Learning to be body-conscious

It's been a little odd, one of those surprises, then, in the last month to find myself twice unexpectedly being made aware of them. The first time was for my doctor, who needed to give them a routine examination. No worries, I said, and pulled my top off. To which she reacted with horror, it seems this is something to be done on the examination table with loads of curtains around.


This is a really nice post, from Jenny, who is Learning to be body-conscious.

I came out to our neighbor

Then I realized he just has no idea, so I spelled it out – I said, “I’m transgender, I’m actually more in the middle, not like I am going to become a man.  But like, at work and my friends and family, I use male pronouns, ‘he/him/his.'"




It's always good for all of us to hear each other's coming out stories.  This one is came out well.

Adventures in Crossdressing: Work Colleagues

........she knows nothing about Daniella. If I spoke to her I was done for. So I just breezed on by as if I was just walking along doing my thing. This may have appeared suspicious or rude, but I doubt she even noticed.




Daniella and her spouse were out shopping, on a school day, when co-workers should be at work.  Oh! No!  What happened?  Read,  Adventures in Crossdressing: Work Colleagues, to find out.

The Ultimate Feminine Shoe

.....as I stood in the high heel slides, the lack of any support immediately became evident. Yes the first step took me right out of the shoes. Now bare-foot, I was looking back at the shoes behind me, wondering what just happened?

 

 

Rhonda talks about slides....The Ultimate Feminine Shoe, but watch out...you can hurt yourself in them!

Defining Normal

Guilt and shame in the transgender community was almost the status quo until recent years, because there was a "perception" that it was, or is, not only abnormal, but also wrong. "


Want to feel better about yourself?  Read, Defining Normal, from Brianna.  It's well written and well thought out. 

Gender and... Coins?

But the cashier, a woman in her forties, was visibly taken aback. She looked at me and said, "I'm surprised you have coins. Men never carry change."






Well, that's a senario I never thought of!  Go to Shybiker's post, Gender and...Coins?, for more.

By the way, Shybiker is a transgender lawyer who enjoys motorcycles, fashion and film.

Paint My Nails for Another Day

I thought about that cafe by the ocean I had looked out from early in the morning on holiday last year. I thought for just a moment that serving treacle thick bitter coffee for a few months to people who wanted to watch life go by on a subtropical island might just be an answer. Time to think. Time to simplify. Time to give myself to actually think about the gender thing.



I just love Hannah's posts.  I love that she can so honestly share her thoughts.  She's just a fabulous writer.  If you haven't read any of Hannah's posts, you're doing yourself an injustice.  If you're wondering why she needs to Paint (her) Nails for Another Day, you'll just have to read her blog post.

Schoolboys Protest No Shorts Rule – By Wearing Skirts

The idea may also have come from a 14-year-old who wanted to wear shorts and was sarcastically told by the headteacher “Well, you can wear a skirt if you like”.




Xandra, from Scotland, considers herself a genderqueer pansexual crossdresser.  An article about boys wearing skirts caught her eye and is worth featuring.

If you want to read a bit more from Xandra, consider, Myths and Facts of Crossdressing.  It's well written with a little taste of humor embedded within.

Old dream

My parents had come to see me, although I thinkthey were there to "rescue" me, I don't remember that part precisely however when I was summoned to come off the island and meet them I walked through the tunnel and I was a woman in fact I looked like Jessica Lange as she appeared in King Kong- the 1976 version (which is how I date this.)







I always like to read about dreams.  Many of you have written blog posts about your dreams.  I have too.  In this one, Sophie tells us about her Old dream.

Some random thoughts on going out in the world en-femme

The "ewwww" factor gets in the way for many of us risking a relationship with a cisgender male.  If they see our former masculinity as still defining us, then they get turned off by the potential of having a gay relationship.  And it can be worse.  We're in a no-win situation about telling males about our past status, as we can either be dumped, beaten, or worse.  


Marian shares some interesting personal experiences on going out in the world en-femme.

Cisgender…

For some reason people seem to think cisgender is an insult, some nasty slur being tossed at them, instead of a simple description. The same people who have no problem being called white, straight, their nationality, their religion, male/female etc suddenly don’t want or like labels when it comes to cisgender. 



