Own it Girl!

Mandy recently sent it this comment which triggered quite a bit of thoughts from you know who:

I hope to be in LA early next year (date still uncertain), and plan to rent a car to do some local sightseeing as Mandy. My ability to pass is far from perfection...but I think I'll give it a try, rather than duplicating the guy Jen saw. If folks are that tolerant, Jen's comment makes me hopeful that it will work out OK for me!  (Jen's comment):

I recently saw a guy waiting to cross a street in LA that was wearing a blue knee length dress. He had feminine cut brown medium length curly hair, and wasn't making any attempt to pass his face off as feminine.

I was really impressed!

I've many times thought that if I can't get to the point of passing well enough, that maybe I should just go with dressing feminine and accept what mother nature gave me as far as my facial features.

Of course we all know "passing" involves a percentage of "location-location-location" but is changing  thanks in a large part to the "younger" peeps, just presenting as the gender you want to be is becoming increasingly less taboo.  

Mandy, we all are chasing perfection in our appearances. It's fleeting though (as I'm sure any genetic woman can attest to.) Once your perfect hair is ready, the wind blows it all around.  Once your makeup is perfect-the hot weather melts it off but - as the great philosopher Gary Gilmore  said before he was executed by firing squad in Utah (and I say to the mirror) "Let's do It!"  Bottom line is,  you will never find out how much you can accomplish in the the world as a woman till you do it.

Actually, the perfect foundation to wear as you begin to meet the public is about six inches thick. When we begin to take on the world our insecurities are at an all time high.  Even one mean comment can send you scurrying back to the closet for cover. Plus, playing on line can give you a double dose of idiots. One of my favorite examples comes from Stana of Femulate.  She once answered an on line troll who slammed her for not "passing." She replied (paraphrasing)  "I pass quite well.  I make sure nothing is coming and use my turn signals."  My own personal on line favorite was when I was called "just another old guy on hormones."  

You've all seen a couple of my (non photo shopped) in the real world pictures. They are the proof of the fact on my best days, I am a gender "tweener".  Now though, the only person I try to pass as is me. One of our readers Pat, has written to that idea too. Certainly we aren't alone and I'm sure there are many of you Cyrsti's Condo readers who subscribe to the simple fact of when you own who you are, the rest of the world may own you too.  

Good luck Mandy!

Cyrsti's Condo "What If???"

It's all fun and games until his surprise blind date shows up in 15 minutes!

Blushing? Brides?

                                                                                     

Many cross dressers and transgender girls dream of the day they can achieve one of the ultimate moments in a woman's life- the wedding day.

All of the wonderful traditions topped off by the special dress-before the bride has to step into the reality world of being a wife.

As with anything else feminine, many of us in our world can only dream of what the experience would be like.  Others though, are able to take the dream a little farther!

No Rest for the Wicked?

Back home on this Monday trying to rest, recoup and catch up on life after a weekend at the Trans Ohio Symposium. Of course I have tons of ideas to pass along to all of you, but I'm going to try to focus them in a way which makes sense for all of us.  I know that idea sounds like a common sense one, unless you know me and how my noggin works.

If I had to come up with two words to describe the weekend, I would use Diverse and Inspirational.  This year I saw and met more transgender women of color and age than last year.  Several times I was immensely inspired by both groups and several transgender men I met.

The whole event caused me to rethink many preconceived ideas one builds up from very little personal interaction with others out side of my circle of friends and the internet.

Along the way, I will pass along the "best of the best", including meeting by accident "Andy" a ten year old  transgender boy.  My partner Liz and I first noticed him as we were standing in line for lunch on Saturday. Our only real interest at first was he was wearing a protective "boot" on one foot similar to Liz's. (Helping a broken ankle to mend.)  Being off in my own little world like I usually am, I just thought he was the genetic son of one the therapists who attended the Symposium.  He wasn't.  We watched as this little white kid wearing a railroad hat pulled out a small action doll of color in action figure fatigues.  Wow-talk about diverse.  As it ended up, Liz and I ended up eating lunch beside Andy and his Mom at lunch. It turns out next year, she is putting Andy into a mainstream public school and is naturally very concerned.

During the lunch itself, our keynote speaker was Kye Allums, who you may remember as the first transgender male athlete to play on a major college basketball team.  We will have more on his speech later as well as how I plan to change completely my workshop next year.

In the meantime, the picture of me above is taken from the third floor student union balcony of The Ohio State University in my knitted top Liz made me.  I am making the sign of the "O" saluting the OSU Buckeyes!  Go Bux!

Busy Weekend!

The way it is looking around here in Cyrsti's Condo,
It's possible the Sunday Edition this week will be delayed due to attending Trans Ohio and a couple other factors.

So, if you don't hear the Ker Plunk! in the morning on your computer, don't call the circulation department!
It's on the way!

