I Got A Wedgie

As I have written here in Cyrsti's Condo, this week is yet another step towards my goal of slamming the door on my former life...and paying forward the best I can.

Just to catch you up a bit, I am attempting to step up and out in my hometown to do what I can to further TLGB goals. Last night was a public meeting in City Council Chamber outlining the local Springfield (Ohio) Equality Group goals.  The location of the meeting and who was going to be there gave me tons of angst. For the first time ever I was going face to face as a trans woman with a veritable who's who of the leaders of the place I was born and active in for most of my life.

As with what normally happens with me, I said to hell with it-hitched up my big girl panties and headed to the meeting. In the process, I gave myself one of the bigger wedgies I have had for a while.

I have my own little motivation mental speech in situations such as this which basically says "nothing is as good or as bad as it seems". Last night was no exception.  Upon arrival, all the good seats close to the door were taken - of course and I had to walk around the entire room to find a seat. For the most part, it didn't matter. I garnered very little attention, found a seat and fidgeted around until I fixed my wedgie. It seemed I was mostly invisible with the general public in the room and totally transparent to the local Equality organizers. They are as exclusive as the Pentagon and their speaker never uttered the transgender word. But hey I'm used to that from the male gay community and the presentation got better.

The Equality Ohio speaker who spoke next, was truly inclusive to all- including we invisible transgender people in the room and she did explain the upcoming  huge discrimination vote in the Ohio legislature. She specifically said it does include gender identification.

As far as the parent group goes here, I am now a paid member and will take my crusade of one to the general membership meeting this coming Thursday. So this isn't over for me.

Two final positives were presentations by a youth group leader who (yes) included trans women and trans men in her group discussions and a minister who spoke to religious acceptance vs tolerance in a place of worship.

Look, in no way do I think this will ever end in my life-for me. But I continue to feel the youth of our culture will change my generation's ignorance.

Now I have to do something about those pesky wedgies!

Fantasy

This video as you will learn just doesn't showcase the reality of a transgender existence-but I won't spoil it for you:

Grae Phillips

As far as I know, Grae Phillips was one of the first in my generation to hit the talk show circuit looking and sounding exactly like a tall sexy female singer. If my memory serves me correct, Phil Donahue was where I first saw Grae. Here's a look at the talented female impersonator on our Cyrsti's Condo big screen:
 

Have a Seat Transgender Person!

This is just fun and all so true: "What my Therapist Should Have Discussed".

Go here to take a look!

"She Zow" Review

Figure by "Onixgreystone"

Before I forget, which at my age is a common instance every hour, I did get a chance to watch the SheZow animated kids show on Saturday.

It's on the Hub network which as I understand it, has very low ratings.  Amazingly though,  I do have the Hub as part of my 500 channels and there is nothing on -satellite package.

Have to tell you the character in SheZow came a long way from my old school Bugs Bunny in drag cartoon days.

I didn't get much out of it except one tiny part where sister tries to explain the basics of female intuition to the newly feminine SheZow.  She simply said I really don't know why I feel this way- I just do. 

Of course on a much deeper level it matters not what I got out of the cartoon. It's what the kids did.

If you haven't seen any of it, of course there are snippets on YouTube and here is the opening intro on the Cyrsti's Condo big screen:

Sealing the Truth

Well my post earlier today was true according to ABC News:


"A former member of the elite U.S. Navy SEALs has come out to say she's now a woman. Kristin Beck, formerly Chris, served 20 years as a SEAL and fought on some of the most dangerous battlefields in the world, but after she left the service she realized she wasn't living the life she wanted. "Chris really wanted to be a girl and felt that she was a girl and consolidated that identity very early on in childhood," said Anne Speckhard, co-author of Beck's biography "Warrior Princess," which was published over the weekend.

Speckhard told ABC News Beck suppressed that secret for decades, however, through the trials of SEAL training and the harrowing missions that followed, growing a burly beard as she fought on the front lines of American special operations. Brandon Webb, a former SEAL who served on a different SEAL team than Beck, said that Beck's reputation in the SEALs was a good one and said she was, by all appearances, the "consummate guy's guy." But the book says that Chris "had considered living as the woman he felt himself to be for a very long time, but while he was serving as a SEAL he couldn't do it.

" "For years Chris had turned off his sexuality like a light switch and lived as a warrior, consumed with the battle -- living basically asexual. For Chris the other SEALs were brothers and in the man's man warrior lifestyle, even if he had wanted to entertain sexual thoughts, there really was never any time to be thinking too much about sexuality," the book says."

Of course none of Kristin's story is entirely alien to most of us who tried the macho lifestyle.  Go here for more and expect this story  to be huge!

I just wonder how I saw this first in the middle of the night coming from an Australian News Source...although Amazon.com was credited too...time change?

Look Fast! We Are Invisible

I was going to title this post "Bastards" but decided to mellow myself out.

This story comes from BuzzFeed, and takes into consideration the Pentagon (due largely to the efforts of Autumn Sandeen) now does recognize the fact that transgender women and men have served- DUH!  The move is huge. Now veteran transgender retiree's can change their gender marker in the Defense Eligibility Reporting System.

In the meantime though, the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” ended the ban on out gay, lesbian or bisexual service members, the military continues to consider a service member being transgender grounds for a discharge from the military.

This year the Pentagon stepped up to the plate with a totally hypocritical statement:

"The Pentagon will be celebrating LGBT Pride Month again this year, but the memorandum announcing the designation has caused a stir with an organization that supports LGBT service members and veterans and their families. “We recognize gay, lesbian and bisexual service members and LGBT civilians for their dedicated service to our country,” Clarence Johnson, the director of the Pentagon’s Office of Diversity Management and Equal Opportunity, wrote in a memorandum announce the designation of June as LGBT Pride Month."

Very simply, don't insult transgender military service members past and present by adding the "T" in LGBT.

Bastards.

Less of a Soldier?

I just caught up with this breaking story about Kristen Beck which is supposedly about to blow the doors off the military's policy towards transgender veterans.
This comes from a fairly different source- but here it is from the Business Insider Australia:

"A retired Navy SEAL is poised to blow the doors off of the military’s policy toward the transgender.  Kristen Beck was a member of the most elite special operations unit in the world — SEAL Team 6. She deployed 13 times. She earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. She served in the same unit that killed Osama bin Laden. Shortly before the bin Laden raid, in early 2011, she retired as a senior chief petty officer after serving 20 years. Her name was Chris Beck back then. In a memoir that promises to change the way we think about transgender women and men,  and their service in the military, Beck writes about how she came to the realization that she was meant to live life as a woman."

This may be too good to be true...but I'm passing it along anyway. After all this is Cyrsti's Condo not the New York Times.

For more, go here.here

HorrorScope "Smootches"!

In the history of out "Horrorscopes" here in Cyrsti's Condo over the last one hundred years- this maybe one of the better "scopes"


"Libra (September 23-October 22): There are a lot of sloppy kissers around you now, so beware. Some prospects do need time before you can cozy up to them, so hold back the horniness now. Build the anticipation instead, as it will do wonders for a hookup that should be rad, but right now would only be bad. Although sunrise screwing may sound passionate, in this case, meeting for breakfast is sexier."

I'm very sure this is one of those "no comment" scopes- only to be upstaged in theFrisky by Michael Douglas's speculation on the cause of his throat cancer. I'm thinking not approved by the medical community.

Perhaps your scope will be as interesting! Go to theFrisky to learn!

**The Horrorscope" term is my own!