Bag Lady?

All of a sudden, I seem to have an over abundance of purses. I could say I don't know where they came from but that's not true. Liz bought me one and I bought the other two. One has a nice fringe, one has my initials and one is supposedly a "one of a kind" recycled canvas purse I bought at a show. It is my favorite. The fringe bag I should be wearing more mow since it is a summery cream color and I save my initialed bag for special occasions...mostly. Maybe it's because I have never been much of a purse fanatic, so it seems like a lot!

Moving on, yesterday was a travel day with a trip up north to see my therapist and a visit here in town to one of my cross dresser - transgender support group meetings. My therapist and I discussed my voice lesson and the fact she was moving her office. I feel a certain draw to the place because it is where I have been going to see her for years and, so much good has happened there. Mainly where I received all my necessary documentation to begin changing my gender markers.

On a lesser, perhaps not so important level, the building the whole unit is moving to does not have a certain outlet of a well known coffee shop I go to. Sacrifices!

The CD-trans meeting last night was fairly calm. A couple new people showed up, which is always interesting and one was even a transgender veteran. Most everyone else was predictably boring...including me. One of the other attendee's noticed finally I had gotten my hair done. She probably did because she has a great head of hair too. She is so fortunate!

Plus while we are on the subject of hair, if you remember the picture I posted the other day of Janis Joplin, Connie suggested I could rock a hairstyle similar to Janis. At one point of time I could and might in the future if I let it grow out again!

Sunday Recap

Seemingly, last week here in Cyrsti's Condo, we spent quite a bit of time discussing the power of expressing yourself in a feminine manner and the destructive influence of Mtf gender dysphoria.

Not much else to say except recap a feminine voice could be enough to protect you in a potentially negative situation. Some people will attempt to start a conversation just to satisfy their curiosity concerning your gender. Plus, once you have reached a certain level in your feminine presentation, why not take it a step further? Enough said.

Dysphoria speaks for itself (no pun intended). Like it or not, most transgender women or trans men are born with it. Along the way, it tortures us into acceptance...one way or another. The sooner we accept the fact we are dysphoric the better.

The week in review also included a couple blogs I follow and I hope I didn't leave anyone out...thanks to my steel trap mind being a little rusted on occasion.

Now is a great time to thank all of you who stop by the "Condo" on a regular basis! It makes it all worthwhile :)

Special Message...J&J

This is for Michelle Hart (no relation!).

She reached me on Google Plus and said if I called "Jager" Jagermeister, I had to buy the first round.

No problem! And yes, I will have to sacrifice sounding like Janis Joplin! Thanks Connie! :)

Janis

Jager

Euphoria

As we cross the transgender frontier, so often we encounter the "one step forward, two steps back" phenomenon.

Of course, the euphoria comes when we seem to build momentum and keep moving forward. My latest success came today at a coffee shop Liz and I go to occasionally. The young woman at the counter (not the barista) kept complimenting me on how nice my new hair style looked. I was walking on cloud nine for the next hour of so until we got back home.

If you follow any of the same blogs I do (or Connie, here) you will understand the concept of gender freedom, or euphoria. Stana, Mandy Sherman and Paula Goodwin come to mind. All of their blogs can be accessed on my blog list. At one point of time or another, each has written about their successful forays transitioning into their non birth (but desired) gender.

Being selfish, I feel as if any step forward is/was earned the hard way through more error than trial. I remember quite well, the days of being stared at (at the best) or snickered at (at the worst).

I have made myself a solemn promise I will never take any of my steps forward as being "more trans than thou." It's incredibly bad karma. After all, I too (like Connie) have the big wrists, which at one point in time were good for swinging a baseball bat. Plus, I am stuck with a big boned larger body.

So, I will take my positive strides when I can get them and I hope you can too.

Let's Be Careful Out There!

It's relatively difficult to write a post like this just after getting back from such an affirming appointment I just had at the hair dresser. Again, I had an excellent experience talking about her transgender son and gossiping ever so slightly about a couple girls we both know from the cross dresser - transgender support group. Plus, I witnessed one of those ultra female moments when another woman stuck her head in the room and went wild with her family news. My hair dresser was so polite, until she left. Then proceeded to tell me she never manages to make her appointments right and is always begging to be fit in.

