As I wrote about last Sunday, in November 2017 I attended the Transgender Spectrum Conference held at Washington University in St. Louis. It was an opportunity to learn and to go out dressed. For the second day of the conference, I decided a more “blending” outfit was in order.
My day didn’t start too well. I was carrying a few breakfast snacks and an orange juice out of the meeting room, and my purse strap caught on the door handle. While trying to extract myself, I managed to spill the OJ on my leggings and shoes. Yikes. Fortunately, I didn’t get too soaked.
The post lunch presentation was interesting, a talk by an intersexed individual, Leon. At age 54, thinking he was a gay man, he found out he actually was internally a woman, with a predominance of female hormones. Apparently, 1 in 2000 individuals are intersexed. So she talked about the issues of coming out, of being considered a “man” but needing mammograms (and insurance related issues of a mammogram for a man).
My main lesson from the two days of hearing the presenter’s stories is my issues with being a crossdresser (mainly wife issues) are pretty minor league compared to others with more serious gender issues. That, and people are people, and a reminder to be more tolerant of others who are different from me.
After the conference ended, I drove to the nearby Nordstrom to try on some clothes. While there, a woman was trying on dresses for a party. I was with Karla, my friend who is a sales agent (angel), and we were judging for the woman trying on the dresses. I had the customer try on a very fun and sexy sequined dress that I had tried on previously, and she really liked it, but it was too pricy, but she ended up buying the dress both Karla and I recommended. It’s fun to talk to other customers and help them chose what to buy.
One final note about the conference. The day before the conference started my then 14 year old car started sputtering, and the check engine light came on. I called the car dealer, they said I to bring the car in. I had to rent a car while they fixed it–no big deal–but had my car crapped out a day later, I would have been dealing with it dressed in a dress, so I guess I got lucky with the timing.
3 Responses
Dee,
It’s a very important lesson to learn that there others far worse off than us , when I have an off day I kick myself up the butt and tell myself my life isn’t that bad .
Changing room interaction is wonderful , I had no idea what went on in female changing rooms , women are far more helpful to each other . I’ve had some great input from other women , being told I had a great figure are lovely legs , for good manners I always return the compliment .
As for car repairs , OH BOY ! I went to drive my car out of my garage and it made a terrible scraping noise , the front tyre was flat . I was dressed ready to go to my painting class , depite that I threw my coat in the car and dug out the spare and managed to get it fitted . Annoyingly it didn’t solve the problem as I discovered I had a broken frong spring so I didn’t make the painting class as I had to wait for a recovery vehicle .One nice PS , the driver called me a lady when I spoke to his colleagues on the phone .
Yep love the sequin dress.
Gender is a societal construct.
Fluid is as fluid does.
I came across the term “intersex” on a job application about 10 years ago. Had no idea what it was, so I researched it. I found there are 9 indicators for determining male or female, and the majority of indicators wins.