I was in the UK a couple of weeks ago and whilst walking back from one of the loveliest Indian restaurants I know I came across this sign:

It’s June. Summer. What on earth is going on, here? Will this town have its Christmas decorations up in July?

Everyone in the UK complains about the Christmas season starting earlier and earlier each year, but this is just insanity! I’m looking forward to summer settling in and Christmas is the farthest thing from my thoughts!

<Sigh>

Taking a lead in the creation of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group, a bloc in the European Parliament, have the Tory party shown their true colours? If so, the colours are back to their traditional blue and the rainbow flag is nowhere to be seen.

The bloc is designed to give conservative and right of centre parties more speaking time and better support but the bedmates that David Cameron has chosen show a darker side to this coalition. A key member of it is the Polish Law and Justice Party run by the Polish president Lech Kaczyński and his twin brother Jarosław Kaczyński, which has shown its homophobic side before. Having publicly stated “The affirmation of homosexuality will lead to the downfall of civilisation” last year, the Law and Justice Party is decidedly homophobic and has shown both anti-semitic and racist sides before.

If just getting more time and support in the European parliament is all it takes to turn their backs on their supposedly LGBT-supportive stance, it shows how little the LGBT community matters to the Tory party.

Read more here:

Pink News – Tories Join with Homophobic Polish Party in Europe

Chez Emily – Ikea standing up for LGBT rights in Poland

Badly paraphrasing Charles Dickens, it was the best of times, it was the most unholy crappiest of times. The past few months have really been a roller coaster. Things have been so bad that detransitioning has been a real option. Things have been so good that I’ve had days walking around with a smile the size of a small Eastern European country plastered on my face. I’ve found the most amazing person who brought me out of the depths that were threatening to claim me and I’ve found that some of the people who I thought I could rely on for support just didn’t want to get involved.

Well, it’s time to try to put the bad times behind. I’m still going to be shaky sometimes but I need to package up the darkness and focus on the pure bright white that has come into my life. It’s time for changes.

One of the big changes is happening because of my work, meaning that I no longer live in France, having settled in the lovely city of Hamburg in Northern Germany. France is a country I love and one where I will always feel comfortable, but I have some bad memories there which I need to give time to heal before I can enjoy it again. Hamburg is turning out to be a real tonic for me and whilst I still have a lot to do to settle into my new house, I am beginning to really enjoy the place.

My work is also changing as I get more involved. I’m taking on a lot more responsibility as I transition to managing a fascinating part of the business. I feel challenged and energised by this and look forward to making a real difference, to helping my part of the business make a real impact. Stress is naturally part of this and again that white light that is now in my life helps me handle that so that I can really enjoy this new direction in my life.

Some changes are more personal. I’m looking after myself after being on a pretty self-destructive path. I’m treating myself as I should, eating better and exercising more. More importantly, I’m drinking a lot less wine which had become a bit of a crutch during the bad times. Finally, once again with the support of my source of white, positive light, I’m following my convictions and giving up eating meat. For some people, this was almost more shocking news than my transition, but it just feels so right for me and I feel I’m doing the right thing considering how I feel about animal cruelty.

It’s all change and my guiding light is a huge part of all of it, so from my heart, thank you. With this solstice I’m going to leave the darkness behind and try to move on to a bright future. It’s time.

I travel a lot for my job which has me renting cars on a very regular basis. In my previous job I used Sixt in Europe and Hertz in the US and in my current role, I use Avis both in Europe and the US. What’s amazing is that I’ve always had a fantastic experience with them all.

Renting a car is one of the few situations I have where I regularly need to out myself. Thanks to a lot of administrative issues taking forever and a day in France, I’ve not yet managed to change my driver’s licence and this means that I need to show my old photo and my old name whenever I rent a car. This leads to some rather fun conversations, however, normally going something like this:

Agent: Can I see your driver’s licence, please?
I hand it over.
Agent: <Returns licence> I think that’s your husband’s licence…
Me: No… That’s my licence.
Agent: <Blank look><Confused look><Even more confused look><Dawning realisation>Oh!!! OK…
Me: <Smile>

At this point, I almost always get a good upgrade (the biggest upgrade I got was to a Hummer and that was faaar too big!) I don’t know why I always get those upgrades, whether it’s a reaction to their embarrassment or a ‘go for it’ type of reaction, but almost every time I get a sports car, cabrio or something huge and my colleagues typically end up in the same class of car that they booked.

