A Reader's Guide to Transgender in State

Welcome to the reader's guide or, rather, table of contents that should make it easier to navigate the chronology of my story as I relate it in this web journal.

Over the course of ten months beginning in July 2011, I wrote 24 posts of a retrospective nature that give historical background about my life experience as a transgender person.  I intermixed these with an equal or greater number of other posts describing my life as it was moving forward in 2011 and 2012.  That intermixing makes it difficult to decipher the chronological progression.  My hope is that the table of contents below will make this task easier for anyone who may wish to know the full story, chapter by chapter, from beginning to end.  From 2012 onward, the progression is mainly chronological in nature, describing:
 

• My life in Romania (2010-13);  
• My journey to Thailand for gender confirmation surgery (2013);  
• My year in the US when I served as president of GLIFAA, the official employee association for lgbt+ employees at the Department of State, USAID, and other foreign affairs agencies (2013-14);
• My three years in Kazakhstan (2014-17) including "Project Sultana" and reaction to the election of 2016; and
• My life after returning to the US (2017-present) in the aftermath of the election and the failure of "Project Sultana."

While in Kazakhstan I briefly maintained a parallel journal that did not include transgender issues.  It can be found at http://attitude-maneuver.blogspot.com/.

Best to all from Bucharest, Washington, Astana, and from my adopted state of Maine!

NOTE:  Parts 1-3 give historical background.  The posts therein were written between July 2011 and May 2012.  Those marked with an asterisk (*) have been removed from the web journal insofar as they have been superseded by my book Queer Diplomacy:  A Transgender Journey in the Foreign Service that is available for puchase on Amazon.

Part 1 -- So How Far Back Does This Go (1954-2002)? 

1. The Early Years^*
2. Where Were You on July 22, 1972?^*
3. WahooWa!^*
4. Under Transylvanian Moons^*
5. CSC:  The Only Limitations Are the Ones You Bring with You^*
6. My Great Purge^*
7. Hubble Goes Up, I Go Down^*
8. Heaven Can Be Yours Just for Now^*
9. NoTransition^*

Part 2 -- The Day my Universe Changed (2002-2010)

1. A Dinner Conversation^*
2. Looking for George Kennan^*
3. Povorot^*
4. Mission to Moscow^*
5. Decision on Gros Morne^*
6. I Wish I Was in the Land of Cotton^*
7. Pacing the Cage^*

 Part 3 -- A Nine Month Story (October 2010 - June 2011)

1. Kyna^*
2. The Education of a Transgender Rip Van Winkle^*
3. Fortochka^*
4. Liftoff^*
5. Stepping Out in Bucharest^*
6. Stepping Out in Court^*
7. My Guy, My Son^*
8. Mâine^* 

NOTE:  Parts 4 and beyond were written in real-time and describe daily life and events beginning in July 2011.

Part 4 -- Looking Strange and Enjoying It (June - November 2011)

1. My Coming Out Letter to my Friends at NASA
2. Electrolysis in the Land of Vlad the Impaler
3. Письмо моим русскоязычным друзьям; A Letter to my Russian Speaking Friends
4. Thank You, Madam Secretary
5. Looking Strange and Enjoying It: Two Months of HRT
6. Interlude:  Bucharest by Bicycle
7. How We Kidnapped Irina Nita
8. Tears for a Colonel
9. On Finding and Losing a Boyfriend in Seven Days
10. A Bushel and a Peck and Up Around the NEC
11. The Odd Joys of International Travel while in Transition 

Part 5 -- Real Life Experience (RLE) (November 2011 - December 2012)

1. The Big Day:  A Letter to My Sister

   • Transition Announcement Letter to Embassy Staff, 10 November 2011

   • Farewell and Welcome, Dacian Dispatch, 10 November 2011

2. After the Ball
3. A Bucharest Christmas
4. Of Friends, Mammograms, and Van Gogh
5. Old Clothes and Transgender DADT
6. Transitional Bicycling and a Night of Lunacy
7. What Do Uranium and a Transgender Foreign Service Officer Have in Common?^*
8. March 8 and Me
9. Diplomatically, Socially, and Congestedly Yours
10. Voice: The Acid Test
11. If Thy Friends Doth Protest Too Much, Do Not Remove Thy Clothes
12. Rising for the Moon: Farewell to a Dear Friend
13. Remove the Document, and You Remove the Man
14. Proudly from Tirana
15. Proudly from Bucharest
16. Looking for Spa Therapy
17. 3F@RM's, Stepbystep_ts, and Our Transsexual Summer
18. Try to Remember
19. To Peris(h) by Bicycle^*
20. Foreign Service Bidding and Transgender DADT
21. Turning to the East
22. Autumn Comes to 45-deg N
23. An Exclusive Halloween Ogre Just for Us
24. Love Is but a Song We Sing: A Message of Peace and Love to Friends
25. My First Anniversary
26. November Postcards^*
27. Hamlet and Healing

