The Evolution of Gloria

Our chairman recounts the beginnings of a lifelong journey

At three years of age, George tried on lipstick for the first time. A year later George tried on a dress, even if it was far too big for him. At five, George borrowed a ring of Ma’s, and wore it when he was in school that day. All three times he was caught for having done these deeds, and chastised because (as a boy) he wasn’t supposed to wear girls’ things.

None of these things were done as part of some sinister plan on George’s part to wear girls’ things. For George, at that time, he couldn’t have even told you what the difference between girls and boys was. Wearing those things was part curiosity and part fascination for him because the lipstick, the dress, and the ring just seemed so beautiful; and seeing and feeling those things on him just seemed good.

The lessons George learned, though, from those experiences were many. As a boy, he wasn’t supposed to wear pretty things, even if they did seem so good to see and feel on him. Being a boy, he wasn’t supposed to want to look or feel pretty, that was something for girls only. George learned, too, that there must be something wrong and different about himself as a boy.

George tried to be the boy he was supposed to be, but somehow the curiosity, the fascination, and the need to experience the pretty things for himself would not go away. No matter how hard George tried, he was different than the other boys he knew. Wearing shorts to school brought taunts from other boys, and even some girls, that he had "girls’ legs." How could George be a boy, and have "girls’ legs" was a question that only seemed to add to his confusion.

George refused to wear shorts to school in order to stop the taunts, and the pain they caused him. He can’t be sure, but maybe the taunt of his "girls’ legs" was added fuel that led him to try on a pair of stockings when he was seven years old. By that time, George had learned a major lesson. The need to try on those pretty stockings had grown overpowering, but when George did try them on, he was very careful to not get caught doing so. Getting caught would only lead to more hurt because he wasn’t the "boy" he was supposed to be.

Seeing and feeling those stockings on his legs after almost two years of denial of wearing pretty things, was an overwhelming sensation. George was fighting within himself that wearing the stockings was wrong for him as a boy, but yet seeing and feeling the stockings on his legs felt so wonderful and pretty. With the stockings on, George did have "girl’s legs", and that did not feel wrong or bad.

The curiosity, the fascination, the need of things that made him feel pretty, became his deep, dark secret from the world. Stolen moments to wear something pretty felt so good, and yet it brought fear, shame and guilt with it, because George did have to hid to do it. More denial followed each time George wore something pretty. As George struggled to outwardly be the boy he was supposed to be, the more the need would become an overwhelming compulsion when denied for any length of time. And when George did give in to the compulsion that was tearing him apart, the more risks he took, and the more he needed to satisfy the compulsion.

By nine years old, George was very accomplished at hiding his secret needs. Ma’s clothes were really too big for him, other than the stockings, which by then he was holding up by using large rubber bands around the tops of them. Dresses didn’t fit, shoes didn’t fit, and the only way he could wear a bra was to tie a knot in the back of it so it would fit his chest. But whether the things fit or not, though disappointing, it was offset by at least feeling the pretty things on him and dreaming they did fit, at least to a point.

Finding things that did fit became a need. And so, George took even greater risks to satisfy that need, especially when something he tried on wasn’t Ma’s. Visiting family or friends, at times, led to chances that George took to try something on. Shoes, jewelry, lipstick, even clothes, became fair prey for him when he could find the chance to wear them, and get away with it. Checking out closets and dressers was not unheard of. If given even five minutes, George could check out a girl’s or a woman’s closet and dresser without them ever suspecting. And if the time and chance allowed, something of theirs would be tried on.

Shoes, jewelry, and lipstick were the most common items for George to try on, as they were the most accessible, and took little time to do. Coats, gloves, hats, and scarves were also fairly easy to try on in a very short time. By the time George was ten years old, he had had the lipstick of at least eight different women on his lips, and nobody but George knew it. One aunt of George’s, he discovered, had several tubes of lipstick, and literally dozens of pairs of earrings. In a reckless moment George took one of the lipsticks and four pair of the earrings to be his own. He knew his aunt would never miss them.

