31 January 2011 by kathleen.

My last couple of posts were a bit on the heavy side.  Let me lighten up….

Most human beings have three kinds of color-detecting cells (cone cells) in the retina.  For most people, that set pretty much covers the range of what we call “visible” light.  Color-blindness is caused by defect or absence of one or more of the kinds of color cells, and color-blind people have limited coverage of the spectrum.

Some humans, however, actually have the ability to perceive more colors because they have a fourth kind of cone cell.  The fourth kind of cone cell multiplies by as much as 100X the number of colors the person can perceive.  Because the genes which carry this ability are located on the X chromosome, the Wikipedia article on tetrachromacy indicates that as many as 50% of women and 8% of men may have this condition.

I find tetrachromacy interesting because it suggests that the folklore about women being more sensitive to color may have a basis in fact.  I blogged about colors a few months ago.  The link in that post to the color chart is amusing, and I think, close to reality for many people.  Now that I have more colors to choose from, the differences among the shades of red in the 8-10 red blouses in my closet is important.  The red in the roses in a skirt will go with one or two of the blouses, but not with the rest.

Posted in Sex & Gender Roles | 1 Comment »

29 January 2011 by kathleen.

Men beat the crap out of women, rape them, and murder them.

Do you think I’m making that up?

• In the United States, one-third of women murdered each year are killed by intimate partners.
• In Afgahanistan, a husband slashed off the nose and ears of his wife for running away from him
• In the U.S. in 2005, 1,181 women were murdered by an intimate partner. That’s an average of three women every day — just in the United States.
• In Kebon Jeruk, Indonesia, November, 2010, a housewife was reportedly dragged behind a motorcycle because the tea she made for her husband wasn’t sweet enough.  She was persuaded not to press charges.
• In Neka, Saudi Arabia, a 22-year old woman was hanged for adultery in 2004
• Bride-burning occurs hundreds of times a year in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan when a family refuses to pay additional dowry

These facts and others like them demonstrate to me that gender is not a gimmick; gender is not a grammatical artifact; gender is not, in short, an academic exercise.  Gender is a life-or-death characteristic.

If you’re MtF, you can be killed because someone thinks you really are a woman.  Imagine that!  Lucky you.  Or you can be killed because the killer feels diminished when he decides he raped a man instead of a woman — the poor boy!

FtMs face a similar dilemma.  You can be killed for being a woman in a vulnerable situation, or you can be killed for the outrageous condition of not really being a man when some studs thought you were.

“He” and “she” are not cute linguistic tricks.  This is real, life-and-death stuff.  So when I read a few weeks ago about a programmer taking gender fluidity into consideration in designing a new web project, I at first thought, “How clever!”  Then I thought about the facts above.

M and F matter because people with testicles get away with violence toward people without them.  Saying so doesn’t make it true; look at the facts yourself.  Denying that you are M or F — denying that M and F matter — denies the reality of violence against women.

Posted in General FtM topics, General MtF topics | 16 Comments »

27 January 2011 by kathleen.

Women aren’t allowed to want, you know.  The universe, evolution, God, or the Fates have conspired to make women’s bodies unresponsive to the wants of the woman to, say, stop menses.  You don’t want to wear a bra?  Sure, no problem — unless your breasts are C, D, DD, or larger.  You don’t want to wear a girdle?  OK; just ignore your butt spreading over all creation, and ignore the snide remarks comparing your butt to a barn.

Then a I hear a MtF say, “I don’t think I want to wear breast forms.  They’re too heavy.”  You poor thing.  The strong back and square shoulders you have…. but a couple pounds of simulated boob are too heavy.  Or maybe you think they’re just uncomfortable.  Do you think you would get any sympathy from a breast cancer survivor?

Turning your male body into a female body to match who you are: did you think that was going to be comfortable?  Is this about your comfort, or about your identity?

Or after SRS, you might hear a transwoman say, “I’m a woman now.”  Good for you, honey.  That is not an excuse to ignore your hair and your personal hygiene.  Men can do that — ignore their appearance — and they regularly do.  Women who do so are shunned.

Yes, mocked and shunned.  And you thought it only happened to transpeople!

We don’t live in a world of “should” or “ought”.  Women should be free to appear as they please; men should be free to wear bright colors.  We live in a world of “is”, and in that world, “want” is a word that belongs to young girls, and to women between the beginning of courtship and the end of the honeymoon.

Posted in General MtF topics | 2 Comments »

25 January 2011 by kathleen.

Do you know who walks the shopping malls at 8:00am? It’s not till 9am that the 20-something mothers show up with their toddlers in 3-wheeled jogging strollers.

