My Transgender Life: Choices
Life is full of choices!

Sometimes I struggle to decide whether I think this is a cliché or just a fact of life. I know that there are certain facts that are not choices. I believe that knowing our identity as one of them. I do subscribe to the following:

We do not have a choice in being transgender.
We do have a choice in what we do about it.

Whenever I think about all the choices I have made in my life — getting married, having kids and ultimately transitioning, I always wrestled with the choices in front of me. Which path should I take? What are the pros; the cons? Am I being selfish? Will someone get hurt? So many voices inside of me are arguing for each position it is often hard to be living in my own head! I constantly wondered why in the world are they doing that?

There have been so many times have I been faced with life changing choices. None of them were easy; as I let all those inner voices have their say. For most of those choices I sat without any movement for a long, long time before I took any action at all.

I suspect that almost everyone has seen the movie The Matrix. I marveled at how quickly Neo chose the Red Pill in the classic scene and was willing to go down the rabbit hole. It took me over five decades to be willing to go down my own rabbit hole to chase my Truth!

…

After my marriage ended in 2001, I was again single and wrestled with so many choices about my life. Deep down inside I knew that I was transgender but not another soul in the world knew of my inner struggle. My body and brain were still waging the war they have done for decade upon decade. My body had “needs!” You know what I mean. I got horny, I got turned on by women or thoughts of women. I needed release, pleasure it is called. I needed to reach that rolling alignment of neurons firing in unison as it travelled through my body and culminated in that release all of which we call orgasm. My body needed it, demanded it! Then there were parts of my mind that took over with the pangs of guilt and telling me it was so wrong as I was not really a man!

It did not matter whether I was with a partner or by myself, my body demanded that its needs were fulfilled. I was in my mid 50’s and finding it harder and harder to give the body what it wanted as it was struggling to get the release it desired.

Every night after work, my apartment was my big closet where the man disappeared and the woman appeared and dreamt that someday she would be real. It was her version of Pinocchio, as she wanted to be a “real girl!”

The war continued; my body wanted sex and pleasure, my mind wanted to live her truth. Like Neo in the Matrix I had to choose between pills, although they were both blue ones. One pill would allow the body to get what it desired, or as Neo was offered to wake up in my bed and believe what ever I wanted to believe.

The choice for the body

The other pill, would undoubtedly allow me to stay in Wonderland and take me down the rabbit hole deeper and deeper with no way to return.

Estradiol, 2MG
The choice for the mind

There was no voice like Morpheus within me to ever tell me it was my last chance to choose. I knew that the first choice was the easy one, but yet even when I chose it, the inner battle continued. The voices in my head to choose the rabbit hole were getting louder and stronger, even though the voices expressing fear and uncertainty were just as loud. In January 2010, I chose to go down the rabbit hole and find my truth.

…

I have made many choices in my life. Some turned out well and some were less successful. One choice in my life was to seek and follow my truth. It really does matter that it took me so many years before I did this. I never look back; I never ask that useless “what if” question. The fact that I always knew my truth but spent so much of my life denying it and letting my body have its needs fulfilled and listen to the voices of fear and shame are all in the past. I am happy to share them now because I know that although my own specific journey is unique, there are many others on journeys with variations on this theme and it is so hard to talk about our internal wars between our bodies and our minds when we are transgender.

For me, the trip down the rabbit hole is one that I am so happy to be taking as I go deeper and deeper into my truth. By body and mind are both at peace as they travel as partners along my adventures in my own Wonderland of just discovering and being me in each moment.

I have chatted with many friends how challenging these choices are as all the voices in their heads argue endlessly and get stuck. I have been there and know what that feels like, and I never can tell anyone how to choose his or her path. My own experience has allowed me to reflect that my body never really knew or cared about my mind’s truth, but over time, my mind’s dreams have outlasted my body’s perceived needs. This is just my story, and may not be true for anyone else.

I can only repeat what Morpheus told Neo –

“All I can offer is the Truth. Nothing More.”

If you seek yours, it will be yours and yours only!

…

A big thank you to Lana W for helping create the world of the Matrix and teaching us all about these choices.

