Another Step Closer

 My partner Liz and I crossed another milestone recently when she secured a time for her first Covid vaccine. Her date is coming up Monday. 

When she completes both of her vaccinations, it means we are a giant step closer to being able to venture out again in the public's eye. Most importantly to me, I will have the chance to see my daughter and three grandkids again. 

Liz and I from Christmas party two years ago. I loved it when her heels made her taller than me!

Also, I will have the opportunity to interact with the public as a transgender woman. Looking ahead, I wonder how many lessons I will have to relearn, if any.  Interestingly, Liz has been indicating she wants to "experiment" with my hair and make up, which she has never dome in our past. In her past, she dabbled in being an Avon cosmetic person and I have settled into a real makeup routine which may need some updating. Truthfully, my "routine" has become wearing less and less makeup. I still rely on my nightly skin care routine and exfoliation when I shave to get me by. Of course now makeup is less important when a mask covers a significant part of your face anyhow.

My problem is too that in my quest to be a "natural" woman, I have a tendency to revert back to looking more like my old male self. Even though a feminized version due to the hormone replacement therapy I have been on. 

As always I have set my expectations too high as far when we can begin to rejoin society again. 

I am sure I will experience no major lifestyle changes. I just want to return to somewhat the same existence I enjoyed before. You notice I wrote "somewhat."

Another Transgender First

 "Leyna Bloom" has become the first transgender woman of color to  be featured in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue.

Leyna is an American actress, model, dancer and activist. The Swimsuit issue is not her first big feature as she was the first openly transgender woman of color to appear in Vogue India.

Coming Soon

 

FYI, the email you see is my other email under my legal name which I changed nearly five years ago. 

It's another story I will get into in another blog post.

I will send out this reminder again as we get closer to the presentation which is part of the Trans Ohio Transgender Month of Visibility.

Close to Home

 

Diamond :Kyree' Sanders, a black transgender woman  has been murdered here in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was only 23 and loved fashion and travel. 

While detectives did consider whether the incident could have been a hate crime, a Cincinnati Police Department spokesperson said the force now believes the killing “had nothing to do with the victim’s lifestyle”. .Her cellphone and purse were stolen. 

This is yet another example of how careful we need to be as we lose our male privileges as we transition into a feminine world. 

More on Transgender Attraction

 Connie commented on the Cyrsti's Condo "Attraction" post:

"As I approach both my 70th birthday and 49th wedding anniversary, attraction is quite different than it was before. While I don't feel lonely, I do feel a loss. I was lucky that my transition to living as a woman was accepted by my wife, but the relationship changed. We were friends before we married, and, while that part has only strengthened over the years, romance was placed on the back burner years ago. Of course, it's much more complicated than just that, as there are other factors (many of them having to do with health) that I won't divulge here. Love and companionship create a bond that can be so much stronger than physical attraction.

I could write of a multitude of occasions when someone was attracted to me as a trans woman. It has never been the case that I consciously attempted to cause any of them. I have been "hit on" by men (both gay and straight), women (both cis and trans), and even a trans man. In each case, I have asked myself what it was that attracted them to me. As far as I know, none of them could have been sure of my genitalia or the "authenticity" of my breasts. In at least a couple encounters, I'm not even sure they knew I was a trans woman. I'm not naïve enough that I believe they were all attracted to my sparkly personality, either.

I decided long ago that, although I can adeptly create the illusion that there is a female body beneath my clothing, it doesn't matter - because I know there is not. The only way, now, that I would feel sexually attractive would be if I had female genitalia and breasts. The fact is that if I don't feel attractive the way I am, then I wouldn't be interested in anyone else who might be attracted to me this way, either.

I know it is largely due to my dysphoria that causes me to feel the way I do. Thank God I have a wife who values our love, companionship, and close friendship as much as I do. Those are pretty attractive qualities, in themselves, after all."

Thanks for the comment! 

As I have said many times, my major contact with genders when I began to come out as a transgender woman came from cis women, mainly lesbians although one of my first dates was with a trans man. Although I like to deceive myself into thinking the majority of attraction came from how I presented myself, the reality was my attraction came from the fact I was different. I am a firm believer in most cis women aren't as grounded in a strict gender binary as men are. So my gender blurring was a plus to them.

Plus my attraction could have been my desire to live an authentic life on a cis woman's side of the gender spectrum. 

To be certain there are no easy answers.

Wow! She Transitioned Well!

 Yesterday I wrote a Cyrsti's Condo post on Nicole Maines transgender character being part of the features in the new DC Comics Pride Anthology issue. At the same time I noticed a post in Femulate from Stana. Without a doubt we all have different distances to travel in our public presentations as we transition genders. 