For about three months George was able to hide his treasures. One day, though, Ma confronted him about the items she had discovered while cleaning. She didn’t yell or get mad at George, but he could feel that she was very disappointed with him. George cried knowing that disappointment, and admitted taking the lipstick and earrings from his aunt because he had wanted them because they were so pretty.

Very little was actually said. George felt great hurt and shame, not for just having taken the things, but mostly for knowing he had hurt Ma. The shame and guilt he felt were a very heavy burden for him. The lipstick and earrings disappeared, and not another word was ever said of that moment. To this day I know that Ma and George were the only ones to know about Ma finding those things.

George fought so hard to regain the trust he felt he had lost, and to be the boy, the son, he was supposed to be. The needs did not go away, but they were buried for a time. At twelve years old, George’s life was given a new revelation. While Ma was in the hospital for an extended time, the wall that George had built to hold in his needs came crumbling down. The cause of the wall crumbling was a bra. As the eldest, George took on many, if not all, of the household duties. Dad was working during the day and spending time with Ma in the hospital in the evening.

George took care of his two younger brothers, learned to cook meals, and do whatever was needed to take care of the family. Skipping school one day in order to clean house, etc., George went to put away some laundry that he had washed and ironed. There in Ma’s dresser, George discovered two brand new bras. The needs returned with a vengeance, and George felt himself give in.

To justify, George reasoned, that just trying on one of the bras for a moment would be enough to satisfy the needs within him, and then let him put them aside again. George wanted no repeat of the guilt and shame he had felt for so long, but it was becoming nearly impossible to contain them anymore. Taking off his t-shirt that he was wearing, George took one of the bras, with the store tags still on it, and went to try it on. George had grown, though, and as he put the bra around him, he discovered that there would be no need to tie a knot in the back of it to make it fit him. As he hooked the bra around him it was one of the scariest moments George had ever experienced. The bra fit him, and that had not been expected.

It is possible that if that bra had not fit that George might have been able to take it off and put it back in the dresser and kept his inner wall intact. He, nor I, will ever know though, because the bra did fit, and the need to wear the bra took over. Turning the bra around, George pulled it up into place on his chest and put his arms through the straps. It was as though that bra had been made just for him, at that very moment. George was actually trembling in a mixture of fear and excitement as he watched himself pad out the bra cups in the dresser mirror. The bra not fitting would have made it seem ridiculous for him to be wearing it, and the spell might have been broken.

But the proof of the perfect fit of the bra was right there in the mirror’s reflection to see, and any denial was gone. Fear of seeing that made George take off the bra, put on his t-shirt and, literally, run from the bedroom. Years of denial, fear, guilt, and shame, went to war with inner feelings far beyond anything George had ever felt before in such intensity. The perfect fit of the bra, the look and the feel of it on his body, and the mental feel of how right it seemed on him, was beyond any reason. For the moment, denial lost the battle.

Return to Contents

I don’t understand SPAM or the virus carrying messages arriving in the Alpha Omega mailboxes on a nearly constant basis. Viruses are, so they say, propagated from the contents of people’s address books. But how many people are really going to have "meals@" or other variants in their address books? I’ve concluded that there is something larger and more sinister at work, where some email addresses have been harvested and stored and are used by viruses in addition to the email addresses they collect from a freshly infected system. Perhaps there is a virus owned database of email addresses sitting out there. In the past few days I’ve been yet again learning more about the web than I’ve wanted to know. For now I think I’ve shut off all the virus attacks and SPAM, without shutting down legitimate messages. (Note added later: I just read a C/NET security article that shows this is exactly what is going on...virus writers are working with SPAM senders. The Virus writers aim to generate "zombie" servers that spam senders can use to broadcast their junk. One particular worm, BOBAX infects a Windows XP server, calls "home" and picks up a SPAM message and a list of email addresses to SPAM. It’s a hard working worm, because it’s also busy trying to infect other machines.

