Are You Kidding Me?

At Monday night's transgender - cross dresser support group meeting, I walked in innocently enough expecting the moderator to go overboard once again expounding on her favorite topic...herself.

Instead she was somewhere missing in action but a Chick-fil-a cup was sitting in front of her seat. I almost just got up and left. Instead, I stayed and let her know my displeasure.

I said I thought the group was not political in nature and why should she bring politics into it. Of course she gave us all the same old song and dance about how she was helping the transgender cause by eating there. In reality, all she is doing is helping a company which hates the LGBTQ community.

Of course nothing was solved and maybe I got my point across with some of the other attendee's.

Only time will tell.

Say it Ain't So!

After twelve and a half years writing a blog, Stana at Femulate is calling it quits.

Stana

Very simply, most of you know, I have referred to her blog as the "gold standard" of transgender related blogs. You could always count on it to be well written, informative and full of wonderful pictures.

I will miss it totally. Stopping by Femulate was my first move every morning when I set out to figure out what I was going to write here in Cyrsti's Condo.  Many days it was like walking through sand to figure out what (if anything) I could possibly add to create yet another post. On many of those days, Stana was my push to get up and get moving.

Truthfully, after some 5600 published posts, I wonder if I should go away too. I think what I am going to do though instead of shutting down the blog, is instead taking a couple courses on creating a more professional site.

At this point in time, I am thinking of taking some of my vacation (coming up soon) to think about it.

In the meantime, I will always admire and respect Stana for her efforts.

She will be missed!

More Transgender Flowers

Due to the state of my life lately, this comment is actually several days old and includes another comment/picture from Connie. Much of it revolves around the concept of "passing" in a feminine world:

"Because of the work I do, I interact with dozens of people every day. It is usually they who start the conversation, as I'm basically there to water beautiful flower baskets, and people want to tell me how lovely those flowers are. I just reply with a feminine-sounding "thank you," but oftentimes I'm asked how I keep them so nice and lush. If I've passed up until this point, that's OK, but attempting to keep my feminine voice during a conversation, and keeping my feminine appearance during a longer face-to-face encounter lower my chances of passing with each tick of the clock (Is that what they mean by "clocked?")

My philosophy on passing is based on passing muster. This may, or may not, include blending in. I pretty much draw attention to myself while working, but it's in a positive way. I realize that there are many people who may size me up before saying anything at all to me, and I'm confident that, for most people, I am passing muster. What I think is the best test of this is that I seem to be approachable. It's a lot different than interacting with sales people or servers, whose jobs are to be nice to the customer - whatever they may think about a trans woman. 

At one of the locations where I work, on the pier amidst cruise ships and smaller harbor tour boats, there are more tourists from all over the world than there are Seattle-ites, so I'm often asked for directions or recommendations on the best places to see or go to eat. I'm sometimes taken aback when a good ole boy from the deep south approaches me with such questions. I mean, he easily could have gone to the visitor center right there, but he chose to come to me. I think I have the longest conversations with these guys, because I want them to know that a trans woman can be just as approachable and engaging as anyone else. Maybe some of them don't even figure out that I am trans, but it doesn't matter. 

Every once in a while, someone will compliment more than just my flowers. I have sometimes been told that I am pretty, too. Women are more likely to be sincere in saying that, but I've heard, "the flowers are almost as pretty as you are" from men more often than I would like (men think they're so clever with their come-on lines). 

Even if nobody spoke directly to me, I could take solace in the mere fact that I hear, all day long, parents say to their toddlers in tow, "See, the lady is watering the flowers!" At least they're calling me a lady, and I'm sure their kids will grow up accepting that I am, as are all trans women."

Thanks for the comment!

Busy Day

Yesterday turned out to be a much busier day than I expected. In fact, it turned out to one of those "Army" style days when you hurry up and wait.

The morning started with an always exciting trip to the DMV to get new tags for our new car. Well, it's new to us! I didn't think I would be needed, so I grabbed a seat to wait for Liz to wind her way through an insanely long line to get to a clerk. It turned out since my name was on the title too, I had to step up and be part of the process. All went well until the clerk asked how we described our relationship for the record. I said "Partner." She glared at me and said "How long?" I glared back and said eight years and she seemed satisfied and went on to the next question. After an eternity, the whole fun filled process was over.

Next was Liz's eye appointment. The only thing I can say, the place was air conditioned and had comfortable chairs. Soon we left and headed to one of the close neighborhood specialty food stores to look for produce. After squeezing the mango's it was past time to head to the pharmacy because they close every day for a lunch break between 1:30 and two. Liz was offered some sort of a discount card for her prescription. That was the good news, the bad news was she had to call a number to get it. Of course by that time, the lunch break was upon us and we ended waiting the extra half hour to try to get the prescription filled. It all turned out to be for naught because the phone lines were closed till Monday.

All of the fooling around made us late for our next appointment.  We were supposed to pick up a friend and be at a restored Cincinnati church which has been made into a craft brewery and event center. We were checking it out for perhaps holding a future Witches Ball there. Also we were supposed to meet the disc jockey we were thinking of using this year. By the time we got there, we were a half hour late. Personally, I loved the place. It brought back fond memories of escaping a hot humid day in a cold bar drinking cold beer and relaxing. Although the meeting itself made it hard to relax, I was treated like any other person in the place.

