From Hawaii News Now :

15 year old "Raquel Largo is transgender and says, "Now I can show my true colors and who I want to be."

Raquel's mom told us there were early signs. "Yeah, sure" said Lena Leopoldo. "He wasn't into boy things."

Transgender is defined as "being a person who identifies with or expresses a gender identity that differs from the one which corresponds to the person's sex at birth."

Lena said, "At first it was wigs, then slowly and surely the make up came in and then the whole yeah."

She supports her son's choice to live as Raquel, but still struggles with the name. Lena said, "It's always Royce and I don't know how to say the girl name. So she accepts it though."

Royce's dad was another story. Raquel explained her struggle this way: "I used to hide when he would come to my house because I felt he wouldn't accept me and that he would discourage me."

On The Pill?

Recently Frock Magazine's Katie Glover brought up a rhetorical question on the "Gender Society" Facebook site. .  If you had the chance to take separate gender pills which would once and for all decide your fate- which one would you take?

The choices went something like this:

Pink Pill.- You would become a young pretty girl and live your life as a woman.
Blue Pill-  You would stay a guy without the burden of wanting to become a woman ever again.
White Pill- you stay as you are as a transgender person.

Of course, being a Libra I chose to pull out my scales and weigh out the issue and of course over reasoned it quickly.

Here is what I came up with...I flushed the white pill immediately.  No matter how I feel about my life as a transgender or gender fluid person now (and am even discovering some benefits to it)-I wish no one having to take the path I did.

Surprisingly to me I would have taken the harder of the two gender pills-the female one.  The easy way out would have been the blue, which I will explain. Being a generic from birth I think would have put me directly in the path of trying to live up to the imagined expectations of my Mom. I know, she expected a ton from me as a son, but it would have been worse as a daughter. Plus, I think very simply, girls have more layers in their environment to learn and deal with than boys. Plus females are the high maintenance gender physically of the two binaries.  There is more that can go wrong in the plumbing and wiring.

Having written all of that- STILL give me the pink pill!

Finally, the Blue Pill.  While I still think the concept of "Male Privilege" was a farce for me-the demands of growing up male ended up being a lot less.  I grew up in a family dominated by macho males and I found out early how I could play the game-if I wanted to or worse yet had to. Plus how much easier would have it been to wipe out all the stress and tension of wanting to be a girl?

All in all, what a wonderful question and one that I guess has been floating around for some time.

Which pill would you take?

This Kid Cleans Up Well!

It's not often I run into a "before and after" womanless beauty pageant picture like this one!

Cyrsti's Condo "Trashy Trans Bitch" of the Year?

Transgender woman Ava Sabrina London (left) has to be right up there!

She is the one who allegedly hooked up with white trash ex playmate Kendra Wilkinson's hubby Hank Baskett when she was preggers.

That's what Hank gets when a plastic "babe" is on the prowl looking for PR and he has had toooo much tequila.

Hey, at the least, he couldn't knock her up too!

Wow! I kind of like this gossip re-reporting! Where are you TMZ!

Summer Job?

What can I say Mom, the summer construction job didn't quite work out!

Cyrsti's Condo "From the Hart"

Merging

Yesterday was a prime example of the world closing in on me-or the opposite.  I went early to the convenience store down the street and the deli to run my errands and I just didn't bother to tuck my pony tail out of the back of my ball hat and (quoting Crosby, Stills  Nash & Young from Almost Cut my Hair Today) - I let my "Freak Flags Fly" although I inserted "Trans Flag."

Predictably, I had a couple **generics who wanted to chat about it and I was just tired of making excuses about how I came to have all this hair, and we exchanged ideas about the seasons, styles and colors.  On the most basic level, both of them just knew I had entered their world of expertise because surely guys can have the amount of hair I have around here, but few color it as I do and even fewer on a seasonal basis. Paraphrasing what Pat said in a comment about me in another post, yes I am one of the peeps in the "social" category and those two women probably couldn't care less if I was transgender, gender fluid, androgynous or gay.  That is my cross to bear and it is getting heavy so I am into my own "Don't ask, Don't Tell and Who Cares?" mode.

