Kristin Beck Speaks Out

CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 seems to have cornered the first Kristin Beck interviews I have been able to see.

Go here for an inside look how Kristin was able to live her life as a Navy Seal. Much of what she says sounds very familiar. If you were a transgender vet or not!

Gender Surfer

 62 year old Westerly Windina- One of Australia’s most iconic former surfers recently completed a six-year journey to become a woman, and has recovered from gender-reassignment surgery.

Definitely riding the "wild transgender surf"!

Coming Out to Yourself

What do all of these comments have in common with me?

"Just what we need, another old guy on hormones."
"If you waited until you were 60 to start transitioning, you are not a real transgender person."
"Isn't it too late in life to transition?"



What they have in common is all of them have been messaged to me here in Cyrsti's Condo.

Everyonce in a while, I find a very well presented answer:

"Realization that one is trans can take anywhere from a few moments to several decades. Usually, trans people have an inkling early on in their lives that their assigned gender feels out of sync with their bodies. The self-realization process is extremely complicated. The human mind does its best to help us survive, which can translate into triggering intense denial. Because of societal constraints, it is common for a person to try to ignore signs pointing toward transgenderism, whether consciously or unconsciously."

This is only one of several enlightening, educational thoughts on transgender women and men from a Huffington Post article here

Not so incidentally, the page also includes this link

to Outserve Magazine and a chance meeting between a transgender vet and  President Obama.

Much To Do - About Quite A Lot

Quite a week. Last night I attended the second of two hometown Equality meetings.

As I have written here in Cyrsti's Condo, this week I stepped from the shadows of my local stealth. Bottom line is, I have lived stealth in my home town for the last several years as I set out to build a whole new life in nearby larger cities. Nothing earth shattering about that but as my feminine life evolved into HRT and beyond- the more I walked the trans woman path the more I detested remnants of my former life in the shadows.

None of that mattered though as meeting time approached. Again I was suffering my usual amount of trepidation- for two reasons. Number one... I'm relatively certain the number of years I have dealt with the inner turmoil of gender dysphoria has left me scarred to a point I will go to the grave with it. In essence a deep fear of public rejection.  Number two... I have a deep inherent shyness around strangers which I have learned to cover fairly well but I have a tendency to come off as a real bitch. Luckily though I'm also a good actress in the sense the more nervous I become, the bigger my tendency is to chatter. A remnant from too many crummy business meetings over the years.

The good news is, as it turned out all my fear was a waste of energy.  I seriously can't remember a group of people going out of their way to make me feel welcome. As with most of my ventures, I was again the "token trans girl" in the room but it was cool. As I tried to tell them, I wanted and needed to bring a transgender view to the group. To "unsilence" the "T" in LGBT.

They were lucky! Last night, I was fairly quiet as my mind raced to interface my thoughts with their very active agenda-knowing full well I can make some sort of an impact-over a space of time.

So all in all, this week was another wonderful attempt to connect the dots in my life. Plus,  I finally feel better about "walking my talk".  I have to tell you I found the experience to be wonderfully liberating!

Thanks, to the Equality Springfield Ohio folks for helping it happen!

Damn Beard!

Can't live with the "beards" up in there on your face in this male to female transformation video on the Cyrsti's Condo big screen:

Responding to On Line Transphobia

I'm the first to admit I spend "mega time" on line searching for relative topics to post here in Cyrsti's Condo.

Today I was giving one of my email boxes a well needed cleaning and found this old post called "7 Tips: Responding to Transphobia On Line" written by the Transgender Law Center.  If you follow any of the attacks flying back and forth at each other from groups as the Rad-Feminists (if that is what they are going by now) and some of the transgender folk who do battle with them, all of them should read this.

In addition, if you do any on line work as a trans woman or trans man-you know you are subject to being "trolled" at any time.

The "Other Woman" Pageant

By accident I came upon a Flickr site where the person has showcased bunches of womanless pageant pix. I am appreciative as the next person around here of the so called amateur contestant who just happens to show up as a beauty.  I do however get a little uneasy on a predominance of kids doing it....

However there are a couple of interest here as well as a ton of pix that aren't.

Two examples are the "girl" on the left and  "Matt Dressed in Drag" below.

Go here for more. On a side note you may want to go quickly if this is the same person whose link was on Femulate all so briefly before it disappeared.

Fiction

Really? In a world far far away...in someone's fantasy world...this happened how? Being the cynic I am, I couldn't help " passing"  it along.
 

The Essence of Time

If I had to store words the old fashioned way, I would have a wall full of notebooks, tablets and stacks of paper.  Thank goodness for me, I have learned to store my stash of words on those little black things I call "info stix". In addition I literally have tens of thousands of words on an E-pub site called Vook and of course approximately 2,000 posts here in Cyrsti's Condo.

I equate the "hoard" on occasion to what is in my "noggin".  This morning for example my dog and I were headed to a local park for a walk and we passed a "20 something" woman heading for her mailbox. Nothing special except for the way she moved. I just noticed how utterly feminine she was in her denim skirt and white top. She was feeling her girlness from the inside out. Then instantly, my brain raced back in time to a trip I made to our family mailbox so many years ago and I could identify with her.

I estimate I was approximately 14 or so and for some reason found myself home alone one fall morning.  I was never one to let an opportunity to dress as a girl go by.  I pulled out my secret stash and did the best I could with my meager wardrobe of clothes.  The end result was a short skirt, a neutral boys jacket of some sort, make up and my shoes I bought with my allowance/odd job money.

To this day, I remember the anticipation of thinking "Wow, this could be the day I open the front door to the world and take a step out". And I did. My life and steps suddenly went to slow motion as I opened the front door to our house, walked to the drive way and made my way down to the mailbox. I estimate the round trip distance to have been around 50 yards and all I felt was the heavenly freedom of the air on my legs and up my body. Oddly to me at the time, the feeling was more of being free rather than a sexual rush which became hugely important later in life- as I began to discover I was transgender and not a cross dresser.

The problem with most of these feelings with me is the aftermath. I waste too much time wondering about the  what if's. What if I had come out then. What if I had come out after the Army?  Who cares-right? The only benefit at all from living in the past is what it can teach us-the true essence of time.

This morning of course was no different.  The girl who walked to the mailbox so many years ago was just walking her dog this morning and I wondered where the woman I saw bought that wonderful top! Obviously she thought so too.