A "Loss" in Chile

Valentina Verbal campaigned to make history as Chile’s first transgender congresswoman. Had she won, Chile’s LGBT community would have representation in the national Congress before most other countries around the world. Verbal learned that she would have to run under her legal male name or pull out of the race. Verbal decided to step down. From the Global Voices site.


"The transgender woman ran for office having applied for — but without having secured — a legal name change. Verbal – who was born a man, but said she always felt like a woman — prefers to keep her birth name a secret. She said that the name not only misidentifies her, but has tangled her identity since childhood. “I thought, perhaps naively, that given the vacuum of electoral laws, and filling in that space with the anti-discrimination law, there wouldn’t be trouble getting what I asked,” she said. Verbal explained that voters wouldn’t recognize her birth name on the ballot. The campaign would be a wash with her having been in politics for years as Valentina Verbal. She belongs to Chile’s center-right National Renewal Party (RN) and spent the past years fighting for an anti-discrimination law."

Hopefully in the future Valentina will get the name problem straightened out and push Chile ahead in TGLB reform. Follow the link  above for more!

Gay Boys and Drag

Entertainment on the Cyrsti's Condo big screen from the "other side":

Life Lessons for Women

The more you go playing around in the girls sandbox as a transgender woman,  the more you will learn how different the process is- outside of the evident examples.

Here is another look called "Life Lessons for Women, 9 Things it Took me Way Too Long To Learn" from the Huffington Post.

Here is #.8:  "If You Think, "I Really Shouldn't Do This, But… ," Stop Immediately At "But." Everything I have done after "but" has been a huge glaring mistake. Shooting off an angry response to a friend after she sent me a thoughtless email. Jumping off a stool while pregnant. Eating the whole weird shriveled-up black pepper in the take-out Chinese Magic 7 Vegetables dish. Pouring water on my husband's head even after knowing better (as articulated in rule 1). "But…" is the car alarm designed by the human mind to stop you at the point of stupidity. Ignore it at your peril."

If you want to look at the other eight, go here. Thanks also to Julia Bravo!

More Than Meets the Eye

I just posted a book of mine for sale on Ebay called "Drag Diaries". It was actually published in 1995 and presents a fascinating look into how the culture around us has changed since then. If you would care to take a look simply go to the Ebay.Com site and my seller ID is CyHart2012.
This book of course is primarily what it says it is- drag and drag queen driven but a history section is included.  Pictures and mentions of Native American "3rd gender" individuals are included among others.

I vividly remember when I found this book in an out of the way bookstore in Columbus way back then, my thoughts on the basic drag queen premise of all of this being an act to them. My problem I somehow knew none of this my so called transvestite activity was an act or an hobby as it was called.

It has only been recently I have been able to step back and take a look at the process and am reasonably sure most people around me view me as a real live transgender person.  My hair stylist (the Magician) is a recent example.  Both of the owners of the salon she works at and I go to are founding entertainers in a drag group called The Rubi Girls.  On a recent visit she was chatting about how much work the entertainers put into a rare show. (They only perform an estimated 3 or 4 times a year for charity.)

I said I understood of course and mentioned the magic of stage makeup, padding and big hair on an audience. But both of us knew I was a different species and really have always been. I also talked of being able to do drag again on my terms.

Someone whom I will not quote directly said something to the effect we are all are born naked and any clothing we wear is drag. True but- the problem with with transgender or transsexual women or men, is we just don't deal with a  gender mismatch on the outside. No amount of makeup, wigs or padding is going to make everything right.

The "Drag Dairies" book was fun as it took me back through my transition liberation process plus gave me a chance to thank the forces above I have made it this far!

Government Apology?

In the United States a "government apology" is nearly as rare as a Polar Bear taking a stroll through my backyard in the middle of a hot Ohio summer.

Everyonce in a while though a surprising apology or two sneaks through in other countries- such as Malta which is located around the Mediterranean Sea, just south of Sicily and east of Tunis. Perhaps you remember Malta making news recently as Joanne Cassar (right) continued a fight which began in 2006 and continued five years to 2011. At that time Cassar sued Malta in the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in 2011 that her fundamental rights to marriage and family life had been violated by Maltese law.

The apology came from
Partit Nazzjonalista deputy leader for Parliamentary Affairs Mario de Marco has said in a recent speech that the party has let the transgender community down by refusing to recognize our rights. In his own speech he said the previous PN government "might have let transgender persons down" Later he even went back and corrected the "might" word and deleted it.

