you are so amazing and the beauty of the photos shows how delicate and remarkable true beauty is. As is the person taking the photos

Thank you Teresa, I am glad you enjoyed my flowers and I was happy to share them.

Oh my! Such a tranquil pretty flower garden. They are so pretty, I just had to compliment your garden.

I love the flower pictures!!!!

Hi Kimberly

I stay away from those TS folks that have that endless flow of funds for facial surgery, boob, toe you name it. They seem not in touch with reality plus credit card debt of 75k & up !!!

I've been reading your thoughts on your blog and connect with you very closely.
I'm mid 40's TS in Dallas Texas area trying to make ends meet. Biker chick in general & live a low key day to day.

I haven't recovered from a lay off three years ago. I transitioned about 5 yrs (I was with AT&T / Lucent Tech). I was one of many during the telecom collapse after 9/11.
I know the struggle of Electrolysis, hormone upkeep etc etc.
I did get rid of a good portion of unwanted face hair. It took about 6 yrs for that to happen (before transition).
I'm legit female for about 5 yrs now (Paperwise)
BTW: do you have your license and SS# changed with name / female gender ?
This would help in your employment search.
Oh well love your garden pics etc.
Can't attach a pic of me for FYI.
I'm praying for you.

Take Care
Bonnie Marie

By accident. I can access all the blogs from the same back office. I forgot to switch to the other blog when I posted. I started to delete it from my Rants when I thought that those who are tracking my Rants can see that I am not all about just Rants, but that I have another side to me. I crossed posted it the Thoughts blog.

Great garden shots Sis but how did it end up in the rants section?

True, the wording doesn't cover toilets. However, all laws end up being interpreted. Employers will start looking for "work arounds" and loop holes and the lawyers will come in and start trying to manipulate the meaning. Just look at past laws. Plus if we settle for something that has a problem, and ENDA has plenty, it will be on the books for a long time. It will be better to wait than to put a piece of bad legislation on the books now. Once it becomes law and we try to get the rights that are missing, they will just say you are already protected by ENDA. We need to fix the problems with ENDA now!

Good points, but note the ENDA doesn't cover toilets. More discussion on my site "Transgender Workplace Diversity"

You provided a link to a socialist page; can you provide at least three good sources that are not bias, but just reporting the facts. Plus, one has to be sure that the deaths were directly related to the sanctions and would not have happened regardless of the sanctions. Bodies blown to bits because of a bomb are directly related to the Iraqi war started unjustly by the leader of the US.

I will give you that Bin Laden perpetrated the planes crashing into the World Trade Centre for his own sick reasons. I will not give three buildings collapsing in free fall speed; by the way, number seven didn't have a plane crash, to the efforts of Bin Laden. I know you didn't say the buildings fell due to Bin Laden, I just wanted to make that statement to be clear.

I don't know who owns oil stock and as such certainly don't know how much they own. You did not provide any statistics as well, so I am guessing you don't know either. Does it really matter? We need to break the dependency on oil and do so quickly.

I could not find fungable in the dictionary, but I assume that you mean fungible. Oil is not a fungible commodity as far as I know. If you know of an alternative source that can provide ALL products that we now derive from oil, you better buy all the stocks you can if the company is being openly traded on the market. It is my understanding that if the oil disappeared tomorrow, we are in big trouble and you will see a world in panic if not in total chaos.

Over One Million Iraqis died from the effects of the UN/Clinton economic sanctions on Iraq during the 1990's.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/sep1999/iraq-s28.shtml

We were attcked on 9-11 because of these sanctions and the associated no-fly-zone according to Bin Laden's own Fatwah

http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm

Who owns more oil stock (including the Carlyle Group)?...the Bush Family or the Califonia Public Employee Retirement System?

Oil is a FUNGABLE commodity!

It was becouse of who had the giggest and the best of everything comparisions of support groups that I left the so called "scene"yes i have done well in business that does not allways mean one will be happy with decesions not properly thought through...kimberly you have the gift of total self exceptance that is priceless.

This is an excellent rant, Kimberly. It's good to have someone just put it in your face and call it out. I think sometimes we cd/tv/tg/ts people get together, drink the kool-aid, and think we have done so much by coming out that our spouses should just be so greatful and happy and love us for finally being honest. Bull.

That my wife still wants our marriage to work is a testament to her not only overcoming her views on gender but her also accepting my apology over hiding and lying for all these years. That trust issue is bigger than any gender stuff, and it doesn't really matter that I may not have been honest to myself, but it's so unfair how I let this become dishonesty to her.

When I was thinking about coming out one of the biggest things I had to weigh was could I handle her wanting to just leave me if that is what she wanted? And I realized that my answer really didn't matter - it was up to her to decide, and I had to accept her choice. I had been so dishonest for all these years - could she even believe that I would start being honest now? I was picking up one end of the stick, and I had to live with the other end. But I had to come out - I was sick of the lying and the hiding.

Smartest thing I ever did. Who knows what the future will bring, but the present is a whole lot better for both of us. Not perfect, but better.