Part 6 -- Gender Confirmation -- or -- The Exclamation Point (December 2012 - March 2013)

1. My White Romanian Christmas
2. So You Want to Be in Pictures?
3. The Journey Begins
4. Our Day at the Beach
5. OD Checks In; I Check Out
6. Fates that Intertwine
7. Like a Natural Woman
8. All in the Zadnitsa
9. Simple Gifts
10. Collapse of the USSR
11. A Matter of Depth
12. We Interrupt this Program
13. Vodka without Beer?
14. My Million Baht Body
15. My Own General Contractor
16. Home Sweet Home in Romania

Part 7 -- Romania Farewell (March - June 2013)

1. Back in the Saddle
2. Radio Days
3. On Losing a Daughter^*
4. Both Sides Now^*
5. The Carpet, Too, Is Moving Under You^*
6. Bucharest Farewell
7. Mâine, a Reprise^*
8. Standing Proudly with Friends, 2010-13

Part 8 -- Bringing Myself Home (July 2013 - September 2014)

1. A Tale of Two Katahdins
2. In Homage to Allyson Robinson
3. Chelsea Manning, Roasting Vegetables, and Me
4. On Reading "Middlesex"
5. Bucharest and Roxana on the Potomac
6. Rising from the Ashes
7. Our Exclusive Halloween Ogre Visits Again
8. November: What I've Lost
9. November: What I've Gained
10. JFK, LBJ, and Their Gift to Me
11. Our Winter Love: Thailand Anniversary and Return to Bucharest
12. Please Continue to Hold During the Silence
13. Proudly from Washington, Proudly from GLIFAA
14. Bringing Myself Home

Part 9 -- My Life on the Steppe (October 2014 - August 2017)

NOTE:  See also companion web journal, "Alice in State," at
http://attitude-maneuver.blogspot.com

1. A Stealthy Guest Appearance
2. Proudly from Astana, Remembering '75
3. Auld Lang Syne; Saying Goodbye to a Friend Five Years: Looking Back, Looking Forward
4. Resistance Is Not Futile
5. Trotsky, French Novels, and Us
6. Petlura at the Gates
7. What Would George Kennan Say?
8. Project Sultana: A Plea for Help
9. Yes, We Can!
10. Waters of March
11. Letter to a Respected Senior Colleague
12. My Declaration
13. Interview with Botagoz Omarova

Part 10 -- Return to the US . . . and Home?  (September 2017 - present) 

1. My Journey . . . Home?^*
2. A Stranger Among My Own 
3. Out of the Muck

If Thy Friends Doth Protest Too Much, Do Not Remove Thy Clothes

Since last year I have been hosting a monthly transgender support evening at my residence in Bucharest.  If any of my readers happen to find themselves in Romania, just drop me a line and I'll give you directions.  MAGIC-DC it is not, but when I found there were no support groups here, I decided I would start a tradition.  Coincidentally, it's even on the third Friday of the month just like the MAGIC-DC evenings.

Has the tradition caught on?  It's too early to say.  For the first several months only my friend Raluca Niculescu came, and we would spend a couple of hours talking and having a bite to eat.  Raluca is recently post-op, and I have much to learn from her about her Thailand experience.  In January it was DO who came, and we watched some transition-related videos and then part of the movie Transamerica.  In February no one came.  The surprise came in March, when over the course of the evening I had a dozen people in my apartment.  Well, to be honest, six, including Irina Nita from ACCEPT,  are LGBT friends and colleagues who had come at 7pm for a Pride Month planning meeting.  As we got closer to 8pm, my officially announced time for the transgender evening, the doorbell began to ring.  Six more joined us, and the Pride Month meeting slowly morphed into the transgender evening.  What was truly gratifying that night was that I had never before met five of the people who came for the transgender evening.

So I never know quite what to expect.  Maybe no one will come, and then again, perhaps a half dozen or a dozen will ring my bell.  Or. . . .