###

Grace Stevens is a transgender woman who transitioned at the age of 64 and holds a Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology. She is a father of three, grandparent of two, athlete, advocate and author of No! Maybe? Yes! Living My Truth, an intimate memoir of her personal struggle to transition and live her true life authentically as a woman. Grace is available for speaking about authentic living with Living on-TRACK, and Gender Variance Education and Training. Visit her website at: www.graceannestevens.com/ to see all her blogs and interviews. Follow Grace on Twitter: www.twitter.com/graceonboard .

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Sharon Osbourne defends Rosie O’Donnell after daughter’s ‘heartbreaking’ betrayal

Sharon Osbourne is speaking out passionately in defense of Rosie O’Donnell whose daughter complained in a recent interview that O’Donnell smokes pot, has a short fuse and delegates a lot of her parental duties up to nannies.

‘It’s just one of those ugly, horrible situations – the heartbreak that Rosie must be going through,’ Osbourne said on The Talk, the daytime show on which she is a co-host. ‘These arguments, it’s horrible when they go public.’

Chelsea O’Donnell, 18, made headlines over the summer when O’Donnell took to social media to report her missing and that she had stopped taking medication for an undisclosed mental illness.

The teen is one of O’Donnell’s five adopted children and last month left O’Donnell’s home in New York. Last week, she gave an interview to Daily Mail Online detailing a host of complaints about her famous mother.

Among the most damaging allegations the daughter makes are that O’Donnell lied to her about being born to a heroin-addicted mother and falsely claimed the teen is mentally ill.

Said Osbourne: Rosie took Chelsea in, loved her, took care of her. She has a lot of children and she has a career so she has nannies. I had nannies all the time … my kids could have said “I was raised by nannies.” That’s the way it is in our house, you take the good with the bad. A working mom.’

‘I’m sure that Rosie did the best that she could do to be a mother, you can only do your best. And as far as Rosie not giving her financial support – neither would I. Not after her behavior. I just would not do it’

The post Sharon Osbourne defends Rosie O’Donnell after daughter’s ‘heartbreaking’ betrayal appeared first on Gay Star News.

Greg Hernandez

www.gaystarnews.com/article/sharon-osbourne-defends-rosie-odonnell-after-daughters-heartbreaking-betrayal/

YouTuber Trevor Moran Busts Out Of The Closet

Remember those videos of a highly energetic kid dancing around to various tunes in an Apple store? If you were on the internet 4-5 years ago, they were hard to miss.

Well that precocious little boy is now a slightly older boy, and in case there was any confusion (there wasn’t), he’s gay!

Moran released an official coming out on his YouTube channel of nearly a million subscribers, in which he acknowledges that most of his fans probably already knew.

But still, it’s a good feeling to speak the truth:

A few days before the announcement, 17-year-old Trevor put out a music video for his song “I Wanna Fly.” It includes some tender moments between Trevor and another boy, who are both held captive by some nefarious group of kidnappers/breeders?

To be honest, we have no idea what’s going on here:

You also might remember Trevor’s X Factor audition, in which he stunned judges, particularly blowing Britney’s mind, with a cover of LMFAO’s insufferable “I’m Sexy And I Know It.”

Dan Tracer

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/F0_1rY1ve8Q/youtuber-trevor-moran-busts-out-of-the-closet-20151012

Todrick Hall Parodies ‘Hocus Pocus’ in Comic Short ‘Hocus Broke-Us’ – WATCH

Fans of the Sanderson sisters and Todrick Hall will be bewitched by Hall’s latest comic parody, Hocus Broke-us, that updates the story of our three favorite witches from Sale–with a twist. Imagined as a trailer for a sequel to Hocus Pocus, the short begins with a moviephone-esque announcer declaring, “After 22 years on their underworld tour, the Sanderson sisters are black–I mean, they’re back.”

The video takes on many of the original film’s more famous moments and characters, including the Sanderson Sisters singing “I Put a Spell on You”, an incident involving a vacuum cleaner (now reimagined as a hover board), and a meeting with the devil (originally played by Gary Marshall, here presented in a slightly, er, more carnal form).

Watch Todrick take on the ladies of Salem, below:

The post Todrick Hall Parodies ‘Hocus Pocus’ in Comic Short ‘Hocus Broke-Us’ – WATCH appeared first on Towleroad.

