“I come from a (youth advocacy) background, and run a weekly support group for (trans*-identified adolescents) who have issues with suicidal ideation, substance abuse, homelessness, and other societal and mental health issues,” she writes on the facebook page for her campaign. “If I get elected, I will work vigilantly to reduce bullying in the education system, reducing youth suicide, increasing awareness of mental health issues, and the promotion of youth job programs, social services, homeless shelters scholarship programs to help youth reach their full potential in life.” 

Driven and passionate, Kaylie cares deeply for the opportunity that a seat on the LYAC would provide her to communicate the needs of the youth in her community to London’s city Councillors. It was this passion she sought to bring to the LYAC candidates’ debate on February 13th, but there was one slight snag: Kaylie is running her campaign remotely, from Bangkok, Thailand, where she is presently recovering from Sex Reassignment Surgery. From her hospital room, she recently recorded and published a tearful ‘It Gets Better’ video to help guide other trans* youth.

Incredibly, despite the long and painful recovery process, Kaylie is still committed to seizing the opportunity to help her community which she feels the seat on LYAC would bring. To surmount the challenge of geographic distance, Kaylie worked with LYAC debate organizers to accommodate her medical leave, and made arrangements to deliver her speech via a Skype video conference.

Unfortunately, London Community News reporter Craig Gilbert was not impressed with this measure of accommodation. Despite affording five, four, and three paragraphs respectively to a trio of cis male candidates, and finally two paragraphs to a cis female candidate, he then gives Kaylie’s speech only a passing, flippant mention. Speaking of technical difficulties, he wrote, “a fifth candidate joined the forum via Skype (she was in Bangkok) but technical difficulties rendered her point mute, pun intended.” Gilbert failed even to mention Ms Sorrenti by name. Trust me, as a past and future candidate for public office, that’s a painful omission to have a journalist make. It’s also usually deliberate.

Infuriatingly, Craig Gilbert apparently believes that the sheer wit of his crack at Sorrenti’s expense constitutes sufficient justification for entirely abandoning any vestige of journalistic integrity—because, in publishing his little bon mot, Gilbert has committed the cardinal sin of journalism: reporting falsehood as fact. In fact, Kaylie’s speech, though delivered over Skype from Thailand, was hardly ‘rendered mute.’ According to Matt Ross, coordinator of LYAC, although the conclusion of Kaylie’s speech suffered an unexplained audio drop-off in the final ten seconds, the majority of her oratory came through loud and clear. If Mr. Gilbert found any part of it unintelligible, he could have done the responsible thing and gotten in touch with Ms Sorrenti, whose contact information was available to him.

One wonders what it was specifically that so disinterested reporter Craig Gilbert about Ms Sorrenti that he saw fit to banish any mention of her name or platform from his article, and to ridicule the measure of accommodation which LYAC gracefully provided in order to allow her participation in the debate despite the challenges imposed by her recovery from surgery abroad. Was it her diversity-embracing platform itself, or could it have been some other factor he found amusing?

Kaylie Sorrenti’s  Youtube Video

Trans youth, it gets better. I promise.

To be fair to reporter Craig Gilbert, he doesn’t make specific mention of Sorrenti’s gender identity, nor any acknowledgement of her medical leave as the reason for the Skype conference. However, according to Sorrenti he was well aware of the details at the time.

One can’t help but wonder, would Mr. Gilbert have berated a candidate in a wheelchair for failing to rise to the occasion? Or, if a candidate had given their speech through a Sign Language interpreter, would he quip that the audience follow-up questions fell on deaf ears? It is unlikely that such an insensitive joke made at the expense of measures accommodating a Deaf or disabled person, in a journalistic piece no less, would be tolerated. So why has the London Community News tolerated this tasteless mockery of LYAC’s measure accommodating Kaylie’s medical leave for Sex Reassignment Surgery?

Help Kaylie Sorrenti:

You can express your dissatisfaction by contacting Metroland Media, the owners of London Community News.