On Friday, April 20, I arrived home by bicycle at about 6:30pm.  "Good," I thought, "I have an hour and a half to get ready."  Before setting out food, I decided I had enough time to take a shower.  I had just taken off my bicycling clothes and started the shower when. . . .

Buzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!   Someone was at my door.  I turned off the shower, threw on a bathrobe, and ran to the front door and cracked it open.  There stood Raluca with a smile that turned to an expression of surprise when she saw me in a bathrobe.

"It is at 7pm, isn't it?" she asked.

"No, it's at 8pm, but come on in while I get ready."

"But I have a whole group right behind me!" Raluca replied, "We all just got out of jail."

"What???!!!!  Tell everyone to come on in.  You're in charge while I get dressed."

"Yes, that's me, I'm always in charge," Raluca sighed.  I know that as one of the most successful of the young Romanian transgender women I have met, Raluca is not boasting.  

Fortunately, Raluca knows my apartment and kitchen.  She got everyone settled while I went to get dressed, forgetting the shower.  Then Raluca came and helped me with the new dress I was having some trouble with.

"What happened?" I asked.  "Were you all arrested?"

"Yes, all of us."

Finally dressed, I joined the group.  I knew many of them.  Others I was meeting for the first time.  This wasn't going to be a transgender evening as such, but an LGBT post-demonstration decompression.  Chief among the friendly faces was that of Tudor Kovacs, one of the leading LGBT activists in Romania.  Tudor proceeded to tell the tale.

Several weeks earlier, many in the Bucharest LGBT community decided the time had come to protest the anti-gay laws adopted this year in St. Petersburg, Russia.  They applied to the Primariia (mayor's office) to stage a quiet, peaceful demonstration not in front of but near the Russian Embassy.  The Primariia accepted the application but then would not make a decision yes or no despite repeated inquiries.

So, according to Tudor, when the planned protest day came, 20-30 activists in this intrepid group decided to go ahead anyway with or without a permit.  When they arrived at the planned demonstration location, however, they found the police already waiting.  They had just enough time to get out a few home-made placards and a banner before the police began arresting them.  All-in-all the demonstration lasted fewer than ten minutes.  No one resisted arrest.  The demonstrators were ushered into a waiting police van, taken to the nearest police station, and detained for two hours before being released.

Well, there's no reason for me to tell the story when you can watch it right here:

Alexandra Carastoian, a talented young filmmaker and activist, shot this video.  It's Tudor Kovacs who is speaking at the beginning, and I see many familiar faces.

Raluca was part of the group, and the police station where they were detained happens to be just around the corner from my apartment, a two minute walk if that.  When they were released, Raluca suggested they all come over to my place.  About ten of them came along with Raluca.

I listened to the story as I put out drinks, bread, cheese, wine, and a bowl of spaghetti.  I was no longer embarrassed about having been caught without clothes.  Rather, I was glad I was there to greet these young LGBT Romanians who had decided to exercise their right of peaceful demonstration.

Raluca

I came to understand from Tudor and others that what had happened to their application to demonstrate is quite common.  When the authorities don't want to be seen publicly as prohibiting a demonstration, they simply do not reply to the application.  They do, however, send the police out on the planned day and time.  They quickly arrest anyone who comes to demonstrate on the grounds that they are demonstrating without a permit.

I said to the group that had I known, perhaps I should have joined them with a few posters in Russian.  Then I caught myself.  If I had joined in the demonstration, my diplomatic status would saved me from arrest, but since I would have been violating a host country law that I am duty-bound to observe, the police most certainly would have made a report to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA).  I don't know if participating in a single protest of this kind would be grounds for the MFA to declare me persona non grata, but most certainly I would have been in hot water.

Sigh.  We watched more of Alexandra's video, and then there was another buzz.  It was Irina Nita at the door.  Tudor, Raluca, and the others told her the story of the protest, and then our evening gradually morphed into another Pride Month planning meeting.

It might not have been a transgender support evening, but it was an evening to remember nonetheless.  I am proud to know Tudor, Raluca, and everyone in this group that had at least tried to stand up against injustice in St. Petersburg, a city I have loved through the decades, a city that may now be off-limits for me.  I was happy that even if I could not be part of their action, I could open up my home and share a meal with them afterwards.