Here's a little comment, from Kathleen, on the term, Cisgender.  Does she approve of it?  Read her post to find out.

Maternal Instincts

Now I have an app that warns me when PMS is about to happen.  Before, it was my husband who sensed my mood but didn't comment for fear of 'getting his head bitten off'.  Now I'm more relaxed about it and philosophical.  I deal with it better, knowing that it's just a couple of days. I'm aware that keeping active and even sex will help relieve tension and that relief will come. Sadly I also get warned that my fertile window is coming up.  I wish.  I get aroused much more easily, initiate sex more often and come better but I do know that I won't conceive. My broodiness remains; a real instinctive desire to start a new family and to create new life. The urge to make a baby with a man I know would make a good father. It seems cruel.  The only other women who understand it are other tearfully infertile females too.


Can a TS woman have a period?  I know several who will answer yet.  In this very interesting post, Jane describes the feelings and even tracks her cycle using Clue.  Read, Maternal Instincts, to learn more.

Feminine Differential – Body Shape

I did have an amazing hourglass figure. My restricted waist was about 28-29 inches and by today’s female standards, acceptable.





I'm a bit late in featuring this one.  Rhonda has another blog post in her Feminine Differential series.  This is about corsets. She wore them for a long time, but rarely does now.  Why?  Go to her post, Body Shape, for the answer.

Bikinis & Fishing

I had obvious breasts, and a bikini on, so I wasn't flaunting anything in anyone's faces, but I was also not hiding myself and conforming to typical behavior either.  I was kind of doing me! 





Yes she was!  Go to Bikinis & Fishing to read more about Nadine's trip.

Fear

Someone has to save the women and children from the hoards of trans-people staking out bathrooms all over the state, hiding in the stalls, ready to pounce on their loved ones. Even writing these words in jest causes a wave of puzzlement to flow over my mind. Who are all of these people who like to dress up as women, hide out, and attack women.



It's been a while since Julia has blogged.  In this post, she laments about the challenges of being transgender and living in the state of Texas.

Writing About Boys in Skirts: Lori Duron Interviews Lesléa Newman

I was also inspired by attending Family Week (in Provincetown, MA) which is run by the Family Equality Council. I saw so many little boys wearing tutus happily running around, filled with joy at being able to be themselves.


One author interviews another author.  Lori shares a wonderful interview with the author of Sparkle Boy, Leslea Newman.

going down with the ship

Homosexual transsexuals were supposed to have lower IQs, be exclusively attracted to men and tended to come from lower income backgrounds. Gynephilic transsexuals were supposedly more likely to come from scientific backgrounds (engineering, etc.), be exclusively attracted to women or be asexual as well as being prone to fetishism.


Joanna just might have a few words to say about this.....ya think?

Conversion Therapy

I thought reparative therapy died a few years ago with the dissolution of Exodus International, which closed in 2013 after its president apologized, acknowledged that conversion therapy does not work, and that changing sexual orientation is not possible. My understanding is that his ex-wife and a few other remnants of Exodus formed the “Restored Hope Network.”

[I noticed this post, on the right side of T-Central's home page, and wish I had featured it a bit sooner.]

From Wikipedia: 

Conversion therapy is psychological treatment or spiritual counseling designed to change a person's sexual orientation from homosexual or bisexual to heterosexual. Such treatments are controversial, and are a form of pseudoscience.  Medical, scientific, and government organizations in the United States and Britain have expressed concern over conversion therapy and consider it potentially harmful.

Honestly, I thought that these ideas were long gone.  While this post applies to sexual orientation, conversion therapy has also been used, in the past, to treat transvestism and transsexualism.  In this post The Rev. Jeff Martinhauk, from St. Paul’s Cathedral in San Diego, discusses a vigil and protest - this evening - at a national conference on conversion or reparative therapy, being held in San Diego and hosted by a local Christian church.

Interview with Ana

Monika: Are you satisfied with the results of the hormone therapy?