Reporter Craig Gilbert also has a professional email address, lacking only, apparently, the professionalism to match.

LYAC’s election day is March 1st. Online Voting is available to all residents of London, Ontario: cast your vote online at lyac.ca.

UPDATE: To clarify some concerns raised by a reader, I want to make it clear that Kaylie Sorrenti provided her personal details for this article, that she read it prior to publication, and that she gave her consent.

UPDATE 2: An earlier version of this article contained a an inaccurate reference to “social work” background. This has been adjusted to “youth advocacy” for greater accuracy and clarity.

Original post by Christin Scarlett Milloy
Source: http://chrismilloy.ca/2013/02/london-community-news-pokes-fun-at-transgender-youth-council-candidate-on-medical-leave-for-srs/

OLYMPIA, Wash. – A bill in the state Legislature to allow business owners to refuse services for same-sex couples would give them a “license to hate,” according to one Senator. But the bill’s sponsor says it protects religious freedoms.

“This is a bill that allows bigotry,” said Sen. Kevin Ranker, D-Orcas Island.

The state of Washington is suing a florist in Richland for refusing to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding. The owner said her religious beliefs prevented her from serving the couple.

Senate Bill 5927 would allow business owners to “deny services” based on an owner’s “religious beliefs, philosophical beliefs or matters of conscience.”

“What that means,” said Ranker, “is I could literally walk into a bar and somebody could say, ‘You look gay. I’m not going to serve you.’”
The florist lives in the legislative district of Sen. Sharon Brown, R-Kennewick. Brown said the bill was written to protect freedom of religion and would not encourage businesses to discriminate.

“My children are bi-racial and so I would be the last person dropping a bill that would pose any kind of discrimination,” said Brown. “What this bill is about is just protecting freedom.”

Sen. Don Benton, R-Vancouver, said the state should not force a business owner to go against their personal religious convictions.

“When you’re a business owner and you put your life, your family and your finances into a business, you have a right to choose who you do business with,” said Benton.

The bill would not allow business owners to refuse service to anyone based on race, religion or disability. Those groups are protected under federal law.

Source: http://www.king5.com/news/politics/Senator-GOP-bill-would-be-a-License-to-hate-204932561.html

Ten lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) organizations have banded together to urge the Space Needle Corporation to fly the rainbow flag annually during the month of Pride and to settle a fair contract soon that includes living wages, continued benefits, job security, and strong anti-discrimination language for sexual orientation and gender identity. The sponsoring organizations are: LGBTQ Allyship, PrideFest, Entre Hermanos, Ingersoll Gender Center, The NW LGBT Senior Care Providers Network, Pride At Work AFL-CIO, Social Outreach Seattle, The Seattle Lesbian, Trans Lives Matter, and Gender Justice League representing tens of thousands of LGBTQ and allied individuals. The Seattle LGBT Commission sent letters to the Seattle City Council and Mayor McGinn recommending the mayor and City Council support these two requests. The Space Needle Corporation has not yet agreed to either request.

LGBTQ persons make up a significant percentage of the hospitality industry workforce in the greater Seattle area. Workers at the Space Needle have gone for two years without a contract and are currently seeking a contract that guarantees fair working conditions, including living wages, health care benefits, and job security. LGBTQ communities in Seattle and around the country experience higher rates of being uninsured and unemployed than the national average. Advocating for living wages and access to affordable health care in the hospitality industry directly impacts LGBTQ communities.

The Space Needle Corporation flew the flag in 2010. In 2011, they flew the flag after compelling the LGBTQ community to raise $50,000 for four LGBTQ organizations. In 2012, during the drive for marriage equality, the Space Needle refused to fly the rainbow flag.

Seattle has the second largest LGBTQ community in the country. LGBTQ individuals have enjoyed civil rights in Seattle since the 1970s and recently won marriage equality. It is time that the symbol of Seattle reflects the values of its citizens by flying the rainbow flag yearly during Pride month, and show fairness to the workers underneath the flag by committing to a fair union contract that upholds their human dignity in all its forms.

