"That's So Male!"

This is a cute quick story here in Cyrsti's Condo from an experience I had last night.

One of my genetic girl friends invited me to meet her for a drink and who was I to turn her down?  The place we went to was having live trivia-which I am deceptively good at.  What I mean is, out of ten questions, I get two right, two close and the rest I have no clue. The people around me (if they aren't paying too much attention) then think I'm some sort of savant and want me on their team-the jokes on them!  Plus, I have the attention span of a five year old, so I as go into rounds two or three, my mind is bored and is in another dimension.

You aren't supposed to cheat at this trivia and Google the answers so you can win but that didn't stop my friend and another woman down the bar from doing it.  Naturally, to do this you need to find an answer in a timely manner.  For whatever reason, I knew the place we were in had sketchy WiFi reception to start with, which was slowing the cheaters down. In short order, my friend got frustrated and started pounding her phone into the bar.  Not long after that, the woman down the bar did the same thing.

I was amazed and said to my friend, "that was so male!"  (It was!)  She quickly turned to me and sputtered "how do you sit there with your hair and boobs and all and tell me that?"  I calmly said "because I have been there and can say it."  Conversation over.

I look at it this way, over the years I have been called a "transgender pretender" because of my lack of desire to "purge" all of my masculine past.  To me, pulling a gender card out from the bottom of the deck on occasion, is just pay back for all the hell I went through to get here.

Besides, as I told my friend (who has invited me to lesbian only events over the years), I could have never come close to the innate masculinity in many of those women!  What a wonderful diverse world we humans live in if we could understand and enjoy the show.

Cyrsti's Condo "Quote of the Day"

On transgender hiring:  Why wouldn't an employer want to hire me? I have all of the expertise and experience that was afforded me by being a man, but now I'd only have to be paid 77% of a man's salary.

Connie Malone

Cyrsti's Condo "Cover Girl" of the Day

Our feature Wednesday cover is transgender beauty Kalindra Chan

Just a Girl in the World

This video was sent to me from Lynne who occupies the same age demographic as me (old) and is decidedly more conservative and in the closet.  For no negative reason, I was really surprised though both of us saw the light in this video. The light is joy from an older MtF "transitioner on the Cyrsti's Condo big screen.

Cyrsti's Condo "Cover Girl" of the Day

Our feature cover for Tuesday is A.D. Miles.  A.D. as I understood it, was a writer for the Jimmy Fallon Show several years ago when the show was doing a ensemble drag skit.  I always thought, AD showed way too much talent for his/her chance to cross dress on national TV.  What a great way for a cross dressing writer to just act like he "came up" with this idea out of the clear blue sky and he just happened to look so good?

Perhaps, in his past, AD discovered his "talent" at a womanless beauty pageant?

Cyrsti's Condo "Power Scope"

My stars aligned themselves in another crazy way this week and left me with this warning:

(September 23-October 22): Everything and everyone will have their place this week, so feel free to compartmentalize your life away. Sometimes you can’t have two parts touching each other on the same plate, as they can have a tendency to bleed unfortunately into each other. So, take heed, as this week will be much like a game of Jenga. Take a few steps back and think before you settle on your next move forward.

I say crazy, because organization is a scary word to me and the idea of "compartmentalization" is even worse. Hope I don't trip on my "few steps back!"

I'm a Libra, as you probably noticed from the dates on the "scope" above, if you aren't, no worry! Go here to theFrisky for your very own sign!

My Behind

I have been behind it seems this time, for the past several days.  When that happens, I rediscover posts I wanted to pass along to you here in Cyrsti's Condo.  One is from Brynn Tannehill in an article she wrote for the Huffington Post called "Paper's Please"  If you don't know, Byrnn is a transgender vet and Director of Advocacy for SPART*A.  

Her very detailed post follows the incredibly convoluted path transgender and transsexual women and men follow in their lives-in and out of military circles.  Here's an excerpt and you can follow the link above for more:

Imagine for a moment you work at a U.S. military base as a contractor. You step out of a bathroom after using it, and are immediately confronted by someone with base security. He demands you present identification proving your gender, otherwise he will arrest you. Your mind races, blood pounds in your ears, flight or fight kicks in -- being arrested will probably cost you your clearance, your job and any chance you have of working in your career field again.

