2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner can carry about 250 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,400 times in 2012. If it were a Dreamliner, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

The Cream Always Rises to the TOP

I normally don’t share other peoples work with you here,but this fabulously written story moved me to tears,and I felt I had to share.

holding on

Written by little light — with 60 comments

I believe in trans people.

Not because we are magically insightful.  Not because we are full of arcane shapechanger wisdom.  Not because we are more or less great or holy than anyone, in our way.  We have among us wonderful people and people who do and say terrible things.  We have our crooks and our hypocrites and our abusers and our traitors, same as anyone, right alongside our heroes and champions and grand examples of high character.  We are a mixed bag, you and me and you and you and you.  We don’t have any more or fewer secret Mysteries in our blood, wherever it bleeds from.  We’re people, with our tiny daily mistakes and triumphs, our hopes and our hopes for forgiveness.

I believe in trans people.

Not because we have suffered, though so many of us have suffered.  We have hurt in ways that have transformed us as individuals and communities, and we’ve talked about that.  I’ve talked about that plenty.  We all know the numbers and the statistics and the terrible stories, these days.  We pass them around as something that’s a little bit heartbroken hagiography and a little bit campfire scare gossip.  We know who has sneered at us, and who has shut the doors.  We know all of this.  You certainly know this about me, by now, where I’ve left blood to sink into the dirt, where I’ve looked into same dark you’ve looked into, where I’ve gotten lost, where we’ve all felt alone.

The thing is, we’ve defined ourselves in those terms.  Justified ourselves in those terms.  Believe we are here, we say, showing our scars and fresh cuts.  Believe we are real.  Believe we matter.  Believe that we are people because what we have been through, people do not deserve, and I hope you see we didn’t deserve it.  We have aligned ourselves, symbolically and narratively, with our suffering:  our dysphoria and abandonment and grief and martyrdom.  And all of those things are true, and they will stay true, at least until we change this society and go to the grave with it, ceding the field to happier generations.  But I want to propose an alternative–and not the alternative that has been offered before, either, the carnival-glam alternative that presents us as the glitter-crusted disco-ball jesters of a new postmodernism.  That’s true for some of us, too, and I won’t deny that.  I just want to suggest something simpler.

I want to suggest that we believe in us because we, as a people, are marked above all by our integrity.

There is not much you can say that describes all trans people.  We are a broad and heterogeneous bunch.  But you can say this:  contrary to what the cheap punchlines and propagandists, the frat boys and the Womyn’s Landers, the sketch comedians and the murder defendants would have you believe, we are not united in a grand campaign of deceit.  We may not be magical, or magically virtuous, but we are, as a people, astonishingly honest.

You look at those numbers we’ve let outline us–the grief and the blood and the hurt, writ vast and cruel–and that is a truth.  But I believe the greater truth is us:  we looked at that world–that heartless world that tears us up and turns us away from every hearth-fire–and we looked at the option of deceiving it into letting us in, the option of pretending to be something we weren’t in order to survive, and we said, to a person:  no.  No, we will not lie, even in the face of starvation, of isolation, of loss, of torture, of death.  No, even to escape the risk of a world that will never treat us right, we will not lie.  We will not pretend.  Not today.  Not again.  At some point, if you are here, and reading this, and calling yourself a trans person or something like, no matter how many compromises and illusions you had to throw up in front of you to make it to today alive, you eventually said “no more.”  You refused to lie, even if only to yourself.

I believe in trans people because, above all, we know something about the great and terrible worth of the truth.  Not because we have paid that price–it has hit some of us harder, and some of us have come through nearly unscathed.  Not because whatever we have suffered has made us more special than any other person.  Because each of us is a person who looked out at a very dangerous, risky landscape and chose, eventually, to travel through it because the truth mattered most.  We know something about the truth.  We know what it is worth.  And we, as a people, surrounded by those who do not believe us and want us to pretend for them that they are right, chose that truth knowing it might cost us everything.

Even if it didn’t.  Even if it never does.  Today, here and now, we as a people are a people of astonishing integrity.  Integrity!  How many times have you heard that word and trans people in a sentence?  How many times have you heard us defined not by our dysphoria, not by our danger, but by our integrity?  I believe that is what this boils down to, though.  Our integrity.  We are people who have chosen, in the silence of our hearts or shouting from the rooftops, to cultivate integrity no matter the cost.  We are people who insist that our internal worlds must be married to our external worlds.  That we will be true to ourselves even if we are the only ones who know it is the truth.  It’s not that we’re somehow inherently virtuous or upright beyond anyone else’s gifts.  It’s that we made choices.  Good choices.  Brave choices.

