Winter/spring

Time to update the blog after a very busy three weeks of work.

There was a lot of interest in my last two posts, especially thanks to T-Central's post about the latter. Thank you, Calle. There's another item I'd like to post in due course on the issue of being trans, to do with the trans phenomenon over history and across cultures.

Spring has been gently pushing winter away, the days are longer, the blossom is out and, certainly last week, the air was distinctly milder. In January I lost nine pounds in weight but then there were five weeks of freezing temperatures and I had to keep warm by eating stodgy food! At least I didn't put any more weight on so now I feel its time to continue with the weight reduction programme. My skin condition is being monitored, of course, and seems to be improving once more. Fingers crossed I can get out again soon.

One other thing is that today I have gone back through my blog to make a major change to a past post and lesser alterations to three others, not through some Stalinist or IS notion of rewriting the past but because the impressions I got and the conclusions I came to were wrong and I don't want other people to make the mistake I did.

Briefly, the problem stems from my having gradually let friends know about my trans status over the last few years but some, although they seemed supportive, used that personal information about me - especially my fears, uncertainties and family worries - to then bully and abuse me, threatening to 'out' me to others who would have caused me problems. If you tell people very personal stuff about yourself, they have an advantage over you because they are in a position to exploit that knowledge without you having any corresponding power over them to keep things balanced and in check. I had hoped they would be supportive at a time of personal trouble - it's one of the reasons you have friends, after all - but they abused me instead. So my message changes to this: if you come out, be aware that you are giving away an important fact about yourself and that, for many people, knowledge is power and they may abuse that power. I am reverting to telling people about my trans side on a strictly "need to know" basis for the time being.

Sue x