Awhile back, a sportreporter for the LA TImes, Mike Penner, transitioned and became Christine Daniels. Then, something happened, never fully explained, and Christine "detransitioned" back to being Mike Penner. He continued to write for the Times.
Today, he was found dead in his apartment, an apparent suicide, at age 52.
I so feel for Mike/Christine. Searched for peace, I hope she has it now.
Well, I spent much of October changing my name on records. Drivers license, Social Security, credit cards, utility companies, stockbroker, insurance company, and just all those stores you deal with online. Still haven't done them all yet (like Macy's - I almost never go there, and they want me to go in person...).
Well, this morning I realized there was one other place I forgot to change my name -- voter registration.
So, after one other unrelated errand, I realized that, and swung back by the house to get a copy of the court order, and headed off to the polling station with both my drivers licenses (old and new, yes, they let me keep my old one...) and the court order. Sure enough, I was on the rolls under my old name (we all wondered why DMV hadn't updated the list when I got my new DL, but well...). Anyway, they asked me to come back and talk to the marshall of the station, a nice young man, who got on the phone to his supervisors.
He was very polite, and referred to me as maam, and simply referred to my case as a "name change - first and middle name only" to his supervisor. They found my records, and I filled out a new registration form, so it should all be good next time, and I got to vote.
Hopefully, I helped break their boredom... ;-)
All is good. Just took longer than normal.
Happy voting day everyone. Although we're not expecting to have happy returns here in Virginia, at least in the govenor's race.
Hi folks,
This is about the Employee Non Discrimination Act - ENDA for short.
Jillian Wiess, Trangender Workplace Diversity is working to get us to pressure legislators to vote in favor
"Please repost this message: S 1584, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, needs 16 more votes. Here's the math and the contact info you need to pass ENDA: http://bit.ly/r7qrO "
the link will let you see where your local legislators stand. Please tell your folks to help pass this.
Thanks
-Jude
The morning meeting was at 9, it was our department meeting. We had pretty low attendance this time, maybe only a dozen folks out of 30.
They always start with congrats and kudos that folks have achieved over the last 2 months. And Martha, the department head, starts off and calls my name!! (my guy name, but, since the news isn’t out yet, that’s cool) I get a Special Achievement award (nicely framed, and does come with a small $$) I’ve been doing a lot more stuff around the department the last few months (mothering instinct?) And Sheila, my group lead, gets one too! So, that was a really a great start.
So, we have a couple of other folks talking technical stuff, and I sneak out to meet my wife Susan and our friend Denise, who is actually also the consultant the company has hired, since Denise is Executive Director of IFGE (www.ifge.org). Along with the division head (Martha’s boss) and Cheryl from HR that I’ve been working with for 7 months.
So, Martha introduces me, and I nervously introduce Susan, our friend Denise (“from an organization to be named later”), and of course the VP and Cheryl. Then I start. “Normally, we keep our personal lives separate from work, however, this is one time when they overlap” and dove right in from there. I’m transsexual, I’m changing in August/September, what the new name will be. A bit more discussion, which I realize I can’t remember at all right now, and we move to Denise, who does a great presentation on the differences between sex, gender and orientation, and the issues involved with trans folk in the workplace.
There were a few questions, like, how did I settle on the name “Judith/Jude”, but very respectful, although a lot of folks were either puzzled or confused. Several folks complemented me on honesty and courage. Many asked whether I wanted to be called Jude immediately – I really hadn’t thought about that part. If they want to, fine, or they can wait till I get back in September.
Right after the meeting, I had an email all set up with my letter. I thought I had it set up to send it to the department folks and friends first, with a second letter set up for the project team I’m supporting (who aren’t in my department). Well, I went up and sent that first letter. Cheryl (HR) was waiting for that, and then did a Reply All and included the letter from the Division Head stating the company’s support and expectations on how I’m to be treated, which was cool.
Several of us then went to lunch – me, Susan, Denise, Cheryl, and about 4 others from the department. It was pretty cool. One fellow had stories of other trans folks he’s known, so all was cool.
