Getting out and about: Belonging and blending in.

Several t-girls, including Lynn and Hannah have written about passing - or more probably not exactly passing, but at least being taken for the way you choose to present when out and about.

“You’re good girl. You’re a good tall girl. You’re a good sturdy girl” (Self Esteem, “I Do This All the Time”)

While the above quote may seem a bit of a back-handed compliment to a self-conscious cis-girl, I suspect quite a few of us would gladly take it as an affirmation.)

At a bit over 6 ft I realise that I am unlikely to pass unnoticed, especially in the street or in shops. There’s little you can do about that, except avoid adding to the problem by wearing heels. (I tend not to and elect for flats when I’m out, and on the basis that if I look at what other women are wearing it also tend to be flats, trainers or low-heeled boots. And the few times I’ve been out in even low (one inch) heels I became acutely conscious of the sound of my steps on the pavement, even if heels do force you into taking smaller steps in a more feminine gait - something which you have to remember and concentrate on when walking in flats .It’s a bit of a trade-off, especially for us girls of height.

What’s the answer? Perhaps to slouch a bit to try and minimise your height? Absolutely not. Don’t. Again, take note of other women around you and how they hold themselves. Men often hunch or slouch, usually leading their walk from the upper body or shoulders. Women, with a different weight distribution and centre of gravity, walk from the pelvis with their shoulders straight, and lead with the foot first. It takes conscious practice and it’s often easy to forget, especially if you get to the comfortable point of no longer thinking about how you are dressed and start to fall back into more male mannerisms. (My default look these days tends to be skinny jeans or leggings and a sweater, partly for comfort and partly for anonymity and  not to stand out, although there will always be those occasions when you see someone wearing something particularly stylish and think “I wish…”)

“Confidence is a preference” (Blur, ‘Park Life’)

As Stana, Kandi and many others have said when touching on this topic, the main key to not drawing the wrong attention to yourself is to act as if you belong – “nothing to see here-  just another woman going about her business - glance away and carry on.” Getting to that point does take a bit of confidence. I gradually build mine starting with greetings exchanges with early morning joggers and dog walkers in parks or the local nature reserves (again, a reason not to conspicuously over or underdress unless you want to try pulling a 4 in stiletto out of the grass or a muddy path).

 Initially I would try and limit those encounters to a brief “Good morning” to older women out walking their dogs As confidence grew that people seemed happy to take me as I presented I gradually expanded those encounters to the point where a man walking his dog greeted me as “love” and I treasured that for the rest of the day. At point I felt confident enough to take Susie into indoor spaces: a small art exhibition in a village hall, an afternoon at church sale, browsing in charity shops or the sale racks in Sainsburys, or a quick drop in the library.

Actually my first excursion into a public space was my first appearance (and so far only, but more to do with the lack of places to change in central Oxford) as Susie at a meeting of the local trans support group in the upstairs room of a pub in central Oxford. Both scary and exhilarating – especially that first walk along the High Street to the venue, but the reception was worth the first night nerves.

Which brings me to another point. Safety. My first tentative ventures outside were alone and at night. I really don’t recommend this. It can be very scary. Remember how you might look to others and don’t put yourself into unsafe places or situations. (Although I can guarantee that after the first time you feel you are being followed with your keys gripped tightly in one hand you will have a much starker idea of what most women have to deal with every day. You won’t forget that easily) Then there’s the additional issue that if you are identified as trans or a cross-dresser out alone you may make yourself even more subject to abuse or attack.  As a first timer you may think that you may be less likely to be ‘read’ after dark, but it’s not worth the danger. Just don’t. If you really have no other option, make sure there is someone with you.

After that experience I swapped late walks for morning ones. Early enough that I could leave and usually return before the neighbours were up and about, though sometimes a little touch and go on the return, but not so early that it wouldn’t yet be light and that there wouldn’t be a few people around (at bus stops, jogging, or taking dogs for an early walk).

Building confidence in being out is still a work in progress. I would still like to visit a proper tea room rather than a supermarket café, or go shopping in town or visit a museum, and I would love be able go out with a trusted friend (male or female) maybe for a drink or a meal. 

xxx

Like mother, like daughter?

 

At the risk of wearing it out, lets paraphrase Oscar Wilde once more.

"All women come to resemble their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his."

Or so it seemed until a few weeks ago. 

