Chaz Bono ruffled more than a few feathers in the trans community this week when he gave an interview to The New York Times in which he explained his decision to transition:
“There’s a gender in your brain and a gender in your body. For 99 percent of people, those things are in alignment. For transgender people, they’re mismatched. That’s all it is. It’s not complicated, it’s not a neurosis. It’s a mix-up. It’s a birth defect, like a cleft palate.”
Yes, that is one way of looking at it, but certainly, not everyone who transitions—or defines themselves along the transgender spectrum—feels that way. And while Chaz is entitled to his opinion, half-assed reporting from the Times notwithstanding*, I would like to interject a few opinions of my own regarding the way in which some transfolk talk about transition and the way in which the media pick it up and report it. Read More…
It’s an obvious statement to say that things change during pregnancy. A pregnant woman’s blood volume increases, as does her basal temperature. There are countless tales about mood swings, cravings, nausea, and old wives’ advice to predict what sex the baby will be, and some of these things are fun but many of them begin to annoy the mother and father to be because quickly, they’ve heard of these things.
I am familiar with the rejection machine, so I’ve blogged about it from time to time, mostly in terms of how to handle it (read: 
We tromped over to our local radiology lab on Monday to get a look at the little one, still lovingly referred to as Susanne’s “parasite,” and were amazed at how much more development has happened in the last 12 weeks. There were definitely leaping hearts in the room watching every heart flutter and gulp of the wee one’s mouth.
Moderate-time readers will recall 
A few days ago a trans woman was attacked just outside of a women’s rest room at a Baltimore area McDonald’s. Two nontrans women, one of them a minor, beat her until she was curled into a fetal position on the floor, and then kicked her in her back, head, and neck. The terrible video, captured by a McDonald’s employee who did nothing to aid or defend her, was quickly posted on YouTube, whereupon some ignoble comments were added to the physical injuries already sustained. The violence lasted around 3 minutes, and the Internet erupted, all over again, with vitriol, calls for quick arrests and/or vengeance, and a whole lot of assumptions about transfolk, people of color, and the McDonald’s anti-discrimination policy.
Anyone who has spent more than 15 minutes trying to craft prose or poetry knows there are a bajillion books, periodicals, and Web sites out there with copious advice on getting published, not all of which begin with the phrase “How to.” Everybody has a tidbit, talking point, piece of experience, whatever, on what to do and what to avoid. For my part, I have read something like 6 percent of what’s been written on the subject. This is not a hallmark of my lazy reading commitment, but much more a statement on the volume of ideas, with much more being churned out daily.
Let it be known that I fly a lot, especially now that I’ve moved to this dusty corner of the country. It just isn’t possible to drive everywhere I want to go, certainly not with $4.00 gas staring me in the face at the station. Most of my trips originate not at the lonely Walla Walla airport, which hosts a few flights a day to and from Seattle, and which will bump up the fare anywhere between $400 to $1,000. So I trek out to the Tri-Cities, an hour away, and go from there. It’s a Planes & Automobiles adventure every time. 
Trans/plant/portation 