I also found out one of the girls in the group had a falling out with my hairdresser when she told her she didn't style synthetic wigs. Group girl is also the one who carried her "holier than trans" attitude into a tire store and got mis gendered.  She was the first to say she had never had any problems. I'm here to say, unless you have transitioned very well, problems can await you.

As Connie points out, one can never be too careful. She references this post:

FABULOUSCONNIEDEEAugust 9, 2018 at 3:31 PM

"As I pointed out in my comment (that you so graciously re-posted the other day), it only takes one bad apple to have a potentially dangerous situation occur. Seattle is about as liberal and pro-LGBT as you can find. I've been told that I have "passing" privilege by many, albeit mostly from other trans people. Even my voice "passes" much of the time, but it is not passable enough to overcome some of the other telltale signs of my prior male existence. My thick hands and wrists (Scandinavian fisherman's hands), along with a muscular neck (developed from playing football) that holds up my big head (seemingly getting bigger with every pound I lose), are giveaways enough. My voice isn't so perfectly female, so the cumulative effect can easily lead to scrutiny.

I believe that the man in the story I told about at the bus stop asked me if I were on my way to work in order to just hear my voice, as he, most likely, was questioning my gender/sex by only looking at me. While 99% of the people I come across in my city don't seem to care about my "truth" as it relates to their "scientific analysis," this creep was probably looking for confirmation of his suspicions so that he could take advantage of the situation and give me all sorts of shit. I doubt that he would have tried it had there been other people around. So, no matter how well you've honed your presentation, whether in look or voice, you should always be prudent and vigilant, especially in one-on-one situations.

If a hairdresser ever suggested that I go back to my original look, I'm afraid I'd have to try to channel Sinead O'Connor in her clean-shaven days. Talk about adding scrutiny to my gender presentation! :-)"

Thanks! Just another reason I am working to make my voice a priority!

Hairdressing

Tomorrow is my second visit to my new hairdresser. In addition to taking a look at the progress/regress of my hair color. We have plenty to chat about.

If you may, or may not remember, it was the expert's idea to let my hair return to it's original color. I don't think the original idea will work but we will see. Plus, from there, we can go to another shade or color which might work better. Either way, it will be a fun visit with a person who has a transgender son (FtM) of her own. Her son has been going to one of those East coast trans kids camps this summer, so I will be interested to see how it went. The goal is to get him hired as a counselor in the future.

I am sure too, she will bring up my voice training, although it is too early (I think) for many real results. The point most miss about vocal training is the safety factor. Potentially, if you find yourself in a sketchy situation, your voice could be the tipping positive factor. One never knows. Not all of us are fortunate enough to live in a liberal, pro LGBTQ area. Or have plenty of "passing" privilege.

Regardless, outside of a screwed typical Cincinnati detour to get there, I'm looking forward to a fun morning.

Can You Help?

Last night at one of our group picnics, one of the other members I have known for a couple years  came up to me and asked if we could talk.

Already, by that point, I knew what was coming. And, there it was, she said she has a 20 something MtF transgender niece who has just decided to begin the coming out process. It sounded as if the transgender millennial has had a fairly positive coming out process, except for a very religious father who still doesn't know.

Fortunately (or not) I am becoming increasingly experienced in having conversations such as these. In the approximately past three months or so, I have had three.

Now, more than ever, I don't sugarcoat the process the transgender person is facing. First of all, attempting a gender transition is a marathon...not a sprint to the finish line. Expect a long difficult path. Secondly, the family has to be very understanding with things such as pronouns and names.

Finally, I said, in a very over simplified discussion, expect many changes along the way, excluding the obvious.

Last night, the woman showed me on her phone, quite possibly one of the best reasons to transition I have ever read.  Very elegantly, the young transgender woman stated the case for transitioning coming down to one simple fact, dysphoria. (Where have we heard that word before?) She explained to the world how she just couldn't live as a male anymore. Plus, it wasn't a choice, she and any other transgender or LGBTQ person was born this way.

Of course, I offered my shoulder to cry on, plus a couple of groups here in the Cincinnati metro area which could be of assistance. Then finished the conversation with each transition is different but I would be glad to help however I could.

It's nice to be wanted.

