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(17 Feb 2017)
‘You’re Cute, Too’
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Poor Laura Ingraham.
Even when she tries to oppose a Liberal issue, she proves our point and supports our position.
A big Thai ‘Kapung khaf’ to you, Laura. You’re too easy.
Take Ingraham’s latest rant against trans (14 Feb 17).
Ingraham and her guest discussed the ‘horrors’ that trans children put upon themselves who change sex – whether male-to-female or female-to-male. She and her guest made our pro-trans point. Her problem was that she continually demonstrated how she repeatedly is confused about ‘gender’ identity and ‘sex’ anatomy. It appeared she got it correct when she agreed that a child’s gender can’t be changed, then she went on a loop when she opposed all persons who encounter their anatomical conversion. She called it ‘child abuse’ for any parent who affords their child the opportunity to transition. She condemns the use of puberty blockers and cross hormones at all ages – both children and adults.
Ingraham was correct as is any broken clock is correct twice per day when her guest mentioned disasters from the 1970s. He described male children whose circumcision failed and their doctors then changed their ‘sex’ to ‘female’ rather than allow that child to live as a mutilated male and await corrective male surgery at a later date in their life. Those doctors imposed upon boy children to live as girl children – the gender against their natural male will. Of course that is doomed to failure! Duh!!! That is what we in this trans community have been asserting for all these several decades – one’s gender is immutable regardless of their anatomy.
Ingraham blathered about her son who plays dress-up as if his is the definitive case – he wears space alien costumes and ballerina dresses spoke Ingraham. Again Ingraham proves our point. All children experiment with life and their surroundings – no matter what the time and place of their culture. Children who merely experiment does NOT define trans children, they are children who learn about their world that surrounds them. The difference is that trans children present according to ‘persistence’, ‘insistence’, and ‘consistence’ in the gender identity of their intimate and innate nature. A child who pretends to be a fire truck today does not want to be converted permanently to a fire truck, they are merely play acting that role. A child who consistently persists their insistence of their gender identification through the course of time and behaviour is, in fact, presenting as their true gender identity.
Ingraham and her guest asserted that the world is replete with post-op transsexual people who have absolute regret about their transition. Again, they proved our point in their references to cases that developed during the 1970s. That was a time when the medical community they condemn were transitioning their patients under false pretenses to conform to irrational social demands of those times – such as ‘normalising’ a homosexual male couple by requiring one of the partners to endure a sex change to female and voila! you now have a ‘normal’ heterosexual couple. We knew then and know now that those psychologists and surgeons were conducting medical mal-practise that no current medical team would dare approach.
Ingraham and her guest asserted that trans people experience unnecessary mental depression. I represent only my own self, not the entire trans spectrum, but my case proves as ‘true transsexualism’. My gender identity has always been female no matter that my family imposed male against my innate will throughout my entire childhood and teen years. It is abuse and retaliation from family and public alike, not my rational gender identity, that caused me to experience and endure my mental anguish. Trans children who come from a loving and accepting family and social circle grow up to be happy and healthy adults – as any child of a loving family and social environment.
You wanna know the truth about trans children depression? Thank you, friend Kira, for your post:
- ‘Even familial support doesn’t diminish the oppression transgender kids face in a world where they often can’t even go to the bathroom in peace. In fact, 31 states still have few or no laws protecting people based on gender identity, according to the Transgender Law Center.’
Too bad Ingraham did not bother to read spirit friend Cara’s latest, timely post that addresses this most insidious point:
- ‘Those of you who choose to wallow in ignorance and hate are what drive transgender kids to suicide, not being transgender but being hated by small minded bigots like yourselves. Grow up, and stop hating.’
Kapung khaf to Cara. Well said!
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I did some side browsing for inter-sex support groups here where I reside.
I came upon an entity that claims to be the top national agency: Accord Alliance.
I am angry.
Reading through their web-site and attachment brochures, they now tell me that it is now called ‘disorder of sex development’ (DSD).
They first labelled me ‘hermaphrodite’; that word did not bother me. They were moving toward the term ‘inter-sex’ since the 1970s; that name did not bother me. ‘Inter-sex’ continued through my ‘slumber’ of 30-some years until recently.
Now Accord Alliance calls me a ‘disorder’. I am NOT a ‘disorder’.
Call me ‘hermaphrodite’, call me ‘inter-sex’, hey, call me late for dinner.
DO NOT CALL ME A ‘DISORDER’!!!
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No more hard plastic devices for me. I had the makings of an idea.
The silicone is setting well in the dilator tube forms – instructions say 24 hours is the cure time. I’m more than past that time; I plan waiting for the smell to diminish.
Two tubes of silicone caulk will make a nice set of three flexible ‘appliances’:
- I made #4 first, had left-overs so I started #3, needed more silicone from a second tube of caulk to finish #3, and used those left-overs to make #2. There is no #1 for this set – no point making #1 because I am long past its use on my schedule.
I have ideas how to make these more interesting to enhance internal sensations.
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I hope you don’t mind that I am sharing my personal life stories inserted in ways I try making a point. It’s just a style to demonstrate my empathy and understanding.
You are so fortuneate. I do not mean to pin anything on you but rather to tell you that you are. You have friends who love and support you during your most trying times. You also have family despite many tough losses. You have an employer who wants you; they are coming your way.
My family rejected me though they all knew what was coming for two decades – my change was no surprise to anyone. I lost my ‘friends’ when I told them about myself. I decided that I would not ‘tell’ anyone and that goes for now though I have come to be more public. Don’t get me wrong, no pity parties for this kiddo. But I would not have my way any other way. Despite many positives I read along your path, I cherish my own path with the only regret that I did not do it better. And stuff those ‘friends’ and ‘family’!
I do miss lacking a biological family. I miss having a mother, a father, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews.
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I began developing an idea as I was reading message board threads about people preparing to go to court to get their legal name / sex change and are obligated to first pre-publish their notice at their local newspaper of record.
Please do not take this term ‘hand-holding’ negatively. I think a good idea is to create a sort of ‘hand-holding’ partnership between someone beginning and someone experienced. I certainly know – as you are now dealing with it – that I had little idea what to do and how to do it when I began my path 40-some years ago:
- legal name and sex changes at both your court and at Social Security Administration,
- where to find counsellors and endocrinologists,
- whether to choose interim procedures (orchiectomy, FFS, VFS, tracheal shave, electrolysis versus laser)
- finding a reliable, supportive electrologist
- how to go about ERT and other pharmaceuticals and what to expect from the chemical changes
- transitioning – full-time versus part-time – at work, school, family, friends, daily activities
- buying a new wardrobe (sizes, styles, color schemes) and ditching the old to Goodwill, Salvation Army, or other charities or clothing exchanges with your trans support groups
- trips to MVD for the new licence and revising your auto insurance
- banking, credit cards, home mortgage paperwork.
- locating GCS / SRS clinics, their differing surgical philosophies, comprehending the differences of each surgeon and clinic to match your goals, learning human anatomy to make the correct decision
Maybe I need to again present this to local LGBT and trans support organisations and ask what they do. I previously presented this to my trans group and got no responce – crickets chirped; maybe because I was still new in the group and my idea was accepted under advisement.
If someone in pre-transition or transition has no one to ‘hand-hold’ through their process, then I can do it – I can help new transitioners.
Obviously all states are different and one comment posted to a trans support board remarked that each county at her state is totally different with certain laws. Surely people helping each other will smooth out their rough edges and quell their fears.
My regrets have been limited to not having done better – that was because of my naivete and ignorance same as anyone else nowadays. I wish I could be there to help my trans successors more directly. You will do well. Pass the torch. When you find someone beginning, commit to them with all your knowledge and expertise.
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Oh, gawd, when I went back to court in 2007 for Social Security Administration – again – I was so nervous as well. I had been legally Sharon and female since 1980 and here I was playing SSA’s game all over again in 2007 to correct their mistake. I had to get a new court order 10 years ago to satisfy that Social Security Administration SNAFU (see: ‘Another Sex Change At Social Security’).
I was still a very private person about my life and dreaded someone seeing me at court or reading it in the newspaper after all those years of privacy. Yet there I had to do it all over again. I had not used my male predecessor in any real way since before June 1985 when I finally finished transition to female full-time and forever. Nick was so foreign to me, yet I had to identify him to the court in the present tense in 2007.
Not long ago, to obtain a legal name and sex marker change was this simple one-page form for Arizona residents.
This was a simple process. I obtained the form from those provided for self-help, completed it, went to the court clerk’s desk, submitted the completed form, paid my $35 filing fee, received a receipt and number, and told to wait inside the court room down the hall. I waited maybe 30 or 40 minutes among others assembled for their turn. The judge called my number, she swore me to my oath, I presented my legal documents supporting my petition, she asked me a few questions, she issued my legal document. Done within an hour.
It has been illegal for anyone to change their name for criminal evasion or enterprise. I know that I had to swear to my legitimacy when I re-did my 2007 court order. I proved my case to the judge using my 30+ years of legal papers and other legal ID. As I shared with you, I had been ‘Nickie’; it was my last name that had to change because of its singular rarity.
The ‘Phoenix Trans Resource Guide’ (page 8) identifies current law and status.
The court will ask these questions to you – the name change petitioner asserts to their background under penalty of law:
- ‘Are you are prepared under penalty of perjury to inform the Court whether you have ever been convicted of a felony and whether there are any pending charges against you for a felony or other offense involving false statements or misrepresentation of identity?’
- ‘Do you understand that the name change will neither harm your rights nor release you from any obligations or liabilities incurred under your current name?’
- ‘Do you swear that you are not changing your name to that of another person for the purpose of committing any crime or furthering any offense involving fraud or misrepresentation of identity?’
Something deleterious began happening along the way. Arizona’s county courts recently found the opportunity to impose a bloated $400 fee and install intrusive roadblocks. OUCH!!!
Friends Alana and Erica recently alerted this Editor to new problems here at Arizona. The Republican-controlled legislature is poised to pass legislation obligating harsh new requirements upon all applicants seeking name changes.
Name change is done by far more than trans community. Curious what more the Republikans demand since they will not be limiting their pain to only the trans community.
Courts already have interstate exchange of criminal backgrounds – the NCIC. SB-1199 is punitive and oppressive. This latest Republikan legislation will presume every applicant is a fraud and obligate them to prove they are not a criminal enterprise.
- Why does this Party that asserts they are the Party of ‘less regulation’ invariably act by imposing undue regulation upon the least capable?
- Whatever happened to ‘presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of law’?
So much for Republicans touting ‘smaller government’ and ‘lower taxes’.
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How life could have been drastically different but for decisions. I alluded to some of this here at my web-site; allow me to elaborate for you.
Kirtland AFB selected me for an appointment as a Pharmacy Tech (1978) as I was ending the school year at Ramah and Pinehill. I declined Kirtland in favour of my clerical appointment to Fort Huachuca. That was the Summer when Linda, a transsexual, came to work at our Fort Huachuca electronics engineering office on her temporary detail doing inspections and audits. Had I taken the Kirtland appointment and not the Fort Huachuca appointment, then I never would have met Linda and who knows what would have followed. Or not followed.
- Would I have changed my SSAN that Summer at Kirtland as I actually did while employed at Fort Huachuca?
- Would I have come out at Kirtland in 1978 or 1979 knowing it was a medical facility?
- Would that military base have been sympathetic towards transsexual during that time?
I moved on my own with a federal government appointment to the USDA Forest Service (December 1978). My dad then bought a second home at Bisbee and built a third home at Nicksville, Arizona (yeh, Nicksville). My dad had a real estate licence and dabbled in selling and investing in real estate; I later spent several years investing in property tax lien sales and earned 16% interest from the county.
What would have happened had I remained at Fort Huachuca and not taken my Forest Service appointment instead? For one, I would have remained under my dad’s thumb had I remained at Fort Huachuca – which is why I eagerly left when I got their call just days before Thanksgiving 1978. My dad was p*ssed that I accepted the move rather than stay ‘home’. I had to leave – he was smothering me. I could never have continued my stealth transition. I told him nothing of:
- my contacts with Stanford (1977), Janus (1978), and their medical referrals,
- my first medical appointment with a primary care physician who gave me a passing medical exam (April 1978),
- my first sex change counselling at Phoenix (February 1979) and then Flagstaff (March 1979), and then
- my first endocrinologist (March 1979).
None of that existed at ‘home’ but did exist at both Phoenix and Flagstaff – as well as Albuquerque – in 1978 and later.
Within days of my move, I bought my second dress from the Sears store at Flagstaff. Oh, gawd, my neighbour from where I resided as a child was working at that Sears store – ‘small world’ indeed! I can only wonder what she thought and what she must have written home about – Nick bought a dress his size, hmmm.
I never would have had all the fun that I had working my second job at KBWA AM (the local radio station) and the disco dancing at Flagstaff most weekends if I instead chose Kirtland. Actually, I might very well have gotten a part-time job at that radio station at Albuquerque and would have gone disco dancing at Albuquerque. Same activities, different specifics. But maybe no Kathy Q.
Or maybe.
Life is so fickle! Make your decisions with your best research and best intentions.
Of course, I would have had earlier access to medical resources at Kirtland, but I took the opportunity to attend University of Utah Medical School when I was promoted for a transfer to Utah (October 1980). Was there a UNM Medical School? I do not recall. Would I have attended that school to do my same independent study as UofU? Dunno.
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Several months ago, Alana and I discussed writing a how-to manual for the M-F patient: from pre-transition to transition to post-op. There are so many issues and details. I know what it is to go through the process alone without any information. Oh, I had some help from Stanford and Janus to start – generalities but low on details. My time was long ago when there were no consellors, no endocrinologists, no internists, no primary care physicians who knew what to do; we all went blindly.
My real experienced physician was my internist at Costa Mesa (1983 to mid-1990s) when it came to transsexual physicians.
Otherwise, I was the first for:
- my primary at Gallup (1978),
- my counsellor at Flagstaff (1979 – 1980),
- my endo at Flagstaff (1979 – 1980),
- my counsellor at Salt Lake City (1983 – 1985),
- my first counsellor at Tucson (1985 – 198?),
- my internist at Tucson (1986 – 2001),
- a string of primaries and endos from 2001 to 2013,
- my current endo (2013 to now),
- the seventh patient overall for my current primary (2015 to now),
- the first patient for her co-primary (2015 to now).
My gender counsellor during the 1990s was ‘old school’. His attitudes remained rooted from the 1960s and 1970s learned from the 1950s. Though we had not met in 1978, I knew of him then with a famous sexologist couple at Tucson (Bob and Nicki Oliver) when I was about to begin counselling with them until I got my Forest Service job. I could not discuss certain issues with him because he would have had fits – such as my Lesbian experience (1994 – 1995). He would tell me that I had my operation to have sex with men, not women; I humoured him and ignored his statements. I can’t imagine a counsellor nowadays declaring that perspective. If one does that to you, run fast in the other direction.
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I had been working on a detailed, extended essay to my sister Kathy. I had planned to send it to her on a special January day.
Unfortuneately, as I have written here, I was preparing that correspondence on my Apple iPad, the one that ‘ate my homework’. All that work got delayed while the computer techies worked to recover lost data.
I shall work to finish that tome as soon as possible when I receive the iPad.
Regardless of what my sister Kathy writes to me – that she wants nothing to do with me – I shall continue sending e-mails to her with personal notes and family pictures. Kathy will get them. What will she do with all this – she wrote hate and I wrote love.
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Now this is a book! Writing is good therapy and my re-writing these topics has helpt me. I hope you are not bored; I hope there are small nuggets of wisdom that you can find for your self.
Thank you, ‘beautifulkittens’, for joining.
Take care – Enjoy! – HUGGSS
Thank you, Dear Reader, for coming again. Please return soon for another treat.
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Slim and Me 