Don't Tell Me NO!

So there is this little quirk in my personality you see.  Don't tell me NO when it is something I want or want to do.

I love music.  All genres..... well except for cRAP....   I auditioned for the Seattle Women's Chorus last March, but did not get accepted.  Not because I cannot hold a note or pitch.  But because my vocal range was too low for the Women's Chorus..... DUH..... Last I sang in a chorus I was a Bass.  I was asked to Hit C above middle C.  Ummmmm........ that's like 2 plus octaves above my normal range.

So seriously.  Why try?  I mean it's only something you love, music and singing.  I remember when my Aunt from England came to visit, my mom's oldest sibling.  I was probably 12 at the time and remember my mom and Aunt in the kitchen preparing a meal or cleaning dishes, all the while singing together the songs from their youth.  It was beautiful.  They constantly sang with each other.  Then mom got me involved in the church choir while in grade school and I sang all through High School and added being part of a small folk group that sang when the church created a Saturday evening mass.

Why Try?  I mean you are a trans woman.  You are looked at funny.  You hear the snickers and whispers as you walk down the street.  You even get outright demeaning comments flung in your face.  But yet you still hold your head up and walk through life being the best person you can.  Hopefully changing the thoughts and minds of what and who you and your other transgender  brothers and sisters are.  And despite all that, you love life and living it to the fullest.

Why Try?  After being denied the opportunity to sing, you decide to volunteer for the Women's Chorus.  You check in each woman singer at each rehearsal.  150 or so each week you get to greet with a welcoming smile, while inside you yearn to be with them practicing and singing.  They ask why you aren't singing.  You make it light and joke about 40 years of testosterone coursing through your veins and how you don't know if it is possible to raise your vocal range to the level expected.  You deflect the rejection and feeling of self humiliation with sarcastic humor.  Yet they embrace you.  They smile and encourage you.  They welcome you.  How amazing to be genuinely accepted as one of the girls.

Why Try?  When the call is made for those that want to dance during the title song of the upcoming performance, you audition to be part of the dance ensemble for the next performance.  Talent in this group of women is abundant.  What are you doing trying to be a part of this?  You have never done something like this before.  You are still learning the ways of your womanhood each day.  Yet you are accepted and in some small way you are getting to be a part of this thing that is bigger than yourself.

Why try?  The next audition was schedule for Sunday.  You have decided you are not going to audition.  You have practiced scales for 2-3 days a week since last March,  But still only feel comfortable hitting D or E above middle C.  Why go through the humiliation of trying to hit higher notes that sound like fingernails on a chalk board?  On the Tuesday before, you are checking the women in as usual at rehearsal.  You stand at the back and just watch and listen to how the songs have come together.  The voices in such beautiful harmony.  The sound is beautiful.  Your heart aches to be a part of this talented group of women.  The emotion you feel creates a huge lump in your chest and throat.  Pffftttt......... Stop it.  It's just estrogen overload, as great as that is....

The rehearsal ends and you decide to just see if there are any open slots for auditioning on Sunday.  Really there won't be.  They fill up weeks before. So it's safe to ask because there won't be a slot available, except that there is.  Ummm...... Ok........ You feel the tears welling up, yet you say "Sign me up!"

Why try?  Oh well, just go and see where you are at.  You know the players now.  What can it hurt?  You still won't have a vocal range high enough.  So take the latter part of your day Sunday and get ready, drive to Seattle, enter into the building the audition will be held in.  Again you are warmly welcomed by the women there.  It is now your time to sing.

Why Try?  You enter the room apprehensively, yet try and be confident and joke that you should not have told me NO last time, because in the words of the Terminator, "Awl Be Baaaach!!!!"  So begins the audition.  Take you to your lower range.  Done with confidence and control and it is quite funny to see this outward vision of a woman hit notes low, low, lower still.  Low enough that Barry White would be proud.  They stop at a B an octave below middle C.  You could have gone lower.  Your sick sense of humor finds it funny that this voice comes from this outward projection of a woman.