Source: http://theseattlelesbian.com/lgbt-leaders-urge-the-space-needle-to-fly-the-flag/

Some activists say that a transgender model wearing a pro-gay shirt is another example of transsexual erasure.

A small grassroots volunteer organization aiming to educate people on trans rights and issues says a campaign featuring a transgender model is actually helping erase transsexual visibility.

Leaders of MAGNET, or Media Advocates Giving National Equality to Transgender & Transsexual People, are boycotting a campaign from American Apparel and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, asking both to reconsider the message their new T-shirts send.

GLAAD and American Apparel touted the shirts with slogans like “Legalize Gay” and “Gay O.K.” during pride season. And while transgender model Isis King is wearing the shirts in advertisements, MAGNET member Ashley Love says it may be too confusing to those who don’t understand the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity, since King is transgender but also heterosexual.

“The real issue isn’t if a particular model profits by promoting ‘Legalize Gay’ tees, it’s the confusion sent to society by feeding the already-widespread misconception that women of transsexual history are really ‘gay’ men in dresses,” Love says. “The public is misled to perceive ‘gay’ as an umbrella term which includes transsexualism.”

Love added that she is proud that King has been featured so prominently in a campaign for a global brand, but that hasn’t stopped her and other members of MAGNET from launching a boycott against the shirts. MAGNET supporter Amber Gray, a California-based activist, agrees with Love that the shirts’ messages “promote misgendering and public misunderstanding of an already underrepresented community who struggles to end transphobia and to be affirmed.” She adds, “GLAAD’s campaign intentionally promotes ‘legalize gay’ interests in replacement of transsexual and transgender issues, which speaks to the larger gay and lesbian political establishment’s continued appropriation, flatlining and erasure of the transsexual medical condition’s needs and accurate narrative.”

King was the first transgender contestant on America’s Next Top Model and one of the first openly transgender contestants on any prime time reality show. She said she is simply doing her job as a model, while also flexing her muscle as a gay ally.

“I think it’s absurd and ridiculous to think that I would misrepresent my sexual orientation,” she says. “The T-shirt doesn’t say I am personally gay. This shirt simply says gay is O.K., meaning that I — as an ally and a public figure — am telling other people that there is nothing wrong with gay people. I’m not misinformed and I know who I am. This design empowers my friends in the gay community, and I’d like to see more allies wear this shirt.”

King added that she hopes her campaign will encourage more transgender women to model in national campaigns. “It does make headlines when a campaign features an openly trans model,” she said, “but the reality is that many trans community members and young adults will see these images and know that you can be successful and achieve your dreams.”

Rich Ferraro, GLAAD’s vice president of communications, also makes the point that the shirts are meant to be worn by gay people, as well as gay allies, which include transgender people like King. Ferraro adds that American Apparel’s ad campaign featuring the pride shirts is one of the first national campaigns to ever feature an openly transgender model, a projecct GLAAD worked mighty hard on.

“We heard from many in the trans community who shared how proud they are that a positive story about a model — who happens to be a transgender woman of color — was able to reach so many through GLAAD’s work to publicize her participation,” he said. He added that GLAAD hopes to work with more companies in the future to promote acceptance of  all LGBT people and that the group was thrilled to be able to push for King to be the spokesmodel, hoping the national campaign was yet another boost in the model’s career.

In either case, the group’s boycott persists, although its Facebook group called “Boycott GLAAD’s & AA’s Pride T-Shirts: ‘Transsexual’ will NOT be Censored” has fewer than 200 members.

“GLAAD propagates the socially engineered ‘transgender umbrella theory,’ the result of a twenty year ideological misinformation campaign which seeks to blur the distinction between the transsexual medical condition, and the many forms of ‘gender variance’ and fetishism,” Love says. “This miseducation reinforces misunderstanding and misgendering, violates our patient rights and marginalizes our social interests.”

Love said she hopes shirts for the 2013 pride season are more trans-inclusive.