They say the camera never lies, and indeed in a lot of my photos it does have an unnerving habit of looking right through the painstakingly applied layers of make up and contouring to show the old me that I've spent an hour or more trying to hide under a layer of cosmetics.

That is until this photo, taken a few weeks back, where what I noticed with a slight shock was not only Susie as I hoped to see her, but also, rather unnervingly, my mother looking back out at me. 

Its something about the eyes and the set of the mouth, familiar from many family photos of around 20 years ago.

I'm really not sure how I should feel about this. Worried, or quietly pleased. On the whole I think I'm pleased. Plus I think this is also one of the better photos of Susie and being able to see an echo of my mother in it as well makes it kind of special.

(I've often wondered how much my  mother knew or suspected about my dressing from the time I was 10 to my late teens when I left for university. Not having any clothes of my own - I didn't start shopping for clothes until my mid twenties - I 'borrowed' a number of her outfits. And not matter how careful you think you may have been putting everything back in its place, there must have been tell-tale signs. Did she ever suspect she may have been had an eldest daughter as well as a son?)

The above photo was taken when I had a period three days to myself as Susie around the end of August, during which I managed to get out for several walks and even a few quick trips to the shops. (After spending  hours getting ready, I really didn't want to have to go though the whole change again just because I needed bread and milk.) 

I was anticipating the eventual comedown to set a few days later after L returned from her few days away and Susie had to disappear again. What I didn't expect was that both of us would come down with a cold that lasted the best part of two weeks and at least three boxes of tissues between us. 

Thankfully the cold has mostly gone now, just in time for another break where I have a couple of days to myself this week when I can let Susie out (and about) again. 

No Room in the Closet

"All women dress like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his"

(a wonderful misquote of Oscar Wilde in Alan Bennett's 40 Years On)

"No man does."

Apart from those of us who did at an early age, those being the only female clothes readily available to us, unless we were fortunate enough  to have sisters close to us in age. Unfortunately, my only sister being very much younger than me meant that by the time I started to explore those feelings I had as much chance of wearing her dresses as those of her dolls, so I missed out of whole experience of dressing as a girl - except in my dreams - and that moment had long passed by the time I was brave enough to venture into a charity shop and look for clothes of my own. But back in 1967 I would always feel a frisson of desire when I heard the plaintive complaint of outrage on The Who's 'I'm a Boy' from a boy being dressed as a little girl by a mother who only wanted daughters and wish we could have swapped places. Maybe outwardly I might have protested too (though I'm not sure) but inside I would have been thrilled and delighted.

I had a similar reaction of missed opportunity when I came across a  recent post from Stana (femulate.org) which mentioned a young Minecraft gamer, who blogs under the name F1nn5ter,  who as a result of losing a bet started to blog as as a e-girl named Rose. Things started to escalate as Finn accepted more bets and challenges from viewers to the point where he was practically dressing and blogging as Rose full time, first for a week, then a month, then three months.  While Finn makes no effort to pretend be other than a boy dressed as a girl (often in the mostly ridiculous outfits his viewers send in bids for), he definitely aced the genetic lottery when it came to facial features. As Rose, he is remarkably pretty (and manages an enviable cleavage). 

He has even inspired a few others, and one gamer he chats with, who goes by the name Fr3ddi, is if anything even prettier.

But it was this post on Finns YouTube channel which caught my attention, where Finn goes for a walk outside at night dressed as Rose (Night time walk as Rose).  

Watching this took me back to my first blog post when I did the same thing for the first time six years ago back in July 2015. And like Finn I was acutely conscious of the sound of my heels on the pavement, (I've since learned to wear flats or low heel boots when outside and also, after one scary night when I was convinced I was being followed, of the inadvisability of going out alone dressed late at night.) 

 

I'm not sure if it this, or another when video where Finn goes for a walk  dressed (this time during the day) where he gets lost and finds himself in a road he doesn't recognise, with no idea of where he is. I've done this too, more than once. On several occasions that I've been out as Susie, I've found myself giving in to what seems like her desire to explore side roads and footpaths that I never normally go down (or in some cases wasn't even aware they existed) just to find out where they go. And on at least a couple of those occasions I have ended up getting completely lost with no idea of where I am, and am faced with a decision to either try to back track my route and hoping I can remember which turns I took, or press on in the hope that I will eventually come out somewhere I recognise. 