I will be keeping a close eye on demonstration plans for the rest of my time in Romania.  From the official point of view, protesting too much here is not much protesting at all.  The least I can do when friends subject themselves to arrest is keep my clothes on, prepare a bowl of spaghetti, and open my door.

The moral?  If thy friends doth protest too much, do not remove thy clothes.

Voice: The Acid Test

Voice.  It's one of the acid tests for anyone walking the male to female transition path.

Does anyone of my generation remember how they sounded before puberty?  I may be one of the fortunate few who does.  Here's a sample:

Yes, that's me in the cub scout uniform, and that's how I sounded in 1965.  In those years we had a reel-to-reel tape recorder that we would turn on during family events.  Those tapes are lost now, but before they disappeared, I extracted a few of the sounds to make a CD as a Christmas present for my Mom and my sisters in 2001.

After male puberty kicked in in the late 1960s, I thought I was doomed.  My voice dropped from alto to somewhere between baritone and bass.  When I made my first abortive attempt to come out as transgender in college in the 1970s, it was my voice that kept me in the shadows, away from other people.  I was already self-conscious enough as it was about my looks, but more than anything else I feared what would happen if I had to open my mouth and speak to another human being.  Here's a sample of my 2001 voice from the same Christmas CD:

Doomed.  There was no way anyone would take this as a female voice no matter what I did.  My voice had dropped in pitch, and there was no way to raise it back.  As I read the literature in my abortive attempts at coming out in 1990 and in 2000-02, I came to understand that hormone replacement therapy does nothing to raise pitch.   Some resorted to surgery, but the results were poor to mixed at best.  The vocal folds, once thickened by testosterone, are not thinned by estrogen.  I came to envy those walking the transgender path in the other direction.  Regular treatment with testosterone will lower even a soprano to normal male range.

Hopeless.  That's how I felt about my voice when I began my fourth attempt at transition in 2010.  I found some websites with advice and practice lessons, but on my own I might as well have been learning to play the violin by reading a book.  The best I could come up with was a falsetto that Kyna graciously tolerated until my friend Shannon and her friend Caroline gently disabused me of it over a year ago.  It was Caroline who first told me the importance of resonance, although in Romania there was little I could do with this knowledge.

When I was in the US in May, 2011, I made me way to Tish Moody,  a speech therapist in private practice who has worked in the transgender voice program at George Washington University.  It was a start, but it was only two sessions.  I had hoped I might be able to work with Tish by Skype once back in Bucharest, but it never worked out.

Finally, late last year I made my way to Linda Siegfriedt, a speech therapist who is also from the GW transgender voice program.  We began working by Skype in early January.  I felt I was back in a cross between learning a language and learning to play a musical instrument.  Exercises, exercises, and more exercises.  Resonance, breathing, pitch glides, strengthening and balancing, functional expressions, and intonation.  It was slow going and frustrating at first, but then. . . .

Perhaps a month and a half ago I began to notice that no one was saying "Sir" to me on phone calls to customer service desks in the US.  It was "Ma'am" from the get go, whether or not I had given my name.

Then on one fine Monday morning in March, the G-Man walked into our office, stopped, and looked at me closely.

I had a dream about you last night, and I realized something.  I no longer have any memory of you as a man.  I have a dim memory of seeing you on the stairs the day I arrived over a year ago, but I can no longer picture you.  I don't even remember what you sounded like.

The G-Man asked if I could still speak in my old voice, but I already knew that I couldn't even if my life depended on it.  It's gone, pure and simple, just as I once thought my childhood alto was gone forever.

The G-Man then asked if I had any recordings of my old voice, and that's when I remembered the Christmas CD that I hadn't listened to in years.  The G-Man's jaw dropped when I played it to him.  "Was that what you sounded like when I met you?"  He was incredulous.  Then a co-worker walked in, and the G-Man asked him if he could guess whose voice this was on the CD.  He couldn't.

A voice changes slowly through hard, persistent work.  While I was sick with no voice at all in late March, I went back and listened to the practice recordings I had made at the beginning of January.  I hadn't sensed it from day to day, but the comparison between the first and last recordings was striking.  Where I had once felt hopeless and doomed, I now hear a voice that is acceptably female.  This is still a work in progress, but OK, well, you be the judge:

Linda tells me I am one of the lucky ones who seems to have grasped and applied the concepts quickly.  She even asks me what I think accounts for such quick progress.  The only answer I can come up with is the study of foreign languages.  Russian is very different from English, and I've spent thirty years making my tongue and mouth do things they never do in English.  I also speak some Portuguese and Uzbek.  Could it be that learning to speak in a female voice draws on those same parts of the brain that both madden and gladden us as we struggle to learn foreign languages?