No, at 8am it’s the over-60 crowd — which now includes me — doing what might pass for power walking.

Among us from 8 to 9 are the 70-something, widowed Carpet Cruisers looking for female companionship that’s not wheelchair-bound.  They are powerful motivation to keep fit and nimble to stay ahead of them, or at least not get trapped in a corner.  Soon I hope to hook up with enough other women to create a fast-talking cloud sweeping down the promenade.

Now do you understand why we talk so much?  It’s harder for a man to make a pass at someone in the middle of a joyful, jabbering cloud!  If one of us wants to meet a fellow walker, it’s easy enough to drop out of the flock and be nice to the man; otherwise we can remain absorbed in our sisters’ stories.

Just one more insight into the exciting life of a senior citizen…

Posted in AutoBiog | 1 Comment »

23 January 2011 by kathleen.

In Jenny Boylan’s book She’s Not There, she talks about the letter she wrote to friends and colleagues prior to her appearance on campus as Jenny.  She sent it to many, many people who knew her as James.  Did you announce yourself that way?

I did not.  On the job I worked through the HR department, as I blogged about a while ago.

Around the neighborhood, however, I just started being Kathleen all the time.  After the day of my transition, I encountered more of my neighbors one by one over the following weeks — and I told them when the chance meeting occurred.  I didn’t pick one day, and go up and down my street knocking on doors telling each neighbor methodically and systematically.

I have a small family, and they are all 600 miles away.  I told a couple relatives by phone; they haven’t even seen me yet and it’s been over three years since my transition.  What I did not do was to write a detailed message outlining The Care and Feeding of a Transsexual — and me a blogger!

What did you do?  If you wrote a letter, did it help anyone besides yourself?  For that matter, did it even help you?

Posted in Transition on the job | 5 Comments »

21 January 2011 by kathleen.

I have been fighting some digestive problems that have interrupted my sleep this week and sapped my strength.  My partner has also been fighting an administrative battle.  Now that we are retired, we intend to use her health insurance to cover me.  Her former employer is OK with that, but so far they have been unwilling to change their records of my sex.  That means no coverage so far because the insurer needs the sex of the patient to match the insurance record.

You have to understand that I unfortunately live in the Commonwealth of Virginia, which passed what is commonly referred to as the Virginia Marriage Amendment in November, 2006. This is not just another law: it is an amendment to the Constitution of Virginia.  Nothing that even comes close to approximating some aspects of marriage is permitted.

So, we shall see how this plays out.  My partner and I were legally married as one man and one woman back in 1976.  So what is the problem now that I am a woman?  BTW, I am not seeking legal advice — just bitching

Posted in AutoBiog | 1 Comment »

18 January 2011 by kathleen.

Fragment a minority: that will scatter them and dissipate their power.

The T is bigger as part of GLBT than it is standing alone — and it is more visible.  I know that the needs of T do not match 100% the needs of G, L, or B — or the needs I or Q for that matter.  Agreeing with and working with groups with which one does not share 100% is part of human relationships.  If we were all 100% in line with everyone else, there wouldn’t be any different groups (duh!).

Let me try a different approach.  Intersexed (I) is sometimes added to GLBT, and so are a few others; the longest I’ve heard is GLBTQQIA, for Queer, Questioning, Intersexed, Allies.

I appreciate the differences between intersex and transsexual; I do not intend to deny the differences.  Even though I for intersex is not in GLBT, interesexed people still benefit from the GLBT umbrella because people who formerly had no clue that anyone could be different now know that differences exist.

Those say that crossdressers are not the same as transsexuals are also perfectly correct.  Should we then add C to the string: GLBTQQIAC?  And D for drag, Q for queen, or K for king?  I think not: if C, D, K or Q will accept being part of GLBT, we can move forward.

To those who are cis-gay, cis-lesbian, straight, and unisexual, “GLBT” is long enough to be recognizable and short enough to be memorable.  Let those of us who are A, C, D, I, K, Q, Q, Q, or T lend our strength and our passion to all the minorities represented by the letters GLBT; for we are stronger with G, L, and B than without them.

Posted in General FtM topics, General MtF topics | 2 Comments »

16 January 2011 by kathleen.

Because of the prostate cancer I had, I have an unusably short vagina.  Up until the urethral sling surgery this spring, I had significant continence issues.  If this sounds embarrassingly intimate, it is because I want to share the complexities inherent in having both transgender and prostate cancer.

