Post #356, but we are discussing Caitlyn and not Helen Mirren. Oh I noticed my iPad changed to “Mirrens” immediately, so I think iPad misspelled it. I also used auto correction on my post.
My iPhone autocorrects my name to something else. Embarrassing when people think I can’t spell my own name.
@busdriver11, OT, but if you go to Settings/Keyboard/Shortcuts and add your name, iCorrect will stop changing it. ETA: handy for all sorts of things besides your name.
Thanks, Bob. I just did that, hopefully it will work. Maybe I can put in all the obscenities that I like to use, that my phone autocorrects into something else, too 
I think it’s great, especially to show to people who claim that nobody pays attention to the lives of ordinary trans people. I know four or five of the people who tell their stories there-- some of them for a decade or more – and they all seem glad to have done it. I even contemplated participating myself, but couldn’t get past my discomfort with the idea of being so publicly out about my history.
I think you’re probably introverted, aren’t you, Donna? I’m guessing that you are a private person, not a public one, and would not enjoy the cameras in your face. You probably wouldn’t care to talk about any subject in public, I’d surmise. If that’s correct, I am the same way. Can type all day, but nothing in front of a camera.
I can’t say it’s true of you, but I believe that a lot of those who are howling the most loudly (including the ones propagating the false rumor – see Snopes – that the “runnerup” was a disabled veteran who would otherwise have received the award) never cared in the least about this award until Caitlyn Jenner was slated to receive it, and/or are are the exact same kind of people who used to vilify Arthur Ashe himself for his political activism. And, because of the disease from which he suffered, falsely assumed that he must have been gay.
If anyone thinks that it doesn’t take courage to come out publicly as a trans woman, and transition, when you were once the symbolic “best male athlete in the world,” and therefore considered the epitome of masculine perfection, they’re kidding themselves. I couldn’t have done it. In retrospect, I sometimes can’t even believe that I finally got up the courage to come out to all my family and friends and to my employers, after so many years of having wanted to but being afraid. Yes, her money and celebrity insulate her from a lot of the economic consequences that many trans people face, and yes, she’s received a lot more public support than she would have if she’d transitioned 30 or even 20 years ago, but she’s not insulated from the still-enormous amount of vitriol and ridicule that’s out there, not to mention personal consequences. I don’t know a single trans person who hasn’t faced the loss of at least some friends and/or family upon transitioning. In my case, I lost no family and only a few friends, so I’m lucky.
I agree. I don’t know the first thing about that award; in fact, I’d never heard of it before. But I can’t imagine actually thinking that it would be easy to be Bruce Jenner and transition to Caitlyn, even with all of his advantages. Of course it required a tremendous amount of courage-witness the amount of time it took him to finally just come out with it already.
That NYT link is fascinating…the diversity eye-opening.
One of the most interesting trans persons I’ve ever read about is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Conway
MIT educated, computer science pioneer, husband and dad before the transition. Now married woman. Tremendous courage and class throughout. Posted this before, but it’s a great read:
http://articles.latimes.com/print/2000/nov/19/magazine/tm-54188
“I can’t say it’s true of you, but I believe that a lot of those who are howling the most loudly (including the ones propagating the false rumor – see Snopes – that the “runnerup” was a disabled veteran who would otherwise have received the award) never cared in the least about this award until Caitlyn Jenner was slated to receive it,”
AIn’t THAT the truth! ESPN can award whatever they like for whatever they like. It’s not the freakin’ Nobel Prize here.
@DonnaL , I am quite sure, this is probably one of the hardest things he has had to do. I can only imagine. I do think its quite courageous for him to live his truth, and as I said, I applaud him for that. However, it doesnt change my opinion that there were others more deserving, and I think ESPN is using this for ratings, which is not good.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I wish Jenner had waited a bit, due to the accident. It seems a bit much to be saluted, glammed up, and held up as a hero so soon after a woman lost her life due to your negligence.
Again, just my opinion, I wish him nothing but the best, and I hope he is now truly happy.
I actually pay attention to that award, and I believe there were more deserving candidates. However, there is no runner-up. ESPN chose Jenner, and it is certainly their right to do so. Jenner certainly showed courage and has opened up a lot of dialogue that, hopefully, will be beneficial to society.
The short answer to your question is yes, busdriver, very much so. It took several years after I was out of law school before I was able to appear in court without coming close to having an anxiety attack.
My God, you have a stressful job. That would be incredibly hard for an introvert to speak in the courtroom.
However, since sexual differentiation of the genitals takes place in the first two months of pregnancy and sexual differentiation of the brain starts in the second half of pregnancy, these two processes can be influenced independently, which may result in transsexuality. This also means that in the event of ambiguous sex at birth, the degree of masculinization of the genitals may not reflect the degree of masculinization of the brain. There is no proof that social environment after birth has an effect on gender identity or sexual orientation. Data on genetic and hormone independent influence on gender identity are presently divergent and do not provide convincing information about the underlying etiology.
