Red Head

 This picture was taken back in the winter of 2018 at one of Liz's martial arts award banquets. My hair is as long now but has reverted to it's natural color. At the request of my hair dresser.

 

Munroe Bergdorf

Recently Transgender model Munroe Bergdorf  has taken on the giants of social media. This excerpt comes from "Reuters":

"LONDON, Feb 16 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - With online abuse pushing her to quit Twitter, transgender model Munroe Bergdorf has called for social media companies to act faster to tackle racism and transphobia on their platforms.

The Black trans model, who said she regularly receives threats and waits hours for racist comments about her to be deleted, called on social media firms to invest in minorities to design algorithms to better protect themselves from abuse.

"If you can censor a nipple and a picture gets taken down with a nipple on it straight away ... then why can't you develop an algorithm that targets transphobic speech or racism?" the London-based model asked the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"If you're only investing in cis white men, or cis white people, to write the algorithms then there's a huge oversight there when it comes to lived experience and the nuance of hate speech," she said, using a term to describe non-trans people."

Best of luck!

Covid Slippage

 Recently, I have been reading the posts on Paula's Place and Femulate basically concerning wearing high heels and dressing up with no place to go during the pandemic shutdown. 

I literally have not had to worry about wearing heels for years because my feet and ankles are in such bad shape from pounding concrete floors  during my thirty plus years as a restaurant manager. The last time I can remember wearing heels was six or so years ago when Liz and I went to one of the witches' balls which used to be a regular date for us.  It turned out to be agony until I could slip out of my shoes into my nylon covered feet. Also I have a pair of two inch high heeled boots I wore one night...again years ago. The whole experience was ill advised as it was a wet evening and I ended up being seated with Liz at a big table in a winery with several wires from the band I had to negotiate when I got up and went to the restroom. To add insult to injury (almost) my heels took my height to well over six feet, so it seemed the whole room was staring as I walked through.  I did make it without bodily injury and decided since everyone was seemingly noticing me, I would stand up as straight and proud as I could. To this day, I am surprised I didn't slip and embarrass myself.

Not surprisingly,  both Paula and Stana (of Femulate) have written in depth on the effects of how their Mothers' fashions influenced their own. Age has dimmed my thoughts on the subject considerably but I do remember my Mom being in dresses most of the time since she was a high school teacher. Plus, of course, I must have been fascinated at some point by her makeup, since I couldn't wait to try it on me too.

Speaking of makeup and getting dressed up, I must be slipping in Liz's eyes. In fact she has even volunteered to do my makeup and hair someday when we can go out again. 

I guess the "Covid Slippage" may actually be getting to me more than I thought. 

At least I am looking forward to receiving my second vaccine the second week of March. While I am not naïve enough to think life will return to some sort of normalcy,  anything coming close will be appreciated!

Inspiration

 

Ain't no Trans in Heaven??

 In nearly a decade, I think this is the first ultra religious comment I have ever received.  It came from "blessed be9, Catalyst for Christ" :

"I refuse to hate: thats Satan's tactic; however, Im gonna tell you the Truth: when we breathe our last, what do you wish to called? Aint no trans in Heaven; you cannot stay on earth. Seek help. I did. GBY (the most non-threatening piece I have ever wRITTn. Again, I dont hate; I love everyone. I would sooner die for you than see you in any other realm but where Im after your lifelong demise). be@peace."

If the truth be known "blessed" you are the hater. If you weren't, you wouldn't wish the ill will on anyone with gender dysphoria who also happen to be transgender. 

As far as your question goes in what I wish to be called on my death bed is my authentic true feminine name which I have struggled so long to obtain. 

Shame on you for worshiping a false God that hates!  You are right "Ain't no trans in Heaven." We have paid our dues to be decent human beings. We will be just us in Heaven. 

I hope somehow you can turn your life around and make it to heaven yourself.

More "Blind Dates"

Recently I wrote a post here in Cyrsti's Condo which revolved around an idea I picked up from "Emma Holiday" about having a blind date with herself.  I added my own perspective to the post by writing on my early memories of secretly wanting to out my old male self to several of the cis women friends I had made. Fortunately, I was rebuffed in doing such a thing because the women couldn't/didn't want to see any male in me. After reading the post, Connie added her ideas:

" If I ever had a blind date with myself, it was because I was blind to the fact it might have been happening, at all. It had always been such a relief to me when I could express my femininity, which was natural to me, and to lose the masculine façade I spent so much of my time and energy to present. Not that my façade was anywhere near that of a macho man, in the first place, however.