During the course of my "studies" I’ve learned of internet blacklists. One such blacklist is maintained by SORBS. When a server allows or has holes in its system that let viruses or spam disguise their origins, then that server may well be discovered, tested and listed. Once listed, responsible servers, and web hosts may refuse to have traffic with them. This is more information than I wanted to know, but I’ve had to use this kind of knowledge to make our email traffic a little more sanitary.

A recent problem that just turned up was an accelerating number of hits from x-rated and highly dangerous websites. Click on one of these and they can take over your computer. Of course, I must click on them, as they show up in our log files to see if we are being linked to by a responsible organization. I have no idea whether these sites really listed us or not, but it’s really odd to see different domain names from the same URL. This kind of SPAM is called "referrer SPAM", and the motive for it is apparently to get click-throughs from published lists of website statistics. I guess we’ve attracted that kind of attention since I publish site statistics every once in a while.

Sometimes things get really bizarre-

That of course, is a strange title for something in our little pocket of the world, but it happens. We index our site using the PICOSEARCH service. Most people clearly don’t know how to use the service, and enter ill-thought-out requests such as "crossdressing". That term shows up on just about every page of our site, so it’s a little hard to see how one could find out much useful by entering that term. Every so often we get a collection of search reported that strikes me as really odd. Here is what we’ve got right now:

1. girdle 2
2. the bible tells me so 1
3. +ties +skirt 1
4. boys in dresses 1
5. paris hilton 1
6. girls just want to be mean 1
7. levine 1
8. nude men 1
9. toledo 1
10. makeovers 1
11. macarth 1
12. shopping 1
13. ties 1
14. study bible 1
15. bookstore 1
16. sheffield

Numbers 2, 5, 8, 11 and 14 really make me wonder what people were thinking. Number 4 was surely someone looking for something sexy. As I reported a while ago, we’ve had a lot of hits because of the article on adolescent female socialization that provided the basis for the current movie "Mean Girls". There was an article a while back about making skirts out of ties. Levine is the name of a psychiatrist who has a practice in Beachwood, and whose services are listed with us. Toledo and makeovers are sensible inquiries, as I suppose are shopping and bookstore. But Sheffield?

Oh well.

Diane Frank has volunteered web space for an art sale being held by her temple. Deb Lee talked about a full day yoga retreat in the fall with her church. She told us there was a big auditorium that can be used.

Abigail spoke about Dr. Erin Svenson. As part of an extended program, there will be a picnic on July 3. People can go en femme or en home. Dr. Svenson has been post op for ten years, and is minister in a main line Presbyterian church.

Diane Frank spoke about a legal situation she discovered through TransFamily. It involves a mother and child, a divorce situation, and the father asking a conservative legal foundation for an immediate restraining order. The focus is a gender issue for one of the children.

The meal for June will be a Salad potluck with everyone bringing some type of salad to share.

Kathleen moved the meeting be adjourned, Diane Brennan seconded.

Respectfully submitted by

Kathleen Fenton, Chair of Member Support

Return to Contents

Reiki (pronounced Ray-Key) is a natural healing method thousands of years old that heals on all levels: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Of Japanese origin, the word "Reiki" literally means "Universal Life Force Energy" - that which sustains life and promotes healing in all living things.

Return to Contents

From : http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=7636

Posted by Cinnamon Stillwell

Friday, May 28, 2004

 

Editor's Note: Curves International wrote to clarify their gender policy and included the following statement:

 

Curves International does not attempt to interpret state and local laws regarding gender inclusion or exclusion in membership facilities. Our franchises are 100% independently owned and operated, and as such, franchise owners must make membership decisions based on gender that are consistent with their state and local laws.

¨¨¨

 

Curves, the Texas-based fitness franchise that has been popping up all over the country, was in the headlines recently because of the pro-life beliefs of its owner Gary Heavin. The usual suspects were calling for blood because Heavin dared to give his own money to organizations that do not perform or promote abortions. Ruth Rosen and Jon Carroll of the Chronicle both produced hysterically inaccurate columns on the subject, which eventually led to an embarrassing correction on the part of the newspaper. But it is an entirely different matter that makes Curves the subject of today’s column.