There is no definitive answer, there are some who cling to the notion it is emotional trauma, have heard some things like m to f transwomen hate their fathers, all kinds of stuff like that, but there are clues in biology. With what we know of prenatal development, the physical and mental aspects of our being develop differently, and experiments with mamals (mice) have shown if you interrupt the hormone cycles, the offspring can end up gender variant in terms of the way they behave and act, male mice acting like a female, wanting to suckle baby mice, other studies have had genetically female mice acting agressive and wanting to mate as a male would. Dissections post mortem of transgender females and males have shown brain structures very much closer to non transgender women and men, so the clues are there. A lot of transgender people will tell you about knowing early on they were different, knew something wasn’t right, so whatever the root cause, it isn’t something that comes from years of exposure to environment or some such.
I can’t speak for why Caitlyn chose to do what she did, whether it is inner expression, or whether it is imitating the Kardashian clan’s way of expressing themselves. However, one thing that I have both seen and have read about is that often when transgender women first come out, first free themselves, however it is put, that there tends to be a period where they tend to go into the more feminine aspects of being a woman, with hair and sexy clothing and heels and heavy makeup and such (obviously, it totally depends on the person, there also are transgender women who seem to favor jeans or leggings and sweaters and such, from in transition first steps and after they are fully done with transition…). For those who wonder why, think about what young women go through, what happens in the teen years, where clothing suddenly becomes important, where they discover makeup and jewelry and so forth, where girls experiment with everything from goth looks to stuff designed to make parents cringe, there is a whole period of experimentation. It makes sense to me, transgender women were denied that, never had that, so it kind of makes sense that there is a tendency to want to go for the glam look, maybe a wee bit over the top when finding themselves. I don’t know what Caitlin will do once the hoopla has passed, once real life sets in, the transgender women I have known after a while settle into their lives and become like any other women, an acquaintance of mine from a church I belonged to (that happened to have a group of transgender women as members) when she was first heading towards going full time, insisted on the heels and hose and dresses and such, I had to laugh when a couple of years ago I ran into her, and she was dressed like a typical suburban mom (she has two teens, a boy and girl) and was complaining to me about the way her daughter wanted to dress smile.
Personally, given her background with the Kardashians, I wonder if whatever good she might think will come of doing the magazine spread, if it may not backfire a bit and be turned into what many are saying, on here and elsewhere, that it is a shameless attempt at publicity rather than trying to show who/what she is. My perspective isn’t so much she is doing it, rather it is the timing, I have no problem with someone doing a glam photo shoot, when Hellen Mirren or Susan Sarandon did their covers, they weren’t in the middle of the media circus of coming out as a celebrity. It is obviously her right to come out as she sees fit, it from everything I can tell is a very personal, very individual decision, some spend years building this safe world around themselves before coming out, others I have known kind of do it saying ‘to heck with it, this is me’, and all I can do is wish her luck. Personally, if she could survive being around the whole Kardashian clan for as long as she did, she must be pretty tough, I don’t know if I could stand more than 5 minutes in the same room with them.
http://www.bdcwire.com/caitlyn-jenner-facebook-post/
If you appreciate irony - read this linked article in full!
Huh! Very cool!!
@madison85-
Thanks for posting that, at least the person who made the original post realized the irony of it and the sadness of what happened to the guy who created the model. While I won’t doubt the heroism of those who serve in combat, the bravery and such (my dad was a WWII combat veteran, wounded multiple times, you name it) I also get a little tired with the idea that the words heroism, bravery or courage is only reserved for the military, that people cannot be brave in their own lives.
While to be honest I do feel a bit uncomfortable with the way some are portraying Caitlin and her decision to transition and be out there like this, I think some of the comments and praise are more than a bit overinflated, that doesn’t mean she cannot be seen as brave or heroic in some ways, especially by people who may be looking at her as some sort of role model, or as hope that maybe things will get better for them by changing attitudes, etc. Whether I agree with the way she is doing it or not, the fact is doing it in a public way, as a celebrity, takes courage, it takes bravery, and yes, I can see some seeing it as heroic. What bothers me about the original post is that somehow saying Caitlin is brave for doing what she did, or that the young woman who faced terminal cancer and decided to end her life on her own terms could be called courageous, somehow takes away from what people in the military have faced, that somehow it cheapens it, and it doesn’t, those attributes are simply that, attributes, and someone being brave and facing ridicule or worse doesn’t take away from the person who is in the military and facing danger. They aren’t the same dangers, they aren’t the same type of bravery, but it isn’t a zero sum game where if Caitlin is called brave, the kid who had his leg shot off saving a buddy in Afghanistan is less brave.
^ Right. Imo, that is.