They say character–integrity–is who you are in the dark.  Well, I have been in the dark for a long time.  Many of us have.  And we have discovered, in the end, not our weakness, not our vileness, not our artificial dishonest infection-on-the-world failure to be real people, but the quality of our character.  And we have made choices since then.  Some of us are cruel and dangerous people who take from others and reproduce pain.  Some of us are paragons of kindness and hope.  Most of us, like me, are somewhere in the middle, some of the same mix of choices and mistakes and wicked joy as anyone else on the street, scattered and various as the birds of the air.  But all of us, mean and glorious, made that choice, once, that choice of radical integrity, that choice to love the truth and commit to it, dark or bright, hell or high water.  That cannot be taken from us.  Any of us, the killers and healers and thieves and parents alike.  It is more than our losses and more than our gains.  It is more than the families we do or don’t have, the ideas we espouse, the places we stand.  Somewhere, deep inside, we will always know that one day we chose the truth knowing that that truth might not be kind to us, and we held tight to that truth while it burned on and on.

I believe in trans people.  I believe in us because we have been honest, at least once, in a way few people on earth have been asked to be.  I believe that is what makes us so frightening.  That integrity is written all over us.  You can see it in the dark.  There is no avoiding seeing in us that choice to hold onto the truth even if no-one else would stand with us and do the same.  That is enormously threatening.  It is no wonder that so many people and communities claim that admitting us among their number might destroy the foundations of everything they know.

Integrity is contagious, see.  It is hard to look at the way we know the truth and not be tempted to look at your own truth, and that truth’s consequences.  It is hard to pretend, with us in the room.  It is hard to make excuses for your own lies and compromises and little self-betrayals.  So people try very hard to make us the liars.  To make us the fakes.  To push us out of the room so we don’t hold mirrors up.

It’s not that we’re special.  It’s just that, every one of us, whatever we did before or since, we made a choice.  We believed.  We committed.  We moved.  With everything mobilized to erase us and keep us from truth-telling, we had the strength of spirit to choose truth anyway.

I believe in trans people.  I will believe in trans people until there is no more believing to do.

NCTE Named 6th Top Nonprofit for LGBT Advocacy

NCTE Named 6th Top Nonprofit for LGBT Advocacy.

IDENTIFY YOURSELF

For most of us,this just a routine part of life that simply just works out without a hitch,but if you are transgendered it’s not so simple.

I think most of us agree that Identification is key to many,aspects and activities in life,especially in today’s we don’t trust anyone environment.Getting on an airplane can be hard enough with the proper ID,but imagine if you will that your ID says male but because you are truly female and dressed as such,hold on honey you will miss that damn plane every time.

And travel outside the country would be virtually impossible,and imagine that every time you do anything that requires ID and you pull it how and the person looks at you like you came from hell to ravage the world and upset the order of things.

While there are avenues that allow you to change your name and gender on your ID,they are not the easiest roads to travel.

Personally I feel if you have been clinically diagnosed as being of the other gender that should be enough to get the job done.

But no,you are required by LAW to show papers from a doctor that prove you have completed sufficient genital mutilation to fulfill their requirements

I submit that this

is sufficient and permanent body mutilation to meet any requirements they should want.

furthermore I have medical proof that I am chemically castrated,and unable to function as a male,by the use of this drug……..

SITERONE 50MG (CYPROTERONE) PRODUCT INFORMATION (see less)

Siterone tablets 50mg contain cyproterone, an antiandrogen that blocks the biological effects of androgens like testosterone, and are used to treat prostate cancer and reduce sexual aggression in men, also to treat severe signs of androgenisation like hirsutism in women; and for transgender hormone therapy.

FURTHER INFORMATION (see less)