I’ve only had one problem, a Sixt agent in France who was determined not to accept my driver’s licence, though she was very polite about it. Getting her to call her supervisor sorted things out quickly enough, though, since she knew me as someone who’d rented several times when she was on duty. All the other times, however, I have to say that the staff have been hugely friendly and very kind.

I’ve heard some horror stories about renting from other rental companies so I think that it’s worth sharing this experience. Hertz and Avis have always been extremely professional and Sixt, apart from the one situation which shows that they have some work to do in training their staff, have been excellent, too. These companies may not be as cheap as some of their budget counterparts, but not being abused is worth paying for and as a regular user of these three companies, I’m very happy with how they treated me even when I had to out myself.

Read more here:

A bad experience with National car rental from Pam’s House Blend:
Blend Exclusive – National Car Rental Employee To Trans Customer: “Screwed-Up Man Faggot”

On 17th July, 2008, a vivacious young woman called Angie Zapata was viciously murdered by a man called Allen Andrade, who beat her in the head multiple times with a fire extinguisher. That’s horrible enough, but the story doesn’t end there. It continues with a trial where a cold-blooded murderer and an equally cold-blooded defence team tried to justify Angie’s murder as a natural reaction of a straight man when he discovers he has had sexual relations with a trans woman.

Thankfully, on Friday 24th March, the jury saw through their horrendous attempt to make it acceptable to murder a trans woman as well as not being swayed by the defence team’s horribly discriminatory repeated use of ‘he’ and Angie’s male name when referring to her. The fact that it turns out that Andrade had known of Angie’s status as a trans woman for days may have swayed things in her favour, leading me to fear that the next murdered trans woman may have her killer acquitted because there is no such evidence of prior knowledge.

I’m hugely happy that Andrade will spend the rest of his life in prison, without chance of parole. I’m horrified that Angie’s memory will be sullied by the horrendous, discriminatory allegations of the defence. An innocent was murdered and had her whole life questioned even with her family and friends supporting her as the woman they know she was.

This won’t be the last trans woman murdered just for being trans, nor will she be the last to be dragged through the courts as much as defendant as victim. Let’s hope that she isn’t the last to have her killer convicted and properly sentenced for committing a hate crime.

Rest in peace, Angie. You were worth so much more than this. I’m so sorry that you were let down in so many ways.

Imagine your boyfriend finding something out about you which made him angry. He breaks into your home and beats you with such force with a glass ashtray that it tears one of your lips off. Imagine that this happens because the police tell your boyfriend something about your past, something you shared with them only because of a horrible threat to your life.

Had that happened to a cissexual woman, it would be page one news. It happened to Brigitte Fell, an Australian woman who had had GRS twelve years before meeting this boyfriend who attacked her. She’d spoken to the police about her past because of threats she’d received and had been promised that what she shared was in confidence. Unfortunately, two police men found the fact that this woman was a trans woman and decided to share it with her boyfriend, telling him ‘you’re rooting a bloke’ (rooting = shagging).

This boyfriend was in a long-term relationship with a woman who had a past. I know few men or women who don’t have pasts and a lot of us have things we would rather not think of. She’d been post-operative for 12 years and living a normal life as a normal woman. Had the police not leaked this past, I don’t imagine anyone would be unhappy in this relationship.

The police did leak this highly confidential information and it resulted in a horrible attack. The officers who leaked it got, of all things, community service.

Had this been a cis woman who’d had her past leaked by the police leading to a horrible attack, people all across Australia would have been outraged. The feminist community in Australia would have been up in arms. As it is, the police who leaked Brigitte’s past face a slap on the wrist, relatively. The feminist community has been silent (at least the Australian feminst community I read and I stand to be corrected here) and the newspapers have had their usual puerile ‘transvestite’ and ‘tranny’ stories.

Now you know why trans women don’t trust the police, the press and feminists. They’d all stand up against such treatment against a cis woman. They all stand and sneer when that happens to a trans woman.

Read more here:

A.E. Brain – The “Christian” Democatic Party (Including some horrible information of how the Christian community views this)

Bird of Paradox – Transphobic policemen unlawfully out trans woman

When I hear the shocked hysteria about the gay/lesbian/trans lifestyle, it always raises a giggle. I love it when the conservatives use these phrases because it shows how isolated and myopic they are.

You see, there is a gay/lesbian/trans lifestyle, but the only reason for that is because the hetero and cis communities create an environment where their privilege over us means taking and expressing a lifestyle is a key part of our battle against their discrimination. What we all know, however, is that this is a social construct purely because of their small-minded opposition to anyone who isn’t exactly like they are.

