The Nanny!boy

[harpsi-fizz.livejournal.com]

I need some advice/imput pretty badly. Any of your thoughts, ideas, or advice would be good, regardless of if you've lived this situation or if you never even thought of it.

I'm moving to Chicago as soon as I can (latest will be October) and am looking for work as a nanny. What I've got going for me are two college degrees, certifications in childcare, CPR and First Aid certification, and I genuinely care.

What I've got working against me- I'm only 22 and I'm an FtM.

I only pass about half the time; I really don't look that threatening. Without trying to spark another round of the Oppression Olympics, in the world of childcare, females have the definite advantage. In New Orleans, one place wouldn't hire me because "we don't hire males, for obvious reasons". I don't know 100% what he meant by that (just a vague idea), but he just kept saying "for obvious reasons" and I didn't like what he was implying.

I couldn't present as female at work because it'd really distract me from my job. Ideally I'd be hired by allied parents, parents with a GLBT child, or a GLBT couple, of course, but sometimes I'm not too optimistic about that.

No questions this time- just wanting you to throw anything in, any thoughts at all, please.

Cissexuality as a Default

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I hadn't been going to cross-post this from my journal, but seeing yesterday's post about cisgender sexuality made me think that it might be useful/amusing to some people here. It's a parody of one of those "sympathetic" Sunday magazine articles about trans people - but with a twist...


"My Life as a Cissexual"

You’ll have seen the lurid headlines staring out from the red-top papers: “Cissexual Gunman on Rampage in North-East”, “Cis Women Get Hormones on NHS”, “Sex-Stick Prostitute Murdered”. Stories about cissexuals seem to dominate the press at times. But how much do we really know about the cissexual community in Britain today? In fact, cissexuals form a surprisingly large proportion of the population – some estimates put the figure as high as 98% – so the chances are that you or your family knows someone who is cis, even if you don’t realize it. We decided to delve further into this most-misunderstood section of the SC (Straight Cissexual) community, and to look at the human face behind the headlines.

Meet “Alex” (real name Alexandra) – pictured here applying make-up in her modest two-bedroom Streatham flat. At first sight, Alex might be any thirty-something career woman. Except for one thing... Alex is a cissexual. “I suppose I’ve known since I was born,” she explains. “It’s like there was always this weird kind of ‘fit’ between the way I felt inside and how everyone seemed determined to treat me. Maybe I was just born in the right body? Of course, the word ‘cissexual’ didn’t exist back then – people were very ignorant about issues of gender identity – but I doubt I’d have told my parents anyway. It just wasn’t the kind of thing you mentioned.”

On the face of it, Alex’s childhood was a perfectly normal one. “I grew up with three older brothers. I used to play football with them sometimes, that kind of thing. But I also liked playing with dolls. They’d tease me about it, but as we got older they didn’t seem to mind, and by the time I went to college I had a wonderful bunch of people around me who just accepted me for what I was. In fact, my closest friends around that time were cissexual. Some of them used to tell me that gender was nothing but a social construct, but no one had any problem with my identifying as a woman. After all, most of them did too!”

It was just a few weeks after her graduation that Alex met Steve. “It was love at first sight, and we were married within months. I really thought Steve was my Happy Ever After.” For five years Alex and Steve enjoyed married bliss. But all the time they were together, Alex was nursing a secret. “I’d never told him I was cissexual,” she admits. “I’d like to say that it never occurred to me it might be an issue, that I’d always thought of myself simply as a woman. If I’m honest, though, I wasn’t sure how he’d react. Steve was trans himself, and so were most of our friends. One day we were being intimate, and somehow he guessed. Then it all came out. Of course he felt betrayed. It’s a pretty big thing to keep from someone, I realize – but there never seemed a right time to tell, you know?” Unable to cope with Alex’s deception, Steve left.

“It’s taken a lot of therapy to get where I am today,” she says. “For a while I just hated myself, Steve, the world in general. But I think I’ve turned a corner.” For the last six months, Alex has been working in a clerical position at a major bank. It may not seem much for someone who left university with a first-class degree in Economics and a promising City career ahead of her, but as Alex says, it’s a start. “At least I know who and what I am now. I don’t have to hide any longer. And that’s got to be worth 30K a year, right?”

network filtering at uni

[alinonymous.livejournal.com]

hey,
I'm Ali; i'm an eighteen year old preeverything mtf computer science/computer engineering student at university.
while I do have issues with the residence hall that cause me to think that i won't transition socially until i no longer live in it, this post isn't about that. I have a contact in the admissions department (she used to be residence hall director) that would help me with issues pertaining to that.

what this post about is the internet filtering at my uni. residence hall net is reasonably unfettered (as it should be) whereas wireless in the academic buildings is rather filtered. it seems like the filter is doing dumb keyword filtering on "transgender" and "transsexual" which filters many actual support / lgbt community sites while letting some bad ones through.

anyway I could email uni IT about it but I dont want to possibly out myself by emailing from my uni email and I don't know if helpdesk@$UNI honors requests from non-uni accounts which is how I would avoid associating my trans identity with my identity as a student.

What should i do?

ali

ETA: It would be trivial enough for me to bypass the filtering - I just VPN out of uni network - but I am opposed to censorware blocking the free exchange of information and i realise not everyone at uni is as technically proficient as I am. When they research transgender topics then the sites are blocked is not a good thing.

A conversation at work

[halfbloodme.livejournal.com]

I work as a teaching assistant at a primary school and today was our last day before the holidays. When out on the extra long playtime after assembly, one of the kids in year 3 came up to me and gave me a hug, nothing unusual there until said kid and their sister who is in year 5 started having a conversation.

Sister: I like that Miss Emery is a girl, she's very huggy.
Me in thought: I'm not a girl but we won't go into that now.
Kid: Why do you say Miss Emery is a girl. She could be a boy like me.
Me in thought: Not a boy either but thank you.
Sister: You're a GIRL. Your name is Caitlin*.
Kid: No I'm a boy.
Sister: Mum says you're a girl, you have the same bits I do, you're a girl. Yeah you're a tomboy, but you're a girl.
Kid: Dad calls me Charlie and I like Charlie better. I'm NOT a girl.
Sister: Mum says Dad is an idiot for agreeing to call you Charlie*.
Kid: When I turn 11 I'm moving in with Dad.
Me: Come on now kids, lets try and enjoy the last day of the school year and not argue.
Sister: Miss, will you tell Caitlin she's a girl?
Me (whilst trying to remain neutral and not cause a full scale riot when the kids are picked up and their mother finds out I'm not going to force their child to conform to a gender or sex): It's not up to me. Caitlin or Charlie, whichever you prefer is what I'll call you.
Kid: Yay thank you Miss.
Sister: I think adults are weird.

(*names changed to protect identities in line with the data protection act)

Working in school (whilst my ideal job), is very cisexual and cisgender biased, I've yet to find a gender neutral title that the kids can use and that won't out me to parents and cause a riot, although I'm working on it. I've so far learned how to deal with questions of boyfriends (I am attracted to women), how to deal with questions on why I won't wear dresses and got my hair cut short and why I don't dress like a girl or like a boy but a mixture. Now it's a case of learning how to deal with situations like the above and stay neutral whilst carefully avoiding fitting into the hetronormative and the sexual and gender normative positions most of our parents and the other staff take. This year has been a real learning curve.