You need to filter. You need to watch the puppies. — A Breath of Elena wrote a very sensitive article not long ago, It Hurts to Read News About Transgender People, about her reaction to hate-filled media that surrounds the transgender community. It Hurts to Read News About Transgender People Don’t worry, there is also positive newsmedium.com I responded to her: “Elena we all can’t be gender warriors. Lives are too complex and to simply come…

I am not the only one aware of them any more — I have written endlessly here on Medium about my extraordinarily typical transgender journey. So many transgender writers have shared their first time doing something specific that was challenging, frightening, exciting, and fulfilling. For me, recently, it was my first friend date with a cisgender woman as a transgender woman… I…

Don’t worry about the boys, they can protect themselves* — I grew up with street gangs, drug dealers, gangster wanna-bes, and random violence. That was the streets of New York City during the 1970s. My “antenna” is still up today no matter what street I walk on. Coming to terms with being a transgender woman has added another, more sensitive…

Lots of cool, non-boring people — According to the Oxford Dictionary, an outlier is “a person differing from all other members of a particular group or set.” I have been accused of being an outlier all my life by different people. I have always accepted that description with pride. I have never liked conformity. Maybe it’s…

Maybe my COVID weight gain was the really good fat? — Like everyone else during the COVID quarantine, I overindulged between Netflix and a pint of my favorite ice cream. …

She glows with pride — I grew up Catholic. They controlled my schooling for 12 years and then I permanently escaped from their clutches, never to return. As I have aged, the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church and pretty much all the organized religions became brutally apparent. …

College swimmer Iszac Henig is courageous and true to himself — For the last couple of years, the cisgender sports world seems fixated on the competitive advantages of transgender women. The media, the haters and the ignorant can’t seem to get enough of their righteous indignation. …

I have always been the daughter that she never knew she had… — I was the middle child. For some reason in my family I was relegated to the chores and responsibilities of a daughter in the 1950’s binary world that I was raised. Maybe they sensed something they couldn’t identify about me. …

OK, it’s all my fault if they don’t — I have to stay stealth male for another year. That means I have to restrain my breasts, wear men’s clothes and act like a guy. God, I hate men’s clothes — particularly the neck tie tight against my neck! …