"Guys, I may have a problem."

In one blog a viewer asks Finn how many dresses he has so he does a quick tally and comes up with twenty four. And I suspect this is before someone posted his address online and fans started to send him parcels (anything from sweets to makeup, shoes and of course, more clothes) 

At that point it must have seemed that Rose had completely taken over any available space in the wardrobe.  That's a point I reached with Susie a while ago. Six years ago Susie's things could fit in a small suitcase. Since then they have overflowed to two drawers of the bedside cabinet,  half of the bedroom closet and part of the spare room.

A large part of that overflow could probably be put down as 'retail therapy', browsing the racks in various charity shops as a sublimation activity in extended lean periods when dressing was not possible. 

Two thoughtful recent posts by Lynn (Time and Tide) and Andrea (The Dress) both touch on the subject of clothes buying as a form of distraction activity to try and cope with the 'pink fog' that sometimes descends at times of frustration or stress. 

Like Lynn, I am in another extended period of trans lock-down, due to the lack of opportunity and what seem an endless parade of rainy weekends though July and the first part August. 

Since my partner doesn't want to have to see Susie, opportunities for dressing usually only come on weekends when she goes out for the day to pursue her own photographic interests but also that I can "have some time for myself". 

It's a compromise that usually works out fairly well (and that I'm hugely grateful for) but it's very dependent on the weather forecast for the weekend and it's often left both of us frustrated and tetchy after a long series of rainy weekends.

It's then that the urge for a bit of sublimation activity to scratch the itch kicks in and I spend time browsing the racks in local charity shops. Luckily I have not succumbed to the temptation of shopping online, despite the tempting adverts cropping in the sidebar of my email account. I'm also acutely aware that Susie is in danger of staging a trans takeover of available space in the house - not just in the closet (and when was the last time I bought anything for my male self, apart from socks?) but that the overflow of wigs, shoes and makeup is competing for the space for my guitars and keyboards in the spare room. So for various reasons I've become a lot more selective about bringing any new stuff into the house. Do I really need another yet dress or pair of shoes and if so, why? - and will I ever wear it, or am I just buying for the sake of buying something? (I have a similar problem with buying CDs that I rarely get round to listening to, but at least they don't take as much space, although they are starting to stack up in piles around the house.)

I don't know if was Finn's idea to get a bridal gown or whether it was something in the many parcels that viewers and fans started mailing him. (I do wonder how may of Finn's viewer are secretly of our ilk and  use Finn willingness to dress up in a series of fantasy outfits to sublimate some of their own desires.) 

He does make a delightful bride though, although with the same struggle to get into a long corset style dress that Andrea mentioned. 

I've never succumbed to the lure of a wedding gown, or even a bridesmaid's dress, mainly for practical  reasons. Where would I keep it, and when would I even wear it? It's a bit impractical for housework, never mind nipping out en-femme for a a loaf of bread or bottle of  milk. But I can see the allure. Possibly most impractical dress I have is a long back button dress which requires an equal amount of contortion and arms that bend the wrong way to get into (and equally importantly) out of.

[I have a slightly shameful fantasy here, of being buttoned into a dress that it is impossible to unfasten on your own and thus dependent on someone else to let you out of. It's probably the nearest I come to a bondge sub/dom fantasy.]

No points, apparently, for the spot the lyric quiz in my last post. It was from the middle section of Genesis' 'Supper's Ready'. I know I'm old, but I didn't realise I was quite so outdated.

xxx

Susie

Now We are Six

 Now we are Six

Or so an email today from Tumblr informs me.

Who remembers – or still uses - Tumblr these days? But apparently it still remembers me, enough to send a birthday message at least. And a reminder to update or verify my account.

Tumblr must have been my first attempt at a blog, or least until I got bored with posting badly photoshopped pictures of Susie and used it for posting bits of artwork instead, and then abandoned it in favour of Blogger where I had more control (theoretically, anyway) over the mixture layout pictures and words. And there on and off (sometimes for quite long periods) I have remained.

But Susie is six? At least as far as her appearance in the blogosphere is concerned. My first Blogger post is dated 19 July 2015 . Perhaps there should be cake, and candles. (Actually, there should always be cake., although I’m prepared to forego the trifle.)

