Lift & Support

[stacis-leak.livejournal.com]

Ha, you got punned, you thought this would be a post about bras, right?

Wrong!

So I recently discovered that I wasn't the only transsexual in Yorkshire, infact I wasn't even the only one in Sheffield, and as always happens when similar individuals start to scheme Emma and I have on more than one occasion raised the idea of starting a little local TS Support group for Yorkshire.

I think between us we probably have the know how to pull it off but unfortunately we lack experience in what exactly we'd be trying to acheive.

We've ascertained that some kind of friendly support network is a good thing but are stumped as to what this should entail.

So far I've thought of:

1) general meeting to stave off feelings of lonliness

2) opportunity to share experiences

But these both fit into the heading of "meeting for afternoon tea", so I thought I'd cast out my (inter)net and find out hwat everyone else was doing.

Are you in a local TS support group? Do you run one? What sorts of things do you do? Do you have any kind of events, fundraisers, mass outings, do you have a membership fee? If so what do your members get in return for it?

I've run a university society before but that was a gaming society which had a pretty obvious equation: "everyone pays a small fee, we use it to buy games, everyone gets to play them."
And I lived next door to the vice president of the LGB(no T back then but I'm told they have one now) society for a year and his model seemed to work along the lines of "You pay a fee which is used to organise special events at special (LGB) venues where people can meat, and ultimately, shag."

Admittedly not everyone would have sex at the end of the events but the people who organised them definitely did so with that in mind.

Neither of these work for a TS support group because it's not really an activity. Unless we charged a ludicrous fee and all took a day out to visit an electrolycist or something it'd be hard to find transition related events. Also as you're all aware, being trans is about gender not sexuality, so expecting us to all meet up and hump would be fairly ludicrous.

This is something I'd really like to look into organising so any feedback at all, even if it's just "Yeah, go for it" (ie. confidence boost) or "make sure you keep your members list very VERY secure" (ie, even obvious advice) would be useful.

I'm also sending this up to TGUK with the specific intention of finding out what sort of catchment area we'd be looking at and how many people would come to a trans yorkshire meeting.

Job applications

[rachelkj.livejournal.com]

So I am working on finding work, mid-transition. I'm fulltime & presenting as female, but it's not always perfect (I jumped into fulltime really soon, right now I'm at 3 months HRT & 3 laser sessions as far as the physical stuff goes).

My question is that I am not sure what to do about the name I put on job applications. I have been putting my chosen (female) name, which is not my legal name yet. I worry that this will cause problems if they decide to do background checks before calling for interviews, but I feel dishonest presenting myself as male on paper when that's not what they are getting. But then again, some people (ignorant assholes who may hold management positions) might say it's dishonest/fraudulent to omit the fact that I am not biologically female. I think my concern is mostly that they will run my SS# through some computer and find that "Rachel" doesn't legally exist, and just drop me from consideration before calling for clarification.

I've actually got my name change papers, and I will be turning them in very soon. But I can't wait for it to go through to look for employment.

Does anyone else have experience job hunting during early transition?