How sad we are

We had our TDoR a couple of  months ago in Calgary, and I felt that it was tainted by the attitude of a select few people.  I just read about a TDoR event in San Diego that had much the same issue.

The issue is one of police.  Apparantly, some people aren't comfortable with police presence at these events.  I think those same people need to get their heads out of their rear ends.

We are arguably one of the most marginalised groups out there.  We fight for our rights, talk about the injustices done to us, and complain about the lack of protection for us.  Some of us even get hurt or killed because of who we are.  "The Public" doesn't like us.

So what do we do?  We have people in our groups that have no problem doing the same to others.  Lets whitewash a whole career choice because we don't like the things done by a few of their members.  The fastest way to lose support for your cause is to become that which the cause is supposed to hate.  So I'll thank you in advance to shut up.

I'm enthralled that we had a police presence at our TDoR.  I think it's awesome that we have the support of our law enforcement community.  The last thing I want to do is alienate some group that I may need to help me some day.  These folks may some day be needed to help recover my car, find my assaulter, or investigate my disappearance.  I - and I want to hope I'm not alone - want to know that they're going to care enough to actually put some effort into it.

So thank you for coming.  Thank you for listening, Thank you for understanding.  And most of all, thank you for being supportive of us.

The Shame of TG

A friend on G+ posted an article about the shame the transgendered have going through their "unconventional" lives.  She prefaced the article with a comment that she was not ashamed of her journey into womanhood. I commented with, "Why should you be?"  Her reply was that there were so many reasons to be ashamed to be transgendered.

I have to call that one busted.  Either that, or I have to call me busted, and since I think I have the right idea, I am going with the former.  Maybe I am just too apathetic to understand shame, or in denial about it.  You decide, and let me know.

My first foray into realising my gender nonconformity was with makeup.  I didn't start with sneaking panties, as you read about so much.  I wanted to be pretty,so I started extending my bathroom trips to use moms makeup.  To the best I can recall, I hid that away, not because I was trying makeup, but because i was using someone else's.  I was bothered about using moms stuff.  I guess CD rule number 2 was already firmly established!  One night, I woke up.  I went to the washroom, and decided to do a little practice run.  My brother came in and got all annoyed at me and scrubbed my face down.  I knew he was upset I had my face painted, but whatever lesson I took from that experience, my not supposed to be using makeup wasn't it.

How do I feel then on the shame issue!?

Shame and pride aren't mutually exclusive. You aren't ashamed of being tg just because you don't go out of your way to advertise it.  Compassion for the feelings of others isn't shame.   You are who you are - and for many this is a pretty personal thing.  If it's personal, it's not shame to keep it to yourself.   You don't fit societies mold - well shame on society for creating something they can't accept - but no shame on you, it's not like you could turn it off.

Full time dreams?

I had an opportunity to take my CDing to the next level recently.  A perfect storm of long weekend, vacationing family, and desire all occurred at the same time in the early part of August.  My long weekend lasted from Wednesday to Monday night, and I spent all of it en femme.  I had a list of things to scratch off the CD bucket list, and this was going to be the time to get rid of much of it.

Wednesday, I went out to dinner with some of the local gals.  Not an unusual activity for me at all - but usually we're out at a known T friendly establishment.  This night, just a run of the mill place that none of us had ever been to before.  

I ended up having to be at work on Thursday after all.  It was the local groups usual meeting day, and I decided to go all out.  I started off by stopping on the way home from work at the local nail salon to get some talons.  I went crazy with a full set of acrylics and painted them up to go with what I wanted to wear that night.  It had been a long time since I had long nails - and I have to say, the keys on the phones have gotten a lot smaller than they used to be!  Still, it didn't take long to remember to not grab anything the wrong way!  I took quite a bit of extra time today, both because I really wanted to knock 'em dead and also because I had the time to spend.  Everything was fine until I put on the top I wanted to wear, and it just didn't do anything for me.  Back to the closet for something else that would work.  Good thing there's lots of things there!  The meet was a total blast, and I ended up staying until close, and then some.  Back home to wash it all off, slip into a nightie and hit the sack.  After tylenol and water.