We hung out for a bit, then we had the meeting schedule with the project team to tell them. The meeting started, pretty much the younger members of the team, and we covered a lot of technical points and things we as a team have to do, which was cool. I had told them I wanted to talk about some other issues after the technical part. So, time came, I brought the other folks in (Susan, Denise, Cheryl, and another HR person), and broke my news, and they all said “yeah, we know, you sent us the email earlier”. Dar. I had apparently merged the address lists of my 1st and 2nd email lists, so had outed myself a couple of hours early. Nobody cared, they took it in stride, all done.
Back to my office with Susan, I checked my email, and had gotten about 12 congrats messages, which I appreciated. One good friend from down the hall (my department) did come by and expressed the sentiment that he did feel like he was losing a friend, and wasn’t sure he could handle it in his own head. I hope we can talk and get him around this, cause he’s a neat guy.
We took off, ended up going out to dinner and hunting for a place to get my other (right side) ear pierced. I’ve had only the left one pierced for quite a while now (3 years? we’ve been working on this longer than that). Finally ended up at Claire’s at Tysons mall, and we were home by 9 pm.
I sent out emails then from the home account to other friends, some neighbors, and my private chef clients. There’s one friend, and I was worried about his reaction. We worked together very closely for about 6, 7 years in the mid 90s and have stayed in touch since then. He’s younger than me, and recently lost his wife to lung cancer, leaving him with the 2 young boys.
Done.
[Story number two: A very good friend, who's on the same path, is in the middle of this whole mess, and came out to her parents yesterday. She'd been very, very worried about it, and Susan and I had recommended she come out to them. She did, they were very accepting, Mom even gave her some of her clothes that didn't fit Mom anymore. I am so glad they accepted her, otherwise, Susan and I sure would've had egg on our faces... ;-)
I talked to our friend that nite, and she officially declared July 16 as "Out Day". So shall it be. ]
Got some responses this morning, including my friend who lost his wife. All good, willing to roll with things, including the private chef clients, which is cool.
Now, to get on with life. Kitchen needs to be cleaned up, and I need to do some cooking. Talk to you all later.
It’s a Beautiful Day!
*** edit ***
this was actually the cool part. So, at the start of the meeting, I get this certificate of Special Achievement or something, and it's made out to "Mike Bienvenu". Thanks, nice to be appreciated and all that. Then I do my part, we talk about all the trans stuff, and then Martha speaks up and says "and actually, I have this other copy of the award with your real name on it", and she hands me a copy of the award and this time it says "Judith Bienvenu".
How cool is that. Frickin' awesome. ;-)
I want to emphasize how much credit is owed to my lovely supportive wife, who has been with me through all of this, helped me maintain sanity and a steady course, and not rush and ruin things. I wish we all had such a coach. And someone who will stay with us and make life really worthwhile. Thanks my love.
Hi everybody,
Well, our group, TGEA, was at the Capital Pride festival in June (we were also at the Capital Trans Pride the weekend before).
There was this guy wandering around with a cameraman, and asked if he could interview us -- myself and the secretary of our group, Katherine. He finally got the video posted up to YouTube, so, here you go!
I am not happy about his caption - he says he's familiar with LGBT issues, yet he used male pronouns for me. We're sensitive about that kind of thing. I've complained to him already, let's see if he changes it.
I'll post the other one with Katherine soon.
-Jude
the Advocate.com has a long article about an intersexed/female player who's been approved to play on the women's circuit. Interesting discussions in the article.
The Iowa Supreme Court has decided to strike down a ban on gay marriages in the state, effectively making them legal and with the full rights of hetero marriages! The decision was unanimous!!!
Read more here
a good day!
Hey folks,
We drove back from Pennsylvania today, we were at the Keystone Conference.
Some trivia:
This is a new conference on the block, the TransCentralPA folks decided they'd put on on, and this was their first go-round, and a job well done.
"Keystone" has nothing to do with the cops from the old b & w movies. For my Australian readers (I know there are at least 2 of you) - most, if not all, American states have some sort of nickname, and Pennsylvania calls themselves the "Keystone State", cause they feel they were crucial in founding America.
We got up there Friday afternoon, and everybody went out to dinner on restaurant row - they'd made reservations for like 16 folks each at 5 different restaurants. Yummy food, and they had a cool little jazz duo playing there, and we were all out on the dance floor and we had the place hopping. Then our friend said we should all go over to this ultra cool little tapas restaurant and bar, so we did, and it was barely 1 room big, we overwhelmed it, so we stood around and got thru one drink then Sweety and I caught the shuttle back to the hotel and crashed.
