Horror Scope!

Well, quite the "Non Halloween" Horror scope here in Cyrsti's Condo!
Your week is going to be all sunshine and rainbows, so live it up! Get out there and prance under the stars. Your energy will be perfect for attracting miracles and beauty everywhere you are, if you place yourself out beyond your normal stomping grounds. Just be prudent with whom you hang though, because although feelings will start out intense, they can also end as powerfully.

 Then again, I still have an invite to a late Halloween party out of town this Saturday!

Go get your Horror Scope from theFrisky   here.



  Chaps Embellished Empire Dress - Women'S Plus (Google Affiliate Ad)

Cis Privilege?

On occasion I recommend and quote from a really good blog I follow called Ask Matt.  Matt Kailey is a trans man but never really limits his scope to men and includes trans women too.

The more we all start to venture out into the public we naturally seek acceptance or some sort of understanding from other human types. This is often very difficult to find even from "friends" in our own LGBT "community" as seen in this comment from a FAAB (female-assigned at birth) genderqueer individual who is also gay  This person got a kick in the gut from very good friends (four lesbians, one gay guy) when they completely slammed the whole trans umbrella:

 “They essentially said that they do not believe that trans women belong in spaces such as the women’s group at the LGBT center, and same for trans men with the men’s group. I asked where I fit, and they were like, ‘You have a vagina, don’t you? With the women, duh.’ I felt like my entire identity was invalidated in that moment by the last people who should be doing that. “But then they made what some would consider a valid point: trans women grew up with male privilege, and that is something cis women have never had. Trans women wouldn’t know anything about menstruation and other issues that happen in that department that cis women want to discuss."

I am passing along a very short excerpt from the post and an equally short portion of Matt's answer. After which, I will give you the link for more.

"The reality is that most gay men and lesbians understand about as much about trans issues (and probably about as much about genderqueer issues) as non-trans, straight people (and those with a binary gender identity) do. Your friends probably don’t even realize that they hurt you, misgendered you, and pretty much discounted and/or trivialized your entire sense of yourself. What this demonstrates is not necessarily that your friends don’t care about you. What it demonstrates is that they can’t wrap their heads around who you are. They don’t understand your identity, they can’t relate to it, and they might not be all that interested in trying – or they might be."

The entire post is here.

I'm Not Worthy!

MULIEBRAL MERITORIOUSNESS...is it a real quote and what does it mean?

"I doesn't know it!!!!"

But if you are curious...go here then be prepared to take your time- this woman is one of us and can pump out some wordage-way beyond my fourth grade attention and "edication" level!

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."