A transgender Filipino woman has made history after being the first to achieve the highly coveted title of Miss Intercontinental New Zealand 2020.
Arielle Keil, 26, who was born in Davao City, Philippines as a boy named Andrew, but grew up in Auckland, New Zealand, underwent gender reassignment surgery earlier this year.
The glamorous trailblazer, who is the first post-operative transgender contestant to compete in the Miss New Zealand beauty pageant.
Friday I was interviewed by a "30 something" college student concerning my lifetime of transgender experiences. I was selected because I matched the age requirement which was presented to the transgender - cross dresser group I am part of. The college student wanted someone over the age of 65. Naturally, at 71, I made the age cut.
Most of the questions were predictable. Examples were how did I get to where I am now and what advice would I have for younger transgender women and men. I explained the steps I took to finally make my way out of a very dark closet into a very terrifying yet exciting feminine world. I went into the visits I made years ago to transvestite mixers close to my home in Ohio. How I learned very early how there were many different layers to the community which was portrayed as a strictly hetero sexual male experience. In reality, the opposite was the truth. Ironically, I found once again I didn't fit in. I wasn't part of the "A" listers who I described as the impossibly feminine beautiful looking "women" or the cigar smoking, cowboy hat wearing crowd who were desperately trying to hold on to their masculinity even though they were wearing dresses and makeup. It was quite the experience.
Even though I didn't fit in with the "A" girls, I still went along with them as they went out of mostly gay venues after the regular mixers. Slowly I learned how much I wanted to continue living as a woman and more importantly, I found I could actually do it. I was breaking loose from the chains of being confined to a Halloween only experience into a life with others around me who had similar gender interests.
Other questions revolved around the differences between the years involving the advent of the internet and various social media platforms. It's not too much of a stretch to think both events have had the most effect on people being able to come out of the closet and live a transgender life.
We basically ended the interview with the most predictable question of all, "What advice would I give to younger transgender people?" My answer was probably over simplistic. I said be aware if you can live long enough to experience it, life is but a circle. Right now with the hope of a new president on the horizon, the circle can get rolling again.
Remember though, even if the going gets tough, sticking together always has the potential to move us forward. In other words, do not participate in ideas such as I am more transgender than you are.
When you look back to the days when you could be arrested for even going out in public cross dressed as a woman, we have come a long way. But we still have such a long way to go.
Bambi Lake, a songwriter, performer, San Francisco Tenderloin fixture, and former member of the legendary Cockettes — the gender-bending performance troupe that grew out of the queer spaces in the Haight of the late 1960s and deeply influenced modern San Francisco drag — has died after a brief battle with cancer. She was 70
From "The Blade"
"The Biden transition team has named transgender veteran Shawn Skelly as a member of its agency review team as LGBTQ advocates are pushing the new administration to undo President Trump’s transgender military ban expeditiously.
Skelly, who co-founded Out in National Security, an affinity group for LGBTQ national security professionals, and served on active duty in the U.S. Navy for 20 years as a naval flight officer, is named a member of the agency review team for the Defense Department in a news statement that went out Wednesday."
As with so many of my thoughts, I encountered this idea from Riley Black another blogger/writer from the "Medium" on line magazine. Riley brought up the idea of a gender transition ceasing to be a verb and then becoming a noun. If you are similar to me, I had to think back to my high school English classes to figure out what Riley meant.
Finally my noggin started to understand the gender process we all go through as we gender transition. Is it always a verb as we progress. Or do we obtain a level when transition levels off and becomes a noun?
I have been in my transition for a long time. In fact, if you consider all the years I cross dressed, I have been on a transition path for over sixty years. You can put it nicely and say I just took a little longer to discover my true self or...I was just a slow learner.
These days, I have a tendency to think my transition has plateaued out and I know now what is around the next corner. On the other hand, life has taught me to never take anything for granted. Plus now, at the age of 71, I would be remiss if I didn't look ahead at the possible specter of spending time in an assisted living facility.
It's looking more and more my transition will always be a verb.
Well, I am paid up, signed up and ready to attend the Aging Summit to be held next week.
I was pleasantly surprised to see one of the transgender women of color I know is going to take on the duties of keynote speaker on day one of the three day event. I also signed up for two of the seminars I saw on issues senior LGBT individual face as they are forced into senior living situations.