 

I joined one of the Curves in San Francisco several months ago and have been happily working out and losing pounds ever since. I was attracted to the Curves concept, which includes an all-female environment. At least that’s what I thought until I went in to work out last week and a man popped up on the machine next to me. He was wearing a skirt-like item over his workout pants and had the look (which I’ve become all too familiar with living in this city) of a wannabe female. But for all intents and purposes, this was a guy. And when he changed back into his regular clothes (in the dressing room shared by women), he looked like any other man on the street.

 

The owner quietly assured me that he was a '' transvestite,'' as if that would explain everything. It didn’t. Apparently, I wasn’t alone in my confusion, because other women starting asking questions as soon as ''he'' left. After telling us that he usually attends another Curves and was just visiting for the day, the owner added that, ''he doesn’t want to make any of the women uncomfortable.'' To which, I piped up that he did indeed make me ''uncomfortable.'' No doubt shaken by my audacity in bucking the ''transgender'' orthodoxy of San Francisco, the owner looked surprised. But I pursued the matter and came away with some interesting information.

 

According to the owner, it seems that Curves does not have an all-female membership, as I had formerly believed. Not in California anyway. Due to several lawsuits that ensued soon after Curves came to the golden state, Curves franchises in California were forced to make their membership all-inclusive. Before last week, I, and no doubt most of the other female members, were unaware of this policy and had we known, it’s safe to say that it might have affected our decision to sign-up.

 

I decided to write to Curves International about their overall gender policy and I received a prompt response. It seems that while Curves is ''especially designed for women,'' they do not ''discriminate against men.'' So, although women are the main customers at Curves, men are also welcome. And those who are somewhere in between can come on down as well. It’s one big happy family.

 

This scenario sheds light on an often overlooked aspect of ''transgender rights''--women’s rights. That is, if real women have any rights anymore? For instance, it’s apparently okay for transgenders to use the women’s bathroom, changing room, locker room, and so on, but it’s not okay for women to complain about it. If they do, they’ll automatically be labeled ''hateful'' and ''intolerant.'' Of course, transgenders’ intolerance for the 99.99% of us that subscribe to the old-fashioned concept of gender, is perfectly acceptable, but we’re all supposed to recognize their sexual dysfunction as normal. And don’t even get me started on the ridiculous pronoun pandering that comes with the territory. If the transgender in question still has a you-know-what, then as far as I’m concerned, he’s a ''he.'' Enough said.

 

But discrimination against women masked as protection for transgenders is not only the rule of thumb in San Francisco, it’s the rule of law. According to the City and County of San Francisco Human Rights Commission, any resistance to transgender activity is labeled ''gender identity discrimination.'' This includes of course, ''the right to use the bathroom/restroom that is consistent with and appropriate to their gender identity.'' So in other words, all a guy has to do is put on dress and a little lipstick and he can walk right into a women’s bathroom for an eyeful, and claim ''gender identity discrimination'' if anyone complains. Memo to men: peepshow time!

 

Although I can only speak for myself, I think I can say with certainty that most women do not want to share a bathroom, locker room, and especially what they thought was an all-female gym, with a man--whatever his ''gender identity.'' But it seems that us plain-old females have no rights, because transgenders and their view of womanhood take precedence. Forget girlhood, puberty, pregnancy, or motherhood, when it comes to transgenders, it’s the clothes, shoes, and makeup that make a woman.

 

Here are the comments this article provoked. http://forum.chronwatch.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5674

April is the month to pay your annual dues:

$36 Single

$48 Couple

So far there have been very few hits on this, tending to confirm my darker suspicions about what people are really hoping to find when they visit our site.

If you have been trying to use the audio features and can't get them to work, please click on the little green dots with the white figure in the center.  That's what get's things to play. NOT an interface I would have designed...but so it goes.

Diane