Still, hearing the G-Man's compliment was one thing.  The same applies to hearing "Ma'am" during blind phone calls and to the reactions of sales people in the stores of Bucharest.  What would a group who knows nothing about my past think about me after hearing my voice not for a minute but for an hour or two?

My acid test came a week ago Friday.  I went to a Romanian high school as part of the Embassy's Meet America program.  What did I talk about?  No, it wasn't about LGBT issues or even about American diplomacy.  I spoke about what it is like to be a bicycling diplomat!

I rode my bike to the school, dressed in a nice new skort and a lavender summer jersey.  The director came out to greet me and introduced me to the English teacher whose class I would be visiting.  Then we went to the classroom, a nice young man carrying my bicycle up to the second floor.

There they sat.  First there were about ten, and then more came in.  In the end there were 20 or so of the most discerning, critical, and quick to speak their minds individuals on the face of the earth:  high school students.  If ever there was to be an acid test, here it was.  We put up a poster of President Obama, and I handed the CD containing my talk to one of the young men who loaded it onto a laptop.  

I was nervous that my voice would not carry.  Even if it did, would it last?  I had been sick only a week earlier, and I was still going off into coughing fits.  I started by asking if everyone could hear me in the back of the room.  "Yes," was the answer, "We hear you."

"Who here rides a bicycle?" I asked.  I like to get as much audience involvement as I can when I speak to groups, and this class of Romanian students jumped right in.  Hands went up, and I started calling on the young women and men.  For over an hour we talked about bicycles, bicycle safety, and how a small committed group of activists can band together to change bad laws.

When I was done with the talk, I opened up the conversation.  "Ask me anything you want.  Ask about America, what it's like to work in an Embassy, or about my own life."

I got the usual good questions.

"As an American, what do you think we need to do to improve life in Romania?"

"What do you like most about living in Romania?"

"What do you miss most from home?"

"Being a woman, what was it like to work in the space program?"

Gulp.  

"Well, one of the nicest things about working with NASA was that there were so many women engineers, programmers, and scientists."

I told them about my friend Marilyn, now at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL.  Marilyn was part of the Messenger mission to Mercury last year and is one of the best engineers I know.  When I took over the Mission Scheduling system for Hubble in 1995, it was Marilyn who handed it to me before moving to Huntsville.  Then there were Deborah and Mahin and Kelli and Mary, an excellent engineer and the best manager I have ever worked with.

"Good," I thought to myself.  "I had an answer for that one."

"Any other questions?" I asked.  A young woman raised her hand.

"As a mother, can you tell us something about domestic violence and how domestic disputes are handled in the US?"

Wow.  I knew for sure at that moment that no one had guessed even in the slightest about my past, and in answer I recounted the experience of a friend who had taken herself and her children to a battered woman's home to get away from an abusive husband.  

Then there were handshakes and photos before I headed on my way.  Almost two hours with high school students, perhaps the most critical, discerning class of people on the planet, and here they were asking me about domestic violence and what it was like to work as a woman engineer.  

I rode home that sunny day with the biggest of smiles.  My voice had survived two hours of public speaking to a group of teenagers, an acid test if ever there was one.  As I rode the streets of Bucharest, I heard first one appreciative whistle and then another for this middle aged woman in a summer jersey and a skort, but nothing could compare with my two hours in a high school classroom.  My voice has arrived.

*********************

Working with Linda Siegfriedt has been so much fun that I find it hard to think of her just as a voice specialist and myself as her client.  Although we have seen each other only as video images over Skype, I think of her as a friend who visits me each Saturday afternoon.  I think you will find the same.

Speaking of which, here is how you can reach her --

Linda Siegfriedt, MED, CCC, SLP
Voice and Speech Specialist

New Leaf Center for Self ExpressionP.O. Box 255
Centreville, VA 20122
703-966-6232
newleafcenter@ymail.com

Just tell her that RM from Bucharest says "Hi!"

Diplomatically, Socially, and Congestedly Yours

My friend Nat put it better than I ever could.  "RM, you got slammed."

The past two weeks have demolished my personal myth of indestructible physical health.  On the evening of March 16 I had twelve people over, first for a Pride Month planning meeting and then for a Third Friday of the Month transgender support group.  That's more people than have ever been at my apartment for an LGBT evening.