Friday was a new day.  I got up, got dressed in some casual wear and attacked my household to-do list.  I usually don't look forward to turning my face into mince with the shaving - and the laser has made that so much better - but this time, not a worry.  I had a tee time for 18 later in the day with a couple gals from the group.  I got to the course all ready to go.  I hadn't swung a club in over a year, and never while - shall we say off-balance?  This was shaping up to be an interesting day.  The course marshal stopped by frequently to chat, and at one point asked if the fellows (it was 2 guys and 2 gals in our 4) were making me play from the blues.  Passing or not, comments like that make a gals day!  It was a late time, and I stopped to pickup some takeout on the way home, and figured out what I was going to do the next day.  I decided to take a dip in the hot tub, and had a new suit just for such an occasion.  Very enjoyable, and another night sleeping right.

Saturday started very similar to Friday.  Got up and dressed.  Yard word, cleaning up, laundry, all the usual aspects of living in a house - but taken care of as my alternate self.   At some point I decided to go out, and it was so good to just grab the purse and go.

Sunday was time to lose the nails, so I got up and got ready to go out.  I decided I was going to use as little makeup as possible to go out, and was happy that I only ended up using about half of the foundation I normally use and still managed to cover up what needed covering.  After 4 days of eyeliner day and night, that went on faster than I ever thought possible.  Practice really does help - and continual practice moreso!  It takes longer to remove acrylics than it does to have them put on - and so I was sitting with my hands soaking in whatever it was for an hour or so while the gals were taking care of a stream of ladies coming in and out.  It was nice to not get a second glance.  The rest of the day degenerated into lazy lounging around.

Monday was the end of the mini holiday, but nothing was put away, buried, hidden, or anything.  Just another causal day.  I decided to just enjoy my new found freedom at coming and going, and did just that - came and went as much as possible.  Groceries, more house work, and a little work-from-home to keep the billed hours up.  A day en femme of total normality.  Just the perfect end to a weekend of adventure.

The Great Bathroom Debate

This seems to be a little contentious, I think.

As I understand it, the bathroom laws are being looked at to allow TG folks to use the washroom of their presented gender without harassment.  This is most flexible for crossdressers, a must have for pre-op TS's, and shouldn't even be a question for post-op TS's.

Start easy, and making use of the MtF:  Post-op TS's aren't TS's.  They WERE TS.  They ARE women.  Women use the women's washroom.

On to the less obvious things.  To me, the entire foray of fearmongering is the perception that in "allowing" men to use the women's washroom, there will be assaults on women and children.

I haven't seen the most obvious counter argument on the 'net yet.  That is, without this law, there are ALREADY assaults taking place in the women's washroom.  This law isn't going to CREATE that, it's already there.  A person that will want to assault a woman in the women's washroom is going to do it regardless.  To my knowledge, there is no law right now saying a man cannot enter the women's washroom.  There are, however, laws saying that you can't assault, hurt, or otherwise abuse another person.  This proposed bathroom law isn't going to remove those crimes from the code, nor is it going to be allowed as an excuse, so what's the big deal?

Winter Clothes!

OMG, I have no winter clothes!

We used to come home in the summer and buy a bunch of Canada summer clothes to last us the winter in the Middle East.  Now we're back, and I literally don't have a thing to wear for the Canadian cold.  I can't even find anything that I remotely like.  And no room to put it even if I did.  ARGHHHH

My issues with the issues of family

Following the news articles popping up on various sites about the Lobel family have really got me thinking about my whole belief stances with respect to the one part of LGBT that I haven't managed to sort into a for or against box yet.

I think this will mark the first actually serious article on this blog.  Good thing it's got limited readership.

For the record, I fully and completely support LGBT rights and protections in the work place, on the street, and at home.  I support rights to spousal privileges, such as spousal benefit with life/disability/workers comp, and pretty much anything else going.  Except same-sex adoption/families.  I understand it, and I believe in the concept.  I just have never been sure it could work, and because of this, I have not been able to include it in my list of "fully and completely."

Also for the record, I don't know the Lobel family, will probably never know the Lobel family, and I am sticking strictly with my own thoughts and feelings on their particular issue at hand.  I am presenting my own viewpoints, and I sincerely hope that nobody reading this thinks that I am criticizing them.  I'm not.  I do not, nor will ever, tell another parent how to raise their children.  I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in child psychology, gender dysphoria, or anything else.