Ana: I’m pleased. I get the most thrill reading my blood test results. Watching which numbers fell and which numbers went up, testosterone and estradiol specifically, gave me a lot of encouragement.

Another thing I’m really pleased with was not having to take a whole lot of spiro or estradiol to get my levels to the ideal area. My testosterone was also fairly low, starting out.

 

 

 

Here's another great interview, from Monika.  This one is with Ana, a girl currently living in rural Washington state.  

 

I know Monika asks the questions but, I'll ask one of her: Monika, I love your interviews, and I know you feature the heroines, but how about a hero (transman) once in a while?  Just thinking..... 

It’s Not Your Fault

We need to chat. About capitalism, ecologic destruction, white supremacy, racism, sexism, patriarchy, homophobia, and transphobia. We need to discuss something important in relationship to all of those nasty things.


It’s Not Your Fault, is a powerful and well written blog post, from Liz.  It's short, so take a minute to read it.

Decade: then and now

I had the opportunity to take a regular snap of me. If, and I doubt this would see the light of day, I could stitch them together in time-lapse, you could see me change and age. Please, don't have nightmares ;-)




Then and now is about.....well then and now.  Lynn talks about what she looked like...you guessed it...then and now.  You can decide for yourself which picture is which.  It's more than pictures, however.  Then and now also discusses family and feelings, then and now.

First World Crossdressing Problems

So first up in the first world problems for crossdressers is that Lindy Bop keep having sales.  They’re are bit like furniture stores in that respect. As soon as one sale finishes, another starts.  And their prices are sooo tempting. 



First World Crossdressing Problems is just a short, silly post, from Jenny.

Guest Post - My First Year of Transition, by Laura-Ann

Laura Ann is a friend and a member of my local TG group, The River City Gems.

Thoughts as I approach the completion of my first year of Transition:

On June 6th, 2016, I put away my "guy" clothes for the last time, and began living as a woman full time. A month later, on July 12th, I  began estradiol therapy. On February 28th 2017, I received the Court Order granting my petition to legally change my name and gender tag, and finally, last Thursday, I had a last session with my local gender therapist - the session that will send me on along the Transition road to the Psych evaluation that will, if all works out, end with my receiving the go-ahead and a date with a plastic surgeon for gender reassignment. It has been a long wait for me to get here, but it was worth it.

When I was about 12, my older brother (he was 19) had some friends who once asked him "what's wrong with your kid brother, is he a faggot, or retarded, or something?". Despite my best efforts to fit in and bury Laura as deeply as I could (I had been aware of Laura as my true identity at least from age 5), I guess there was something about my behavior that other kids sensed was wrong, or not manly enough. I was anti-social, reclusive, and had few friends of my own - a condition that would define most of my youth until I met and married my wife Lynn in 1986. I suppose my parent's friends, if they noticed me at all, probably wondered about me too. To everyone out there who is struggling with depression, gender identity disorder, or the loss of a loved one, all I can say is, those sad memories are behind you, in a past that, if you choose to make it so, need only define who you were, not who you could be tonight, tomorrow, or in the rest of your lives. For those of you who might be transgender, or living somewhere else in the LGBTQ spectrum, and are only just beginning to consider the implications of accepting yourself as such, I won't say to you that this road you will walk, or the obstacles you will encounter along the way, will be easy to overcome. I will say to you that along the road you will meet people and have experiences that will bring you great joy, or terrible pain, and every other human emotion in between.

In the end, with the help and support you will get from friends, health care providers, and your families, and maybe from your church and your employer, if they are accepting of LGBTQ people, you will find out who you truly are. When that realization comes, and it might come to you as an epiphany, in a single thought (as it did to me), or it might develop slowly, over a much longer span of time, maybe years, you will finally be at peace with yourself, and you will have the chance to interact with your loved ones in a way that is both new, and old. New, in that your gender transition, if that be your destiny, will take some getting used to, both on your part and theirs. Old, in that you are, in your essence, the person you have always been. You are, simply put, the sum of your life experiences, the knowledge that you have picked up along the way, and the memories of your interactions with the world and the people all around you. If you were a person that loved and had compassion for others, and I hope you were, that will still be who you are even after gender transition: HRT and gender reassignment surgery won't erase that in you. You will still be the same "person", with the same core personality as you always were, just in a different wrapper, and probably sporting a different hair style. With any luck, most of your family and friends will understand this, and take your gender transition in stride.