Sean Mandell

Todrick Hall Parodies ‘Hocus Pocus’ in Comic Short ‘Hocus Broke-Us’ – WATCH

WATCH: Dallas LGBTs Rally in Response to Hate Crimes

Haters in Dallas might well be outnumbered: Turnout at an event on National Coming Out Day indicates mounting support for the victims of hate crimes in the Lone Star State’s third biggest city. 

About 100 people responded to a posting on Facebook to show up at the Legacy of Love Monument Sunday night, and stood in solidarity with Dallas’s LGBT population, reports The Dallas Morning News. 

The rally was organized by Daniel Cates, who billed it as “We Are Not Afraid: LGBTQ Response to Hate.” The demonstration followed three attacks in recent weeks in and around the Oak Lawn neighborhood. 

“There are those out there who want to send a message,” Cates told the crowd. “And they want to send it so badly that they’re willing to cause us physical harm, to scare us back into our closets and to make us afraid.”

People at the gathering waved rainbow flags, and some embraced Michael Dominguez, who is recovering from a recent attack that occurred as he walked home from a gay nightclub, Station 4.

On October 2, Dominguez, 32, was knocked unconscious and stabbed in the eye, behind the ear, and on his side. “I don’t know how else to explain it other than that somebody has hate in their heart obviously to do this to somebody else,” he said, and encouraged those in attendance to speak out against hate.

“As a community we have a history of minding our own business. If something happens [we say] it comes with the territory, it comes with being gay, that’s what we’re risking,” he said. “I don’t think that should be the case.”

The only one of several recent LGBT attacks in the area to be labeled a hate crime by police occurred in the Love Field neighborhood September 20, following the Pride Festival, when four men attacked a man and beat him with a baseball bat while yelling antigay slurs.

In July the severely decomposed body of a transgender woman was found in a field near Stemmons Freeway. The woman, Shade Schuler, had been shot to death, as The Advocate previously reported.

Watch Dallas TV station KXAS’s report on the rally, below.

Dawn Ennis

www.advocate.com/crime/2015/10/12/watch-dallas-lgbts-rally-response-hate-crimes

Rapper Mykki Blanco Opens Up About Coming Out As HIV-Positive

Mykki Blanco is a rapper and performance artist who is known to his thousands of fans as a gender-bending rebel, someone who is unafraid to be himself and push boundaries in an industry that often demands conformity.

A music video for one of his early songs, “Wavvy,” went viral, racking up over 1.5 million views to date, because it exemplifies this ethos. In the 2012 clip, Blanco raps as two different characters: the first, a shirtless thug trying to evade police capture; the second, a fabulous wigged and lipsticked entertainer singing in a posh nightclub.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Open Question: Pupils dilate?
my pupils got dilated when i saw gay porn (only watched it nothing more). It didnt get huge or big enough to call dilated but i appeared to have gotten bigger (maybe my imagination) but there was a lot of dark things in the background so the reflection might’ve made me think it was bigger than it really was. I was very anxious at the time and sleep deprived. I watched straight porn and my pupils got bigger (once again slight) a few times but stayed the same most times. I didnt feel arousal at the gay porn which i have seen many times due to my hocd. The last retard i talked to said hocd isnt real but she clearly had a reason to lie (she was LGBT) . Again my pupils dont get huge only a bit bigger please help i did the experiment in a dim lit (kind of dark) room then in a well lit room in the well lit room it didnt dilate at all in the well lit room at either of the videos. in the dim room it got slightly bigger but i think it was the dark things behind me which reflected into my eyes and looked like my pupils. Could i be latently gay. i feel disgust at gay porn and dont at all want to be in a relationship psyhical or emotional with a guy

answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20151012093413AA8A3gn

Raven-Symone now sorry for her ‘lack of empathy towards name discrimination’

Raven-Symone, under fire for saying on The View that she would discriminate against someone with a ‘ghetto’ name, is clarifying remarks that even her own father publicly knocked her for.

‘My comment was in poor taste,’ she said in a Facebook post late Sunday. ‘My lack of empathy towards name discrimination was uncalled for.’

The former child star made her remarks last week during a conversation with her fellow co-hosts about new study released in the Journal of Evolution and Human Behavior.

She said if she were an employer looking to make a hire, she would not consider any names that sounded too ethnic.

‘I’m not about to hire you if your name is Watermelondrea,’ she said. ‘It’s just not going to happen. I’m not going to hire you.’