I will eventually discuss the story below after giving my beliefs.  I don't mean to sound without compassion or empathy, but I also don't want to be specific to this family - they deserve better than to be singled out.  I apologise in advance for any offense you may take for my lack of names, pronouns, and use of third-person common nouns.

I think that handles introduction and disclaimer.

I'm sure I sound old fashioned, outdated, and quite possibly out of touch with modern society when I say that I believe in the balance of the stereotypical traditional family.  I believe that for any family to function, there needs to be a solid balance in everything.  A balance between nurture and discipline, guidance and self-discovery, give and take, the list goes on.  In short, everything that the arch-typical mom and dad respectively provide.  I have spent a great deal of time in the last two years being concerned about my own children because I'm not the stereotypical dad.

That'll work for my premise.

My own observances of single parent families have told me that a single mom will tend to have children that are wild, undiciplined, believing that things are owed to them.  A single dad is showing me that their children tend to be apathetic, non-empathetic, believing they can take what they want.  I admit my sample is very limited, but I work with what I have, and what I have supports my premise.

I understand that every person is different, and many if not most of the people out there don't fit the stereotype mold perfectly.  But the stereotype exists because enough evidence has existed throughout human kind to allow such rash and general conclusions.  I did some Myers-Briggs type indicators in high school.  Every boy in class save one was Introverted.  Every girl was Extroverted.  My class certainly wasn't unique, so some of these stereotypes do have some kind of basis in fact.

So here comes my issues with same sex child raising.  How can two women or two men provide that balance?  Certainly if one of the partners was behaviorally more of the opposite sex, it's the same as the "traditional" male/female family head.  But if not?  From everything I understand, a smallish percentage of the population is gay.  A smallish percentage of the population is transgender.  I would think then that it would be a smallish-smallish percentage of the population that was both gay and transgender, which makes me think that the same sex parents are probably not able to provide the balance of the stereotypically traditional family.  Without that balance, it's almost inevitable that the child will have some parental influence in development.

I'm afraid I don't know enough long term gay/lesbian couples to come close to drawing any kind of conclusion on this, and in full consideration that same-sex marriage is a relative new thing, I don't think anyone can offer the right answers yet.  I do look forward to the time when my concern on this is completely invalid.

To be specific with the news story that prompted this diatribe of mine, I have some thoughts in my head that perhaps the child is not necessarily gender dysphoric, but simply wanting very badly to be like the parents.  I can really see a male toddler of two female parents not being happy having boy parts when neither of the two most important people in said child's life does.  Kids compare things as soon as they can find them.  The pessimistic paranoid in me has a little voice asking how much exposure has there been to "people penises are bad" talk.  On the other hand, pictures show a very happy looking child, which indicates a great deal of the right stuff in the home.  Could the child be gender dysphoric?  Of course!  I wonder how much hoopla there would be over the issue if the child was F2M, and thereby vastly reducing the entire "nurture" potential argument.

I could very well be completely out to lunch, and frankly, wouldn't mind one little bit having it shown to me.

The news article goes on to say that the parents have had the child in to see therapists and psychologists to see which path is right for the child.  I'm willing to put real money that the subject of "penis' are bad" talk came up in the sessions - to cross the T if nothing else. The parents have chosen to take a middle path.  Wait and see.  Hold off on genetic puberty until the child is certain.  It sounds like balance.  It's not my place to say if its the right or wrong thing to do.  I'm sure some archivist 10 years down the road will be happy to revive the story and we can all see how it ends.  I pray it ends well.

The CD Rules

Nope, nothing about going to the grocery store in an evening gown.  Much more fundamental.    Here's my list of CD  "rules":

1. You have to come out to her somewhere between "Can I buy you a drink?" and "Will you marry me?".  Give her the choice before she's pregnant with your 4th kid.
2. You have an SO, presumably a job, and a place to live.  That means that you have some disposable income.  Buy your own clothes and leave hers alone.  If you don't have any of these things, or other disposable income, leave hers alone anyway.  It's bad enough that you probably broke rule 1 before getting to this point.
3. If you're clean by this point, then number 3 is to consider your SO's feelings.  She's a person too.  You may find that listening to her and paying attention to her needs as well as your own may actually end up with both of you getting what you want.  And without cost either!

Easy enough, only 3 rules to follow.  I'll add more as they come, but I think that's about all there is for must do's.