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I was asked by a group of six to teach a empty hand defensive class today. My only limitation was to not go to the ground as I am still healing. Many of my techniques end up with me locking up an attacker in a manner that I can call the police and keep them at bay with just my legs and be on top of them. Generally speaking for these types of classes I have one concept to teach and also allow the students to agree say on one common attack and work that into the concepts I teach. Lastly, I demonstrate what I call "Counter-for-counter" which in short means if they did "this" I do "that" and if they then do "something else" I counter and we can keep going as long as it takes but keeping in mind this is under 10-15 seconds which many think is cool but is not easy to learn which is why I push practice and repeating my class. Oh, can't forget to show how to get out of being tied up with duct tape. One of the students today is a repeat, a black belt and is always trying to counter my counters which is cool but so far have failed to come out on top. I really like this type of student because they challenge me to be better and every class I learn something new "Always a student, sometimes a teacher" is something I fully grasp and embrace. Now what should I wear :rolleyes:

Yesterday in my phone conference, Monica and I got on an interesting topic. She told me about this book she read where people would see the image of themselves as the opposite gender when they looked in the mirror. Having never seen, I cannot relate to the visual aspect of that. However, I can imagine things from an auditory standpoint. Through the years, I've noticed that my inner voice sounds higher than my spoken voice. This happens quite subconsciously without me trying to make it happen. I don't even pay strict attention to it, but now and then, I become acutely aware of it. Furthermore, more often than not, I notice my voice sounds higher in my dreams. The more I think about that, the more I remember that dreams are an expression of the subconscious mind. I just thought I'd share this interesting tidbit of information. Ever since yesterday, I've been obsessing more on that, and even though I cannot get my outer voice to match the pitch of my inner voice, I have been trying to talk in a somewhat higher voice. I will never get the outer to fully match the inner, but it is fun to see how high I can go before sounding off the wall and putting myself in danger of hurting my throat. Toward the end of the conference, I tried talking a little higher pitched, and I practice that when I'm by myself.

So recently I moved from the smaller dilator to the medium dilator, first time was painful the whole time but got a little better each time yet was still painful. Tonight I just finished and very happy that there was almost no pain. If things progress as they have been I should be good by say Sunday. Any ways the purpose of this entry is too tell others who will go down this path is that in the beginning it is no picnic but does get better. eek not looking forward to the larger one :(

Ok. So the light bulb finally "went on" today at the second friday support group. A question was asked what was the event that indicated that you needed to transition. Well for me, that hasn't really happened yet (or maybe it has). But I mentioned a little bit about my history; that this was not put upon me by society, it has always been there since I remember. That initially I repressed it, but the last 15 years or so, I've wrapped my identity up in my career and family. It did not seem like I was repressing anything. When my business failed, when I stopped being so career oriented, that is when I started having a crisis with anxiety. And started going to therapy. So that was my answer. And after I spoke those words I realized how much I have f-cked myself up. When I was 6 years old and started to repress my feelings, that is when it started. I did whatever I could to fit in, act male, etc. Don't get me wrong. If I could have lived as a female, I would have been a tomboy who would have played sports with the boys and would not have played dolls with the girls. (don't get me wrong. I liked playing with the girls and socializing with them. Games, TV, reading, just not dolls). However, I would have been feminine, wearing dresses, long hair, etc. It seems like a dichotomy of existence. But think of a top female athlete who is extremely feminine but grew up learning their sport playing with the guys ... that would have been me. Anyways, I started to realize that I will need to unravel all of this social conditioning that society has put on me AND what I've put on myself. I have to unf-ck myself. If I don't do it correctly, I'll just be acting like a female, like I acted being a male. I don't want to pretend anymore. But the reality is, I don't know really what it is to be female, because I missed out on growing up female and pretending to be male. So, deep down, I knew all of this. What I did not know is that because society put this on me, I need to look back and understand how I got off track. Just quickly reflecting, it was when I was 6 years old. But what I need to understand is what is critical that I missed and how I can overcome that in a way that I can transition to living female and do it in a way that it is not an act. I've already made that mistake already. And quite possibly, I may make it again. In previous posts, I've always said that I thought that I was self-aware person and that this crisis really surprised me. Well, I feel like I'm starting to really figure this out. I just hope and pray that I can use this knowledge going forward. Anyways, any feed back will be appreciated. I hope everyone is doing well. I hope I have not put a lot on you!! Love, -Lisa