It's no surprise to those of us who spent a significant amount of time in the closet, how scary all of this can be-and kept us in the closet.   Then I began to wonder about those overly ignorant human's who think we trans folk had a choice in all of this?  I constantly remind myself that no matter how much I enjoy where my gender life is now, if I had a real live choice to never go on this journey-would I? No I wouldn't and it's very difficult to explain to my friends what a luxury it would have been to have known what gender I was when I woke up in the morning. That's usually a real conversation stopper!

The "choice" idea is nearly as ludicrous as the occasional on line "genius" who tells me HRT must be great since I have my own boobs to play with.  Tough to explain to such a suave guy, yes it is nice to have my own breasts as an expression of my femininity.

But, let's face it, the world will always have it's share of those who are just innocent ignorant.  They just don't know much about transgender individuals and we should be able to educate them.  The ignorant bigots are the tough crowd and some how some way we need to keep fighting to beat them down.  Hopefully, along the way the gender marker problems will go down with them.

Cyrsti's Condo "Cover Girl" of the Day

Our feature Cover for Monday is a bit different-makeup artist Joseph Harwood from the UK.

I have also included a video from his site on the Cyrsti's Condo big screen.

Cyrsti's Condo "Sunday Morning Edition"

Ker Plunk! Another Sunday edition has hit your virtual porch and it's time to get started.

Page One.- The Week in Review.  Last week we covered the fact the transgender community has an unemployment number twice the national average. Now though, it is possible the light at the end of the tunnel is not the train and certain groups are trying to help the situation. In fact there were actually TGLBQ job fairs recently in San Franscisco and Salt Lake City which sort of tied in with our mention of transphobia in rural America.  Shelle was kind of enough to detail her experiences concerning the lack of resources many TGLBQ women and men have in smaller less populated areas-including job fairs.

Slime Paul

Allyson Robinson

Of course my favorite slime ball Rude Paul was back in the news with his show's use of the She Male term. Supposedly  Glaad backed down the producers of the show and they made some sort of half apology. Similar to the vague tripe GM's top person is rolling out. Perhaps you all have heard,  the slime slick is heading UK's way. A version of Rude's show is coming.

Page Two.- Positives!  In much more pleasant news, an upcoming documentary which includes transgender military personnel from the US and the UK is in the works.  Just the fact transgender vet Allyson Robinson's name is attached, gives the project much more respect.

Also, transgender model Geena Rocera's "Gender Proud" video was a resounding success with over a half a million hits in the first couple of days.

Last but not least,  we mentioned "Auckland's" Amy Brosnahan who decided to enter a beauty contest down under because she wanted to spread the word for young transgender women.

Page Three.- Accepted!  I don't believe, during this week of chasing my tail, I have passed along the fact I have been accepted for the second year in a row to be a workshop presenter at this year's Trans Ohio Symposium.  I figure I must not have embarrassed myself too much if I got invited back!!!

Page Four.- We Got Mail.   In a post called "If it Walks like a Duck, Looks like a Duck and talks like a Duck...is it a duck? , we briefly jumped into the murky waters of what made a trans woman feel secure as a woman.  And we received this comment from Marian:



I've found that gender is as much of a social construct as it is a physical body construct. We, as a species, are cued into "gender" based on certain obvious and not so obvious signals. But when the signals are not presented strongly in one direction or another, confusion will result. For example, Julia Sweeney developed an androgynous character, Pat, whose gender id couldn't be determined - and the associated skits had fun with the miscues... Take that character and strengthen the cues slightly towards one gender or the other, and androgyny would be taken away - yet, the person could still be gender queer and presenting in a gender opposite from what she/he was born into....

Thanks Marian! and I agree. In fact I'm growing to the point where I am sure gender is a total social construct. Also, I like the reference to "Pat". Shown at the left.

Well kids, time to finish my Sunday morning "Cop O Joe" and get the dog out for her walk.

You are all my "fave's" for stopping by the Condo!!!! Thanks to all!!!