Take Nicole Maines for example.  She gained "passing privilege early in life from her parents when she was accepted for who she really was. She was "allowed" to not go through testosterone poisoning before and during puberty.  Even to the point of becoming a transgender activist at an early age. I am sure most of us would feel so fortunate to have been in the same situation. 

Now, let's take Stana from Femulate for example. In her recent post, she described how she was mistakenly confused by an intake person as being a feminine person. She has always written concerning being a "feminine" male. Again, you can see from her wonderful pictures how well she has transitioned. Or maybe she would argue she didn't transition at all. She is just living as her authentic self.  

Then, there are the rest of us. All have faced differing levels of being able to try our best to present a feminine image. If you see many true photos on line (which are getting harder and harder to find) you will see many who have struggled with the basics of transitioning.

The sad part, or even tragic part is all of us are only trying to do what comes naturally. Forget the transition word, we were always girls and women. The only beneficial part of not being particular feminine was I was able to fool the bullies and they left me alone. 

My most recent example came yesterday when I went to the Cincinnati VA Hospital for my second vaccine.  When I went in for my first shot, I was mis-gendered at least three times which nearly broke my heart. This time, I gathered my resolve to not get mis-gendered so many times. I spent extra time on my eye makeup, since my eyes would be the only part of my face which would be seen. I also spent extra time trying to style my hair different. Again, looking ahead to wearing a mask.

The good news was this trip I wasn't mis-gendered at all.  More than likely, the year off from interacting with the public I have gone through has made me lazy when it comes to my feminine presentation. 

At the least, maybe someone will think I transitioned well.

In the Comics

 Nicole Maines (below) , "Supergirl's" first transgender television  super hero  will now be featured in a  DC Pride  anthology comic. 

 From Wikipedia:

"Nicole Amber Maines (born October 7, 1997) is an American actress and transgender rights activist. She was the anonymous plaintiff, Susan Doe, in the Maine Supreme Judicial Court case Doe v. Regional School Unit 26 regarding gender identity and bathroom use in schools"

As an aside, Nicole and her identical twin brother Jonas were adopted at birth  and grew up in Portland, Maine.

Attraction?

 Unfortunately, too many transgender women and/or trans men are very lonely. Along the way on our transgender path we face obstacles from family and spouses which causes us to break up relationships. Also, transitioning later in life adds to the pressure of restarting our lives as another gender. So many  transgender women  face the daunting task of overcoming years and years of testosterone poisoning. All of a sudden, the bodies which have served us so well (even though we hated them) are no longer wanted or needed.

I started my search to gender transition in my early sixties after putting myself through an intense process to determine if I really wanted to undertake such a  serious project. I have always believed changing genders is one of the most difficult and/or painful undertakings a human can attempt. 

As I explored the feminine world, the more natural I became and I decided to move forward into what I referred to as the high maintenance gender. More than likely I was fortunate in that I was on the cusp of being able to pass in the world.

After a painful period when I tried to live a dual gender life, which ultimately led me to a suicide attempt, I decided enough was enough and I left my male self behind. Then I jumped off the deep end and started hormone replacement therapy.

All of this brings me back to my attraction topic. As I transitioned, I was very lonely too. Not to mention confused. Was I supposed to reject a lifetime of being attracted to women and switch to men? The answer came quickly for me as I explored several dating sites and continued my routine of going out to non gay venues. Even though I did have several interactions with men, for the most part either stood up by guys or treated as sort of a curiosity. 

On the other hand, I found many more women were attracted to me in my new gender than ever were when I was a man. Ironically, it was two lesbians who helped usher me into the feminine world and another lesbian who I still live with nine years later. 

As I indicated, I was fortunate for  the wrong reasons. For instance, I was so lonely because my wife of twenty five years passed away very suddenly. So I had no disapproving spouse to worry about.  I was on my own.

Over the years, I have been asked how I rebounded to where I am today. The answer is I flooded the dating sites and kept on trying. I had my fair share of trash as I would change my profile from seeking men to seeking women as a transgender person. Finally I hit pay dirt and was rewarded with another relationship I never thought I would be part of again this late in life. (71)

I am also on occasion slightly amused by the transgender women  who are looking for a "good man" not realizing they are in competition with the majority of all cis women in society. 

Indeed, attraction is a fickle beast, especially when it involves transgender humans.   

Patti Harrison

 Disney’s new animated film Raya and the Last Dragon has sparked debates about whether the two main characters, Raya and her enemy Namaari, are queer or not. Yet even as the major studio has decided to leave the sexuality of their main characters ambiguous, there’s one instance of explicit queer representation in the film: Patti Harrison’s appearance in the small role of Tail Chief. It makes Harrison the first known transgender actor to appear in a Disney animated film, as pointed out by Out.