Rev. Yolanda has made a video of her song Transcendence. The song is available now on a 3 song EP and it is part of the upcoming autobiographical musical The Church Of The Alien Love Child Presents: The Passion of Rev. Yolanda to be premiered Oct 11, and 12, 2018.
Award Winning Public Servant and Transgender advocate Karen Kendra Holmes shares her passion for helping others transition and to foster acceptance and support from those around them, and how life can be fulfilled by being true to oneself and to others. Karen educates others who are not transgender to foster understanding that she and others […]
Tasi Zuriack joins us today in departure from her normal fashion beat. Today she is blogging about her attempt to join a Facebook support group for transgender women over the age of 39. Tasi considers herself to be a transgender woman and she admits to being well over 39. But after she was initially approved for membership the group’s leader rejected her. Read her blog today and decide for yourself if it was a case of not being “trans enough” or if she wasn’t allowed in for some other reason.
Today our Youth View contributor M writes about how their dysphoria has changed during the past few years. The word dysphoria means an extreme discomfort or a feeling of unease. It has manifested differently for M over the years. For example when M was 14 their Adams Apple and chest caused deep feeling of discomfort for them. Now they sometimes feel the dysphoria centered on the chest but because, due to hormones, their chest is getting more feminine. Read all about M’s dysphoria in today’s Youth View.
As Claire moves forward into her new life as a woman she is buoyed by support from friends and associates. For the most part her circle has approved of the move she made. But she is also a public official and that means she is open to a wider range of criticism than a private citizen. Her friends said she shouldn’t read the comments on her Facebook page but she did. Was that a good idea? Give her newest blog entry a look.
Cheryl Ann “Cassie” Sanders had been a contributor to TGForum for several years in our previous incarnation and she has cleaned up some of her old contributions and is sharing them again with a new generation of TGF users. Today she writes about how there is a difference in the way she thinks about men from the way she thought about men before she became Cassie. You might say she has been of two minds on the subject of the attitudes and habits of men. See what she thinks, in both cases, in today’s column, Thinking “Softer” about Men . . . and Love.
The drug Amanda was taking to ease her anxiety started to seem as if it was giving her anxiety. To try and feel like herself again she stopped taking it and then the intense anxiety she that had made her go on the drug returned with a vengeance. She had been making plans to pack up and return to the east coast but this renewed anxiety made it hard to just get through a day, let alone plan a big move across the country. She started taking Lexapro but it’s been 17 days and she is not getting any relief from the anxious, debilitated-feeling that has her in its grip.
Claire writes today about meeting a controversial figure in the trans community. Caitlyn Jenner. Ms. Jenner arrived in the community when she came out at 64 with no ties to the community. She didn’t even know any transgender people. Then she made several mistakes that opened her up to attacks from some trans community members. Claire was aware of all that when Ms. Jenner came to her area for a college speech. Knowing some would not approve, Claire managed to meet Ms. Jenner and blogs about it today.
Cheryl Ann Sanders, a.k.a. Cassie, was a frequent contributor to Transgender Forum in the past. Back in the 1990s when TGForum featured and interactive bulletin board it bristled with challenges and responses. One of the challenges was to describe your first kiss as a woman. Cassie dips back into the past today to present her answer to that question and she challenges you to add your response in the comment area below.
Raquel and Mark, seemingly two parts of one person that became separated after drinking a strange potion, have been transported to another land, possibly another world. There they confront “the Magistrate” who is apparently responsible for their condition. In a house that is a duplicate of their childhood home Raquel meets her “mother” and then her “father.” Then she finds herself cast into darkness only to awaken in a horrid swamp confronted by a hideous creature with one eye. It’s Guug, an ogre who tries to protect her from wolves but the wolves attack and Guug is injured. Raquel is in serious peril! Is all lost? What will happen next? Read Chapter 21 of Metamorphosis.
The news is out! Our contributor Claire H. is now officially Claire Hall. She came out publicly in a big way by being featured in an article in The Oregonian. She is out at work and out to family and friends. Today Claire blogs about how it feels to be presenting herself to the world as her authentic self after years of hiding.
Cate O’Malley has been a contributors to TGForum since 2014. Her posts have brought us useful information, entertaining notions, and some chuckles now and then. This will be Cate’s last post on TGForum (unless she is inspired and has internet access) as she takes off to hit the road and travel the land. Many thanks to Cate for her contributions. She ends them today with a post on the necessity of helping senior members of the LGBTQ community. It’s a good idea as we’ll all be there someday.
Sophie talks about identity today. In the past she had defined herself according the various roles she played in her life. She was a loner, a Penn Stater, a frat guy, a husband, a drunk, and none of those roles really reflected her core identity. Then in 2008 her hidden inner identity burst out. For awhile the word “transgender” was what defined her. Read today’s blog and see how Sophie identifies today.
