Well, Pride month is over and I find myself asking just what, exactly, am I supposed to be proud of? I honestly don't know, maybe someone can explain it to me. I can't say that I'm proud of being transsexual, I'm not ashamed of it, either, it is what it is. I'm also not proud that the sky is blue or that grass is green. Should I be proud to have a condition that, by some estimates, 1:500 people have? Are people proud of being blind? Diabetic? Clubfooted? I consider being born transsexual to be an unfortunate circumstance, one which I hope to correct at some point.
Should I be proud that over 50% of us attempt suicide before age 20? Should I be proud that over 31% of us succeed in doing so? Should I be proud that my life has been marginally good enough to keep me from killing myself? (Not that the thought never crossed my mind!) Should I be proud that we're 16 times more likely to be the victims of a hate crime? (this estimate sounds a bit high, but maybe?) Should I be proud that because of a healthy degree of caution on my part, with a heaping helping of plain old-fashioned dumb luck, that I haven't become a statistic yet? Should I be proud that this could be the last thing that someone ever reads?
Should I be proud that many of us live far below the poverty line? Should I be proud that many of us become unemployed, underemployed, unemployable, and homeless just for being who we are? Should I be proud that some of us have to sell our bodies just to survive? Should I be proud that life saving emergency medical treatment can be denied or delayed if it's discovered that we're transsexual? Should I be proud that most insurance companies won't even pay one thin dimes worth of transition costs? Should I be proud that many of us risk our lives and our health by resorting to DIY HRT and silicon ''pumping parties'' because of the outrageously high financial cost of doing transition the right way, and the ridiculous hoops that some ''gatekeepers'' make people jump through? Should I be proud that we barely rate high enough to be considered third rate citizens? Animals are treated better!
Should I be proud of how the media constantly misrepresents us to society? Should I be proud that some of us actually help to perpetuate the misconceptions? There's an old phrase that bears repeating; one ''Oh, fuck!'' wipes out at least ten ''Atta girls!'' (or ''Atta boys!''), and we have more than our fair share of ''Oh, fuck!'' moments. Should I be proud that, year in and year out, the public face of trans in Pride events worldwide is gay men in really, really bad drag? Should I be proud of the constant freak show on Springer? Should I be proud of the clown who jets around the country wearing nothing but a bra and panties? It's no wonder that the cisgender have bathroom panic! Yeah, I know, lighten up, it's just in good fun, after all, Blackface and mocking the handicaped is hysterically funny, too, right?
Making ourselves look like circus sideshow attractions every June doesn't do anything to help us. Let me make one thing really, really clear; in-your-face, out, loud, and proud has never, and will never, accomplish anything but creating backlash from mainstream society. Gays and lesbians have achieved what they have in the last 40 years not because of pride, but in spite of it.
Dani xxx
Friday, July 1, 2011
Sunday, June 26, 2011
''Resistance is futile''
Well, wouldn't you just know it?!? No sooner do I say that we are not part of some Borg Collective than the Borg Qveen herself (AKA: Common Teri) informs us that we've already been assimilated and we probably didn't even know it! Well, okay, I'm a big enough girl to admit it when I'm wrong, though I don't really recall being assimilated! This business of being a Borg does help explain a few things, though, and probably comes with a few perks:
1) Now you know where that voice in your head came from, you know, the one that told you to buy that really cute pair of slingbacks last week!
2) Borg are never alone. Hey, when was the last time that you saw just one Borg in Chili's on Saturday night!
3) You get to wear one of those really cool vinyl catsuits!
I wonder if I can get to be Seven of Nine? :-D
Dani xxx
1) Now you know where that voice in your head came from, you know, the one that told you to buy that really cute pair of slingbacks last week!
2) Borg are never alone. Hey, when was the last time that you saw just one Borg in Chili's on Saturday night!
3) You get to wear one of those really cool vinyl catsuits!
I wonder if I can get to be Seven of Nine? :-D
Dani xxx
Friday, June 24, 2011
I ''get it''
Wow! Holy crap! I recieved 17 comments at my last post! (Well, okay, I know that 3 or 4 of them were boo-boos, but I'm counting them anyway! :-D) All of this over a facetious little 2 paragraph post that I hammered out in about 2 minutes, I wish I got this kind of reaction (minus the flame war, of course!) to my better thought out ones! Thank you all for your comments, I found them to be enlightening, and a few of them (I'm looking at you, Teagan! :-D) to be humorous. Unfortunately, I couldn't (and still can't!) comment myself thanks to my ongoing Blogger issues, I hope to have them resolved soon. I seriously considered closing further comments after about the first ten, but I decided not to, and I'm glad that I didn't, because something amazing happened. After Calie's comment (and probably because of it!) there seemed to be, perhaps, the beginings of a rational discussion. this has raised some hope in me that maybe we can finally get beyond this (somewhat silly, IMHO) arguement over semantics and move on to more important issues, of which there is no shortage.