I have always been athletic (slowing down in my old age, now), and I enjoyed being that way. That's not necessarily a masculine trait, but it helped in covering up my femininity. I hated all of the "dirty jobs" that I purposely took on to appear manly, and slithering around in crawl spaces is helpful in forgetting about one's gender (if only temporarily). On the other hand, I was the envy of many of the wives in our circle, as I did a lot of the cooking and cleaning around the house and have always treated my wife like the lady she is. I was the only one who knew that I did all of this because of my hidden feminine-self, and that I was, in a way, living vicariously through my wife.

I had a cross dresser friend who would manipulate encounters with women by showing herself or himself (depending on the current presentation), either by showing pictures or showing up again soon thereafter in the other mode. She/he would always take much delight in doing so, and I was often embarrassed by this when we were out together. I only showed a pic of my worst male-look, complete with scraggly beard, one time. It was to a woman who had only ever known me as the woman I am, and she reacted with horror - not necessarily because it was a most unflattering picture of me, but because, as she told me, she had never thought of me as being anything but a woman. It certainly caused her to gasp, anyway. It also taught me that I don't need to confirm my femininity by comparing myself to the dichotomous male façade that I once wore.

The only way I date myself is by making archaic references. Like, the Twist was a dance from the 60s, and not about my gender identity. :-)"

Thanks for the insight! In some ways I think wanting to show a picture of your male self is just a narcissist's way of fishing for a compliment. Similar to you look good as a woman...for a man.

One of these days I will have to write a post concerning how I felt about going out as a transgender woman to be by myself.

Nicole Gibson

 British transgender actress Nicole Gibson:

A Blast from the Past

 Recently I was surprised to see a post on Facebook from one of my old transgender friends from the earliest days of us exploring the feminine world for the first time. Over the years we have moved far away from each other and she has undergone several surgeries to enhance her appearance as a transgender woman. Her name is Racquel (pictured below).

Interestingly her post concerned several early visits to "straight" venues when we went through unique musical harassments:

" I’m eating a burger at Buffalo Wild Wings. And they just played Dude Looks Like a Lady by Aerosmith. And that’s fine. Because if I complained about it the staff would apologize profusely.

Six years ago the world was very different. I would hang out with Cyrsti and people would play Dude Looks Like a Lady on the jukebox just to intimidate us, and there was certainly nobody who cared if we complained."

All of Racquel's memories are unfortunately so true and even she didn't get to witness the night when a group of drunk rednecks kept on playing the mentioned hated song. It got so bad, instead of doing anything about it, the manager just told me to leave. Even though weeks later I was approached in a neighboring venue by a bartender in the banned place and asked to return. It seemed the person who kicked me out got fired for drug abuse. Revenge was mine but the hurt remains, even to this day.

I do agree with Racquel though the world has changed from the "mean" old days but we still have such a long way to go.

I "Stuck to It"

 Well, yesterday was my appointment at the Cincinnati Veterans Hospital to receive my first Covid-19 vaccine. As always, as first experiences go, it was an interesting time.

First of  all, the weather was cold (25 degree's F. )  so I had to plan ahead to make sure I was warmer outside until I arrived at where  I needed to provide a bare arm for the vaccine injection. What I finally decided on was to wear a loose fitting long sleeved sweater over a T-shirt so I could strip off the sweater for the vaccine. 

For the most part, the plan worked relatively well and I only dropped all my paperwork once. So I was able to slip out of my coat and sweater without too much of a problem. 

Overall, I respected the organization of the whole operation. At the door of the main entrance directing traffic was a person I thought was a transgender man, although it was tough to tell since they were wearing a mask. Then came the walk around the hallways until I finally arrived where the vaccines were actually being given. As I was being directed forward, I actually was only mis-gendered by two people out of approximately fifteen. Which I figured wasn't too bad considering how much work I didn't  put into what I was wearing. My sweater coat is not form fitting at all and I just wore jeans and boots. Plus, since I was wearing two masks, the only makeup I wore was on my eyes. 

Knock on wood, the best part so far is the only reaction to the vaccine so far is a slight itching in the arm.  

Plus, the best part is, my second vaccine is already scheduled for thirty days out in March. I was fortunate too it was just cold today as we are expecting close to or over a foot of snow over the the next several days.