On day one, the session I am signed up for is called "LGBT Aging" and the session will address how aging as an LGBTQ older adult is different than aging as a heterosexual, cisgender older adult, and how we can reflect and honor these differences.
On day two, the session is called "Resilience Planning for the LGBT Community. " It really zero's in on some of my paranoias. Such as the barriers older individuals experience to health, social support and community resources.
This is a virtual summit and there are several other seminars I still may attend. If you by chance are interested in attending, drop me an email to Jessiehart751@yahoo,com and I will send you a link. It costs fifty dollars.
Well, I finally made it out of the house for an extended period. Ironically, it was only to visit my Veteran's Administration hospital in Dayton, Ohio to have my blood labs taken. For those of you who don't know, I am a transgender veteran of the Army during the Vietnam War era.
The last several times I have made the journey to visit the "vampires" as I call them has been very much uneventful. This time though, they waiting room was nearly full and once I did take my turn, I had so many vials of blood (8) they needed that the tech who took my blood had to use both arms to get enough blood. He finally did and I was sent on the way past the "admiring public" in the waiting area.
Liz (my partner) was off from her job and agreed to go with me. Also the day happened to be unreasonably warm and beautiful. I was able to wear an easy to access T-shirt for the vampires pus jeans and tennis shoes. The one thing I noticed was how old the other Vietnam veterans looked. They were all wearing their hats and stood out from the rest of the room,
From the looks I received, I must have stood out too! Of course I was wearing a mask, so all they could see of me was my eye make up and very long hair. Any way you cut it too, I am not a small person at 5'10" and have the thick torso I inherited from living a life of testosterone poisoning.
Yesterday though, none of any of the blank stares I was receiving bothered me in the least. In my mind I was the most attractive woman in the room. As I walked past all of them I tried to straighten my shoulders, stick out my chest and at the least try to be happy I was out of the house.
Even if it was only for a trip to the vampires.
As I semi-frequently mention here in Cyrsti's Condo, I served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. I was fortunate in that I only was actually in Vietnam for a half hour twice. I served a year in Thailand supporting the troops who supported the fighter jets who escorted the B-52 bombers and did recognizance. At the time as I was trapped in my battles with gender dysphoria, serving time in the military was very close to the last place I wanted to be. I had no choice, I was drafted, passed my physical and then enlisted for three years to have a chance of working in my choice of jobs. In other words, I wasn't in the military to "make me a man" once and for all.
It turned out the time I served was to come back and help me so many times times in my life. I have written many times of how being in the Army led me to meeting my first wife and the greatest gift I have ever received, my daughter. Along the way I was able to travel parts of the world I would have never seen and receive the health care I receive today at very little cost.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the veterans past and current and especially those of you like Michelle. She is another transgender veteran who reads and contributes to the blog. Thank you all for your service!
Freedom is never free as referenced by the election we just went through.
One of the more rewarding parts of being an "out" transgender woman also carries more than a small amount of responsibility. In many ways, we are "tasked" with proving to the general public we are just like anyone else they might meet...or are we?
Here is Michelle's take on the idea:
"The news about the LGBTQ candidates that have won their respective positions in the political world made me hopeful that the American public is starting to see us as just people. For too long, many so called open minded looked at many of us as freaks but now they are looking at the community as individuals that have more to offer than what they have been brought up to believe about LGBTQ. I hope to see more openly LGBTQ people come into the light and escape their closets."
I agree totally with the idea we need positive transgender role models. The more we have, the more chances we have to show ourselves to be similar to anyone else in the world. Assuming you want to that is. For one, I take pride in being transgender and at the same time I lived/live my life similar to so many others. My life certainly was shaped by my early years in the Army and by playing sports. Surely a surprise to many I have met who have somehow made their way past the personal walls I erected to protect myself.
On the other hand, I have been little off center as far as the so called "normal" is concerned. In many ways, I used the process to protect myself. After all, my macho male personage was difficult to maintain. Plus, I was self destructive in nature and took too many needless chances. Some were successful, some not so much.
In the end though, all the chances I took led me to being able to lead a successful life as a transgender woman and project to others I am mostly similar to them. Not a threat, not a freak.
Just like everyone else, trying to get through this life alive.
Image from Trans Outreach, JJ Hart As I negotiated my way through the gender wilderness I was in, I needed to reach out at times to find mom...