Dysphoric Hell

Following my recent post concerning transgender gender dysphoria, Connie wrote in this comment:

FABULOUSCONNIEDEEAugust 5, 2018 at 4:50 PM

"There are so many triggers that can bring on gender dysphoria - internal triggers and external ones. Waking up in the morning with a scratchy face from the overnight beard growth sometimes gets to me. Even the act of shaving can feel so unfeminine. 99% of the time, I can ignore it, knowing that, once I've completed the unpleasant task, my face will be all smooth again - ready for makeup and the day ahead. The other 1% usually occurs when I've overslept, and really don't have time to spend on a close shave before heading off to work. Still, I'll be late before I'll ever go a day without shaving, but even the feel of stubble (though not visibly detectable) at the end of the day is often a source of misery.

External prompts that can bring on the dysphoria can come from a mis-gendering or even a sideways look from someone. Developing a thick skin reduces the dysphoria, but it doesn't block it off completely. Fortunately, these things happen quite infrequently to me these days. Last week, however, I was accosted by a man like I've never experienced before.

It was early on a Saturday morning, as I waited, alone, for a bus to work. A middle-aged man with an aluminum suitcase appeared from the intersection, and I went into my vigilance mode, clutching my purse and fumbling inside it for the metal nail file I always carry. He walked by me, but turned and came back to ask me if I were going to work. I answered affirmatively with a polite smile. He followed up with asking me where I worked, and, still trying to be somewhat polite, I told him that I worked on the pier (there are 91 of them, so I felt safe enough saying that). By this time, he had ascertained that I was probably trans, and so he just had to say so with another question: "Can I ask you a question? Were you born a man and then became a woman?" I looked away at that question, grasping my nail file so tightly that I'm sure my knuckles were white. He persisted until I finally told him that I am a woman, and how I "became" one was no concern of his. I so wanted to ask him if he were born a boy and then never bothered to grow up to be a man, but there was no-one close enough to even hear my scream had he decided to get physical.

My bus was not due for another ten minutes, and I was a captive for his lecture the whole time. He went on about how it was a sexual thing, and kept trying to get me to answer questions about my sexual preference and such. I finally had had enough, and I told him, in a voice that I realized was a channeling of my mother's sarcastic tone, that his questions were highly personal, inappropriate, and totally based on misinformation. He tried to argue with me, but I refused to say anything else except that he had no right or basis to presume that he knew who and what I was when I've been living with who I am for over six decades - longer than he'd been alive. As the bus appeared down the block, I stood up and told him that I had to go. He followed me to the curb, asking if I knew anything about spirituality, karma, or vibes. Just as I stepped on the bus, I left him with my parting words: "Yeah, I'm getting a bad one right now."

Despite my satisfaction at getting the last word with a pretty good zinger, the incident stayed with me and affected my whole day. It's been over a week now, and I can recall it quite vividly, still. My battle with dysphoria has been to think of myself as a woman - not a trans woman or whatever anyone else would like to label me as. Knowing that there are others out there who do not see me the same way as I see myself is as bad as the itch of my growing whiskers, and such incidents can leave me with a lingering feeling worse than a full-blown beard on my face. If only it were as easy to zap away the jerks of this world as it is to zap away whiskers with electrolysis - which is not even that easy, really."

Thanks for sharing! I keep wondering when something similar will happen to me.

Voice Training Day One

All the angst surrounding my first day of voice training has come and gone, mixed in with a liberal amount of excitement.

As I waited, I had myself convinced the person doing the work wouldn't have any experience at all with a transgender women going down the same path as I. As it turned out, a totally unfounded fear since the first thing she asked me was how long I had been out. And, what pronouns I preferred!

Then, we embarked on an hour's worth of measuring my voice on a neat little machine with a microphone and blue lines with solid gray ones. The closer I could get my blue lines to the gray ones the better.  It turns out too, my natural voice isn't so far off a feminine range, which should make the whole process easier. I thought all in all the session went pretty successful.

My vocal problems seem to come from trying to do too much. For example, when I try to raise my voice too high, it cracks. Then becomes scratchy.

All of that is the good news, the bad news is my instructor just finished up her masters from Ohio University and is headed South to Charleston, South Carolina, so I have to start all over with a new person in two weeks when I go back.

In the meantime, I have daily homework assignments to do to designed to stretch my vocal cords more or less permanently.  Plus, I have to work on reversing fifty plus years of male style talking. Men have a tendency to speak more forcefully. I have to work how I approach my sentences and attempt to speak in a more "sing-song" pattern.  I have to do it until it becomes natural.

The things I have on my side are time and enthusiasm.

I just hope my next instructor is as good!