We were part of a panel discussion at the first session on Saturday morning, 9 am, so I wore one of my new pants suits (navy pinstripe), and we had a good time. Hit another session, and had a great lunch with a wonderful talk by Mara Keisling (she's head of NCTE ). She is a very good leader in trans equal rights, and is very funny, one of the best dry senses of humor I've heard. Very good talk.
Sweety and I actually skipped the early afternoon session and hit the exercise room, then cleaned up for the late afternoon session. Then, back to the room for the fancy clothes, and we had a great reception, dinner, speech by Donna Rose (yes, the TransCentralPA folks got a couple of big hitters for their first time out of the gate, well done girls), and more party. I brought this red dress that a friend gave me (when she had her top enhanced, she couldn't fit in it anymore, and did I ever benefit). Here's a pic of Sweety and me at the Saturday nite party.
Oh, and yes, I did get a haircut Friday morning before we left town. I do like it, it was kinda long and ratty at the ends, however, I'm not sure I can get it to stay in a ponytail for work tomorrow... heh heh. Ooops.
Okay, now here's the amazing part:
Background: Our local group helped host the IFGE conference here in town at the beginning of Feb. (Oh, I just realized, I never posted a good summary of what happened at our local IFGE conference. Okay, will fix that later). So, Sweety is helping with the conference on Sat, while I'm running the registration table. So, she's walking past the meeting rooms, hallway full of folks, and she looks up and sees someone, a guy she recognizes from work, dressed to the nines as a good looking woman, just as this person sees Sweety and recognizes her. Well, other person goes into full panic, cause they're not out and here they've run into someone from work - absolute death, right? And Sweety instantaneously thinks of exactly the right thing to say "It's okay - my husband's trans", and everything is okay. so, that's the IFGE part.
Now, Sat. AM at the Keystone, we're standing there, and this girl walks up, says, "well, it's about time I said hi" and I don't recognize her from any past group, and she holds out her name badge and the first name says "S-----". Okay, so what? Then I see the last name in small print, and go "Oh. My. God." It's a co-worker from about 13 years ago. We were at the same company, just a few doors apart, from like '93 to '98 or so. I went to teach at university for awhile, "he" left with a bunch of others guys and started his own company. Now, "she" saw me Friday nite, I didn't recognize her at all, so she came and really said hello on Saturday morning. In my defense, a) I never knew she was trans, b) he was like 50 lbs heavier (wonderful slimming), and c) he always wore glasses. She's only recently been really dealing with trans-ness, and this was her first big trip out. So, we spend most of the rest of the conference hanging out and trading stories and such. There were only about 60, 65 folks in this office of our company, so, if 2 of us were/are really trans, does that mean the actual percentage in the population is like over 2 % ? or is it higher? More on our new friend later as this new phase of the friendship grows. Oh, and another aspect: we actually played Fantasy Football together for like a decade, well after we both left the company. Really outrageous and amazing.
And,S, if you're reading this, Hi Hon. It was a pleasure and a real honor to make your acquaintance. For real. ;-)
So, IFGE was Sweety's turn to be surprised, and Keystone was apparently my turn. What can happen next?
So, we're back home. It's kinda odd how we're meeting and becoming friends with all these folks who are apparently pretty high up in the trans-activist organizations. One friend, who as far as I knew 3 months ago was just another trans woman, has since been elected to the chair of the IFGE board and is also on the NCTE board. And we know Mara Keisling, and more importantly, she knows us. And we know the leaders of at least 2 local/regional groups, and .. and .. and... the current pres of our local board is stepping down as Pres this June, and there's no one willing to take up her spot. I've been asked. I'm hesitant, cause I'm going full time in Aug/September, with facial feminization surgery in August (and recuperating the rest of Aug), but... we were looking over the rest of the members, and I just don't know who else can do it. And Sweety has talked about taking on the Outreach position - responsible for making sure that someone appropriate shows up to talk to groups who want to learn more about transgender/transsexual stuff. Just don't know right now.
Ah, sigh. I'll welcome comments and suggestions - should I throw my hat in the ring for the job? Whacha'all think?
hugs all around
Jude