No matter how seemingly tiny, in whatever country- stories such as this should give us all in the transgender community just a little more drive to push on. Plus the sacrifice of individuals such as Joanne Cassar to push on when she could have hid in the stealth closet which so many of us run to in fear is truly inspiring!

For more on this story, please go here
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Summertime

No gentle sea breezes here in Cyrsti's Condo. It seems we are in the path of yet another giant weather system in the middle of the country and we are expecting a rough evening into the early morning hours. I know I'm speaking to the choir here if you are out in the Oklahoma area. With each of these weather episodes I want to say I'm a huge believer in the effects of global warming.

Other than that, life has sort of leveled out for a bit. When my biggest problem is getting back to my stylist for a color attack on my constant "greeping" gray hair.  That's all good!

I hope my next visit I can continue the plan for a "summer lightening" sort of a copper/blond mix.

Speaking of "blond's", I'm passing along one cross dresser who does pass on the Cyrsti's Condo big screen, the reactions from the audience are classic!

Is the Gender Grass Always Greener Elsewhere?

Along the my way down the transgender path, I’ve been fortunate enough to run into several strangers who seemingly just “popped” into my world-made an impression and left.  So many think the average trans woman or trans man encounters an inordinate number of negative people. I certainly haven't kept a scorecard but I would guess the opposite has been true for me.

Years ago a tall , strikingly attractive confident woman in her mid 40′s made it a point to strike up a conversation with me.  She knew I was trans and garnered bunches of attention.. Basically she just wanted to tell me to hold my head up and it probably wouldn't get appreciably better for people like us. No, she wasn't transgender or transsexual but she felt the burden of her height and looks as just a hassle at this point in her life. By "us" she was meaning women who cause attention in a room-believe me for completely different reasons in our sense. How nice!

She confided years ago she worked at one of the clubs operated by one of the biggest men's magazines. Not the one with a rabbit involved-but the other. She went into a  15 minute tirade on the idiots in the world who couldn’t see past her reflection.

I was stunned.  So many people in our culture (me included) would have believed her situation was close to heaven.

I guess the other grass isn't greener. Everyone has their cross to bear. Even if it's a cross dresser cross.

Plus, I knew the greatest majority of genetic women didn’t have her “looks” either but certainly found ways to live highly successful lives. You know the women I'm talking about,who just exude femininity and a zest for life.

I started to consider not being required to bring a lawn mower with me with my makeup. Maybe the grass wasn't greener on the other gender side. I have found though it is certainly as soft and inviting as I thought it would be. That's OK, I never did enjoying mowing grass!

Age and the Trans Girl

One of the huge drawbacks of age is the tendency to repeat yourself. Peeps are fond of telling me I don't look that old (not a day over 60) or act that old. Which is all good until I haven't seen them in a week or so. Then I start  repeating everything I said the last time we met. Everyone is nice and says they are doing the same thing at half my age. Yeah right-if you are you may want to start check into the problem!

Being me of course, I'm doing essentially the same thing with words. At the risk of not being Dr. Phil  (plugging his book every 2 minutes)- I finally have my literary masterpiece molded into a form which I think is workable. The problem?

I'm to the point of moving posts from Cyrsti's Condo over to the book and then I'm seeing a paragraph or two in Halfback to Hormones which should come back this direction. All good until I wonder in the vast amount of 2,000 posts, have I already mentioned it?

Well, if I am- it's not nice to make fun of old peeps. Then if you do (get in line)  it won't bother me much anyway. My sarcasm can be compared to a person you are admiring across the room. The closer you get, it can easily lose it's charm! I'm used to it!

On a side note, my humor was one of the earliest issues I had to deal with in my transition. Bottom line, it was such a huge part of my male self-I brought it along.

Coming up in the next post a possible "repeat" performance. If I can remember which one it was!

It's the Time of the Season

In my part of the world prom and graduation season has almost come and gone. But has it really? With increased frequency we are seeing more and more transgender youth challenging the system. Standing up for the right to enjoy activities such as prom or graduation as the trans women and men they really are. The effect of each and every one of these youth will certainly be felt for years-until all the gender walls come down.

In the meantime though, there is much to be done encouraging youth in the closet to enter the world- on their own terms. How much of course depends upon where you are. Here's an example from the television show , What Would You Do?, who decided to find out what people would do if they witnessed a boy undergoing gender transition trying on a prom dress: