A Dream of the Heart

Ever sit and wonder what your purpose in life is.  Like what path to take.  What are you passionate about?  Are you passionate about anything?  Off and on I ask myself that.  Then not too long ago it hit me.  I felt a huge wave go over me.  I think I have finally discovered my path in life, my passion. Something my heart is telling me I need to do. It may sound crazy or impossible, but I think with a little support and a lot of heart, anything can be possible.  

I want to start a foundation and a private boarding school for LGBT youth.  A place where those who were kicked out of their homes for being themselves can go. Anyone who reaches out in need, no matter where they live, the foundation will pay for them to get to the school.  It would be a place to live and go to school.  A safe place where kids would have a warm bed, food, clothes, and get an education. They would have access to therapy and medical care, if needed. They will have a place to be themselves with no fear.  They would have a supportive environment.  

I would really like this idea to become a reality.  I read of so many stories where parents kick their kids out for being LGBT.  And they don’t have anywhere to go. They end up dropping out of school and living on the streets.  This saddens me so much.  I need to help.  This is where my heart is drawing me.

There are still a lot of details to work out and this is just beginning.  It will take a lot of time, but I really feel I need to do this... one way or another.

Almost 4 Months

It has almost been 4 months since starting HRT.  I can't believe how fast 4 months have passed.  Not much in the changing department.  My breast are growing slowly, but boy do they hurt.  Every time a chill runs through my body it feels like lightning bolts are shooting out my nipples.  I have been progressively getting colder.  I wear a fleece jacket almost all the time and I'm still cold, I can't wait till it warms up outside.  Hair growth has been interesting.  It seems to be slow growing some days and others it is growing like wild fire.  My chest hair has continued to be slow growing which is good, I only have to shave my chest every other day.  My leg hair seems to go in spurts... one moment it's taking longer to grow and the next I'm a wookie... guess this is the joys of the hormones leveling out.  Arm hair is taking longer to grow.  Facial hair has stayed the same: slow growing with straight razor, slightly less normal growth with electric razor.  Too bad I can't use a straight razor every day, but I get major razor burn by the second day.  My metabolism has seemed to change a bit, I'm eating more, but not gaining weight... staying about the same.  I do need to start exercising though, I bought some cute shirts from Vicky's but I need to lose my love handles.  This past Sunday I discovered how helpful bras really are.  We went to Easter service at my great-aunt's church and I wore a suit in total boy mode.  Without having a bra on, my A's were jiggling a little bit and my nipples were rubbing against the fabric of my shirt causing major discomfort, plus they were cold without a bra on.  I think that's it on my HRT progress.

And a very happy note, one of my best friends messaged me today.  Her mom, who sells Mary Kay and knows about me, offered to do a sit down and teach me some makeup tips and try some different foundations.   I am so excited!!! We are doing it this Saturday and it's gonna be loads of fun. I can not wait.

Anything Other Than Straight (Link)

http://www.danoah.com/2012/11/anything-other-than-straight.html

Facebook Status

Below is a post from a good friend of mine… it was too well written not to share:

Recently, a friend implied that who he voted for in this election doesn’t matter, and if I want to see real change I should “get off the couch and start effecting the change you claim to want.” Because the politicians don’t matter, it’s all about the people. 
How dare you. How dare you sit there and tell me to get off my couch and effect the change I claim to want. How dare you even assume that I am not. The idea that any out and open gay man is not fighting for change is ridiculous, and show’s how little you know of me. 

Let’s first talk about the changes I want. I would like the same rights that you have as a straight man. Namely, I would like to be able to marry my husband, in whatever state I please. I would like the tax incentives that come from that. I would like to be on insurance together and not have to file it as “taxable income” I would like to be able to visit him in the hospital if he were sick and not fear that some bigot might not let me in as I am not a “relative.” I would like for our future children to be able to legally have us both as their father. I would like to not have to face having queer or faggot written on my door at work. I would like to not wake up every day, every day, and read in the news how some public figure has called people like me an abomination, or less then, or compared us to pedophiles, or that God hates me, or that I am the downfall of society. I would like to not read in the paper how all of this is too much for some of our teenagers to take and decide that life isn’t worth living and kill themselves. I would not like to have to fight every damn day of my life, solely for being who I am. None of these are things a straight white man have had to ever fight for or even think about. 

But I do. Every day. I fight. I have been at the NH State House for hearings on Marriage Equality. I have worked tirelessly on diversity panels, committees, and groups that have worked to educated fellow faculty, staff, and students at the universities I have worked at. I have served on regional committees that have presented conferences on GLBT rights throughout New England. I have spoken to lecture halls full of students that I don’t even know about what it’s like to “come out” and to be a gay man. I have counseled GLBT students and teenagers when they haven’t known what to do after their parents have kicked them out or someone has called them something unimaginable. I teach a class on perspective and gaining a world view, seeing more than your own life experiences. I have engaged perfect strangers on using terms such as “that’s so gay” or “faggott.” I have tried to educate my friends and family on the candidates and what they stand for and what would happen to me and my rights if certain ones are elected. I have come into the place where I worked to have Faggot spray painted across my door, and have kept going. I have gone to a job where students have spit in my face and called me a faggot, and have had to go back and have an “educational moment” with them. I have woken up on days where even I have become depressed about the amount of hate and anger their is towards people like me in the news, but I have kept going. So yes, I have fought, and I will continue to fight.

It’s true, politics are only one piece of the puzzle. By voting for Obama will everything magically change over night? No, of course not. However, by voting for Romney and Ryan, we are putting two people in charge of this country that support the belief that I am less than. That want to actively work to take away my rights and make me fight even harder. That will be an example to people in this country and around the world that it’s ok to treat gays or women as less, because the President doesn’t like gay people so why should we. 

This election is so much more than just economics, healthcare, immigration, or military spending for me. Those are all important issues, but my rights as a person, my freedom to live as who I am are so much more important than any of that. This election is about electing someone who can be an example for our country. To show that we need to treat everyone equally, like our fore-fathers stated. That no matter who I love, it’s ok and it doesn’t matter what you think your religion says about that, because it’s your religion, not mine. I want my President to be an example to our country, just as I want to be an example to my friends, family, students, and community. I want my President to fight for me and my rights, just like I am fighting for myself and my rights. 

No matter what though, I will continue to fight, because I have no choice. Living as an out gay man in this country you have to fight. There is no sitting on the couch and letting it happen. You fight every damned day whether you want to or not. That is why I am voting for Obama. That is why I hope that my friends, family, and those important to me are voting for Obama. That is why it hurts so damned much when people I love and respect share their support for Romney. Because it’s not just a vote for his small government or his military spending. It’s a vote that says your paycheck is more important than me as a person. It’s a vote that says I am less than you, and that we are not equal. It’s a vote that says I need to fight harder.

Understanding trans (by MissJessicaSmith)

Original Link: http://missjessicasmith.tumblr.com/post/33324655251/understanding-trans

It’s strange to me to think about the fact that I was born trans.

I can accept that I was born with blue eyes, brown hair, and a cute smile. I can accept that I was born intelligent, that I was born to a mother and a father, that I was born in the United States, that I was born with the correct number of fingers and toes. 

All of those things are things I can see, things I can verify, proven things that myself and everyone else has acknowledged. 

But that I was born trans, that doesn’t seem to fit into that same pattern. I know it’s true, because I’ve been this way since I can remember. I know there wasn’t some moment, or trauma, or event that changed me from a cis male into a trans female. That never happened, this is just who I am.

To be born with completely incongruent physical and mental identities, to me that doesn’t make any sense. Truly, I can’t even come up with any comparable examples. It just doesn’t happen. In almost every human being, and most likely in every other animal, your brain and your body are one. You are your body, you are your mind, you are just you. There’s no need to second guess, or doubt. You don’t ever look at your body and think “This is just a shell. This isn’t me, this is just what people see me as.”

For example, many people have low self-esteem because of their appearance, be it their weight, or their height, acne, hair color, nose, freckles, or anything else you can think of. They feel like they are a worse person because they see their body as being inferior. But their body is them, it’s one and the same, so when the see their body as bad, they themselves are bad.

And this true with trans people as well, we are not immune to the same worries, doubts, and loss of confidence due to the normal spectrum of body image insecurities.

But we also have another issue, that causes even more emotional turmoil than these ‘normal’ insecurities. We have the constant feeling, the constant thought and understanding that ‘this isn’t me’. It’s not that these aspects aren’t what society says they should be, they may or may not be but that is not the point. The point is that they aren’t right. They shouldn’t be here. As if I were to look at my hands and have lobster claws, instead of hands. My brain would instantly reject it, because it’s incorrect. My brain knows what I should have at the end of my forearms, and it’s certainly not claws. So when a trans person looks at their body, and generally any part or aspect of their body, they see an incorrect shell. 

And who are you supposed to be then? We don’t have anyone to model ourselves off of. Cisgender people do not carry a book or a guide of who they are, to identify themselves. They just know what they should look like, how they look like, what they want to be, how they want to act, and everything else. They are themselves, and so they will be themselves.

Transgender people don’t have that luxury. We not only start from scratch, with nothing, we have to create our identities while rejecting our old identities. We have to try to decipher what gender roles we were forced into, what gender roles we want to put upon ourselves, and what gender roles we will fit into when we transition, even if we don’t want them.

We have to decide what we will look like, to the extent we can. Do we want surgery? Hormones? Should I grow out my hair, or cut it? Should I wear makeup, or should I not? Most of us do this in the absolute privacy of our own lives, we don’t have people we can get feedback from.

We experiment with ourselves with no rules, no guidelines, no methodology. We just try to find the look, and the feel, and the identity that will give us the feeling that cisgender people get everyday without ever realizing it. The feeling that when we move, we talk, we act, and when we look in the mirror, we see ourselves.

So I do understand when cisgender people say they don’t understand us. I don’t understand us. I don’t understand how this could happen, that the mind and body could have such a disconnect from each other. But I live this disconnect every day. I’ve adapted to it, as humans are wont to do. It impacts me in every single way, permeating every moment, every aspect of my life, day to day and year to year.

But I don’t think I will ever understand how or why I was born this way. I just was.

~ By MissJessicaSmith

Discrimination (Link)

A friend of mine’s friend was denied being bone marrow donor due to being gay. Discrimination needs to stop.

https://m.facebook.com/1347543534/timeline/story?ut=2&hash=-7037651820354336187&wstart=1343804400&wend=1346482799&ustart&_rdr


http://www.change.org/petitions/the-food-and-drug-administration-fda-of-the-united-states-remove-the-ban-against-msm-blood-and-marrow-donations?utm_campaign=share_button_mobile&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition&utm_term=27098131

Out In The Park (Link)

http://outinthepark.info/

Dems Approve Platform Including Marriage Equality, ENDA

http://www.hrc.org/blog/entry/dems-approve-platform-including-marriage-equality-enda

So Much Hate... Why?

It seems no matter where you turn there is hate towards the LGBT community.  Why?  Since I embraced myself as transgender, I am becoming more and more aware of all the hate.  With Chick-fil-a, with the debates over same-sex marriage so much hate.  The people I follow on Tumblr post their asks on their blog and many anonymous people say such hateful things.  Again I ask why?  What is so wrong with being a lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender that people hate us so much.  We do not hurt anyone.  We just want to lead normal lives without being hated.

Yesterday I read an article about parents of transgender children.  It talked about the fears they had.  They had to hide the fact that their kids were transgender.  They tried to go "stealth".  But when it was discovered that their girls were born boys or their boys were born girls, they ended up having to move to get away from the bullying and hate.  Why as a society can we not accept everyone for who they are?  I remember the first article I read about a transgender individual.  It was about Cece.  Who is now in jail for killing her attacker in self defense.  She was beaten and could have been killed, but faced her attacker in a kill or be killed situation.  Fearing for her life she ended up killing her attacker.  Now she is in jail.  Why?  It was self defense.  But the bigger question is why did those people hate her so much to want to kill her?  Why is there so much violence against the LGBT community?

This past weekend my wife and I watched a documentary on HBO about Vito Russo.  "Vito was one of the pivotal players in many of these gay rights organizations during their formative years. He was an early member of GAA (Gay Activists Alliance), whose goal was to secure basic human rights, dignity and freedom for all gay people. He was one of the co-founders of GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), which was formed to ensure that media representation of gays and lesbians was accurate. Towards the end of his life, he was one of the founders of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), a guerilla activist group whose goal was to bring legislation, medical research, treatment and policies to ultimately eradicate the AIDS epidemic."  This was a very informative documentary.  What was very interesting was the part about his project "The Celluloid Closet."  In his project he documented homosexuals in film from it's beginning.  It showed how there has always been homosexuals in film.  In the early years the characters were shown as normal people.  There was nothing wrong with a man kissing another man, a woman kissing another woman, two men dancing together, men in woman's clothes, woman in men's clothes, etc.  Then, I think in the 40's (I maybe wrong on the decade) there was an act that prohibited any homosexual acts or characters in film.  Around the 60's the ban was beginning to lift, but the homosexual characters were then shown as evil or bad people.  They were being shown in a very negative light.  It continued on that way until around the early 80's.  But with 20 some odd years of anything homosexual being shown as bad, the damage had been done.

As much as I don't like to admit it, our society is shaped by what we see on TV, in the movies, and hear in music.  With such homophobia being ingrained in our minds, I started to see why there is so much hate.  Society was brain washed into thinking anything homosexual was bad, evil or wrong.  Now this also sheds some light on the reason why the younger generations in today's society are more accepting.  With media portraying homosexuals in a better light as normal characters with nothing wrong with it and social icons such as Ellen Degeneres coming out as gay and Chaz Bono coming out as a transgender man, the younger generations are more accepting.  This gives me hope that one day the old homophobia will die out and be replaced with an accepting society.  It may take a few generations, but there is hope.