She now says: ‘My comments about discrimination have spun out of control. I’d like to begin by saying that I was not attacking a specific race, but repeating a name that was said in a viral video which has received over 2 million likes.

I have been denied many jobs because of my skin color, body size, and age. Each time I was rejected, my self esteem was negatively effected, so empathize with those who feel victimized by what I said. We would hope that when it comes to hiring, our names, physical appearance, sexual orientation, and age would never outweigh our qualifications, but often times, they do, that’s the truth and it sucks. But I should not be part of the problem, I should be part of the solution.’

She had received widespread criticism for her remarks – even from her own father who called it an ‘inexcusable gaffe.’

‘She’s a grown ass woman making grown ass mistakes,’ Christopher B. Pearman wrote in a Facebook post over the weekend. ‘We all have been guilty of this.’

‘Raven is a really Beautiful, Sweethearted, Human Being.I should know. Her Mother and I Love her Very much and will always support her and have her back. Even if sometimes……….she says some dumb S#%T!’

The post Raven-Symone now sorry for her ‘lack of empathy towards name discrimination’ appeared first on Gay Star News.

Greg Hernandez

www.gaystarnews.com/article/raven-symone-now-sorry-for-her-lack-of-empathy-towards-name-discrimination/

New Gay Web Sitcom ‘Boy Toys’ Looks at the Absurd Side of Life and Love in LA: WATCH

Comedian Brian Jordan Alvarez has just released the first episode of his new comic web series, Boy Toys and it’s as absurd as you might hope.

A half-hour scripted sitcom, Boy Toys follows go-go dancer Ivan (Alvarez) as he deals with a breakup and welcomes an old friend from high school, Frankie (played by series co-creator Brad Wergley), back into his life as his new roommate. Frankie is an all around ‘newbie’–new to LA and new to dating, or rather, sleeping with men. As Frankie, Wergley is the cute and spunky ‘straight man’ to Alvarez’s dry-witted but razor-tongued Ivan. One liners fly by so frequently you’ll have to pause and replay.

The show paints LA and its gay scene in broad strokes (“You’re in LA now, you’ve gotta learn how to lie”) that will doubtless be familiar to its denizens.

Comedian Jimmy Fowlie also shows up as Ivan’s confidante, Jeremy–who has something of a drinking problem.

5 more episodes are slated to be released in the coming weeks. Check back HERE for all the latest episodes! And watch the first episode below:

The post New Gay Web Sitcom ‘Boy Toys’ Looks at the Absurd Side of Life and Love in LA: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad.

Sean Mandell

New Gay Web Sitcom ‘Boy Toys’ Looks at the Absurd Side of Life and Love in LA: WATCH

'Bring Your Own Body' Exhibit At Cooper Union Showcases Transgender Artists

A new exhibit is on display at The Cooper Union in New York City that brings together the work of transgender artists and the famed Kinsey Archives.

Called “Bring Your Own Body: Transgender Between Archives & Aesthetics,” the event is curated by Jeanne Vaccaro, a postdoctoral fellow in gender studies at Indiana University and a scholar at the Kinsey Institute, and Stamatina Gregory, associate dean of the School of Art at The Cooper Union. It opens Oct. 14 is slated to run through Nov. 14.

According to a press release, the “the exhibit historicizes the sexological and cultural imaginary of transgender through a curatorial exploration of the Kinsey Archives and the burgeoning movements for transgender expression from the turn of the 20^th century.”

The list of artists associated with “Bring Your Own Body” is extensive and includes Justin Vivian Bond, Flawless Sabrina, Juliana Huxtable, Chris Vargas and Zackary Drucker, among others.

The Huffington Post chatted with Vaccaro and Gregory this week about their vision for “Bring Your Own Body” and the narrative being constructed through their curatorial work.

The Huffington Post: What was the overarching concept for “Bring Your Own Body”?

Jeanne Vaccaro: The exhibit explores the way transgender identity is formed between an archive and an aesthetic. In other words, between an official history or record and the performative and artistic; between what is decreed by doctors, psychiatrists, and legislators, and what is experienced and lived. The space between is the space of power relations in tension and in movement.  

