The Socialization of Transgender Numerology

I'm thinking about now I have spent way too much time on my latest pet theory.
Just when I want to put it all to rest and enjoy passing along simpler fun posts about the effect of the hormones I'm on-there is more from "Natalie Reed":

"While cis girls, throughout their socialization and lives in our
culture, internalize cultural messages about ideal womanhood as a
demand of what they need to be in order to be considered valuable,
desirable, good women, they have the comparable “advantage” of at
least already being girls / women (or at least already having that
assignment). Trans girls, though, are subjected to those same messages
but internalize them as what is required to manifest womanhood at all.
We’re swimming upstream against our gender assignment, and if THAT is
what “being a woman is all about”, THAT gets internalized as the
standard we need to live up not simply to be loved and valued, but in
order to simply be read and perceived as ourselves. In other words,
while cis girls internalize it as what they need to be in order to be
good girls, trans girls internalize it as what they need to be in
order to be.

This ends up creating a whole lot more existential urgency in a trans
woman to live up to the cultural standards of womanhood. For us, the
question driving our self-hatred and self-consciousness over stupid
things like our body not meeting arbitrary-cultural-standard-of-beauty
#2677 isn’t as relatively easily conquered as the desire to “fit in”
or be “good”. It’s instead driven by the pressing need to exist, to be
embodied, to be seen by others and understood as who we are rather
than who we aren’t.

So when we’re told that we’re failing to live up to one of those
morphological standards, the consequence isn’t a feeling of “Oh shit,
I guess I’m not a proper woman”. It hits us much, much more deeply. It
undercuts our fundamental sense of being."

Natalie Reed comes up with very good points and you can read more here.
Now, lets see...about those hormones....

Transgendered Numerology

Recently, I watched a show on the scientific approach to sexual attraction. Essentially, as our lives progress we subconsciously choose mates in our numerical category. Most of us are fives or sixes and that is what we end up with for a mate. Not a ten or a one-a five. In essence that is what the show said not I.
Of course I wondered how all of that effects a trans person?
I have been fortunate enough to have met a couple before and after trans women in my life and seen pictures of many more. The best example of gender numerology was one of the people I met years ago. He was a very plain male. I would say a three but as a female? An easy eight. As introverted he was, she was the opposite. Was this the norm? Probably not. A few bodies are just gender ready to assume the opposite gender while most aren't.
Back to the numbers.  The great majority of us who will never make it to a feminine six or seven, let alone an eight or nine. We are lucky in many ways to be a five or six in either gender.
So what? Some of the most interesting, fun and stimulating people I have ever met, have been fives at the most. I won't even mention the other end of the spectrum of people who are nice to look at and that is it.
The biggest true problem we transgender women, transsexuals and cross dressers have with numerology is how it skews our thought processes. From the cross dresser who desperately wants to be a nine (in the ridiculous on  line skimpy photo) to the transsexual woman who thinks just one more procedure will make her that head turning babe (she turns heads all right and not for the right reasons)-it seems the numbers are ruling their lives.
Here's what you are thinking. What about matching your true gender with your external self- Cool! But at the expense of looking like a clown? I know-I've been in the clown category. If I had some sort of guidance about the power of self versus appearance maybe my journey would have been easier?
I of course, have no answer to all of this and it's all just speculation.
I just wonder how the gender attraction numbers work with trans people.  Hopefully someday a person much smarter than me runs attraction tests with our culture. It would be an incredibly complex process to add all the layers. Trans men and trans women, cross dressers, transgender and all who are attracted to their own birth gender or the other or both!
My only hope would be the findings could be a help to all of us struggling in the middle of all of this. Especially the younger ones!

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.