Now, mostly for the benefit of those who may be new here (seeing what today's train wreck will be! :-D) I'm going to tell you a few things about me, for those of you who have been regularly reading my scribblings, most of this will be old news. I do have a point that I'm trying to make, trust me!
I am, perhaps, something of an unusual animal in that I meet few of the expectations, or stereotypes, of any of the various groups that I could be grouped with. I am a transsexual, probably Benjamin type 5 (I don't obsess over what ''type'' I am). Politically, I am a socially liberal independent libertarian conservative, something of a rarity in GLBT circles. Religiously, I've described myself as a agnostic wicca buddhist nazarene pastafarian, I don't believe in god, at least not in the judeo-christian sense of a personal deity. I've recently been learning about illuminism, but that is the subject of a different post. As I'm sure that many of you already suspect, I am a lesbian, the partners that I am attracted to are primarily women.
Okay, so what's my point?
My point is that I ''get it'' (and I always did, in fact), we are all individuals, not the members of some Borg Collective, Mafia, Nazis, or any other sort of thing that I've heard bandied about. now, personally, I don't believe that most people use terms like ''the crossdressers'' trying to be deliberately offensive or with the intent to dehumanize anyone. For better or worse, I'm sure that we've all done something like that at one time or another. We should all, perhaps, realize that just because we may not take offense at something that doesn't mean that someone else won't.
I am...me, and you are you. Be the best you that you can be.
Dani xxx
Now, mostly for the benefit of those who may be new here (seeing what today's train wreck will be! :-D) I'm going to tell you a few things about me, for those of you who have been regularly reading my scribblings, most of this will be old news. I do have a point that I'm trying to make, trust me!
I am, perhaps, something of an unusual animal in that I meet few of the expectations, or stereotypes, of any of the various groups that I could be grouped with. I am a transsexual, probably Benjamin type 5 (I don't obsess over what ''type'' I am). Politically, I am a socially liberal independent libertarian conservative, something of a rarity in GLBT circles. Religiously, I've described myself as a agnostic wicca buddhist nazarene pastafarian, I don't believe in god, at least not in the judeo-christian sense of a personal deity. I've recently been learning about illuminism, but that is the subject of a different post. As I'm sure that many of you already suspect, I am a lesbian, the partners that I am attracted to are primarily women.
Okay, so what's my point?
My point is that I ''get it'' (and I always did, in fact), we are all individuals, not the members of some Borg Collective, Mafia, Nazis, or any other sort of thing that I've heard bandied about. now, personally, I don't believe that most people use terms like ''the crossdressers'' trying to be deliberately offensive or with the intent to dehumanize anyone. For better or worse, I'm sure that we've all done something like that at one time or another. We should all, perhaps, realize that just because we may not take offense at something that doesn't mean that someone else won't.
I am...me, and you are you. Be the best you that you can be.
Dani xxx
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
''The Crossdressers''
Calie closed the thread at T-central yesterday before I could respond to Carolyn Ann yesterday, so I'll respond here. B.T.W. Carolyn Ann, thank you so much for the insult to someone that you don't even know! I am not an ''anonymous coward'', if you would've looked at the bottom of my comment you would've seen that I signed it, as I always sign my comments, Dani xxx, so I think that you owe me an apology, though I doubt that I'll get one. I was making reference to your post on Saturday, ''Lost interest...'' and I certainly meant no offense, but I probably should've known better, since it seems that your favorite passtime is to surf the web looking for things to be offended by. My bad!
Now, I don't blame you for being offended by the term ''The Crossdressers'', I dhd a simple Google search and it turns out that ''The Crossdressers'', or, more specifically, ''thecrossdressers.com'' is, in their words, an ''Explicit cross-dressing gay fantasies'' site, and I'd be offended to be associated with that, too! Now that we've established what ''The Crossdressers'' really is, I'm pretty sure that we can all agree that ''Explicit cross-dressing gay fantasies'' can, in fact, be turned on and off at will, so Calie is quite correct! :-D
Dani xxx
Now, I don't blame you for being offended by the term ''The Crossdressers'', I dhd a simple Google search and it turns out that ''The Crossdressers'', or, more specifically, ''thecrossdressers.com'' is, in their words, an ''Explicit cross-dressing gay fantasies'' site, and I'd be offended to be associated with that, too! Now that we've established what ''The Crossdressers'' really is, I'm pretty sure that we can all agree that ''Explicit cross-dressing gay fantasies'' can, in fact, be turned on and off at will, so Calie is quite correct! :-D
Dani xxx
Sunday, June 19, 2011
My Sacrifice
Well, today is Father's Day, a day that usually comes and goes at my house without much fanfare. A couple of cards, a couple of phone calls, (my sons and my step-kids don't live nearby) but otherwise the day passes much as any other Sunday. I prefer it that way, I've never really been too sure what to make of Father's Day. I am a father, and I always will be, no matter what the future brings, and I wouldn't change that for the world. Sure, I would've rather of been a mother, but thanks to the circumstances of my birth that was never in the cards, so there's no sense in dwelling on it.