And I wonder if some of those early posts will prove just as embarrassing as seeing your baby photos when looked back on from the grown-up perspective of being six.

 ***

All change!

“Feel your body melt
Mum to mud to mad to dad”

 [points to anyone who identifies the quote.]

The Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu (Zhuang Zhou) once dreamed  he was a butterfly, and when he awoke suddenly he wondered if he was now Chuang Tzu who had just dreamed of being a butterfly or a butterfly now dreaming he was a man called Chuang Tzu.

While I wouldn’t go so far as to describe Susie as a butterfly, except perhaps in her flightier moments, or her rare, fleeting appearances in the garden, I think I sometimes know how Chuang Tzu must have at that moment of feeling still suspended between two different states: that of a light carefree butterfly and the solid reality of mundane existence.

It’s a feeling that lingers in that hour or so when the last traces of Susie have been packed safely away out of sight after receiving a phone call from L saying she’s on her way home, and before she comes in through the door, bursting to tell me all the news of her day out. In that state I am neither completely one thing nor another. I am no longer Susie, and I’m just starting to miss her – especially the feeling of hair against the back of my neck once more, but I have not yet fully adjusted to being boring old S again. 

(For myself, I will not be asked about how my own day was, or what I did, unless the answer contains no reference to spending the best part of it as Susie. While her existence is acknowledged in this house, it is not open to discussion.)

That context switch from being Susie back into mundane life can sometimes prove difficult, especially when you’re busy editing your answers before you speak.  This is something that came up in an LGBT+ Ally discussion at work. Self-editing your responses when your boss or colleague asks about your weekend because you’re not comfortable being out at work  takes a lot of mental effort that is basically wasted - and constant non-committal answers have the danger of making you seem aloof, distant or stand-offish. That wasted mental effort, and the strain it imposes, is part of the reason the company I work for has a strong Pride LGBT+ network and encourages and supports people who want to be out and open at work. It’s not totally altruistic: All that wasted mental effort, they judge, could be better used thinking about work and contributing to company goals. But it is a move towards a win-win situation. (That is, if you actually like your work.)  

Although here I perhaps ought to confess that despite being on my workplace’s Pride committee, I am not out myself as trans / bi-gender, even to fellow members of that committee. That time may still come, but it still seems a big and potentially irrevocable step to take, despite all the reassurances about diversity and inclusion, after 40 years of being in hiding.

A Bridge too far.

 While not entirely surrounded by water like the fabled Seven Bridges of Konigsberg problem*, the village that I live in is bounded on one side by a canal and on the other by a small river  and by a couple of small nature reserves at the top and bottom of the village. 

(*well, famous a handful of mathematicians and students of graph theory anyway.)

There are around five bridges (I can never keep track) mainly on the canal side, plus two or three locks that allow footpath access to some of the neighbouring villages on the either side.

When I first started venturing out in the early mornings as Susie, sometime in mid-2019, it was often those two nature reserves and trails that I headed for, where I could walk for an hour or two and not encounter anyone apart from a few intrepid joggers and early morning dog walkers. (Later, as I grew more confident, I would look forward to these chance encounters and even stop for a brief chat or make a fuss of a playful dog.) 

I've only ever done the full route (some 12 miles) once, which proved to be a bit of mistake. Probably as a result of dehydration and tiredness, I took an awkward tumble on the way back. The next day I found I couldn't put any weight on my left foot, and was still hobbling about painfully for the next two or three weeks, and which put paid to any more excursions for the result of summer.

After that I decided to take things in more relaxed and manageable chunks, taking  in just one side or the other and two three bridges at a time. At some point I decided I should bring a camera with me and record of photo of Susie at each of those crossing places. 

Then just as I was getting more comfortable and confident about those weekend morning walks, along came covid and the first lockdown, which put paid a those excursions for a while, since it's very difficult to maintain 2m distance on a narrow towpath from someone coming in the opposite direction without diving into a hedge or ending up in the canal, neither of which are guaranteed to enhance a lady's dignity.

Indeed, it's only recently that I've restarted some of those morning walks again. So here's a reminder of those pre-lockdown days when a chance encounter on a morning walk was an opportunity to exchange friendly greetings or a few word rather than avoidance and concerned looks. Hopefully we will be able to return to those days before too long.

same coat, but different hairstyle: blonde for a change.