Stamatina Gregory: Mounting this exhibition at the School of Art at the Cooper Union is important because we want to expand the art historical canon and foreground themes of pedagogy and politics. For a small art school we have a group of committed queer and trans students inviting artists and creating programs. For example, inviting Dark Matter to campus. Juliana Huxtable, who is giving a reading for the exhibition, is also doing studio visits with students. Our students in the School of Art have a critical interest in the intersections of art-making and social justice, and they take tremendous initiative in bringing artists and creating dialogues here. Our hope is that this project and our programming add to the conversations that are already happening at Cooper.

Vaccaro: We are not interested in offering definitions as a whole, and in fact to do so when it comes to any identity is dangerous. We wanted to present a modern history of transgender using archival collections, but it isn’t possible to exhibit that kind of material without feeling the violent weight of sexological and diagnostic histories and their continued reverberations in foreclosing transgender subjectivity. In order to exhibit that material we had to do so in dialogue with contemporary art and world making efforts by transgender and genderqueer artists.

What do you feel like this exhibit contributes to the increasingly mainstream conversation about gender identity? 

Vaccaro: It certainly complicates the mainstream narrative and illustrates not just the multiplicity of transgender identities but the many forms of expression those identities take. Popular media representation often contributes to a pathological and medicalized view of trans experience. With art and performance we can show another side of the story — including the rage of confronting misrepresentation in the media.

Gregory: The historical materials we are exhibiting from the archives of the Kinsey Institute and the University of Victoria Transgender Archives demonstrate the origins of transgender in American midcentury sexology, which is something the mainstream public has very little awareness of. Photography, correspondence, drawings, ephemera, and printed matter culled from the archives highlight the intersection of historical taxonomy and lived experience. Transgender is neither new nor finished, despite recent and unprecedented visibility in popular media. In fact, a return to the archive offers a critical historical perspective. Police mug shots of transgender women of color imprisoned in the 1960s for sex work and female impersonation highlight the ethical and long overdue need for an intersectional and abolitionist transgender movement. Many parallels can be drawn between the sensational media coverage of Caitlyn Jenner and the New York Daily News headline of Dec. 1, 1952 proclaiming “Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty: Operations Transform Bronx Youth.” Christine Jorgensen in fact intersected with Alfred Kinsey himself, visiting the Institute in 1953 so he could take her sex history.

How did you pick these artists?

Vaccaro: Selecting artists was a near impossible task, especially as the list of talented and visionary transgender artists is an expansive one. Ultimately we made selections based on several factors, one key one being the artist’s relation to an archive. In many cases this was explicit, as in the case of Chris Vargas, who we commissioned to make a new work using materials from a research visit to the Kinsey archives. Under the rubric of his “imaginary” Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art, he has created a takeaway collage and digital projection exploring the news media headlines about gender transformation from the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s and on, based on the scrapbooks of Louise Lawrence. This new work performatively harnesses and plays with an inherited set of representations and found objects. Of his experience in the archives Vargas said, “I was struck by how the sensational approach to gender identity has not shifted significantly over the past 60 years. I was excited to work with the scrapbooks of self-identified transsexual Louise Lawrence who had a generous relationship and intellectual exchange with Alfred Kinsey about the evolving notions of gender in the mid-century.”

Gregory: We also felt it was necessary to draw attention to an artistic legacy and to an art historical through line from artists such as Genesis Breyer P Orridge and Vaginal Davis to, for example, downtown performer, artist and activist Chloe Dzubilo (1960-2011). Flawless Sabrina and Zackary Drucker have strong ties to one another. The work of young artists Mark Aguhar (1987-2012) and Effy Beth (1989-2014), both tragically no longer with us, were galvanizing for so many queer and trans people on digital platforms like Tumblr in the U.S. and South America, and we were privileged to have the blessing of their families to exhibit their work and continue to share it with a wider audience.

What do you want viewers to take away from “Bring Your Own Body”?

Vaccaro: While the exhibition gathers work under an expanded umbrella of transgender, it does so without identitarian claims. In that way, and in many others, B.Y.O.B. seeks to pose more questions than it does answers. That can be said of most “good art,” and it can certainly be said of identity. Of course, we hope people learn from the work, but most importantly — and in the face of the crisis of violence facing trans people — we want to create a space to celebrate the visionary and imaginative spirit of transgender liberation.

“Bring Your Own Body” is on display at The Cooper Union from Oct. 14 through Nov. 14. Head here for more information.

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