And the Winner is Transgender

 

Amy Schneider, a trans woman from Oakland, will make her fourth “Jeopardy!” appearance Monday after winning three games last week during Trans Awareness Week

.After her victory on Friday’s show, she told Newsweek that she had been trying to get on the show for over a decade. 

“I’m not sure quite how long [ago I first applied], but I remember trying out when I still lived in Ohio, and I’ve lived in Oakland since 2009, so it has to have been at least that amount of time,” she said. 

Schneider also explained how her transition in 2017 might have helped her finally get a spot on the show. 

“The reality is that for the first few years of that, when I was trying out, I was, as far as any of us knew, a standard white guy,” she told the magazine. “And there’s just more competition for those slots on Jeopardy! They’re making a TV show, they don’t want everybody to look the same, and I looked a lot like many of the other contestants, and I think that definitely made it a little tougher for me at that time. I would have got on eventually — I was never gonna stop trying!”

Monday Inspiration

 This is especially directed to you cross dressers or novice transgender women struggling to find your way out of your closet.

Tennis Anyone?

This is another of my continuing series of posts revolving around chances I took cross dressing my way into becoming a transgender woman and living fulltime in a feminine world. 

In the restaurant/bar I used to manage, two cis women who I presumed were in their fifties, came in several days a week to enjoy a cocktail or two. During the warmer months they used to stop by after their tennis matches in their tennis outfits. Of course I was jealous of the fact I didn't have an outfit to match theirs.

Around the point in time I am writing about, the stores I loved to shop in started to carry short thin ribbed flared dresses in larger sizes. Perfect to put together a tennis outfit. All I needed to do was find a white one. As luck would have it, I found one in my size. I then set out to complete my "outfit". The problem I had was finding items and then hiding them from my wife. As luck would have it, we had a rarely visited other closet where I could hide an item. Often in plain sight. 

Now, back to the outfit. Finding a pair of white tennis shoes in my size actually proved to be fairly easy too. Now I had to figure out what to do about my legs. Even though I was able to shave my legs back then I added a pair of Leggs pantyhose and even added a pair of white thigh highs which didn't exactly fit the idea of what a cis woman would wear with a tennis outfit but still added some pizzaz to the whole image. After all, I was reliving my non existent teen girl years I missed. 

I finished off the whole tennis image with my long straight blonde wig.

Let me add in here, I had rarely even touched a tennis racket in my life so I would be without one when I went out.  Once I was secure (the best I could) in my tennis woman outfit, I headed out to one of my favorite up scale malls. My wife was working that day so I had free time on my hands. Once I arrived at the mall, I was able to semi relax and feel the air on my legs and I found also I attracted quite a bit of attention from the older men who seemingly were there to supposedly walk but probably to look at women too. 

The whole situation was I equated being stared at as validation as a woman. I was  to learn later in life it was so wrong. There is a thin line between being classy and trashy when you are first cross dressing in public. I'm afraid I crossed the line into trashy in my early days of journeying into a feminine world. If my tennis outfit crossed into trashy I can't tell you. It was so long ago.

My story is I was doing nothing different  than other cis women I had mentioned above. It was only another attempt to be just like them. 

Tennis was just an excuse.

As My Blog Gently Weeps...Again

Sadly, it's time for remembering all our transgender sisters and brothers who have perished. For those of you who don't know:

 Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) is an annual observance on November 20 that honors the memory of the transgender people whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence.

"Transgender Day of Remembrance seeks to highlight the losses we face due to anti-transgender bigotry and violence. I am no stranger to the need to fight for our rights, and the right to simply exist is first and foremost. With so many seeking to erase transgender people -- sometimes in the most brutal ways possible -- it is vitally important that those we lose are remembered, and that we continue to fight for justice."