[edit] apparently the bridge in the photo above is called a wight bridge, where a small island (wight) splits the river into two for a short stretch before it rejoins later downstream. Also the bridge I crossed to get to a neighboring village where I once spent a delightful afternoon in a church sale as just another lady from a nearby parish. See back (in black).

Readings: Stories of loss, desire and transformation

"In Cleveland it was well known that any wild goose which flew over Whitby would immediately drop dead, and that to catch a seal it was as first necessary to dress as a woman."

This little epitaph, taken from Keith Thomas in Man and the Natural World prefaces Sara Maitland's 1988 short story 'Self-Seal', first published in A Book of Spells and reprinted in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windlings's The Year's Best Fantasy. Second Annual Collection, which is where I first read it, along with Lucius Shepard's 'Life of Buddha' (which I'll return to later.)  It is a one of a handful of trans-themed stories that made an immediate and personal connection that has remained with me since, some thirty years since I first read it.

The main character (there are only three people in the story, and two of them are not human) is a youth (never named) on the verge of manhood and yet to prove himself a man by going down to the sea's edge to catch a new born seal and bring back its skin as a prize. He has continually put this off but this will be the last year he can do it before his beard grows and it is too late. It is not the killing he is afraid of - he has slaughtered pigs, wrung the necks of chickens, drowned unwanted kittens in a sack as part of growing up on a farm. 

No, not the killing, but the feeling when his mother lays out her skirt for him the night before the mother seals arrive on the beach to give birth.

"It is the other. His mother had smiled last year when he tried to tell her. His stomach feels sick to think about it. His dreams fill with it."

When the day comes, he wakes, strips and puts on the dress his mother has laid out. It falls lumpenly, ugly. The sight of his feet poking out from the bottom are ungainly, ludicrous. In that moment, "He knows what his fear is. It is pleasure. Pleasure and desire." 

Instead he raids his mothers kist for her best clothes: stockings, corset and petticoats and bonnet, and fumbles with the ribbons with now slippery hands, until at last he is dressed and it fells right this time. One more thing. He takes a ribbon and pulls his member tightly back until he is smooth down there. There should be something else down there, something he will never know, but this is the best he can do.

As he leaves, he sees himself in the parlour mirror. How pretty she is, he thinks. And then, in the next sentence, comes the switch of pronouns. 

"How pretty I am, she thinks, and she raises the latch and skips out." 

Shivering in the cold air, she goes down to the water's edge, where the seals are coming in, to watch them give birth and suckle.

"Good morning, my dear," says Seal  Woman to her. "and welcome".   "Hello says the new Seal Child. "Will you come and play with me?". "Yes" she says, "yes, please".

So the three of them enter the sea, where they swim and play (she has no fear of drowning) and one by one she loses her bonnet, skirt and petticoats as the Seal Child nips and tugs at the laces and ribbons until there is just one small ribbon left. And when, back on the beach, this comes loose with another playful tug, there is a moment of consternation, alarm, and shame.

"I'm sorry", he says to Seal Woman.

"I was never fooled before" say Seal Woman. "Why is that?" 

"I was naked", he says. "You could have seen. You must have known"

"That's not what counts", says Seal Woman. "You must go now."

But we know. I can't speak for Sara Maitland, but in this poised moment of shame, sorrow and loss, I feel that she she does know, and that she's talking to me. That this is a story aimed squarely at how I felt at that age, and when I first read this story, and still now.

And then the exchange that has puzzled me ever since.

"I could cut it off", he offers, and for a sweet moment of fear, excitement, desire, he means it.

"No, that's not what counts," says Seal Woman.

"No" he agrees.  "Please. Please let me stay."

But the moment passes and before he can remember the reason he came in the first place, and the rock drops from his hand, they vanish  into the sea.

'Later will say, "I caught a seal, but then I let her go." He does not know if they believe him. He does not know if he is a man.'

Some of us are still wondering, or even if we really know what it fully means to be a man.

But what was meant by that last "That's not what counts", which, unless I'm misreading this, almost seems to counter the first? My reading of the first is that Seal Woman saw a girl because at their first meeting on the beach and in the water there was only a girl there to see, as evidenced by Maitland's use of pronouns, which then shift back abruptly to 'he' when the final ribbon loosens and the girl is revealed as male. Is this an argument that what counts is anatomy, or only when anatomy is revealed or, in this case, becomes erect? I still hope not. So much of what has gone before to this point, seems so unerringly accurate of that mixture of fear and desire to cross and be taken for and seen as female, that to snatch that away at the last moment, to say "that's not what counts", seems cruel.