The fact that today is Father's Day, with a helpful nudge by Rhiannon's post this morning (rhiannon-rambling.blogspot.com) has caused me to reflect upon the choice that I made 18 years ago. I had finally accepted that I was trans,and that I was going to transition. I walked right up to the edge of the abyss, prepaired to jump, then stopped, stood back, and walked away. I purged. No more clothes, no more shoes, no more make-up, no more jewelery, I de-transitioned before I'd even started my transition. I cut my hair, stopped shaving, grew my beard back, and threw myself into anything, and I do mean EVERYTHING (work, sports, alcohol, drugs, etc.) to try to keep from thinking about it.
Why?
For my family, for my kids, for my wife, to save my marriage (my wife is much more accepting now than she was then!). I was the product of a broken home, a failed 16 year marriage, and an emotionally and physically absent father, and I wanted better than that for my kids. I, like so many others, before and since, had lived in denial of who and what I was. I told myself that all I had to do was meet the right woman, settle down, and it would all just go away. Of course, that doesn't work, but I didn't know that at the time. So now I had a wife and kids who, through no fault of their own, were stuck firmly in the middle of a mess that they never asked for. So, I did what I felt was the right thing for my family, I put their needs ahead of my own. I had made my bed, and I'd just have to lay in it.
Was it the right choice?
I ask myself that sometimes, and the simple answer is that I have no simple answer. It was probably the best choice that I could've made at that time and place, the early '90s was a different time than today, and NH was a different place then. I made sure that my kids grew up with a father and a ''normal'' childhood, and I gave my marriage a good fighting chance to survive going forward into my transition now (it wouldn't have survived 18 years ago!). But at a cost. My youth. Had I transitioned in the early '90s I would've been a relatively young transitioner. Now, I'm in my mid 40's, and testosterone has had those 18 years to further ravage my body, and I'll never get those years back.
I envy you younger girls, you have so many better options, so much more information at your fingertips, and so many more places to find help than I did ''back in the day''. Don't do what I did. Don't live in denial. No one today should have to make the choices that I had to make back then. Don't get innocents caught up in your problem.
Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there!
Dani xxx
The fact that today is Father's Day, with a helpful nudge by Rhiannon's post this morning (rhiannon-rambling.blogspot.com) has caused me to reflect upon the choice that I made 18 years ago. I had finally accepted that I was trans,and that I was going to transition. I walked right up to the edge of the abyss, prepaired to jump, then stopped, stood back, and walked away. I purged. No more clothes, no more shoes, no more make-up, no more jewelery, I de-transitioned before I'd even started my transition. I cut my hair, stopped shaving, grew my beard back, and threw myself into anything, and I do mean EVERYTHING (work, sports, alcohol, drugs, etc.) to try to keep from thinking about it.
Why?
For my family, for my kids, for my wife, to save my marriage (my wife is much more accepting now than she was then!). I was the product of a broken home, a failed 16 year marriage, and an emotionally and physically absent father, and I wanted better than that for my kids. I, like so many others, before and since, had lived in denial of who and what I was. I told myself that all I had to do was meet the right woman, settle down, and it would all just go away. Of course, that doesn't work, but I didn't know that at the time. So now I had a wife and kids who, through no fault of their own, were stuck firmly in the middle of a mess that they never asked for. So, I did what I felt was the right thing for my family, I put their needs ahead of my own. I had made my bed, and I'd just have to lay in it.
Was it the right choice?
I ask myself that sometimes, and the simple answer is that I have no simple answer. It was probably the best choice that I could've made at that time and place, the early '90s was a different time than today, and NH was a different place then. I made sure that my kids grew up with a father and a ''normal'' childhood, and I gave my marriage a good fighting chance to survive going forward into my transition now (it wouldn't have survived 18 years ago!). But at a cost. My youth. Had I transitioned in the early '90s I would've been a relatively young transitioner. Now, I'm in my mid 40's, and testosterone has had those 18 years to further ravage my body, and I'll never get those years back.
I envy you younger girls, you have so many better options, so much more information at your fingertips, and so many more places to find help than I did ''back in the day''. Don't do what I did. Don't live in denial. No one today should have to make the choices that I had to make back then. Don't get innocents caught up in your problem.
Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there!
Dani xxx
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Back in the saddle again...I think?
Hi, everyone, I'm back, for now, anyway! I've been having MAJOR problems with Blogger, hence my silence over the last few weeks. It wouldn't even let me log onto my account to create a new post until this morning! Of course, it probably doesn't help that I don't have a computer, I do all of this from my phone! If Blogger can't keep their shit together I may have to go to WordPress or something because this is getting f'ing ridiculous! I really would hate to do that because Blogger's format is very user friendly for someone who is somewhat tech challenged, like me, but that won't help me if I can't even log in!
Okay, end rant. New post later today or tomorrow...maybe? (fingers crossed)
Dani xxx
Okay, end rant. New post later today or tomorrow...maybe? (fingers crossed)
Dani xxx
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