Atypical Transgender Late Bloomer

It has been such a week. (I'm not referring to the SR22 crash, or the F35 crash, or the H60-CRJ crash, or the LR55 crash). The Trump Administration has moved swiftly to target negative public attention on transgender people, and the way the federal government interacts with the topic. Because on any given topic, it's the Federal Govt and the DoD that are the biggest customers; no other single entity spends so much money. After the DCA midair, the names of two of the helo crewmembers were released and the third's name was withheld for two days. Speculation immediately began on the MAGA-sphere that they were withholding the name because crewmember-three was transgender. Not true, but the fires burn bright. The President released an Executive Order specifying there are only two genders are they are not malleable; you're either a person who is conceived to make the "big cells" (eggs) or to make the "little cells" (sperm). It's laughable that this ...

Watched the movie, Will and Harper , on Netflix. I almost typed Netscape, that's how old I am. This is a great show and a great treatment of trans issues - by which I mean, exposing trans reality and trans issues to the cis audience. It is certainly a buddy movie and a road trip movie , in the vein of The Road to Morocco , but this went far beyond those tropes. And it's a movie , which is by definition an artificial story told with intent and agenda (a-gender?), but this was a pretty good one. It seemed balanced; it displayed the social ugliness they encountered in some spots, and on social media. It rang true. It is a very feelings-oriented movie, but it manages to do that without feeling cloying. We need a Bechdel Test for movies with trans characters. This one passes with honors; it has a trans woman, playing a trans woman, and the actor is playing themselves in a semi-documentary format. To sum it up, this movie hits much better than for instance Lil...

Saw the movie, Emilia Perez . Spoilers . This is the story of a terrible violent Mexican cartel boss, with a wife and kids, who strongly desires to abandon his life and become a woman, using the unlimited fortune they have built. To that end, he enlists a struggling attorney to make arrangements in the background. Bottom line up front: this is a fantastic movie. It might not be for everybody. It grabbed my heart. There are criticisms from the trans/ LGBTQ community. The narco boss is a terrible person who goes trans. It's not a positive role model. This is not too different from Silence of the Lambs having a purported trans character : sure, there may be a trans character, but they're a serial murderer. The scenes of the narco becoming a woman, and the results of four years of transition and surgery and a fortune spent, were compelling to me. Karla Sofia Gascon is the first movie actress I've just stared at and thought, Whoa, in a very long time. (Previous: J...

There are women's voices I hear and I think, I might be able to sound like that and be happy with it. I have a few voices within me now. One is my default voice. I've lost most of my Brooklyn accent, even my NY accent, although it does appear at times. I am unable to say "saw horse" without invoking it. I have a professional radio voice from a career in aviation. I suppose I have an authority voice after spells in supervision and management. But I would dearly love to develop a femme voice. The first woman is Marcia Kramer , born 1948, of CBS NY. Another woman with a great voice is Miranda July , born 1974, who I came across recently on an NPR interview. The woman who I've always had a voice-crush on is Mary Louise Kelly , born 1971, of NPR.

I've had a medical problem for the last five years. It's an effect of having diabetes for 40 years. It leaves me wanting to be near a city with a medical complex. But I live out in the sticks. Hillbilly country. God, guns, guts. So I drive to my doctors. Sometimes it's a two-hour drive. I like where I live. I like my doctors. So I live with the drive. This last week my driving has been sloppy. I wonder if my driving days are about to be over. It really screws my decision to live here if I can't reliably drive. I am invited to Virginia, where I have family but it is not a trans-friendly state. I really don't want to move into those politics. Trans decision making is more complex.

I've never had long hair. Much more of a man's military haircut. That's how my father (the cop) wore his hair, although he dirt flirt with the Dry Look in the early 1970's. I've been on HRT for three years. I've been letting my hair grow for those years. I have a buzzcut, or an undercut, on the sides. For a while, I had my sides shaved with a straight razor by a country barber. All men. I was in there once on Veteran's Day. The TV continually played some black and white old tv channel, mostly cowboys and indians. On Veteran's Day, it was all war movies. I came in, took my seat. I was not what the group was used to seeing. There was a war movie on. Something caught my eye and I asked, Is that Audie Murphy? None of the locals knew what I was talking about. The barber knew, and said Sure it. The rest of them just looked at each other. A great war hero, the real thing, not some JOhn Wayne Hollywood faker. Silence. I think I may have earned some cr...

I checked into a hospital in the South for a full knee replacement. It was a well run facility with a good reputation. They asked me about my gender identification. I said, genderqueer. I have not wanted to mess up my medical records with multiple name fields. Someday, I'll do them all at once. They did ask the Depression/ Suicide protocol questions. I told them the truth. Yes, I think about suicide. Yes, every day. No, I don't have a date or method in mind. Yes, I have a weapon in my home. Man, they did not like that. I think they were more worried about their institution than about me. I get that, but: don't ask the question if you don't want the answer. They wanted to assign a person as my suicide watch. I really objected to that as intrusive. In the end, they blinked. I told them, nobody whose about to kill themselves puts up with a knee replacement. It's a lot of short-term pain for long-term gain. That's not suicide thinking. I realised that telling ...

I visited a friend this week. A solid conservative, yet a good, decent, thoughtful person. I had a gift for him - a lamp which I'd seen that screamed out to belong to him. He lives about 2h15m from me. A doctor's appointment took me to his area. The last time he saw me, I was a guy. I was apprehensive. It went to well. He brought me into his house. We sat and talked. Old-timer stuff. He said, Hey you look different. Then, just to speak of the elephant in the room. Well, I am different. I laid it out, big picture: the HRT, the changing, telling my family, telling my boss. We talked. He said, I wish you every happiness, and he meant it. That really meant a lot to me. A good friend, a solid person, a decent human. I'm not surprised. I was relieved.