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...

I thought the new Matrix Resurrections was excellent. Highly recommended. And it certainly delivers as a trans allegory . It took somebody pointing it out to me, but when The Suit (new-Smith) keeps referring to Tom, he's dead-naming Neo. And Neo, who's been wearing pants the whole movie, ends up wearing a cassock-dress and in a supportive role. Neo and Trinity are willing to commit suicide to avoid being forced into a box that's not their desire. There is an awful lot of suicide in the movie, and in the series (going back to The Kid in the Animatrix). It's not a subtle thing - weaponizing people to jump out of buildings to maintain the economy's progress. I did appreciate that Smith's last line ('know what the difference is between us?') pays homage to the last line in Bound. It's not a perfect movie. So what. It is a great movie. The pitch room scenes took too much time and overworked the banality. The fight scenes took too long and ofte...

There's a lot of challenges in beginning to present cross-gender. The clothes, the shoes, the accessories are an expense, and can be a significant expense so many people turn to Thrifting (as a verb) which is a common experience. But there are other factors - shoes (ugh!), and makeup / cosmetics. multi-jillion corporation Sephora has initiated a series of Zoom makeup tutorials to continue to support the early Trans community (and build customers, to be honest) called Classes for Confidence . So I signed up for the class and was very impressed at their initiative. Then I received an email suggesting I request a complimentary makeup kit to be used in conjunction with the Zoom class. Wow. Just wow. And it showed up two days later in discreet packaging. Double-wow. Smallish containers of about fourteen different potions and creams. It was really very nice of them (and an easy way to put a lot of sample product into the hands of an about to be customer-for-life.) The Z...

I have dresssed up en femme a few times now. I got my kit, my basic bag of clothing, from a few thrift stores. The ones in the richer neighborhoods have much nicer stuff. I've got a few scarves. I've got a few skirts. Two sets of leggings. Two brassiers. Eyeglasses and masks get in the way but improve anonimity. I have not gone out while dressed up. I am fortunate that my significant other is radically accepting of it all. In a perverse way, I feel calm and safer when I'm dressed en femme. I feel like I'm free of all the Toxic Masculinity bullshit I've been force-fed and had beaten into me since I was three years old. I feel a lot more comfortable dressed as feminine (in girl-mood, as Eddie Izzard says) and I feel heppy to be relived of all the male expectations. I'm much more comfortable with my feelings. That's perverse because where I live, there's a great risk of significant violence when you're dressed as something unexpected...

Six years ago now, I recovered lost memories of beatings and rapes and learning to be the best boy I could to avoid "being in trouble". My story has unraveled and become apparatent in non-linear ways, in hints and starts and later recognition. I've realized I wasn't the pure-hetero I spent 55 years pretending to be. I realized I didn't need to believe in the church that perpetrated the rapes, covered up for the crimes, and conspired to run a local catholic grade school as a rotating supply troop of young boys for the priests to enjoy. I've realized that when I presented myself as All-American to a young woman and proposed marriage, I was suppressing memories of events and desires and made a false presentation. When it all came to a head, and I wan't the man she thought she'd married, and I wasn't the man I said I was, that was the end of that. There was no fixing it. Now, alone and left to myself, I'm growing my hai...

I am reading more and more about transgender people and their transitioning. It's of interest to me for a few reasons. I've known a friend who did it, and there was a professor at grad school who transitioned. I've always felt that in any change, the before-state is usually sustainable, the after-state is usually sustainable, but it's the transition where all the chaos and pain happen. People who are adversely affected by a poorly managed change usually get hurt in the transition from before to after What I find remarkable is the significant pain and difficulty these people go through voluntarily. Nobody initiates or endures this process on a whim, whether they choose to dress and present differently, or choose a hormonal transition or even a complete surgical change. I think the plumbing doesn't matter. It seems to me the folx must be under great duress to embark on such an adventure of self-identification. And in pursuing self-identification, aren...