Thanks!

Recently it seems I have spent a lot of time here in Cyrsti's Condo discussing the Veterans Administration.
Not too long ago I exchanged emails with Jessica from France and she asked what the VA was? OK, I'm a dope sometimes and forget the world wide web is indeed world wide.
Very simply, my definition of the VA is that it is a branch of the U.S. Government entrusted with the welfare of military veterans following discharge.
My journey with the VA started a year ago and currently is finally at the point I call my "second level" of hormone therapy. Simply, I want to increase the dosage of the meds I'm on to expediate my feminization process.
I believe all of that will happen and now are starting to look at level three.
Level three is having the VA change my gender markers. So far it hasn't been that big a deal but it will be.
When it is, already I owe a huge debt of gratitude to trans vets such as Autumn Sandeen. 
This year she has tested this basic VA Directive:

"Effective immediately, to change the gender on VA medical records, a vet must simply provide a letter from a physician certifying that the vet has changed genders and has had appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition. To be clear, the physician’s letter does not need to certify that some specific surgery or any particular medical procedure has been completed – only appropriate clinical care for the individual veteran as determined by the physician.”...BUT!

In testing the policy she found that one couldn’t change one’s sex marker as easily as the new healthcare policy was supposed to make it. So October 2011, I filed an appeal with the VA challenging the denial of my request for a sex marker change...AND


That appeal was the tool NCTE and the VA used to clarify the policy. So March, the VA identified what kind of documents would be acceptable for changing one’s sex marker. I had applied fall 2011 with the kind of documents the VA identified as acceptable in their March policy clarification. Yet, the new policy didn’t impact my ability to change my sex marker: my appeal was still pending. As of Oct.15 – almost a year to the day after filing my appeal – I was sent a letter from the VA. My appeal was resolved in my favor. Per the letter, sometime within the next thirty calendar days the VA will change my sex marker from male to female.

Because of transgender veterans such as Autumn pushing the system, my path becomes so much clearer and hopefully easier. Just saying I have a debt of gratitude doesn't seem enough.

Go here to read more.

Trans Woman Picked

From BuzzFeed Politics:


"The new head of the country’s leading LGBT military organization is Allyson Robinson, a former commissioned officer in the Army who most recently worked at the Human Rights Campaign on workplace issues. Robinson also is transgender — and her selection represents a huge breakthrough for a community that has received a level of respect in recent years but still faces overwhelming discrimination and high rates of violence, according to recent surveys by LGBT organizations. Following the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," however, she now faces the unusual challenge of persuading activist and donors that, in spite of that victory, the cause still needs their help. "We disentangled America from this legalized discrimination against gay and lesbian servicemembers," Robinson said, acknowledging that the key aim of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network since its founding in 1993 was reached with the September 2011 repeal of the law. The case she will make is the one that SLDN and OutServe, formed in 2010, have been making since the repeal: Troubling issues remain when it comes to LGBT military service. In addition to benefits issues for same-sex couples, open service for transgender people, whose own sense of their gender does not match the sex with which they were born, was not addressed in the repeal of the 1993 ban on open service and remains a reason to be discharged from the military today. "We have not achieved full equality for LGBT servicemembers, and I think that’s something that Americans care about. I think they care about the way that our troops and their families are treated," she said."

The Silent Enemy

Speaking primarily for me, I have been critical of the LGBT movement and the silent "T".
Truthfully, the farther I have transitioned into society the more silent I become. Not necessarily by design- I started to blend better into the world. All of a sudden it wasn't "hey isn't that a..?" to androgyny.
None of that means I would be less politically active in the transgender movement if I knew how to how to help more.
Before you think that is an excuse, here is what I have tried and what I plan to do. I have contacted my local LGBT center in Dayton and have received absolutely NO feedback-don't care. In the future, I going to put together a proposal to do a presentation at the state wide trans convention this spring.
I sometimes get the idea some think I'm just a know it all. Perhaps I am in the areas of late life transition, building a new friend network and even dealing with the Veterans Administration. I certainly don't ever think I can come close to knowing it all but I have gone there.
So, that's why I think the "T" is silent. Here is a much better in depth look from Ashlee Kelly in the UK.


In true dyslexic manner, here's the end of her article in GayStarNews:


Trans people are a minority within a minority. Our representation within wider society is so small that even the most basic transition stories can attract national attention. So it's important we work on our visibility. If even LGB people can't see us, how can we complain about being underrepresented? For more go here.

More Cassandra!

I recently mentioned Cassandra Cass and Brianna Austin here in Cyrsti's Condo. Perhaps I should have reversed the lady's names and called it the ABC posts?
Sorry, you know how so I like a little play on words in my little mind!
At any rate (as luck would have it) Brianna just posted a a set of pix and a link to Transtasia on her TG Reporter. 
Co incidentally, check out my lasted post while you are there!
Thanks!