I have not dilated for 6-7 weeks, because when I dilate I have difficulty urinating for hours afterward. Right now I am at a decision point: if I don’t resume dilating soon, the very short vagina I have will close up. If I do resume dilating, I risk even more urinary tract infections (I’ve had three since the surgery mentioned above), or damage to the urethra.

It’s not like this is anyone’s fault, actually, except maybe mine if you are of the belief that we are each responsible for our own health and our own disease. When the urologist told me in the spring of 2001 that the biopsy was positive for prostate cancer, I was not surprised. There may be men who have hated their maleness more than I — but not many. Living with intense negative feelings often has distinct if untraceable effects on the body.

I suppose I should just let the vagina go; it’s too short for intercourse anyway. I want to keep it for emotional reasons, and because I spent so many hours trying to keep what depth I had,  Then at my gynecologist’s suggestion, I pressed harder and sought to deepen with dilation what the surgeon was unable to create with the scalpel. It was the deepening that began to interfere with the urethral sling with which I was fitted last April.

Writing this out helped me to clarify the issues in my mind. (Thank you for listening!)  Being able to pee is awfully important. I think I’ll go for preserving that function first. I’m going to follow up again with my urologist, but I think the answer is pretty clear.

The situation prompts me to urge once more that if you are diagnosed with prostate cancer, and you are transgendered — even if you are absolutely, positively, 100% sure you would never in a thousand lifetimes want SRS — you must discuss transgender with your urologist or oncologist. Chemical or surgical castration may cure both problems at once: stop the cancer’s growth and ease your transgender issues. Than can only happen if you talk frankly with your doctor.

Posted in AutoBiog, Prostate cancer & SRS | 1 Comment »

14 January 2011 by kathleen.

My goal in applying makeup is to look like I don’t need any, instead of looking like I’m wearing it.

I see some of the 20-something and 30-something women with creamy, flawless skin — and it’s such an even, pasty color that they could only be wearing heavy foundation.  Not just foundation, mind you, but heavy foundation.

There is certainly a “look” about heavy foundation.  The first few weeks after I transitioned I wore minimal makeup, pretty much as I described above. I noticed, though, that some — not all — of my female coworkers wore much heavier makeup, including foundation. I asked one coworker whose makeup I admired. She told me about Prescriptives and their Virtual Skin line.

I bought some at Dillard’s in Norfolk. It looked very good, and for a few weeks I wore it every day: foundation before the blush, and eyeliner, shadow, mascara, lipstick.

I mentioned a while ago that I wear a partial hairpiece. As you can see from the About page, I have bangs. Of course I do; they cover my high forehead. They also rubbed the foundation every time I moved my head. Within a few days, the bangs were discolored from the foundation. Yes, the hairpiece is washable; it’s synthetic, but it isn’t made to be washed twice a week.

Then, too, I felt uncomfortable about being made up all the time.  I felt I was encouraging people to see me as “on display”, and in particular to be on display for males. More on that another time.

My compromise was to drop the foundation.  I kept the eyeliner, shadow and mascara (I have a  condition I call Boy’s Eyelashes) so my face doesn’t look too washed out, but I think my makeup is pretty subtle: just me with a little color to punch up the contrast.

I am guilty of this, though: I never leave the house without eyeliner and mascara.  Well, OK, I go out to pick up the newspaper from the driveway (6am) before I put on my face, but that’s about it.

Posted in AutoBiog, General MtF topics | 4 Comments »

12 January 2011 by kathleen.

I am just two months shy of the second anniversary of my SRS. I am starting to have so much fun just being myself that I am beginning to forget that I am transgendered. I mean: I am living life as myself, and the fact that my self includes transgender is no longer at the front of my consciousness.

Did that sentence make any sense?

I am living retired; I am involved with my church; I am starting to learn to play a musical instrument; I walk, and I exercise, and even in the cold I am doing some pruning in the yard. OK, I’m still doing electrolysis once a week, but that’s about the extent to which my transgender impinges on my life. Oh, I just remembered: I write this blog, too.

If you cannot be your transgender self, I know it’s much more important to you. I remember: for over 40 years I stifled my transgender, allowing myself just a few hours on the weekends to be myself. In those years, who I was and what I wanted to wear were always on my mind.

Now that I’m “here”, I can relax enough to explore who I really am. Aspects of my self that I thought I had to hide so nobody would know I like to wear women’s clothes — it doesn’t matter now. It’s great to be me!

Therein lie the chicken and the proverbial egg: do I love myself because I transitioned? or was I able to transition because I love myself?

Posted in Loving Myself, AutoBiog | 3 Comments »