Women and Halloween

Julie and Susan

Well kids, of course it is "Boo!" time in my part of the world and it's positively HUGE. Around these parts Halloween is right behind Christmas as the biggest holiday. Of course everyone is talking about it finally taking some of the heat off the election babble. (and the coming hurricane which we are fortunate enough to miss most of)
I heard an interesting radio talk show this afternoon with a male and female host talking back and forth about how women approach Halloween.
She started of course by saying how the costume dynamic was so much different for women...duh! The best comment was how many of her friends spend an eternity buying underwear for their costume everyone would see. Plus, lets not forget men don't have to worry about the pain and suffering of walking around in 4 inch heels for five hours.
Then in ever so subtly in typical femme speak she slipped in the phrase "maybe all that work is what makes it fun".
Really?

Hi Naomi

I just added "What about Naomi" to the blog roll here in Cyrsti's Condo.
Welcome Naomi! Her blog features a real life look into the complex gender transition process.

Empty Calories

Empty calories at a Halloween drag show?
Very much so last night for me at least. To begin with, lets describe "empty calories" as that 99 cent value burger you ate for lunch and were hungry less than two hours later.
To set the scene, last night was one of the only nights I considered myself in drag for years. Pulled out the BIG Drag Queen hair, boots and overall just slutted it up...and had a great time. I received some ego building compliments and even was called Gloria Estefan. Believe me, I'm not going to insult her and say that was true in anyway shape or form.
All of this took me back to my younger days when going to drag shows and garnering any attention at all was my life. I called it " Running with the Queens". Time after time I would do it, get the buzz go home and crash to the bottom quickly- empty calories.
Something was wrong.  Sure, as a human type being I crave pleasure. I understood all of this but dammit why the deep empty feeling in my soul? Wasn't I helping my gender situation? How difficult could this cross dressing thing be anyhow?
Well, no I wasn't helping.  The best you could say was I was biding my time until I came to grips on what was really going on inside me. The true story was watching a bunch of cross dressers watch a bunch of drag queens wasn't really me.  My inner girl was hollering "No you idiot!" Ha Ha, who listens to women anyhow?
You see, I'm tough and stubborn -or just stubborn beyond a fault and it takes me years sometimes to actually grasp my own reality and then put it to words. For all I know, there could be another me in the cyber world who says hey! she's right!!! Number one, I'm sorry I compared any of you with me but if I can help- count me in!
So I'm happy I went and thanks to the friends who invited me and I plan on doing it again BUT I'm sure all you purists are thinking - if she is living female, is this fun really called doing drag?
Duh! No it's not but it's my warm and fuzzy moment of realization and I'm sticking to it!

Unfit To Serve?

As previously mentioned here in Cyrsti's Condo,  transgender Army veteran Allyson Robinson was named to head the  Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) and OutServe, the association of actively serving LGBT military personnel.

 Robinson assumes the post as the two organizations are slated to finalize their combination this weekend. A native of Scranton, Pa., Robinson is a 1994 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, where she majored in physics. After an internship at Los Alamos National Laboratory, she was commissioned as an officer in the Army and commanded PATRIOT missile units in Europe and the Middle East. She also served as a senior trainer/evaluator for NATO and as an advisor to the armed forces of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar.

I know I'm speaking to the choir here but somehow I'm thinking transgender service people such as Allyson might just ruin all the stereotypes the U.S. Military has for refusing to let us serve.

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.