
Now of course here comes rounds of dirty political tricks from both sides. In fact Bobbie Douglas just sent me this story from "The Raw Story"

"Eric Fehrnstrom, a top aide and political strategist to presumptive Republican presidential candidate former Gov. Mitt Romney (MA), made headlines earlier this year with a gaffe comparing Romney in the primary fight to an “Etch a Sketch” that you can flip over and shake and start over with as a blank slate in the general election. Before he was an adviser to Romney, Fehrnstrom was a political columnist for the Boston Herald. According to a profile in GQ, in 1992, he outed recently-elected Massachusetts Rep. Althea Garrison (R) as a transgender woman, effectively ending her political career.
Althea Garrison was a Boston politician and activist who was elected as a Republican to the Massachusetts state House in 1992. Two days after her election victory, Fehrnstrom published an article in the Herald announcing that Garrison had been born male.
“I can remember his glee when he found the birth certificate,” said a former Herald reporter named Robert Connolly.
The outing of Althea Garrison raises serious questions about the culture of the Romney campaign, where Fehrnstrom operates as a privileged member of the command team and as Romney’s longest-serving, most-trusted political strategist. It has been said that if Karl Rove was “Bush’s brain,” then Fehrnstrom is “Romney’s balls.”

I'm not going to say I'm unbiased and I believe there will be more than a few of right wing preachers who will work this theme into Sunday's Mother's Day sermons.

So get ready. All of this should be interesting!