It was all very gratifying until Monday.   I felt tired all day at work.  I thought that was it, that I was overtired, and almost apologetically I told the G-Man that I was feeling under the weather and perhaps should consider staying home the next day.  I wasn't even serious about it.

Then I woke up in the middle of the night with the worst sore throat I can remember in decades.  Swallowing was painful, and my voice was a whisper.  Twelve hours later I had no voice at all.  All the other usual cold symptoms soon came on and joined in a merry spring celebration in my head.

I missed three and a half days of work, in disbelief first that this was not going to pass in 24 hours, then not in 48, and then not even in 72.  My throat could take chicken noodle soup and soft boiled eggs but not much more than that.  I consumed more tea and honey than I have in years.  Our Embassy medical office sent medication home to me through a neighbor, and I went to work on Friday afternoon more for a medical evaluation than for work.  At least the sore throat had finally loosened its grip.

On Saturday my voice started to come back, and on Sunday I felt well enough to meet my Peace Corps friend PA for brunch.  This is her last week in Romania, and it would be the last chance to see each other.  After brunch we walked through one of Bucharest's beautiful downtown parks, the sun warm and an early summer feel in the air.  Could it have only been three weeks ago that snow drifts dominated the streets of Bucharest?

I went to bed gently that Sunday evening, certain I had turned the corner and that all would soon be well.

That feeling lasted until just short of midnight.  During 25 years of marriage, I became a light sleeper much like my mother had been.  Our young son would have the usual childhood illnesses and problems, and my spouse's two aunts and sister who lived with us had an assortment of ailments, some of them serious.  Suffice it to say that the rescue squad in our neighborhood knew us well through nighttime visits, sometimes more than once in a month.  I was primed for the slightest nighttime touch on the shoulder, the softest call from another room.  In a moment I would be bolt upright, leaping into action to address the crisis of the moment.

So there I was on Sunday evening, already two hours into sleep when I heard the sound and jumped out of bed.  It took a moment for me to realize it wasn't my telephone that had started ringing but the intercom telephone.  Someone was at the door outside, asking to come in.  In pajamas and a bathrobe, I opened the door to find my local friend NR standing there.  She was having a small personal crisis and had come to me, her trans sister, for a shoulder and a few words.  We sat, we talked.  It didn't take long, and soon NR was on her way.

As to me, I scarcely slept the rest of the night.  The adrenalin had done its job.  Instead of recovering, I found my symptoms lingering.  Not thinking as clearly as I should have, I rode my bicycle to work on Thursday only to find that the temperature had dropped and the wind had picked up at the end of the day.  That night a good cough kept me up again, and I dragged myself into work on Friday.  When our nurse saw me at lunchtime, he handed me some more pills and said just two words:  "Go home."  I took a taxi and collapsed on my couch for the rest of the afternoon.  Only today, another Saturday, am I finally feeling back to where I was a week ago.

My story in this journal has been one of almost miraculous transformation, a snatching of my life from the hands of a fate that seemed destined to take me to the grave with the greatest of unfulfilled dreams.  At the same time, I don't want to sugarcoat the down moments and put rose colored glasses on everything.  Thus to put it bluntly, for me to get this physically sick was a shock.  I don't recall anything like it in decades.

So now my mind is going in circles with theories.  I am not alone by any means, as this mysterious Romanian virus is wrecking havoc at Embassy Bucharest.  A number of others have been laid up at home as long as I was.  One friend has what we are calling the 100 Day Cough.

But me, the person who never gets sick beyond a 24-hour cold?  Let's see, is there anything different about my life this year than in years past? 

Oh, yes, there is the small matter of HRT.  It's almost ten months since I began.  Could a law of unintended consequences be at work, my body changing not only in ways I had always wanted but also in ways that have lowered my resistance to infection?  I've already had two local MtF women friends tell me, in effect, "Of course, didn't you know?"

I guess I should add to that the pressure of a long divorce and then post-divorce litigation.  Pressure, pressure, and nothing but pressure for nearly four years with no truly relaxing vacation other than my two weeks in the US with my sisters last October. 

So what did I do the day after my workplace transition last November?  I jumped right into advocacy and support!  Here I am, a very involved post representative for Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies (GLIFAA).  Most of my evenings and weekends have been going to volunteer work for GLIFAA and with the local LGBT community.  I feel I have back dues to pay, at least four decades of them, and that my position at a U.S. Embassy overseas puts me in a special position to be able to begin that repayment.  I'm not a great organizer, but I do put my heart into every activity and event that I can.