(I get a lot of email from other cd/tg/tv/ts's who find my story and ask how to come out to their spouses. I don't have the answers, but I do know that they need to come out as soon as possible, be as sensitive as they can, and realize that they have been very unfair to their spouses. Most of them then tell me thanks but they can't come out for whatever lame excuse they can come up with. I know it's fear of losing it all, but what are you losing when you build it on a pack of lies?)

Hi Kimberly,

Ah yes, labels. We can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em. On one hand we have the "Transgender" Activists who so easily throw people with transsexualism, crossdressers, transvestites, drag queens, "gender Queer", and whatever else, under the ubiquitous umbrella of "Transgender". I would guess that most of the women who were born with transsexualism, including myself and most all of the women I know, do NOT want to be included in any "Transgender" label. The term transsexual, or even transsexualism is also problematic. When they hear these terms most people still conjure up thoughts of drag queens, she-males and deviant sexual practices. Just do a Google search on transsexual and see how many hits you get....and what percentage of those are porn sites. It's no wonder people get confused about "who" we are. Over the last several years there has been a move to distance ourselves from ALL of those "labels". HBS is one of them. It may not be perfect but it sure is a heck of a lot better than "trans" anything. I guess I would agree with you about it not being a "syndrome", using the strict definition. But it IS a birth condition or anomaly or defect that occurs in utero. It is NOT a psychological pathology or disease.

The sooner we can "wean" ourselves away from the "trans" designation and toward and more toward a medical term (or ANYTHING but trans) the better off we all will be.

A side note: we need to do away with the classification that transsexualism is a syndrome. One definition of syndrome is; 1. Pathology, Psychiatry. a group of symptoms that together are characteristic of a specific disorder, disease, or the like. As a transsexual, I am not suffering from a disorder or disease anymore than any other woman, genetic or otherwise, on this planet from just being female.

Kimberly,

As a woman who was born with HBS (Harry Benjamin Syndrome; also known as transsexualism) I completely agree with you. I had surgery many, many years ago and I am living a wonderfully productive life, which was not the case before transition. I wnt through so many relationships, including four marriages, always thinking the "next one" would be the "answer". I never intentionally hurt anyone, but hurt them I did. It was MY fault, not theirs. I completely understand why a woman who was married to a "man", and that "man" turned out to be a woman, would not want to continue the relationship. I know that I am a woman and if I met and fell in love with a man...and that man turned out to be a woman suffering with transsexualism; I would be devastated. I really don't think I could handle it and would probably terminate the relationship.

Terri

I understand how you feel and how frustrating it is to try to live your own life when all these "fortunate" folks are thrown in your face. Life is not the same for everyone and some people have privledges that others dont. The sad truth is that most transexul women cant afford the surgeries they need or want. The ones you see on most sites have had a lot of help or were allready pretty well off before they transitioned. The rest of us... well, we just have to do the best we can. Sometimes we have to choose between eating or paying rent and getting hormones that month. Its not fair, but theres not much we can do about it except live our lives the best way we know how. We have to find a little comfort in our day to day lives and know that at the very least we are being true to ourselves.

Tif

Thank you, your comment it did go through on my site. I came across this whole thing rather by accident. The possibilities scare the hell out of me and the best way I know to shine a light on the topic is to bring it to the public eye any way I can. I guess time will tell.

I'm the biologist (who also blogs at The Next Hurrah) who's been doing some of the debunking of this story that Jim links to above. I'm not connected to the research in any way at all (it's not even my field), I just had to step in because I hate seeing science -- and especially individual scientists, and their families -- being attacked with lies for political gain.

Arlene, the question you raise (and that Kimberly raises in the post above) is basically an "is it possible" question, and frankly I don't know if that will ever be possible -- it's not possible now, in humans or sheep, and this research is not designed to make it possible -- but if it were someday possible, it could be used for real evil if good policy wasn't put in place.

I think the posts here & on your site (I tried to comment there, Arlene, but I don't think it went through) have been excellent. It is way past time to talk about the ethical implications of being able to manipulate our own identities, and our sexualities.

But right now the conversation is in a weird place, because it started off based on PETA's lies last August, and is still trapped with this focus on Roselli's work (there's a lot of other research on the biological basis of sexual behavior that's considerably farther along) and with the facts all wrong (they can't make gay sheep straight, they can't detect gayness in the womb, and they aren't trying to cure gayness in humans).

I'm hoping we can get the science straight so the really good ethical questions that have been brought up can be talked about honestly. There's a lot of other sexuality research that anyone who cares about this topic really ought to be thinking about (I go over some of it here http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2006/09/peta_crosses_th.html and also at the link Jim posted above).

Here is a quote from the Times UK 12/31/06:

Potentially, the techniques could one day be adapted for human use, with doctors perhaps being able to offer parents pre-natal tests to determine the likely sexuality of offspring or a hormonal treatment to change the orientation of a child.

Let me ask you Jim is that true?