It's an argument I have with another story, Neil Gaiman's otherwise  sympathetic graphic novel A Game of You in the Sandman series, in which Wanda, a young transwoman frightened of taking the final step of GRS, is left behind by her flatmates when they cross into another world because, according to the witch child, Thessaly, in the eyes of the Moon Goddess, she wasn't born a woman. Wanda's abandonment ultimately leads to her death when the house she has been left in comes, literally, crashing down around her,  and to the ignominy of been buried in a suit under her deadname by the parents she has run away to escape.

Gaiman has, not surprising received quite a lot of flack from readers among the trans community, either from the implication that (at least in the eyes of the goddess) what matters is how we are born rather than who we choose to become, or an inability to envisage an ending that didn't follow the tired cliché of a tragic ending for a trans character, or both.

Contrast this with Lucius Shepard's short story 'Life of Buddha' in which it is magic that effects Taboo final transformation, a magic which initially seems to inhabit him precisely because of his gender fluidity, presenting at different times as a man (albeit with small breasts hidden under loose clothes) or in a dress and wig as a rather beautiful young woman. Taboo, like Wanda, is afraid of the surgeon's knife, and resists his friend Buddha's arguments that he should take the final step and become the woman that Buddha believes he is destined to be. Things come to a crisis when Taboo's flat is raided and both the attackers end up dead in the ensuing fight. Taboo, panicked and afraid, has to disappear, and Buddha sees the obvious way out. If Taboo can cure other people's complaints and remove warts and growths with his herbs and magic, why not use it for this last step. 

* * *

There are several other stories that have remained with me long after I read them (William Carlson's very strange 'Dinner at Helen's and Sonya Dorman's 'When I was Miss Dow'), but maybe for another post depending on whether this sparks any interest.

Pride, Proud?

 The eagle-eyed (and eared) among you may have noticed that this June is Pride Month.

It's a curious time, and not just because most of the celebrations are online (or in the case of BBC Radio 6music, on the airwaves) rather than out the street.

It happens to be a curious time  for me personally because this is the first time I've been actively involved in the celebrations. 

Circumstances have conspired in previous years - even before lockdown - to prevent me actually attending a public Pride event, either as my everyday male persona or as Susie. That one is still on my bucket list.

But this year I found myself on the newly formed Pride committee at work, helping to arrange and publicize the network and a number of events lined up throughout Pride Month in June.  And it's even more curiouser* for me in that I have not actually come out to the rest of the committee as bi-gender, or hinted at the existence of Susie. Instead I registered as an ally when I joined rather than identifying as any part of the  LGBT spectrum.

[* if it's a good enough for Alice then it's good enough for me.]

It feel does a little disingenuous, and I suspect at some point that this unresolved situation may have to change. The trouble is, as with a lot of  decisions you keep putting off, the harder it gets to finally do something about it, and the more uncomfortable having to explain why you kept putting it off in the first place. 

If and when I come out at work is not down to any actual or perceived pressure to do so. The company I work for is very supportive of Pride as part of a wider remit of Diversity and Inclusion and it's made very clear that you are not expected to do anything that would make you feel uncomfortable: You can be out and proud, or you may not think you are ready, or you even think it's no-one else's damn business how you feel and you you fancy. It is entirely your choice, and everyone needs to respect that.

But Pride? If I'm still hiding the existence of Susie, even to my fellow members on the Pride committee and who I can trust to be accepting and completely confidential, then should I be celebrating Pride? Am I, in fact, proud?

Possibly not. I've lived with this dual aspect of me so long, and though some pretty grim times, that it's not something I can say I'm proud to be in the same way I can take pride in a skill or an accomplishment. It's just a weird kink, maybe even a glitch, in the way I developed. It's there, and it's always been there, and to me it's sort of like saying  you are proud of being left handed, or having blue eyes, or a middle toe longer than the rest. (I haven't by the way, so don't bother checking your own in case it's some weird medical marker.)

No. I'm celebrating Pride for other people: for my colleagues and my friends, both at work and elsewhere, whether they know me as Susie or not. And that means for you too.

Happy PRIDE.