- Transgender Day of Remembrance founder Gwendolyn Ann Smith

46 trans & gender non-conforming have been killed this year making it the deadliest since this started being tracked back in 2013. These are their names...Tyianna Alexander, Samuel Edmund Damián Valentín, Bianca "Muffin" Bankz, Dominique Jackson, Fifty Bandz, Alexus Braxton, Chyna Carrillo, Jeffrey "JJ" Bright, Jasmine Cannady, Jenna Franks, Diamond Kyree Sanders, Rayanna Pardo, Jaida Peterson, Dominique Lucious, Remy Fennell, Tiara Banks, Natalia Smut, Iris Santos, Tiffany Thomas, Keri Washington, Whispering Wind Bear Spirit, Sophie Vásquez, Danika "Danny" Henson, Serenity Hollis, Oliver "Ollie" Taylor, Thomas Hardin, Poe Black, EJ Boykin, Aidelen Evans, Taya Ashton, Shai Vanderpump, Tierramarie Lewis, Miss CoCo, Pooh Johnson, Disaya Monaee, Brianna Hamilton, Kiér Laprí Kartier, Mel Groves, Royal Poetical Starz, Zoella "Zoey" Rose Martinez, Jo Acker, Jessi Hart, Rikkey Outumuro, Marquiisha Lawrence, Jenny De Leon, Jahaira DeAlto.

Each and every name read and recognized on the Trans Day of Remembrance represented a full, rich life that did not deserve to be cut short. The rhetoric and stigma aimed by anti-equality political leaders and public figures at transgender and non-binary people have led to an unprecedented level of horrific violence against our transgender community. We must fight for change. We must dismantle this stigma. We must bring this epidemic of violence to an end.

#TransDayofRemembrance

Well, It was a Good Idea

 As I previously wrote about, yesterday was the day of the college class I was supposed to attend with several other LGBTQ board members of the group I am part of. 

As it turned out, I drove an hour and fifteen minutes one way to not ever locate the classroom I was looking for. 

Needless to say, I was deeply disappointed. 

Better luck next time.

Inspiration

 I will be on the road  today participating in a master's level Sociology class.

Here is a bit of inspiration in the meantime:

 

When Life Gives You Lipstick

 

When life gives you lipstick, wear it!

Anyway you cut it, life is never fair for everyone. I'm biased but I think transgender women are dealt the most difficult hands in life. First of all, we have to do the difficult work of  figuring out who we are. Looking back I have written numerous times about all the mornings I woke up and immediately tried to figure out if I was a boy or a girl. What made matters worse was the fact this all happened before the internet and social media eras. Loneliness was extreme. I wasn't old enough to understand all that was happening to me and there was no one to explain the meaning of being gender fluid.

In the meantime I did the best I could to survive. I even tried to "come out" to a friend in high school (a guy) and was roundly rejected. Looking back, I had a total girl crush on another friend which I never let on to. It seemed life had dealt me a hand I couldn't win. 

Once I turned driving age though, I did get a small break.  On a couple occasions I was able to cross dress and sneak out of the house when my parents were away. I remember the trepidation I felt when I saw my reflection for the first time in a store's shopping center window. On the other hand, I felt a bigger sense of accomplishment. Other than those extremely rare occasions, high school wasa continuation of my gender frustration. The only relief I felt were a couple of school events I went to which featured a couple of very presentable boys in drag. Needless to say I was very jealous. 

The biggest setback I thought was coming was being drafted into the military. Along with the obvious reasons to dislike my upcoming service was the fact that women didn't have to worry at all about the military. Ironically this all turned out to be the time when life gave me a potential set back and I was able to turn it all around for the better. First of all I was given very little chance of  continuing my career as a radio disc jockey in the Army and I did just that in the American Forces Radio and Television Service. Then perhaps more importantly, I was able to finally come out of the closet toa few of my closest friends as a transvestite. Finally, the gift which kept on giving was meeting the woman who would turn out to be my first wife and birthed my beloved accepting daughter. 