Nobody chooses to be gay, lesbian, trans, queer, intersexed or even questioning. You can choose to accept it, you can choose to be open about it, but it’s not something one decides to be one day. In fact, thanks to our wonderfully misfunctional society, for most of us it is something we fight against for years or even decades because of the fear of becoming the social pariahs that coming out makes one. Even in this supposedly accepting world, the cost of coming out is simply huge, so huge that for gay, lesbian and especially* trans people the cost of coming out can be pretty equally balanced by taking ones own life.

We live in a world which pays lip-service to openness and inclusion. I see it all the time, from the slogans sent by the HR department in the company I work to the attempts our governements are making to protect minorities and the under-privileged. However, when it comes down to the core of most people in our society, a lot of the acceptance we see is paper-thin and a little bit of pressure opens up the prejudices hidden within. I’m glad to see that lip-service because it means that people are at least trying, but we all know it’s not enough, just as we all know it isn’t going to change dramatically in the near future.

The most comical aspect of the lifestyle hysteria is the idea of recruiting people to it. I suspect that a decent amount of those screaming about us ‘recruiting people to our lifestyle’ are fighting a battle of their own against being part of those lifestyles. As for the rest, I don’t know of any straight person I could really, honestly convert to a homosexual life and I can’t even get most cis people to grasp how it is to be trans let alone convince them to jump the gender barrier.

So, yes, my dear bigoted friends: There is such a thing as the gay/lesbian/trans lifestyle, but it’s your quixotic fighting against anything which doesn’t fit your small frame of reference that is making it. Were you able to leave alone and let people live their lives just as we let you live yours, there wouldn’t be the need for building this lifestyle… Most of us would just get on with our lives and you’d never notice us! You’re not going to change things anyway because people are going to go on being born like us and the more you rail against us, the more we’ll build communities and lifestyles to fight… In other words, you’re fighting a losing battle.

Anyway, whilst we need to have these ‘lifestyles’ you love complaining about, I have to admit it’s kind of fun, so don’t worry. We’ll just keep on doing things like this and then when you wake up, maybe we’ll go back to the more boring ways.

* Why do I say “especially trans people”? Well, that’s because we have not only straight and cis people against us, we also have the medical community determined to denigrate us as much as they can and a scarily large amount of gay, lesbian and intersexed people who have deep issues with trans people. As they say ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you’… That’s pretty true for trans people. Paranoia is a healthy attitude when a decent part of every aspect of society has a deep problem with your very existence.

“Wow! She’s tall! I wonder if she’s trans!”

I do it myself. I see a very tall woman, the question pops into my head and I start looking for the giveaways. It’s terrible, isn’t it? I mean, how judgmental can one be to a woman just because she’s tall? I know that people are doing it to me: I’m 1m84 (6′1″) which is already tall for a woman pretty much anywhere in the world, but living in France where the average height for a woman (and for men, too) is quite far below me makes me rather noticeable!

I think that’s one of the hardest things about being a trans woman (I guess it’s the same for trans men, too… Any comments?) There are these little give aways when one is trans and a very noticeable one, such as being much taller than the average woman, or a collection of small ones, which combine to be enough to gain attention, can leave one feeling very self-conscious and insecure.

For a long time, I tried to ‘hide’ my height (as if one could hide being 20cm taller than all the other women here!!!) but over time, I came to embrace it as a part of me that I should be proud of. There are women my height and they don’t all try to hide it (though I’ve seen several who walk with a slouch to blend in). It was a battle and I overcame it… Of that I’m proud and it has made my life a great deal better.

We all have these things we’re worried about but for a trans person it can make the difference between being accepted and being assaulted. On top of that, it can leave deep feelings of self-doubt and even self-loathing (trust me, I know about that one!) These small things add up and can really make life hell.

Anyway, my dear trans brothers and sisters (and siblings who don’t identify as either), keep fighting the battle. Each such obstacle we surmount is worth celebrating and we must make sure that we don’t feel overwhelmed by those obstacles we have yet to beat (and beat them we will!)

In 1977, Rachael Padman arrived at the University of Cambridge to enter the very male-dominated world of radio astronomy. Of 10 graduate students arriving that year to study radio astronomy, only one was a woman and Rachael Padman wasn’t one of them, or at least not openly. You see, Rachael Padman was fighting with the big battle of needing to transition to live in her true sex and that is just what she would do during her time at the University of Cambridge.