Would it have been different if I had transitioned on the US?  I imagine I would have been just as much involved, but I would not have been the lead on anything.  I would have been just another pair of hands.  It is a fact of a Foreign Service Officer's life that we are experts on anything that falls within our portfolio.  We are experts whether we know anything or not.  If we don't, then our task is to learn very quickly.  We are the representatives of our country overseas, and it is the very definition of our jobs to be the best representatives we can.  Thus it is that I am a very visible if unofficial representative of the U.S. Government in the Romanian LGBT community.  My hope is that I can also be an effective representative who is remembered fondly and well when she departs.

But to do that, I must recover my health.  So this weekend I am taking time for myself.  I am disconnecting the phones at night and lounging in the sun with a good book.  My only outdoor activity today was the pleasant one of a morning at the beauty parlor.  What better way to start to feel good about oneself again after two weeks of feeling like an infectious blob?

Infections, coughs, and tissue aside, there has been some very good news this month.  In rapid succession I received my new Social Security card and my new Diplomatic Passport.  My trivia question of the month is whether this is the first time the Special Issuance Office has reissued a passport because of a gender transition.  Although I'm certain I'm the first such case for a State Department employee, I can think of a few people at NASA and other agencies who might have stood in that line before me.  With new passport in hand, I will hope for fewer interesting experiences such as the ones I had when I traveled to the US last year using my old passport (The Odd Joys of International Travel while in Transition).

Still Red-Nosed but with a New Hairstyle

The law of unintended HRT consequences may also be having another effect, one that leaves me strangely pleased and smiling.  You see, I got lost a few weeks ago when I was walking to a friend's house.  I decided to take a short cut, but then my infallible sense of direction failed me.  I came out of the back street maze in a place so far removed from my friend that I had to call her and ask her to come out and find me. 

My chair and book are calling, so please forgive me dear friends if I drop everything and attend to their needs.  I'll write again soon, I trust without the need of keeping the box of tissue at hand.  

Yours diplomatically, socially, and congestedly from Bucharest,

RM

March 8 and Me

My readers in the US no doubt are wondering at the title of this posting, perhaps thinking there should be a question mark, as in March 8 and Me?

My readers east of the Danube, however, are already smiling and thinking, "But of course, for Robyn this was the first March 8 of her new life."  If anything, they may be thinking there should be an exclamation point, as in March 8 and Me!  They also be wondering why I think my U.S. friends are scratching their heads.

So please bear with me as I explain.

Dear U.S. friends, March 8 is International Women's Day, and it's big.  I mean as in it's bigger than Valentine's Day and Mother's Day combined.  It dates to 1909, when it was first declared by the Socialist Party in the United States, but to my mind this holiday is associated with the 1917 February Revolution in Russia.  You know, that's the one that toppled the tsar and ushered in a period of democratic hopes that the Bolsheviks smashed eight months later in their October Revolution.  The women of Petrograd were in the streets on February 23 for International Women's Day.  It was the middle of World War I, and the march slogan was bread and peace.

International Women's Day 1917, Russia

Then a strange thing happened.  Bystanders gathered, and at the end of the day, no one went home.  Think of Cairo and the Arab spring.  Now you've got the picture.  The crowds stayed in the streets for days.  More and more people joined in.  The city was hungry, and someone finally thought to break into a bakery.  It turned into a bread riot.  The tsar was away at the front, but the city authorities tried to restore order by calling in troops.  It didn't work out the way they hoped, however, because the good troops were all away fighting the Germans.  The troops that were in the capital were largely raw draftees.  Ordered to shoot into the crowds, they hesitated, seeing so many women's faces, faces that reminded them of their own mothers.  Instead, many went over to the side of the crowd.  At the Imperial Duma -- a proto-parliament that until then had little power -- Prince Lvov, Alexander Kerensky, and a group of other legislators decided it was time to get ahead of events.  They formed what they called a Provisional Committee and sent a telegram to the tsar at the front.  "Sire, to save the country, you must abdicate."  To their own surprise, the tsar acquiesced, and that was the February Revolution.