I made a new contact on twitter the other day, her name is Susan (not her real name). After a few tweets we e-mailed and then a day or so later had a phone conversation. Getting to the point she said she was a self-employed Management Consultant. When she came out of the wardrobe (Tranny Closet? ) to her customers she was assured thaty it wouldn't change anything, and she was congratulated etc., etc. She then found that 70 odd percent of her customers went elsewhere.........She's getting by, doing menial jobs that she's overqualified for, but she obviously didn't fit in with British business culture as a Trans Woman. Now I've got pretty left of centre political views (middle of the spectrum Labour Party) and I'm a member of LGBT Labour, an organisation that advices the Labour Party on LGBT issues. So you might guess that I'm pretty disgusted with what happened to Susan. I've been invited along to another LGBT meeting In Redditch (to the south of Birmingham 15 miles or so), it's a group that is in it's infancy and another Trans Friend and myself will be the only Trans people attending. I thought it'd be good to put a slide show together with Keynote showing the issues and thoughts that we have whilst transitioning. So I put a few photo's showing the stages of feminisation that I've been through amongst the slides of bullet pointed text. One of the photo's showed myself with another friend who is still very part-time, luckily I asked her if she was comfortable with a picture of her in the presentation. Where and whom willl it be shown to she asked, when I told her Redditch (her home town) she started to make non commital noises, she was obviously uncomfortable with the idea. She was actually afraid the company she works for might somehow find out about her, and make life difficult for her, I thought yes look what has happened to Susan. Part of the problem is that she works for a company that has been split up, bought and sold 3-4 times over. Staff are not really valued by those who have ultimate control over companies, and it only takes a customer whom my friend might be sent to, to complain about sending someone who cross-dresses. Faced with this, the easy thing for the company to do would be to fire her, or victimise her to the degree that she went off sick with stress, and they could eventually get rid of her on medical grounds. I've blurred her face out so that it can't happen, but I thought that it was, in this case, going to be a good example of the fears that a Trans person has to show others, when coming out or being found out, which can easily turn into paranoia. I remember it myself. Luckily I work for local government, who are upholders of Equality........ I don't know if you have the equivilent to our Equality Act in the US, but even though we have it here in the UK, it doesn't stop discrimination, by the unscrupulous rich companies who often fund the political parties. Eve x

Especially early in life, it is difficult to tell tomboys, butch Lesbians and transmen apart. This demands that parents and other caring individuals develop strong observational skills and to learn all they can about parenting. Parents and other caring adults, such as aunts, uncles, great aunts and uncles, grandparents, teachers, and coaches help the child build a foundation that will serve the child for the rest of his or her life. The tomboy cycles rapidly between male and female energies and behaviors. She does not feel acute stress when an occasion calls for feminine attire/behavior, such as wearing an Easter dress on Easter,etc. The tomboy is often heterosexual and grows out of it, sometimes as late as high school or college. She may have a boy's nickname, sometimes only at playtime, or when playing sports. Often a tomboy does this in an effort to gain male privilege. Occasionally the tomboy grows up to be a butch Lesbian. The butch Lesbian may have been a tomboy earlier and acknowledges feeling "different," or a romantic attraction to girls (crushes) at an early age (often age four or even earlier), but these feelings become stronger during puberty and often she becomes more masculine as she ages. However, she never hates being a woman, even though she may dress and act very masculine, and does not seek gender reassignment. The butch Lesbian may be able to stop homosexual BEHAVIOR, but the desire is always there. They have been known to marry and have children, due to family and societal pressure.Often she seeks the company of heterosexual men as friends and work mates, but dislike other butch Lesbians, with whom she sees as competition for the attention of feminine Lesbians. Obviously, she seeks romantic relationships with feminine Lesbians. Butch Lesbians are NOT about gender but about SEXUAL ORIENTATION. The transman, like the butch Lesbian, and the tomboy, feels "different" at an early age, age four, and sometimes earlier. The transman adamantly demands to dress in boy's clothing, have a boy's name (not a nickname!) and questions why his body does not look like a boy's. A transman is ALL ABOUT gender, BUT can be ANY sexual orientation in relation to his TRUE GENDER, the gender he identifies as being (internal gender). A heterosexual transman may have mistook himself as a butch Lesbian prior to learning about the concept of transgender. During this time he may have had trouble "connecting" with the Lesbian community. A note to parents: On the surface, the behaviors of a future tomboy, butch Lesbian and transman are remarkably similar. One must become familiar with your children and develop excellent observational skills, especially at playtime, when a child feels most free to be themselves. One wants to support your child into becoming an healthy adult, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, without inadvertently encouraging a child to become something they are not. Being a parent is the hardest and most important job you will ever do, but will also be the most satisfying.

