I, with the all of the power of the universe, through the magic of the goddess, and in the full witness of the circle of humans, hereby grant you full and complete status as a transgendered person from this day forward. You have the right to define your own gender role, to choose from the … Continue reading Balls & Heart
Transgender, if you do it right, is terrifying. Transvestism isn’t, be it crossdressing or drag. If all you do is change clothes for a bit of fun, retaining your assigned gender, staying fixed in heteronormativity. Transsexualism isn’t. If you have a birth defect and your attempt is to hide it, fix it, blend in as … Continue reading Terrifying Transgender
Did I ever really have a personal voice? I know that I have a service voice, the voice of the concierge. I can take care of others, helping them develop their own voice. I know that I had a written voice, constructed texts that have attempted to share my learnings, my experience, my feelings. But … Continue reading Lost Voice
The challenge of trans is compromise. As transpeople, we are very clear that we are not simply one or the other but rather have elements across a range of continuous common humanity that we need to balance, need to hold, need to compromise. As we do this, we hold the truth that the challenge of … Continue reading Price Of Awareness
Follow your bliss, Joseph Campbell said. Be exuberant, feçund and prolific in the world, trusting your gifts and making the most of them. Do what you are called to do and the power will flow through you. So many of us work hard to play small, to deny who we are inside, to try and … Continue reading Kali’s Daughter
A woman is someone who makes the choices of a woman. If you believe that we are what we choose, then that definition is clear and perfect. If, on the other hand, you believe that woman and female means the same thing, it will sound stupid to you, but gender is about much more than … Continue reading Woman Choices
“Oh, brilliant one, so wise, calm, centred and authentic, powerful because you are comfortable in your own skin, what is the answer to ascension? How can I own my own life, become gracious in the world? Just tell me and I will do it!” Telling stories about making hard choices, about taking responsibility, about finding … Continue reading Not That Answer!
Jesus Loves You, but everyone else thinks that you’re an asshole. — Schoolyard Taunt If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all. — Gloom, Despair and Agony On Me When you feel forsaken by a world that seems to want to find any reason to slap people like you, losing sight … Continue reading Forsaken Rebirth
Einstein was a theoretical physicist, not an experimentalist or a developmental physicist. Rather than collecting data which could test a hypothesis or working to master physical ideas in a practical way, the theoretician experiments in the mind, looking for conceptual answers. Theoreticians are the visionaries of physics. I couldn’t have survived my life without thought … Continue reading Thought Experiments
““If you’re out there and, to be honest with you, if you look like a man in a dress, it makes people uncomfortable. So the first thing I can do is try to present myself well. I want to dress well. I want to look good. When I go out, as Kim says, you’ve got … Continue reading If You Are
There is an assumption that transpeople inhabit trans spaces. That is rarely correct, simply because there are very few trans spaces in the world and most of those that do exist are ephemeral — an hour here, a weekend there. In reviewing a recent reality show one person noted how good it was to see … Continue reading Spaces We Inhabit
The first thing you feel obligated to do when you emerge as visibly trans in the world is to reject your history and your biology. Whatever you claimed to be before this date was a lie. You were never really a man, never really male. It was all a lie, forced onto you by … Continue reading Rejection, Rebellion and Rethinking
“I don’t think think that there is such a thing as a crossdresser,” ShamanGal said to me. She had just spent the evening at Hamburger Mary’s playing big sister to a transwoman from out of town, one who lives as a married man, waiting for his 15 and 13 year old kids to go to … Continue reading Seeing Hearts
I recently saw an long interview with Lance Armstrong, talking about the effects of his doping revelations. To me, he missed the biggest takeaway from the story: He is a bully. Using focus, intimidation and every trick you can find to win, crushing all who challenge you in the process, from friends to reporters to … Continue reading Crushing Trans
“Oh my God!” women would sometimes exclaim, “He is prettier than I am!” “That’s because I had to work so hard at it,” I would explain, “while you just got the gift of being pretty.” “There are no ugly women, only lazy ones,” said beauty icon Helena Rubinstein. For most women today, especially around here, … Continue reading Hard Gender
“My role is to offer people permission: to be catered to individually, to treat themselves to something beautiful, to be important, to feel better.” — Betty Halbreich “I’ll Drink to That: A Life in Style, with a Twist“ Ms. Halbreich is head of the Solutions department at Bergdorf Goodman in NYC, where she helps women … Continue reading Finding Permission
In many dictatorial states, people are “disapeared,” abducted out of sight. Today is Transgender Day Of Remembrance and while the transpeople who have been murdered around the world are crimes to be acknowledged, I’m thinking of the transpeople who have just been disappeared. There are so many reasons why transpeople disappear in the world. We … Continue reading Disappeared
I took a story. . . Transvestism is about changing your clothes. Transsexualism is about changing your body. Transgender is about changing your mind. Monica isn’t taking the route of reprogramming, of opening her heart to use the plasticity of her brain to overcome the compulsory gender training, that brainforming that everyone undergoes. She isn’t … Continue reading Boobs & Brains
So it was my first question in my first session at my first day of my first big trans conference. “Men and women take power in different ways. As you shift your gender expression, how do you shift the way you take power in the world?” That question of power shift, that one question, has … Continue reading No Balls, Pussy
You cannot simultaneously think like a man and think like a woman. Choices must be made. That’s probably the biggest barrier to understanding between the genders. Men try to understand why women don’t just think like men when it would serve them and women try to explain how they experience the world to men who … Continue reading Decoded Confidence
Callan 