Flying Above the Babble

As I skim the surface of the cyber world searching for Cyrsti's Condo content...on occasion I find a person who uses the written word effectively to describe the trans life experience.
A person who can rise above the babble (including mine) and make sense.
Recently (of course) I have read posts from so called experts taking the terms cross dresser and transvestite to task.
What's the old term "Sticks and Stones can break my Bones but Words just Confuse Me?"
I'm passing along an article called Blurred Youth: An Introduction into Femininity. It was published in the Daily Titan from California State University Fullerton.
Read Julie Nitori's story here.

Echoes of our Lives

Perhaps by now you have heard the story of the transsexual Matrix co-director Lana Wachowski who reemerged in Hollywood this past July.
Over the years. Lana and her brother Andy have been notoriously solitary. A fact Lana recently said had nothing to do with her gender.

Recently, Wachowski was awarded the Visibility Award by the Human Rights Campaign, after her recent decision to end a long-standing policy of ignoring press and public appearances and to instead openly acknowledge her transition to womanhood. Which opened the opportunity for wide reaching public relations benefits for the transgender community.

 While accepting her award, Wachowski gave a moving 25-minute speech about her painful past growing up transgender, being bullied by a nun at her Catholic school and why she nearly committed suicide. I began to believe voices in my head -- I was a freak, that I am broken, that there is something wrong with me, that I will never be lovable. After school I go to the nearby Burger King and write a suicide note. But it was addressed to my parents and I really wanted to convince them that it wasn’t their fault, it was just that I didn’t belong... When I see the headlight I take off my backpack and I put it on the bench. It has the note in front of it. I try not to think of anything but jumping as the train comes. Just as the platform begins to rumble suddenly I notice someone walking down the ramp. It is a skinny older old man wearing overly large, 1970s square-style glasses that remind of the ones my grandma wears. He stares at me the way animals stare at each other. I don’t know why he wouldn’t look away. All I know is that because he didn’t, I am still here... I am here because when I was young, I wanted very badly to be a writer, I wanted to be a filmmaker, but I couldn’t find anyone like me in the world and it felt like my dreams were foreclosed simply because my gender was less typical than others.

A video of her entire speech is available here.

Catching Up!

The last couple of days, I've been down and out with a bad cold/flu or whatever.
As I finally summoned up the last bit of energy I could find (kidding), it was time to write a post or two to Cyrsti's Condo.
I suppose this has given me a breather to think about how life has rolled on the past month.
It's hard to believe it was just October 3rd was when my journey went into overdrive- again. That was the day I was treated to a style and coloring job at my daughter's hair salon.
Fast forward to a totally different public experience and a four day trip exclusively as a woman. So I guess that's kind of fast.
It could have been faster yet, if I had been able to get to my much anticipated appointment with the Veterans Administration endocrinologist. Instead, it's coming up on November 1st.
As I have written, I think I have basically "hit the wall" with my hormonal progress and would love to move forward.
Maybe I just wanted to make sure I kept all of this into a 30 day period?

Cassandra Cass

Now that I got your attention with a picture of transgender actress Cassandra Cass, It's time to point out you should visit Brianna Austin's TG Reporter for a wonderful diverse look at our transgender - transsexual world...(TG Reporter even includes a touch of written content from me! Yes! I am biased kids!)
Seriously, head over there on this link.



Just to be extra nice, here's more of Cassandra!

How Mentally Ill Was I?

As I am fond of saying, if I was or am the diagnosis certainly has nothing to do with my transgender identification.
The was I'm referring to was the time I served in the U.S Army.
As a transgender vet, one of my favorite blog stops is Outserve Magazine and Brynn Tannehill.

Over the next few weeks, she is going to be writing several articles concerning the question of open transgender service. This first excerpt comes from her views of the policy trans men and women can't serve because of the now hopeless outdated mental illness questions:


"For 45 years there have been transgender individuals who have functioned at the highest levels of their fields. Lynn Conway is one of the people most responsible for the microprocessor revolution of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. She was also on Board of Visitors at the United States Air Force Academy, and a civilian two-star equivalent at DARPA. Dr. Christine McGinn was an astronaut qualified flight surgeon in the Navy. Amanda Simpson is a Presidential appointee to the position of Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Army. Dr. Chloe Schwenke is a Presidential appointee to a director’s position at USAID. The list goes on and on, but it puts to rest the notion that gender dysphoria is a debilitating mental illness. It’s a medical condition that doesn’t prevent people from doing their jobs, and often those people are doing them extremely well. Being trans hasn’t been an adverse indicator for security clearances since the mid-1990s. Given that, the government has tacitly recognized that gender dysphoria doesn’t imply an inability to function, nor does it imply a dysphoric person is untrustworthy. It also begs the question: if the U.S. government was and is willing to trust Lynn and Amanda with the highest levels of decision making and responsibility for national security, why is it also unwilling to trust a gender dysphoric culinary specialist third class with making sloppy joes? While the Associated Press and some LGBT media outlets picked up this story, there are few outside the trans community aware of this shift. The paradigm among the public, and even amongst some members of the LGB community, remains that trans people are mentally ill or dysfunctional. This is not altogether different from how the public saw the APA’s decision to remove homosexuality from the DSM in 1973: it took a long time for this position to become the conventional wisdom as well."

Follow the link above for the entire post!