Why Try?  Now you have to go up.  Running the scales higher and higher.  You reach middle C yet hit it spot on.  You start to feel the strain as the next scales up are played and you sing.  Finally at a B flat above middle C you have a slight crack and you feel how strained your voice is.  That's it you declare.  Any higher and it will not sound pretty at all.

So you listen to some advice and think well, yea..... ok.  And you express appreciation for letting you audition again, and regret for possibly wasting their time.  You will be informed of the decision the next day, as you watch the exaggerated winks of his right eye with a smile as you are told good job.  That lump from last Tuesday is back in your chest and throat and you feel your eyes moistening up as you try not to let the huge tears flow.  Stay composed when you want to run out in the middle of the busy street next to the building and whoop and holler and jump up and down.  You Made it!!!

So, Why Try?  "Being real" with yourself just tells you that it isn't going to happen.  Your voice can never be in the right range.  That it is a silly, silly dream to think you could be a part of such a nationally known and respected choral group.  A group that combined with the Men's Chorus is like the 2nd largest in the country.  Why humble yourself and risk your ego being carved up and splattered on the ground?

Why Try?  Because great things can happen if you do.  Whatever the mind can conceive and believe it CAN achieve.  I live that everyday being the outward expression of the true person that has always been inside me, aching to be shown to the world.  My mind conceived that thought decades ago about being true to the woman that resonated inside.

Did I fail?  Do I fail daily?  A big HELL YES I do!  So what!  If you aren't willing to humble yourself and risk the failure then it wasn't that important to you.  The risk of transitioning my gender was huge.  I could have lost everything and everyone important to me.  Yet I had to.  The risk was huge.  The reward has been so much greater.

Why Try?  Because you may have just given up the chance to be part of something great.  Something bigger than yourself.

I do not write this to say look at me, look at me.  I write this to say "Look at you.  Look long, hard and deep inside you."  What does your heart and soul yearn for?  Will you achieve every time? A Big nope.

WHY TRY?  Because if you don't, you most assuredly will miss out!  I hope you will risk failing, risk everything you hold sacred in your life to achieve what your heart calls for you to do.

Or in those immortal words from the wise Yoda.  "DO or DO NOT.  There is no TRY!

Crossing the Threshold: LGBTQA Stories of Spirit

On Friday July 11th, as part of the Tacoma Pride Festival's event on convergence of spiritual Faith and being LGBTQA, I was one of 6 story tellers to share our own journeys of how our faith or religion intersected with our identities or orientations.  Growing up in the Catholic Church and attending Catholic grade school and high school, my faith had to be reconciled before I knew I could, would and should transition.  I hope you can take something away from my perspective of how my faith influenced my transition as a transgender female.

TransGenitals

I knew I was in for trouble or, another head shaking moment, when the message I receive on Social Media tonight started with......

"Hello. I'm not hitting on you and mean no disrespect......"

Rut Roh......!  Do I read on?   It's almost like a car accident.  You really don't need to look,  you don't want to look, yet you have to look.  I wanted to find the delete button but my eyes betrayed me.  They began to scan the words that followed.  Thus continued a message in the form of which I am, unfortunately, all to familiar and receive far too often.

.....I just wondered how the final surgury (sic) went and what your new girl parts look like and how yours compares to natural lady parts. So sorry to be a pain! Have a great day and great luck to you...and you look fantastic!!! I'm John

First comes the deep sigh!  In this case followed by my head gently shaking back and forth.  In light of the media faux pas earlier this year with Katie Couric and Peirs Morgan and their less than spectacular interviewing questions, you would think more people would get it.  Sadly, those that continue to send me these questions must all lack Cable TV.  Or perhaps their channels do not go beyond ESPN or Fox Sports1 or Comedy Network.  But wait, they have a computer.  Their message came through social media, thus they must have computing skills.  Surely they read news online.  Or have seen the news reports, blog posts and general discussions on the asking of this subject.  Sadly it appears John and far too many others haven't.

