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A friend of mine yesterday was looking through Glamour Magazine and discovered an interesting article, one about a girl, who used to be a boy.  I haven't completly read it yet, but from what I have read, it does seem to be a really nice story.

You can read the entire story at Glamour's website: Just another girl (who used to be a boy)

A striking blue-eyed blond deftly navigates Los Angeles’ Melrose Avenue in her blue convertible Beetle. Her name is Amy Karn, and she could be any 26-year-old girl headed to Friday after-work drinks with the top up, windows down and her hair blowing in the breeze. Perma-glued to her cell, she’s usually talking to Valerie Reynolds, her best friend. This time Valerie’s calling to ask: Did Amy bring the halter bra she needs to borrow? Check. “We share everything,” says Amy. “I don’t know where I’d be without her.” Every woman needs close friends to lean on, but for Amy, this has never been truer. Over the past two-plus years, between settling into her first “grown-up” apartment, getting her career off the ground and trying to find love, Amy has made one mind-blowing transition her friends have not: She’s changed from a man into a woman.

[...] Three years later, as a freshman studying architecture at the University of Southern California, Amy realized that she was still harboring a deeper secret. “At that point, I had admitted to myself that I wasn’t gay; I was transgender,” she says. “I would lock myself in my bedroom and try on makeup, like a teenage girl experimenting for the first time. I thought no one knew until my junior year when one of my housemates, Allison Doyle, started knocking on my door. She’d say, ‘I know what you’re doing in there, and you don’t need to hide.’”[Continue reading]

What are your thoughts on the article?  Do you think that if you were approached, you would be comfortable being "spotlighted" in a magazing?

Note: this article will talk about sex. And be rather disgusting.  So be sure to send your thanks to New Hampshire representative Nancy Elliott.

So I was reading my twitter feed today, and noticed a tweet from ZJ. Now if you don't know ZJ, you should head over to ZJ's youtube page. If you're an athiest, you'll love ZJ even more. ZJ's videos are pretty much about disproving religion, but that's not what the tweet today was about. When you watch one of ZJ's video, you'll know why I like them so much. (have you noticed I've been avoiding pronouns ?) ZJ hasn't disclosed what pronouns they like to use, or whether they identify as genderqueer or something else. Bascially, ZJ doesn't limit themself to one gender.

Anywho, so I'm browsing through my feed, and I saw this:

Parents in Sweden decided to withhold their childs sex.

"We want Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mould from the outset,” Pop’s mother said. “It's cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead.”

The child's parents said so long as they keep Pop’s gender a secret, he or she will be able to avoid preconceived notions of how people should be treated if male or female.

Pop's wardrobe includes everything from dresses to trousers and Pop's hairstyle changes on a regular basis. And Pop usually decides how Pop is going to dress on a given morning.

Can we have more awesome parent's like this ? I myself applaud them ... however some individuals don't ...

“Ignoring children's natures simply doesn’t work,” says Susan Pinker, a psychologist and newspaper columnist from Toronto, Canada, who wrote the book The Sexual Paradox, which focuses on sex differences in the workplace.

“I don’t think that trying to keep a child’s sex a secret will fool anyone, nor do I think it’s wise or ethical,” says Pinker. “As with any family secret, when we try to keep an elemental truth from children, it usually blows up in the parent’s face, via psychosomatic illness or rebellious behaviour.”

But those who appose ... obviously don't get the point.  It's not about keeping the child's sex a secret. It's about letting the child discover who they are.  It shouldn't matter what's between your legs.  That doesn't define who you are.  The elemental truth, is you are how you feel.

Whether you're born with a penis or a vagina, is quite random.  How male or female you feel about yourself, is not.

Read More ...

As I was browing through twitter this morning ... I saw a tweet from @sexgenderbody about thugs beating up men in dresses ... However ... as sad and depressing as the title may seem, I did actually get a chuckle when I finished reading it. =)

Thugs attack two men in dresses... who turn out to be cage fighters http://ff.im/-9rkPN
@sexgenderbody 9.25am

Two thugs who attacked what they thought were a pair of transvestites picked on the wrong men - when their intended victims turned out to be cage fighters on a night out in fancy dress. Dean Gardener, 19, and Jason Fender, 22, singled out the two men walking along a street in wigs, short skirts and high heels. Bare-chested Gardener was caught on CCTV confronting one of the men in a pink wig, black skirt and boob tube - then seen swinging a punch, a court heard.

Read more

Now ... I'm not one for violence ... but you have to admit, it is pretty amazing. =)

I was browsing my twitter feed today, and came across a retweet from @ TGworldNews.

Photo: atrox: This really made me tear up. I’m not transgender, but I don’t identify as male or female. And...http://tumblr.com/x1a3d58ek
@blakesays 12.00pm

Even if you do not identify as trans ... it is still a powerful image.  Often times we know that transmen bind ... but more often than not, we don't know what it's like, or what binding really entails.

I mentioned in the forums that I'm working on a trans monologue, with quotes from trans individuals, explaining what we go through.  And one of my good friends sent me this:

»I'm the one who got cysts binding the breasts I shouldn't have«

I know ... that when I tuck, I don't think much about it.  It's often just tighter the better.  I don't think about what I'm doing to my body ... just that I'm trying to get rid of something. We do it so that we can hide it, so that we can forget about it, as if it were never there.  But no matter how tight I tuck, or how tight someone binds ... it doesn't get rid of the fact that it's still there.

I guess take some time out of your day, whether trans or not, and tell a trans friend that you care.  Get to know somebody for who they are on the inside, regardless of how they look.  You may not know what they're going through, but let them know you'll be there for them.