Plus I have "lotz-o-mail" from you kids to catch up on!

Cyrsti

Cyrsti's Condo "What If?"

Jim!!! I know you are in your room. Get out here, it's time to go to the game!

Trans Ohio Uno

If you hang around Cyrsti's Condo much, you have read me write about the Trans Ohio Symposium going on about 50 miles from me in Columbus, this weekend.

Since Liz and I volunteered to help today, we were allowed to "sit in" on any of the workshops we could.  Both proved to be extremely interesting.

The first was presented by Kristen Precht-Byrd, who is an Assistant Professor in Applied Linguistics at Kent State University here in Ohio.  Among other things, she is working on "Tendencies in Gendered Communication."  Or, in other words, the tendencies  of how cis women and cis men tend to communicate in different ways. Some no real surprise- such as emotions.  Of course, cis women are the highest and cis men are the lowest of the genders apt to use emotional words.  But then, the professor began showing us studies of how transgender men and transgender women do or should use these tendencies to further each's personal transition to their non birth gender.

I'm not going to get too technical here and here is her email for more information: kprecht@kent.edu. 

On the other hand,  what I found extremely interesting was how across the board- trans men did not fit easily into many categories.  According to Professor Precht-Byrd (who is married to a transgender man) , she is still researching if there is an answer of why trans guys on occasion seemingly fall right in line with their cis-guy counterparts in areas such as emotions and negative judgement.  On the other hand, they seem to retain their feminine heritage and rank right with cis-women in other key areas. By the way, there were several trans guys in the room who remained true to their gender-by not saying much about their thoughts on the matter.  Sound familiar?

For once it seems, we trans women may have an easier tendency of shedding more of our male pasts than our trans guy counterparts. After we learn to communicate in the world as feminine critters.

What's it mean to us? A chance not to obsess on sounding like legendary actress Lauren Bacall   the American film and stage actress and model, known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks. Don't me wrong, I would love to sound like her but more and more I relate to her emotions on the screen.

Today I used an example from the 1942 classic movie Casablanca.  I answered one of the workshop questions (to Liz) on how would  I respond to the sentence "We went to the movies."  Liz and I went to a big screen re-release of it last year in a Cincinnati theater. I said now,  the World War II tragic theme was not what I remember the most. When I went this time, the movie  emotionally overwhelmed me to the point of tears as I viewed it from the eyes of  Bacall and Ingrid Bergman.  I wasn't going to even bring it up to the group and just leaned over to whisper it to Liz and then I had too.

I still have a standing paranoia that people think I'm trying too hard with this woman thing.  Similar to being mistaken (or labeled) a drag queen/tra--ny.  I have no idea of how long this phase of my transition will take to disappear but in the meantime (after today) I have a better working knowledge of how the binary genders communicate and where trans women and trans men fit in.

Our second workshop of the day was to go into a totally different direction which I will pass along later! 

Cyrsti's Condo "Cover Girl" of the Day

I love Vanessa Lima's profile: A transsexual Persian/Mexican mix model!

Trans Ohio Symposium-Day One

Symposium is a big word.  The ancient Greek definition is actually different from what I thought it would be:
The Greek symposium was a key Hellenic social institution.
It was a forum for men of good family to debate, plot, boast, or simply to revel with others.  Hey, nothing wrong with that and I would be kidding you if I said none of that went on at the Trans Ohio Symposium which begins today (Friday).  The really big deal though, are the workshops provided.

I have found over the years, the best way to get your money's worth at a tour or a group event was to volunteer. By doing so, you can provide much needed assistance and learn more yourself.  Essentially it's a trade out (barter) -your precious time for your precious money.   At this time of my life, my time is a commodity I can trade, so Liz and I both signed up for day one today to help.

What is today? It's a day of presentations for what I call the "intelligentsia" (Latin this time for:is a social class of people engaged in complex mental labour aimed at disseminating culture.) People interested in such things can get college education credits from the sessions today as professional types dissect issues such as  transgender violence, prisoners, school students, partners, athletes and more.  Then tomorrow and Sunday-is the time for the "not so intelligentsia" such as me and others who are - discuss another whole range of subjects.

Wow! Such a weekend.  My problem is I have always been a conference "geek" and come away with too many things I believe I need to do to "conquer the world" I was always taught if you could come away with three and do them-that was an excellent return for your time. So knowledge and meeting Trans artist Pamela Ann Reed and Transgender veteran/activist Brynn Tannehill will be geeking moments for me. Finally, I will be interested to see how the mix of participants works out this year.  Last year the proportion seemed to be in favor of younger transgender men.  I feel much of our feminine population is still deeply closeted by need or is of the opinion of one of my friends that she is still a "tra--y" and only would go to party.

I tried to tell her, of course there will party time too-as in all great conferences but this one is so much more!