Well. my new friend John, you have just picked the evening upon which I am going to use you and your incredibly insensitive and repulsive questioning to educate........

So, John, I mean no disrespect and am sorry to be a pain, but......... :-)

First, by starting out by saying you are "not hitting on me and mean no disrespect", you do nothing to change the nature and offensiveness of the words you choose that follow.  And ending with "Sorry to be a pain" stinks like stale salmon and conveys "I just asked a couple incredibly insensitive questions, but by following up with this ending, makes it all OK".  And adding such a statement after asking these questions screams to me that you really don't care if these questions are improper, disrespectful or even hurtful.  Oh my new friend, how wrong you are.

Questioning me or any person for that matter, on the subject of their genitals is very dehumanizing and objectifies myself and all other transgender persons.  It is this objectification that leads to society believing it is OK for persons such as myself to be assaulted, beaten and even killed on a daily basis.  It contributes to the fact that 41% of all transgender people either attempt or succeed at suicide.

I have not yet, nor do I intend to, ask you about your genitals.  I wouldn't dare ask if you measure up and beyond the length of the high heels I wear daily.  They are generally 3.5" to 4" by the way.  Would you ask your mother, sister, daughter, other female friend how their hysterectomy has affected the outer appearance of their genitals?  If you wouldn't ask these women such questions, whom you know well and are related to, how in any sane world could you make the first message to me be questions solely about the status of what is or isn't under my clothes AND how they look.

You also make an assumption I have had some kind of surgery.  Maybe I have, maybe I haven't.  It really is irrelevant to you.  Even if we were starting to develop a relationship, which I can guaran-damn-tee you will not be happening, it would still be irrelevant until the relationship reach a stage that I may choose, and it would be MY choice, to be intimate with you.

If you are curious about transgender surgery and how the end results work and look, I am going to recommend an incredibly new invention.  The great, all knowing Google or Bing Machines.  They can provide you with a wealth of knowledge and yes, even pictures, of how the anatomy looks after surgery.  But if reading seems too much work, here is a helpful and simple flow chart for you.

Wait now.  Don't leave me yet.  There is one more set of words you used that need reviewing.  You asked how mine compare to "natural lady parts".  Am I to assume you do not believe me to be a "natural lady"?  And this belief is determined by what you think my original factory equipment was or wasn't?  That is what defines a complete and whole person to you?  Their Genitals?  That is what defines a "natural woman" to you?

Well I could make the assumption you identify yourself entirely by the parts contained in your pants. However in my case, and pretty much every person I have ever met or interacted with, their identity as a person, their person-hood if you will, comes from within their mind, their soul if you are of such a spiritual persuasion.  It comes from that place in our hearts where we hold securely our hopes and dreams and vision of who the person is we present to the world each day.  That is a persons gender.  And there is a whole wide array of gender identities beyond simple male or female, feminine or masculine.  If you want to define the totality of a person based solely on the sex characteristics of their body, then you reduce the uniqueness of people to nothing more than a body part.

I could also point you to an earlier post of mine Mystique Of A Natural Born Woman... which provides even more thoughts on what makes a "Natural Woman".

I will conclude by saying I am very open about who I am and my history and experiences as a human being.  Your message however strips me and others down to being nothing more than meat hanging on a butchers hook.  I am a person.  I have feelings.  I have dreams and goals and desires like all people.  Like all people we also long for friendship and companionship.  Through your questions you perpetuate the Jerry Springer freak stereotype in society which reduces all transgender people to a lower class of people not deserving of the same love and respect that, in truth, we all deserve and crave.  If you were introduced to a woman in a social setting and you wouldn't dream of your first questions to her being about how her genitals look, then don't ever again send a message such as the one you did to myself or any other transgender person.

So thank you John.  Even though you are not the first, not even the first this month, to ask me questions of this nature, I appreciate your sending me a message on this night.  A night when you touched off the need within me to write this bit of education for yourself and others.  And.......

........ "I am sorry to have been such a pain and meant no disrespect"!!