It was going on long before 9-11, but you saw them everywhere after that fateful day in Manhattan. The flags came out, and the bumper stickers read Proud to be an American. Many of us who were raised in Judeo-Christian homes looked at those stickers with a wary eye. My first/… Read full post »

Two years have gone by since I began my transition from living in a male body to living in the right body. So much has happened in these two years that it would take ages to write about it all. Last year on this date I wrote a post entitled One… Read full post »

TERRY GROSS: You describe yourself as transgender. What does that mean to you?

Mr. HEGARTY: Well, you know, it's pretty simple. You know, I don't identify as a man. I identify as transgender, you know? I mean, it's a pretty typical phenomenon. There's probably transgender people… Read full post »

It was forty years ago this Thursday, on April 22, 1970, that Earth Day was first observed. Here in Stockton, California, it was our twenty-second anniversary celebration. The weather was postcard perfect, and many got their first sunburn of the season as they browsed the dozens of booths and tables.… Read full post »

On the third Friday each month, I meet with a group of people at a local watering hole to talk politics. The group’s name is Drinking Liberally and last night we had a light turnout because this weekend is the California State Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. Only about a dozen… Read full post »

I cannot begin to describe how happy I am, but I’m going to try. The joy radiates through me every day with such intensity I often get tears in my eyes. It’s not that everything in my life is perfect. No one lives without difficulties, problems, and pain. Yes, I experience… Read full post »

This article was posted in the L.A. Times online pages last week. I dithered about whether to share it here, but decided to because it is partly my story too. I get email alerts of transgender murders and suicides almost every day, and each one breaks my heart. But when Christine… Read full post »

Growing up on a farm in the late 50’s and early 60’s I had many chores that I was expected to do. There were chickens to feed and eggs to gather. There was a cow that had to be milked, pigs to feed, water troughs to be filled and straw that… Read full post »

In 1995 I was a graduate student at California State University in Sacramento in the Speech-Language Pathology program. I had to take one Psychology elective, so I chose Child Psychology. I chose it from the many courses offered because I was wrestling with why I continued to feel like I was… Read full post »

Note: This is by far the hardest post I have ever written, or will likely will ever have to write. But it is also one that I must write. In it I share the deepest darkest skeleton in my closet. In so doing, I hope to educate and warn others of… Read full post »

Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. was the founder and first president of Bob Jones University. In every classroom of the university there is a large plaque that contains one of his “chapel sayings.” One of the first ones I remember seeing as an incoming ministerial student was, “The test of your c… Read full post »

Sometimes life has to kick you in the butt to get you to realize that you need to change. In 1974 when I moved back to Colorado after my discharge from the Navy, I was itching for a good butt kicking. I had been steeped in a military testosterone environment, had… Read full post »

Can a woman fill the role of a father to a child? Can a man fill the role of a mother to a child? It has been said that any man can be a father, but it takes a lot more than sex to be a dad. The same is true… Read full post »

I’m crying again and I’m proud of it. I’m very emotional,

and my period isn’t here until Friday, and please don’t tell me not to cry,

not to feel sad, because I feel, I feel so much and I hurt so deeply… Read full post »

Lisa’s fourteen year old blue-green eyes flashed like neon in my mescaline soaked brain as she said, “Women don’t have to take their clothes off to cum. You want me to show you how we do it?”

“I can’t think of anything I’d rather see than that!” I joy… Read full post »

I have been home from work for four days now with a miserable head cold that, as usual, has settled into my chest. I have been coughing, sneezing, and blowing my nose constantly for four days now.

As fate would have it, I made my first post to Open Salon… Read full post »

It is common for a transgender child to act out and misbehave when they are not being accepted for who they know themselves to be. In very young children it is manifested by demands to wear certain clothing, to have a certain hair style, to play with specific toys. As the… Read full post »

"If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." Dr. Bob Jones Jr.

 My adoptive mother was raised in central Louisiana in Beauregard Parish near the small town of Sugartown. She was the eldest of thirteen kids. Her mother, whom everyone knew as “Granny” married her husb… Read full post »

Rural eastern Colorado is referred to on the early maps of the United States as “The Great American Desert.” I often felt deserted as an adopted transgender child growing up on the prairie. I was deserted by my birth mother and I was deserted by society in general.… Read full post »

from the GLAD website here

  U.S. Tax Court Sets Precedent, Says Treatment is Medical Care

February 02, 2010

The U.S. Tax Court today issued a long-awaited decision in O’Donnabhain v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, ruling that treatment for gender identity disorder (GID) qualifies as m/…

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“The highest ecstasy is attention at its fullest.”  ~Simone Weil

It didn't take long to attract the attention of my second Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Leach. In my report card to my parents she wrote that I seemed to need her attention more than other students, but… Read full post »

Those of us who survived Gender Identity Disorder have a duty to transmit to humankind the memory of what we endured.

He came to the world in the usual way.  ~Harry Chapin

A mistake – my mother had turned twenty just three months earlier, and she already had… Read full post »

I am a sick person, and I have always been sick. I have Gender Identity Disorder (GID), according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association. GID was not a valid psychological diagnosis in 1955 when I was born. That happened i… Read full post »

 

Was it a coincidence that 24 years ago today I was reunited with my birthmother, Gaylene, in Pueblo, Colorado in a snow storm and that today I knelt in the freezing wind in the Catholic Cemetery in Trinidad at her grave? Is it a coincidence that 14 years ago tomorrow… Read full post »

My plane touched down in Denver almost a half hour early today. The flight attendant reminded us to reset our watches and gave us the local time. I set my watch back two years.

Today I saw my Dad for the first time since my transition, but because of the… Read full post »