Siterone general information What is Siterone used for? Siterone tablets 50mg are used to treat prostate cancer, a tumour that is dependent on androgens (male hormones like testosterone) to grow. Siterone tablets 50mg are also used to reduce sexual aggression in sex offenders. In women with severe signs of androgenisation (overproduction of androgen), Siterone tablets 50 mg are used to treat hirsutism (unwanted hair) and androgenic alopecia (hair loss) both caused by excess androgen production. Siterone 50mg can also be used, in conjunction with oestrogen supplements as part of the feminisation process for male to female transsexuals. How does Siterone work? Siterone tablets 50mg contain cyproterone, which is an anti-androgen that blocks the biological effects of androgens, like the male hormone testosterone, on cells containing androgen receptors. Prostate cancer is an androgen-dependent tumour, which means that it needs testosterone to grow. Cyproterone in Siterone 50mg binds to the androgen receptors on the tumour cells blocking the action of testosterone, which then cannot bind to the cells and stimulate the tumour cells to grow, thereby protecting the prostate from the effect of androgens. Siterone tablets 50mg block biological effects of androgen on other cells with andogen receptors, such as reducing the production of male hormones in the testes, which reduces aggression and increased sex drive (hypersexuality), caused by over-production of testosterone. Women also produce some androgen but in much smaller amounts. However, some women produce too much testosterone and this can cause hirsutism (unwanted hair), acne and/or seborrhoea (greasy skin from too much sebum) and androgen-dependent alopecia. Siterone tablets 50mg inhibits testosterone production in these women, reducing these unwanted effects. Blocking the effects of androgens is also a means of promoting feminisation in transgender hormone therapy for male to female transsexuals. But apparently having breasts and being non functional as a male is not enough to satisfy the hunger of society in this matter. I’m sure if I dress as woman and walk down the street with my breasts exposed I would certainly be arrested,even though my ID says male. But in order to have my ID and Gender match who I really am I must at least be castrated,and spend thousands of dollars doing it. I think this is most unfair,some of us live on fixed incomes and can’t really afford this if they require it shouldn’t they pay for it in these cases at least. And what of FTM transsexuals they have to come up with enough to remove their breasts at  minimum. The damn LAWS are just unfair in this matter and need to be reexamined. I am  Shelle I will die Shelle and I see no reason why I can’t be properly Identified as who I am. I’m not nuts because I want to be nuts you society make me nuts. the world must really smell like shit where most of you are because you have your heads up your collective ass.

Reflection

For many Months I have considered the prospect of having a book published about my life,I guess mainly because a close friend of mine is doing this.

But after considerable thought  on the issue have decided strongly not to do so,firstly there is really nothing so unique about my journey,that sets me apart from most of the girls my age who have struggled through most of the same things I experienced along my 64 year trail.

I have no strong desire to make out like I’m better or more learned than any of my piers in the transgendered world,I’m just a regular girl,with maybe some great short stories that I can share with you all here,and I intend to do just that.

But certainly I don’t feel so damn famous in my life that I should expect people to have a desire to read some long litany about how I have lived out the most wonderful journey through the transgendered world,indeed I haven’t But I have my own unique stories that may entertain you along your journey in life,and I will share them as they come to mind from time to time.

Another pleasant valley Sunday

Once again another Sunday has rolled around another week in the book of my life another chance to look back and forward another chance to dream,and plan and reflect over the quagmire that has been my life for decades now.

I think my recent past I would say the past three years now have begun to bring me to a place where I can finally grow,and smile and give great thanks for.

It has been some of the most challenging of my life as well but the benefits have brought forth many miracles to my life.

During my sessions with my therapist we discussed the fact that revealing yourself to family and friends tends to be a very difficult challenge for gender variant people,Indeed it has been so for me,and is still ongoing fraught with pit falls and issues I can’t yet put into their perspective pigeon holes just yet.

While it has been frightening for me I think it has gone much easier than it does for many people,and for that I am most grateful.

In all of it I have found the greatest strength in my younger sister, Debra she has not only accepted and loved me she has gone out of her way to promote me and give me things I thought I would never know in life.

Us girls are not keen on revealing our age to people but I can tell you I have some years on me.I recently had a birthday and my sister sent me the most beautiful card I have ever received on any birthday of my life,it was covered with butterflies,and she knows how I love them.

But more than the look of the card the words she put inside touched me in a place I have never been touched in my whole life.

Inside she wrote these words    “I’m so proud to be your sister! You are a beautiful and amazing woman! I love you so much! Deb and Don”

When I read these words tears began to flow from my eyes and for the first time in my life I realized that others have begun to see the woman I have fought so hard to be.

This is the best present I ever received on any birthday of my long life and one I will most treasure till I die.

So on this Sunday I am happier than on any I can ever remember in life.

Another very remarkable thing happened during this time that bears being glorified as a prize and a blessing to my life,I was somehow given the friendship of a very wonderful lady,who I now refer to as a sister too,her name is Carolyn, without her love and support I wouldn’t be on here sharing these posts with all of you she helped in great manner,by getting me set up here on this blog and has been most encouraging to me along the way. I can’t thank her enough for the help and support she gives me every day of my life,I hope she remains my friend always few people have ever invested in me like she has,what a truly wonderful gift I received in meeting her.

I think the hardest of all has been my relationship with my son, while he took the news about me well and says he supports me,he refuses too be a true part of Shelle’s life and feels most uncomfortable being around her.I think for now I will just back away from him and let him come to terms with this as he wants if he chooses not to be part of my new life then so be it,I knew from the beginning that not everyone would have the mental tools to deal rationally with this,while it saddens me that he is having such a hard time with it on the other hand it may create something  wonderful in the end. I will keep the dialogue open and hope for the best,But I won’t let this diminish these gifts of happiness I have gained thus far.

I close now looking forward to Sundays,instead of crying through them.

Butterfly