It's just another instance of closing one gender life and beginning another - on my home turf. (Which I never set out to do-I wanted to do it elsewhere for the most part). But why not? Destiny ultimately pushes us in one direction or another and she gave me a giant push!  I dislike it so though when she gloats and says, "I told you so-dummy!"



**generic- born female

Sugar Buzz?

I have a couple dear generic friends who have dealt with weight problems as women most of their adult lives. In fact one of them who reads the blog is a pound short of losing 200 pounds!!! Wow Yay!!! Min! (And a totally sweet person.)

When I whine and cry to my partner about being the cause of a "whip lash" neck injury or a facial smirk to a generic; on occasion she will say "I know, I have been an over weight woman-shut up already!" I understand a lifetime of insecurity about my looks!

Of course she is right and we go on with our lives, with or without the world.

The appearance topic is one I will be discussing here in Cyrsti's Condo and in a couple of my Frock Magazine articles. If you are considering a gender transition, how much will appearance play into it?  To put it bluntly, most of us will never be able to achieve a very high level of feminine beauty.  But-if that is all you are after, stay where you are in the system.  After all, jumping from being a cross dresser to a transgender person is a big move and one I would argue has nothing at all to do with appearance.

For what it's worth, here is the path I used.  Very early in the game as I started to venture out, I just wanted to see if I could navigate the feminine world at all.  I found I did have an innate sense of my own style, dressed towards it and managed to blend.  I found that shopping and "walking the malls" looking at myself in mirrors was OK-for awhile.  When I started to interact with the public was when I began to discover how natural I was, or could be. I called it "jumping out of the mirror and into the world."

The process was intensely personal, euphoric and painful at the same time.

If my generic friends were writing this, or if my deceased wife was "ghost writing it", they all would say mere appearance is a shallow gateway into the girl's sandbox. Embracing the layers of a woman's existence is a whole other experience!  Easy to get all dolled up and get your sugar buzz on in your heels and hose princess, but what happens after the buzz? I am so not in to telling others they are right-but they are.

So, if you are considering transitioning, have fun and enjoy the girl part of your appearance but just remember- the sugar buzz always goes away after you have eaten cotton candy and the real world is waiting.

Open Mouth- Speak Diversity

A quick post, here in Cyrsti's Condo (for once) about last night. Perhaps you remember me writing about the "2 dolla" pint night I have frequented for years in a big mainstream sports bar I go to.

I guarantee over the years, I have made so many fashion mistakes (in there), I wondered if I was ever going to get this cross dressing thing right and even come close to living my feminine dream. In fact,  I've experienced so many of "walk of shames" in the place (even to the point of falling down in my boots) I can't start to remember them all. .

The place has 36 draft beers and approx 30 seats along a straight long bar - no pun intended.  Last night, I had to walk all the way to the other end to find an open spot which happened to be next to a couple I have seen several times, but never met.  I asked if they could pass me the beer list which was setting in front of them which actually started us down a road of interesting conversations about the local and regional beers that are becoming so popular.

Not long after that, they introduced themselves and asked if I lived close by.  I said actually I'm sort of between two cities right now (Springfield and Cincinnati). It turns out they have two grown kids which live in Cincy and asked where I was moving to there.  Without giving any consideration to what gender tag they were attaching to me, I said, "I'm moving in with a friend on the East side and yes she is a she and she is my partner."

The whole thing came and went so quick and I said it so matter of factually, I thought damn and waited for any reaction.  There wasn't much of one.  The other woman just paused so briefly and said that's great. They were good people and I didn't have to get into an in depth conversation on the dynamics of being transgender, or worse yet my sexuality.

I guess it is just another sign of how my life is moving full circle and I am wondering if I should ask the bar management if I can get a kick back when another patron orders more beer to talk?  Probably not!