Friday follies...

The Hair Goddess is a fickle diety.  Sometimes she blesses your hair and things just somehow seem to magically fall into place.  More often, though, she's got a nasty streak going.   Things either start out funky or get funky at some point during the day.  You can do the exact same thing on two separate days - same product, same styling tools, same everything - but the end result can be very different.  Whether she makes things perfect or turns things into a rat's nest seems to have no rhyme or reason but most of us know it's true.  Anyway - that's a long way to share that today is a good hair day in Donna's world. 

It doesn't happen all that often, but I decided to try to take a photo to capture it.  I actually took a couple, and uploaded one of them to FB.  Here's the other one.  I originally thought to delete it because it's out of focus but I like it better than the other one so I'll share it.  Anyway, this is me right now....

Back to hair:  Sometimes no matter what you do to fix it, you just make things worse.  So at some point it becomes easier to just more effective to put it up in a clip or into a pony tail.  If you see me on a workday and I've got either of those things in my hair you'll know that the day most likely started with styling issues.  For a long time I had relatively short hair so it wasn't nearly as hard to style.  But the probability that the hair goddess will lay an egg on your head on any given day seems to be directly proportional to the length of your hair.

Certainly, weather has something to do with it.  My hair very much loved Arizona as the lack of humidity provided more opportunities for better hair.  Similarly, here in South Carolina it can be pretty humid during the summer so not matter what you do by the time you go outside you've got a wild, frizzy mess on your hands.  Anyway - back to the point - today is a good day.  I don't have anything big planned but I appreciate these days when they happen. 

A few interesting updates this morning...

The Girl Scout thing continues to expand (see latest here).  There's a "response" video to the original post that seems to be getting quite a bit of play:




On a separate but related topic: I've got a dear friend here in Charleston who has a daughter in Girl Scouts.  If you'd like to buy cookies through me let me know.  I'm happy to both help her out, and do my part....

A bill has been introduced in the Tennessee General Assembly specifically aimed at keeping transpeople out of bathrooms.  It refines wording of the existing statute by declaring that a person must use the bathroom of the gender matching their birth certificate (see additional detail here).  Furthermore, Tennessee is one of the states that won't allow transpeople to change their birth certificates so the entire issue becomes problematic.

This is hateful legislation.  It is a law that has no reason to be.  It's not in response to anything, it doesn't solve any percpeptible problem, and it's clearly one legislator's misguided and thinly veiled effort to solve a problem that doesn't exist.  Given Tennessee's current record for LGBT-phobia it becomes part of a number of stupid, misguided bills being floated as "laws".  But make no mistake - it is specifically aimed at keeping transpeople out of bathrooms.

I have no friggen' clue how they think they'd enforce this thing even if it did pass.  How many people carry their birth certificates with them?  And the fine even if they could enforce it is only $50 so it's not like this is a felony.  But the intention is bigger picture - to put a law on the books and set a precedent that somehow implies that transpeople are dangerous in bathrooms.  That kind of thing has larger implications.

One of the things I find disturbing is that there will be transpeople who will support this bill.  There are people who can somehow rationalize that, "Gee, of course we need to keep people who don't have the appropriate documentation out of bathrooms so this is a good idea."  For anyone who feels that way - you're certainly free to have that opinion.  But my own opinion is that ANYONE who supports this - trans or not - is as misguided as this bill is.

Here's an update on the bill from this morning (see it here).  It lost one of its sponsors and will most likely die.  But the idiot who submitted the bill in the first place....he's a piece of work.  If  you had any doubt about his intentions, read this and look at the embedded video.  All I can say is that pity this fool if he even raised his ignorant voice at a transperson when I was around.  He's not the only one who can stomp a mudhole.

Next topic:  I had someone write to me (a guy) who indicated that he was attracted to the notion of meeting and dating a post-op transwomen.  Over the course of a couple of days we exchanged emails back and forth and this person seemed genuinely surprised when I told him that transfans were generally not held in high esteem in the community.  I told him that most post-op transwomen I know who are interested in guys would not be interested in a guy who was specifically attracted to the fact that she was trans.  Anyway - it's an interesting dynamic but it's very true.

There was an interesting workshop to discuss this at SCC a few years ago.  And it's a shame because some of the guys I've met who attracted to transwomen are really, really nice guys.  But some of them are pretty creepy, too.  Like many things everyone gets lumped together and the general stereotype is not a flattering one so the good ones need to work harder to overcome that. 

My first experience with a guy was with someone named Ralph in the early days of my transition, and my memories of him continue to be wonderful.  I suppose by most definitions he was a fan because Lord knows I wasn't the first nor the last transwoman in his world.  But he was the most patient, gentle, loving, knowing, caring man I've ever been with.  Ever.  And if someone like him came into my life again I'd be open to getting to know him.  I just would.  But the point is that I'd be a hypocrite to somehow imply that every man who's interested in transwomen is somehow tainted.  I know from experience it's not true.  He was the first man with whom I had sex post-op, he helped me to learn some important things about myself, and he set the bar very high for every other man after him.  Ralph rocks.

Anyway - I'm not quite sure how I got from hair to news to guys, but there you have it.  What have I got planned for the weekend?  I'm taking a training course all three days of the long weekend from 8-4 which is a bit of a drag.  It's Restaurant week here in Charleston so I'm planning to try a couple of restaurants I've been wanting to sample.  Football playoffs are happening.  I've got an appointment with a therapeutic massage therapist to help work out some of the knots in my back and shoulders.  I'll be at the gym a couple of times, and wrestling on Monday.  I've got an appointment at the Apple Store.  So - no shortage of things going on with me this weekend.  The bigger problem is how to fit them all in....