In around twenty nine days Claire will “go public” with her new gender presentation. She is excited to cast off the persona that was holding her down and anxious to enter the waters of women world. She has already come out to a few select people in her life and they are for the most part either supportive or indifferent. One of her female friends remarked that as much as Claire enjoyed the trappings of femininity that wasn’t what makes a woman a woman. Claire thought it over and shares her opinion on that in today’s blog post.
There is a saying that “the devil is in the details.” Sometimes no matter how much work you’ve put in some little detail will get overlooked and major problems will occur. For one trans woman just one lapse into inappropriate body language was enough to cause her a big hassle. Former TGF contributor Cassie Ann Sanders returns to TGForum with a new short fiction piece that illustrates how it’s the little things.
Autogynephilia is a term created by Dr. Ray Blanchard. It purports to be a motivation for males to go to great lengths, even gender reassignment surgery, so they can see themselves as women. Blanchard claims that this is sexually driven. That rather than seeing another human or some object as a sexual fetish the male who has autogynephilia becomes his own sexual fetish. Many in the transgender community vehemently object to this idea as it reduces their need to express themselves in their true gender to nothing more than a paraphilia. Dr. Dana Bevan is one who has scoffed at the theory. Today she scoffs again while revisiting the subject.
When you’re used to being treated a certain way it’s easy to forget that you are being given credit for you Caucasian maleness. Doors open for you and regard for your knowledge and skill in all areas is taken for granted. But what happens when you go from male to female? Doors may open for you but that’s because you’re a lady and gentlemen will grant you the favor of holding the door. But suddenly all the knowledge and skill you have in areas such as home repair, automobiles, and other stereo typically male interests is no longer acknowledged. The “little lady” must need help. See how Cate O’Malley handles patronizing men.
Kimberly writes about a time when she moved from the east coast to California. She was only dressing en femme part of the time and that time tended to be very early in the morning. Or late at night if you look at it from another view point. Everyday she would get up and get fully dressed in lady’s business attire. Then off she would go, out into the world. What did she do on these excursions? What adventures did she have? Read her blog post today and learn what she did and to what lengths she went to avoid discovery by her neighbors.
Raquel and Mark, seemingly two parts of one person that became separated after drinking a strange potion, have been transported to another land. They trek to the north to confront “the Magistrate” who is apparently responsible for their condition. In a house that is a duplicate of their childhood home Raquel meets her “mother” and then her “father.” Then she finds herself cast into darkness only to awaken in a horrid swamp confronted by a hideous creature with one eye. It tells her “Guug not eat you. Wolves eat you.” The wolves attack and Guug is injured. Raquel is in serious peril! What will happen next? Read Chapter 20 of Metamorphosis.
Many trans women are reluctant to express their true selves for many reasons. One reason looms over the others for some. While they may be average height for a male they are taller than the average female. This makes them reluctant to go forth into the world expressing their true gender. They feel that being over six feet (1.8288 meter) tall may draw negative attention to them. Today Claire H. talks about how her 6′ 1″ size made her feel she couldn’t ever be herself. Then she started to find other tall women to provide inspiration. One of them is Tula.
In today’s post Dana Bevan refutes the main points in the book “When Harry Became Sally.” The author of the book, Ryan Anderson, uses junk science, and quotes, or points to people, who are firmly anti-transgender. Dana believes his agenda is to marginalize and sideline trans people while affirming the belief system of conservatives who feel a man is a man and a woman is a woman, and if you don’t fit neatly into one of those two genders then you’re a sinner, an abomination, or worse. See how Dana reduces all of Anderson’s arguments with logic and science.
Our 17-year-old agender contributor is making work for us. The graphics department will have to update “Seventeen” to “Eighteen” on their column’s graphic since M is having a birthday on March 13. Happy Birthday M! Their post today talks about the way it feels to grow older. (These kids today.) But seriously, you will want to know what’s been going on in M’s life and that’s what they talk about in today’s post.
Claire just came to terms with her trans nature a short while ago but she has been thinking about it and musing on it and being frustrated by it for many years. Once she made up her mind her road to transition to living as a woman seems to be rushing by under her wheels. Her goal is to say goodbye to her male persona in just a few months. She is preparing her coworkers and her circle of friends and acquaintances that the change is coming. Her blog post today will let you know how it’s going.
Raquel and Mark, two parts of one person that became separated after drinking a strange potion, have been transported to another land. They trek to the north to do battle with “the Magistrate” but have been told by a mysterious woman named Lydia that one of them will not survive the confrontation. In a house that is a duplicate of their childhood home Raquel meets her “mother” and then her “father.” Then she finds herself cast into darkness only to awaken in a horrid swamp to be confronted by a hideous creature with one eye that tosses her over its shoulder. What will happen in Chapter 18 of Metamorphosis?
It was the 1960s. I was a young man, a very young man, torn between spending the summer on his expected path of taking accelerated post-graduate studies at the university or diverting toward testing life as a young transgender woman. In those days, unfortunately, continuing my studies and being a transgender woman was not an […]