The disc jockey was a trip. We as a group got some push back for using him because supposedly he was a neo nazi in his past. So, we wanted to meet him naturally, to hear his side of the story. Interestingly, Liz said if he avoids me, maybe he is a Nazi. Because they would be more apt to steer clear of a transgender person.

To make a long story short, I don't think he is or was a Nazi and someone is just out to get to us through him. It's sad because all the money raised goes to charity (homeless shelter) and we don't make anything for what essentially is huge pain in the rear. I keep thinking this will be the last year.

After taking our friend home, we finally were able to stop at an Aldi Food Store and do some light shopping for a late dinner.

After all of that, we ran out of time and the day came to an end. Thank goodness.

Lesson learned? If and when you get a chance to live a full life as a transgender woman...never look back!

Flower Girls

As luck would have it, I stopped during my walk at a neighbor's house down the street to admire one of her flower beds. As I did, she came running out to talk to me. It turns out I was the first person in the neighborhood to notice and appreciate all of her hard work. With all the rain we have been having the flowers are doing quite well.

As always, I was a bit self conscious because I hadn't even bothered to put on any make up which of course I don't for my morning walks when I meet very few people. She was so engrossed with talking about her garden, she didn't even seem to notice. After all, she wasn't wearing any either and may have found it odd if I was wearing any either.

Ironically, a better example of a flower girl adding beauty to her plants just came from Connie:

Connie pointed out the picture was actually taken last September "when the flowers were on their downside." Sort of like she was. Well, we can all claim that!

Seriously, I am sure she gets a lot of compliments on  the beautiful flowers and herself.

Thanks for sharing :).

Happy Fourth!

It's the Fourth of July and time to forget the divides we suffer in Washington and remember all which is still good with our nation.

Sadly at a time when our government seems to be so out of touch with the people, so much good is happening at the grass roots level, especially within the LGBTQ community. Like no time in the past, we are preparing for the fight ahead.

In the meantime, let's remember Woody Guthrie's immortal song, This Land is Your Land:




I would like to thank the "Tony Burgess Blog" I follow for this inspiration!

Passing Privilege?

I saw a post somewhere the other day about the importance of a person's "passing privilege."

First of all, I am not a big fan of the passing comment at all and always like to refer back to Stana's Femulate comment referring to how she always passed with care, by using her horn, flashing her lights etc.

Long HRT Hair

As far as I am concerned, I go back to what a transgender woman friend told me years ago. She said, I passed out of sheer will power. So many years later, I still do. If people don't like me, it's their problem.

I was never blessed with being a "natural." It took me a long time to realize the compliment "You make a great looking woman," was missing the rest of the comment...for a man. Even though I grew up desperately wanting to be a girl, I lived in a male dominated world and had precious little time to express my "feminine side."

My real inclusion into having any passing privilege at all came after I made the decision to go on HRT. All the good things happened like hair, breasts, soft skin and a rounder face. However, I do believe sometime in the future I will get a health pay back in return for messing around with my body's hormonal basic's.

In the mean time though, I will continue to put my best feminine foot forward to the world the best I can. Out of sheer will power.

Hopefully I won't wear my horn out when I get the chance to pass.   

Pooya!

If you haven't seen or heard, Pantene is starring a 41 year old transgender woman as one of it's models:

"When Pooya Mohseni was 19 years old, she was walking around a park in her hometown of Tehran, Iran, wearing a simple black T-shirt and white jeans, when a group of policemen approached her.

The officers took issue with how Mohseni, a transgender woman who was presenting as masculine at the time, wore her hair. To them, it was too long.

Pooya Mohseni

"My hair was down to the middle of my ears," Mohseni, now 41, tells Refinery29. "Not very long at all. If I pulled it all to the front of my face, it would come down to the middle of my nose." 

According to Mohseni, the officers' real problem wasn't her hair. It was what her hair signified.  Almost two decades later, that very same head of hair is making its debut in a new Pantene campaign called "Don’t Hate Me Because I’m #BeautifuLGBTQ," which was born out of the brand's new partnership with GLAAD in honor of Pride Month. In a video for the campaign that can be seen on both YouTube and social media, Mohseni recounts her arrest and declares that "hair is the most visibly transformative part of your body."

I agree and still feel so fortunate I was able to grow my own hair. It forced me into going all out to adopt a stable feminine persona. The drawback of course is making sure I keep up with it at my stylist!

Bored

After every up moment such as this weekend, there naturally comes a period of "what now?"

I have nothing going on this week until Friday when we have our monthly transgender-cross dresser social at the Mexican Restaurant we go to quite a bit.

It's still too early to decide, but since we are still baking in our mini heat wave, I probably will wear my other maxi dress.

Other than that, I will be riding along with Liz to her doctor's appointments, which require no special preparation to speak of. Just the normal jeans and minimal make up.

All the Prides in the area are now done, so it's a let down too. Most of the euphoria of Pride can be tempered with all the tragic violence against transgender women around the country and the world. Pride is a powerful example of what is possible...if we all stick together and make it happen.