My U.S. readers are scratching their heads again.  "March 8?  February Revolution?  Has hormone therapy mixed you up on calendars and dates?"  No, no, dear friends.  It's just that Russia in those days was still using the Julian Calendar, which at that time lagged behind the Gregorian Calendar used in the West by thirteen days.  Thus February 23 in Russia was March 8 in the US.  When the Bolsheviks took over in the October Revolution, they switched the country to the Gregorian Calendar.  For the next 70 years, the October Revolution holiday was observed on November 7.  They also put Russia on the metric system.  If they had just stopped there, they might have had a great thing going.  But it all went to their heads with dreams of collectivization and communism.  Then we got Stalin and the Gulag, the Brezhnev decay, and finally Yeltsin and the revolution of August 1991 that brought things back to where they were in the spring of 1917, more or less.

Is it all clear, now?

Oh, I almost forgot, what about the women?  Well, the Bolsheviks didn't like the idea of women or anyone else marching in the streets, so they took the March 8 holiday and turned it into a completely apolitical women's day, sort of our Valentine's Day and Mother's Day rolled into one but more so.  It's still a national holiday in Russia.  Everything is closed, and that includes the U.S. Embassy.  Flowers and gifts are given.  It's the one day when Russian men turn soft and treat the women in their lives -- and I mean all the women in their lives -- as queens and princesses.  They have to!  They know what will happen to them on March 9 if they don't.

When I was stationed in Uzbekistan, all the local guys at Embassy Tashkent formed a receiving line.  It ran from the front entrance almost out to the street.  As the workday began, the guys greeted each and every woman, Uzbek and American, as she arrived for work.  By the time she entered the Embassy, each woman held a small bouquet of roses.

Now my readers east of the Danube are scratching their heads.  "Surely you celebrate March 8 in the US, don't you?"  No, I'm afraid we don't.  Some progressive newscasters might mention International Women's Day, but no one gives it a second thought.  Yes, dear friends east of the Danube, that is the sad reality on our side of the Atlantic.

In the 1980s and onward, I took my own enjoyment in International Women's Day whenever I was east of the Danube.  I would give the flowers and chocolate, and I would give the dinner invitations.  I knew that gender transition was an impossible fantasy for me, but I also knew how I would like to be treated in that world of fantasy.  I took my own silent joy in giving.

So imagine my joy this year!  This is now my day.  Alas, March 8 is no longer a national holiday in Romania, but it's still big.  It was too cold for the guys to form a receiving line out to the street, but inside our work home on the outskirts of Bucharest, all was warmth.   A knock on my office door, another flower in my hands.  Bouquets covered the tables at lunchtime.  Doors were held more gallantly than usual, and we women smiled at each other in passing throughout this day, our special day.  Cards and e-cards flew through the ether, including a special one from my dear friend Nadine in Moldova:

Любимая и дорогая наша подруга! Мне очень приятно поздравить тебя от всего сердца с Международным женским днем!  Мы первый раз это делаем и я так рада!!!  Пусть твоя прекрасная и заразительная улыбка будет всегда олицетворять твое счастливое сердце, а твои глаза излучающие доброту и понимание пусть всегда сияют, чувствуя любовь близских людей и верных друзей!!!

Dear and beloved girlfriend!  I am so happy  to wish you a Happy International Women's Day with my whole heart!  This is the first time we can greet you with this wish, and it makes me glad!!!  May your beautiful and infectious smile always be the face that reflects a happy heart.  May your eyes always shine forth with goodness and understanding, feeling the love of your close ones and true friends!!!

My friend F1 from Uzbekistan said it simply and with beauty:  "I knew you as a soft and sincere man, and my happiness for you today is that you have lived to know the joys of womanhood."

In Romania and neighboring Moldova, the entire month of March is for women.  March 1 is Mărțișor, a celebration of women, life, and continuity.  Men give red and white ribbons and charms to their women friends, and women give them to each other.  According to tradition, women wear the charms and ribbons on their wrists or over their hearts.  As the spring blooms, women and girls move the charms from their wrists to the branches of fruit trees, a sign of fertility for the year to come.

Winter's End, A First Bloom

March 1, March 8, and then March 17 and St. Patrick's Day -- yes, the wearing of the green extends even to Bucharest -- March is a celebration of spring and of life.  The long winter, seemingly endless just three weeks ago, has broken.  The snow drifts are melting, and the Sun warms skin that it has not touched since last year.  It is a wonderful, joyful time for me, Robyn, to be alive in this, the year that brought the first March 8 of my life.