Month: November 2015

The Sensuous Art of Gerda Wegener | Advocate.com

The Sensuous Art of Gerda Wegener | Advocate.com:

“Aside from creating sleek art deco fantasies that graced the pages of Vogue, La Vie Parisienne, Fantasio, and many other magazines, Gerda Wegener (1886-1940) was married to a transgender woman who had the first publicly recorded gender-reassignment surgery.”

Beguiling images from a little-known French painter – The Boston Globe

 

Beguiling images from a little-known French painter – The Boston Globe:

“FORT WORTH, Texas — When, in 2011, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston decided to sell one of its paintings by Claude Monet, two by Alfred Sisley, one by Paul Gauguin, one by Camille Pissarro, and one by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, all to buy a single painting, ‘Man at His Bath,’ by Gustave Caillebotte, many people asked a forgivable question: Who is Gustave Caillebotte?”

Dreaming Of Becoming Real

I don’t know where this is going to end but what I understand is it must begin somewhere.


I seems a lifetime since I began this journey and as cliche as it may sound, it seems but a moment has passed. Naturally what I have written to this point is but one small piece of the puzzle which is a life and there is so much more to search through, to discover and understand. At the same time I feel as though I have just been brought into this world, a confused soul trying to find my place.

I wish I could sit down with myself from all those years ago, not to say everything is going to be alright, because sometimes it will be and others it won’t, that is simply life. I would like to see, once again, where everything began, what thoughts I had, how I saw the world. I guess this is important because on so many levels I feel there is no connection between who I was even a few years ago, never mind decades. It is as if those years happened to someone else and I am seeing them as a peeping tom looking through a dirty window. Each sight and sound out of any context I can relate to. Inside jokes and shared secrets I am excluded from.

Maybe he died, all those years ago on a cold Winter evening. Even if the falling snow didn’t cover a physical body and cold, black water never wet the skin, maybe instead it was the spirit which was covered, the soul which was washed away…

I know nothing afterwards was the same.

I sit here wondering what to say, is there a way to reconcile to past with the present? Do I want to? Am I the real me or is he? Am I figment of imagination, a hope, a dream, or am I a nightmare given form?

I wouldn’t be surprised if there are those of you out there asking, “Again?” I can understand your feelings, I have had them many times myself at this point. One would think I was past all of the doubts, fears, and questions. It would be reasonable to expect to see me talking about confidence, self assuredness, and a feeling of finally being true to myself and the world in general… Well, such would be nice, but life is never so simple and my demons are are more stubborn. 

Much of this stems from something I have noticed recently which is how little difference I find in my feelings and the way I process my presence regardless of how I walk out the door; obviously presenting feminine or not, alone or in a crowd. I sometimes imagine myself within a bubble, unable to connect with anything. Sadness, fear, happiness… they all reside just beyond my fingertips leaving an expectation of depression and finding even it eludes me.

Is this what I am suppose to find? Is it me or the medications I take?

Before I began writing, there had been a lifetime of chaos. A constant storm of noise, emotions, and thoughts which tore through my mind, scouring away each day as light turned to darkness. There were entire months which passed without notice. So much which was said or done of which I have no memory.

Now there is only silence.

So why write this post? I want to know the truth. I want to know who I am, now, this moment… Am I a figment, a hope, a prayer?

Maybe a shadow or ghost dreaming of becoming real.


Sex reassignment surgery may protect metabolic health of transgender women – Medical News Today

Sex reassignment surgery may protect metabolic health of transgender women – Medical News Today:

“Transgender women who undergo sex reassignment surgery and hormone therapy may be less likely to develop metabolic disease than those who receive hormone therapy alone. This is according to new research recently presented at Cardiovascular, Renal and Metabolic Diseases: Physiology and Gender – a conference of the American Physiological Society, held in Annapolis, MD.”