The myth of Activist Judges As somebody who gets 100% of their entertainment from online sources, I also get 100% of my news from online sources. One source of news I use is Yahoo.com, which features some of the most diverse and progressive articles written on a mainstream web news source. The comments section of these news articles, however, seems to be made up of some of the most staunch neo-conservative and fundamentalist christian people on the internet outside of forums dedicated to those political/religious affiliations. While homosexual marriage seems limited to homosexual rights, Transgendered people are caught in the crossfire because many states that have denied marriage to homosexuals have also denied marriage to transgenders and transsexuals. Within the last week, a Judge in Florida issued a ruling that essentially annulled the anti-homosexual marriage law passed in Florida sometime in 2008. This judge issued his ruling with the statement, "The preliminary injunction now in effect thus does not require the clerk to issue licenses to other applicants, but as set out in the order that announced issuance of the preliminary injunction, the Constitution requires the clerk to issue such licenses." This judge is essentially saying it is not the injunction that is requiring the state to issue gay marriage licenses, it is the US Constitution that places this requirement on the states, and that the injunction is just an order by the courts to the state of Florida to follow the Constitution's provisions. The article written for Yahoo! News can be found here: http://news.yahoo.com/federal-judge-allows-gay-marriages-begin-across-florida-225319224.html If one is to scroll down to the comments section, the tone towards homosexuals flips a switch. Here is a small selection of comments from that section: "This is just plain wrong and I’m confident is sharing that none of us Christians like this federal judge making decision for us Christians down here in the south." "One of the biggest moral mistakes in human history is to have same gender individuals believe they can marry. Genesis 2: 24 Same gender unions lack the tools to have or demonstrate proper relations.........." "Does the 14th amendment cover father son marriage? See how the liberals havent covered all their lies. Never was gay so called marriage ever thought a right denied. And just as the 14th amendment DOESNT cover father son marriage, NEITHER does it over gay so called marriage. " These fundamentalist christian comments are common in the Yahoo! news comments section. However, when it comes to articles written when a federal judge issues an injunction within a state to respect the constitutionally guaranteed right to equal marriage rights, there is one comment that pops up every time: "The people voted and spoke, and did so very wisely. Then another activist judge, with no understanding of The Law or our US Constitution comes along to be a spotlight whore." These types of comments are common on homosexual marriage injunction articles, and not just on Yahoo! News articles, but all over the internet. Lets take a moment to examine the claim that judges that place injunctions on states to respect homosexual marriages, and by extension transgendered marriages, are activist judges. First we must dissect the term Activist Judge. While such a term has yet to be defined in a denotative way, it is obvious Activist Judge implies that an activist judge is using his/her power as a judge to push his/her own political or social agenda. There are, obviously, many problems with this label. The first problem is that this name calling ignores the Supreme Court's decision on homosexual marriage, in specific its ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act (Love that name by the way; it implies that homosexuals are some how attacking marriage by wanting to get married). If you happen to be out of the loop on that, SCOTUS ruled 5 to 4 (divided across party lines, obviously) that the Defense of Marriage Act was an unconstitutional law. Those who call federal judges who place injunctions on states Activist Judges are ignoring the Precedent system the courts use. In america, all federal courts are actually assistant courts to the Supreme Court (see the origins of lower courts during America's early history), which means that any rulings the Supreme Court makes are precedents for the affiliated lower federal courts. If you are unfamiliar with precedents, precedents are simply a system in which lower courts are expected to maintain consistency with higher courts by taking previous rulings as preceding rulings to the challenge at hand. If, for example, the Supreme Court rules that laws limiting speed limits to 50mph are unconstitutional, the Supreme Court is also implying that its lower courts hold that ruling as a precedent to further challenges to speed limit laws. This would mean any time a lower federal court receives a challenge to speed limit laws after that ruling, they are expected to respect the Supreme Court ruling as a preceding ruling and must rule in favor of the precedent or push the challenge up to the Supreme Court. In the situation of homosexual marriage, SCOTUS' decision on the Defense of Marriage Act serves as a precedent for challenges to state level homosexual marriage bans, essentially requiring state level judges to rule in favor of homosexual marriage under the precedent of SCOTUS' ruling on DOMA. Even if a judge believes a state ban on homosexual marriage is somehow constitutional, their hands are tied by the precedent of SCOTUS' ruling on DOMA. A federal state judge must rule in favor of homosexual marriage. So far, the best thing a federal judge has been able to do for anti-homosexual marriage proponents addressing challenges to their state-level bans on homosexual marriage was to push the challenge to the Supreme Court to get a direct ruling on whether or not states are required to follow the ruling on DOMA as a generic ruling on homosexual marriage bans. However, as a side note, since SCOTUS has refused to revoke marriage licenses that homosexuals have as they move from a state that allows homosexual marriage to one that does not, it is my personal opinion that when that challenge hits SCOTUS they will quickly rule that states must respect the constitutionally guaranteed right to equal marriage rights. In addition to ignoring the precedent system, the assertion that judges that rule in favor of homosexual marriage are activist judges is a misnomer. While I recognize there may be specific, rare incidents of judges ruling outside the law to serve their own political agenda, this is not the case on homosexual marriage rulings. In this case, a precedent is in place which implies the right to homosexual marriage is a constitutionally guaranteed right. The point is ALL judges are activist judges; all judges are attempting to push a singular political opinion: The Constitution is the highest law in the land. All judges are activist judges pushing for the constitution, and that is not only their job, it is what the constitution says is SCOTUS' only purpose, and by extension the only purpose of its lower courts. -By Taylor Cogdill Amare atque Pace, Semper.