During the coming years, Rachael would transition and go on to build a reputation as a respected radio astronomer. Her transition was particularly well accepted by the enlightened society at the University and life went on. A two-year fellowship at UC Berkley in the US was followed by a return to the UK to continue research at the University of Cambridge.

In 1996, Rachael recieved a job offer for the role of Director of Studies at the all female Newnham College, a recognition of her work over the past years. The governing body having known of her past was happy to offer her this role, recognising her as a woman of science and a valuable resource for the college. However, Germaine Greer, a highly activist transphobic feminist was also a fellow of the college and when she heard the news, not only did she make a fuss of it within the college, she made a fuss of it in the national newspapers, outing Rachael in the process and leaving her distracted and depressed for several months, plus questioning how she presented now in a world where everyone new of her past.

Luckily, her family, friends and the rest of the fellows stood by her and Rachael is still at Newnham College continuing as Director of Studies and as a fellow. She has published several works on stellar evolution and on radio telescopy and continues to lecture at Newnham College and at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory whilst also being active in the administration of teaching in the Department of Physics.

A woman I admire a great deal because she has come to terms with her past and has overcome extremely tough battles especially with regard to being outed, Rachael continues to be a good example to women in science very directly, due to her work with teaching the next generation of female scientists, and to trans people looking to see how to live their lives in a complex world.

Read more here:

Rachael Padman’s Story – Lynn Conway’s Transsexual Successes

A gender for success – The Guardian

Read more on Ada Lovelace Day here:

Finding Ada

It came up at work today: What made you choose to transition?

If you read pretty much every trans website, trans people don’t choose to transition, trans people reach a point in their lives where the cost of transitioning is so heavily outweighed by the cost of staying as they were that transition becomes unavoidable (though, in theory, this isn’t the case for those that fall into the hands of a properly working system which helps them transition early enough… More of that another time).

The cost of transitioning is high, and here I’m talking about really high. At best, you get to lose a chunk of friends, enjoy a bit of ridicule and then have to go through some pretty horrendous surgery. At worst, you also get to enjoy people wanting to kill you (and, unfortunately, managing far too often), losing your friends, losing your job as well as becoming unemployable and being shunned by your family. Nobody chooses to transition. As I said in the previous paragraph: Transition happens when you reach that dead-end where it’s the only sensible choice.

That said, it is still a choice. One doesn’t choose to be transsexual; one is transsexual. Nor does one choose to ‘become a woman’ or ‘become a man’ because that is what one already is: It’s the body’s expression of the gender that is wrong when compared to the mind and the identity. However, when it comes down to it, transition is still a choice. For some people, it’s a choice between transition and ending ones life, and I’m not ashamed to admit that it took that to convince me to transition, which means there was nothing ‘brave’ about me doing this: I did this because the alternative scared me more. Others, however, manage their transition better and make real decisions about transitioning.

What I think is important, however, is that there is an element of choice. There is an element of agency: I suggest that we do control our lives and are not the victims of our conditions as is so often portrayed.

I chose to transition and in doing so, I chose to risk losing my marriage, my friends, my family and my job. It wasn’t a selfish decision but nor was it in any way selfless: I had huge pressures which forced me to make this decision, but in the end, I weighed the cost of not doing this and it was worth more than practically losing my whole life.

The interesting thing is that when one asks pretty much any random sample of transsexual people whether they’d rather transition or take a magic pill to make them completely non-transsexual (i.e. make me male), the answer is generally very simple: Absolutely not! I could never imagine being anything but who I am  and being female is one of those key starting points alongside being white and dark-haired that I couldn’t imagine changing: They define me… How could I dream of touching that without rejecting who I really am?

So, my response today was that I didn’t choose to transition. I arrived at a point in my life where I chose to stop pretending to be who I wasn’t because I couldn’t bear the cost of continuing pretending and didn’t want to face the alternative of making that choice. However, that said, I made it very clear that I wasn’t forced into this: I made this choice because it was what I needed to do to live a proper life. I  arrived at a point in my life where I had to make a choice and I did.

Playing with words? Yes, maybe. However, I think it’s important that I did make a choice. I chose to live, irrespective of the costs and even had I not maintained as much of my previous life as I did, that choice would still have been worth it. I made that choice having already prepared myself to lose all of my previous life and that was very liberating as well as being quite scary since I realised that I really could walk away from it all to be who I really am.

I like being in control of my destiny.