In many ways, I was a bitter, lonely old (wo)man at age 27, coming from a childhood environment that was strewn with difficulties that I won't go into detail about here. I was anti-social, reclusive, mostly alone, and was just existing really, and not "living", with little hope left, and no expectation of anything but emptiness, darkness, and despair. In the fullness of time, I met two people, my wife Lynn and my daughter, Shanna, who would, with supreme effort, love, and infinite patience, save me from myself, and turn me from that path of despair and bitterness. At the very beginning of 2016, I joined the River City Gems Yahoo Group, and just one week later, on January 9th, 2016, was swept off my feet at the Gem's Holiday Hangover Party, and into the beginning of my Transition. Further gentle nudges from various Gems to walk "outside the box", in the early months of 2016, have washed away the last traces of fear and uncertainty about who I am and where I am supposed to be going. Now the path lies much clearer before me, and I am mostly happy to be here. I am just Laura Ann, the sum of my life experiences, a fat, grey-haired, older-than-dirt transwoman, but maybe also a kinder, gentler person than I was in that former life, at least I hope so.

There is a word, a very old word, which had it's origins maybe 3 thousand years ago in India: "Namaste", which, loosely expressed in English, means something like "I bow to the divine spirit in you". It is a word of selfless love that asks for no return on investment; it is maybe one of the best words I have ever come across to express what I feel about the people I love, those who have accepted my transition, and those who don't know about it yet, but who helped me all through my life to get where I am. To all of the people who have enriched my life for these 60 years, all of my close-by friends, and those others, who live far away and that I will most likely never meet in person - everyone who is trying to make this sad world a little better, one kind word to a stranger, and one hug at a time - I say it: Namaste, and good night, all.

Laura Ann Charlot

If you wish to contact Laura Ann, she has offered her email address: laura_ann.0726@yahoo.com

Guest posts are always welcome.

Why I Wish All My Patients Were Transgender

I saw an older woman recently for something totally unrelated to gender care.  She had seen on my practice’s website that I treat transgender patients and asked me, point-blank, if I just treat the hormonal issue, or if I also “agree with the lifestyle.”  I have to admit that stopped me cold for a beat.  What I wanted to say was, “I completely reject the premise of your question.  This is not a lifestyle, nor is it a choice.  Rather, this is about the fundamental essence of who they know they should become, as a person.” 


Hormones Demystified is a terrific blog, authored by an anonymous endocrinologist.  This is a blog dealing with hormone treatment and not necessarily focusing on transgender patients.  The author, however, gets it.  He/She gets us (I suspect the pronoun is "she"!).  Why does the author wish "All My Patients Were Transgender"?  Go to the post for a wonderful and surprising answer.

And, while you're over at this site, you might want to also read, Top 10 Things To Tell Your Endocrinologist To Make Her Cringe……and want to flee the exam room ASAP.

Hormones Demystified is now listed on the right side of the T-Central home page.

Girl “Friends”

I could play with a girl as long as we could do what I wanted, but if she wanted to do really girly things, like play Barbie where I had to be one of the girl dolls, I was out of there.  I could deal with being Ken, but not Barbie.



I just love this post.  It's so....from the heart and so real.  

It's more than that, however.  I've read many ftm blogs, but this post really shows me that no matter what our birth gender is we, who identify as trans, are really the same.  I wanted to play with the girls.  Shawn wanted to play with the boys.  We both wanted what we couldn't have at the time.

Transgender vs. Transsexual

A mother much preferred noting her daughter to be a “tomboy” and not "transgender".  For those who do not understand they may feel that there is a slippery slope from gender non-conforming to transgender to transsexual.  




A short post, from Rhonda, on a topic that has been widely debated in our community over the years.  Transgender vs. Transsexual is Rhonda's take on the subject.