Even with all those successes, I was still missing a huge gap in my life. Something was still wrong. Around this time life gave me the transgender term and the internet to research it. .All of a sudden I knew who I was. All those times I went to the transvestite mixers and didn't quite fit in made sense.

It all left me with the huge "what if" questions. Life had given me the answer to my gender issues but also left me the choices to settle my problems. Was I going to take the chances to give up all my male privileges and live full time as a transgender woman. After years of experimentation and soul searching the answer became clear and I took the gender plunge. 

At this point life gave me options. When my wife passed away, she was my biggest naysayer, so tragedy turned to a bittersweet triumph. Around this time also, the Veterans Administration began offering Hormone Replacement Therapy which I could take advantage of at a very low cost and I was old enough I could take advantage of early Social Security retirement and not have to worry about coming out at work.

It turned out life was repaying me for all the years of  turmoil and stress it put me through. 

Zion Moreno

 

Transgender model/actress Zion Moreno is about to become a household name.:

Zión Moreno stars on the new Mexican Netflix series Control Z, which follows a group of high school students who unfortunately get their secrets spilled to the whole school by a mysterious internet hacker. 

One observant but "socially isolated" student, Sofia, attempts to find out who is behind her classmates' secrets being leaked.

Be Man Enough

 Actually the whole comment turned out to be "Why don't you be man enough to be a woman?"  The phrase was directed at me after another huge fight my second wife and I suffered. I don't remember now what the exact reason for the fight was but I assume I was coming down after cross dressing and was becoming a less than pleasant person. 

I was certainly stuck in a rut and rather than asking for her help, I made myself miserable. When I did that, I made her miserable also. To make matters worse I think, she knew about my cross dressing urges before we became married. Over the years she witnessed my slow slide to becoming my authentic self and living full time as a transgender woman.

It wasn't easy. Her Dad was an alcoholic and I was close to being one too. So she had to put up with that part of my toxic male personality. Why or how she stuck with me for all those years was a testament to our love and her strength. Indirectly my wanderlust due to trying to out run my gender desires led us to other adventures. For example, we moved to and lived in such diverse places as metro NYC all the way to a rustic house in the woods in rural Ohio above Marietta and the Ohio River. 

One of the pleasures of living just North of the city in New York was the Sundays we were able to take the train downtown and explore in a relatively mellow environment.  It was one of these trips along with another trigger moment which started the fight which led to the comment. 

First of all, I felt as if I presented well enough to take the trip on the train as my feminine self. Either she felt I didn't or wanted not to take the risk of being recognized as we left the house, I will never know because it never happened. 

Around that time too, I somehow (think of this being years ago) became a transvestite pen pal with another cross dresser. We used to send scented letters back and forth along with the occasional picture. Somehow I came up with a photo of me cross dressed standing over a stove cooking. Another of the problems my wife had with me though I was never a "domestic goddess" and didn't overdo my share of the household duties. But the biggest problem she had was when she found a letter in the mail before I could get to it. Looking back at it, this was probably the first time I really had snuck around behind her back with my transvestite urges.

Of course the letter set off a huge fight. The problem with me fighting someone with words only was I didn't know how to hold back the emotions and often went too far. Unfortunately this no holds barred way of dealing with an argument did no good at all. It was during one of these moments when she turned to me and said "Why don't you be man enough to be a woman." 

Naturally I was taken aback and ended up giving quite a bit of thought to what she said. 

The problem was I couldn't or wouldn't give up my male life. It was simply still too much a part of my existence. Plus, no matter how hard I had studied women my entire life, I didn't feel I was ready yet to cross the gender frontier. I still had so much to learn plus I didn't want to face the probability of giving up my financial life as well as family and friends. Little did I know, waiting probably caused me extra pain and suffering before I actually made the decision to transition in my early 60's. 

It's so sad my wife passed on years ago now, so she couldn't see how I manned up and used my second chance at life to become a woman.