“A rose is still a rose, period — not a sub-rose, not a second class rose, not a rose impersonator,” Love said. “Why didn’t GLAAD also advocate for ‘Legalize Transsexualism’? Being an ‘ally’ goes both ways.

Source: http://www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2012/07/12/activists-say-gay-shirt-american-apparel-ignores-t-lgbt

My daughter, Grace passed away in September 2010. There wasn’t an obituary. There wasn’t a funeral. There wasn’t a casket or even a body to put in one. No one sent me sympathy cards. No one brought me casseroles. This wasn’t because no one cared; it was because my child is still alive.

When my daughter came out to me as transgender I was driven by fear. I feared my child would kill herself if she couldn’t begin her transition from my daughter to my son. That fear and longing to save my child overtook anything else. I forged into a new life and helped her transition. I didn’t expect to feel such grief. C.S. Lewis said: “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”

I had to put away all of the girl pictures. I had to get rid of any sign that Grace ever existed. I had to remember to call my child the name that she chose: Chris. I had to replace she with he. I had to start calling who I thought was my daughter my son.

I distinctly remember crying one Saturday afternoon in bed mourning the loss of my daughter. Grace came in and hugged me and said, “Mom, if this is going to be so hard for you I won’t do it.” I looked in her eyes and saw such fear. I knew in her heart she needed to transition to alleviate her pain. She was willing to keep going through that pain to spare me pain. I thought what a great kid I had and how her heart and soul were what I loved not her gender.  I then said, “No, I know you need to do this and I’ll be ok just give me time.” She looked so relieved and said “Thanks, mom and we’ll get you help too.”

Grace slept in bed with me that night. When we awoke I found her staring at me so pensively. I said, “What are you thinking about?” She said, “You have a really big nose.” I burst out laughing and so did she. She and I had always used humor to get through life, and I needed it now more than ever. I realized that my child would be the same honest, wisecracking kid I grew to know and love no matter what the gender. I knew it my heart we would both be ok.

My grief lessened over time as I saw my child blossom when transitioning to my son, Chris. He became happier and had a confidence I hadn’t ever seen. He and I formed a closeness that I hadn’t anticipated.

I need parents out there of transgender children to know they are not alone. They need to know feeling grief is a very real and normal part of the process. They need to know that it really does get much better.

I moderate a private Facebook group for parents/family of transgender kids (young and grown) we now have 170 members across the whole world. It’s a very supportive group that has helped me immensely. You can feel free to send me an email at transparentmary@gmail.com to request to join our group.

Grace is gone but Chris is very much alive. I am grateful every day that he is my son, and that I was lucky enough to be chosen to be his mom. It is an honor that I cherish.

There wasn’t an obituary  instead there was a birth announcement. I gave birth to my child again but this time in the correct gender.

Until next time.

Mary J. Moss

Feisty single mom to a terrific 14 year old boy who just happens to be transgender

Email: transparentmary@gmail.com

Founding member of New York Citizens for Transgender Rights (NYCTR) https://www.facebook.com/pages/New-York-Citizens-for-Transgender-Rights-NYCTR/102338483283522 and http://www.affirmingtransgenderrights.com/

Source: http://blog.timesunion.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Todd Michael Allison had a boyish grin, ear, to ear, that every mother loves.

But even as a young boy, Allison knew that things were not right.

“Todd did all the things expected by a boy,” Allison said, reminiscing about childhood days. “Todd sang in church choir all the time”

What most people didn’t know, though, was that Todd was almost always depressed, ONN’s Harrison Hove reported.

“Nobody knew that,” Allison said.

The boy developed into a man, a sailor serving the U.S. Allison went through the Navy’s nuclear training pipeline.

The accomplishments grew, a life picked up pace with medals, marriage, children until one morning.

“It was my secret,” Allison said.

Some 40 odd years in the making, Allison changed course.

“I have two choices. I can pick up the gun and finish the job, or I can acknowledge that this is never going to go away. This is a part of me and I have to deal with it,” Allison said.

Allison transitioned into Tara alone.

“Between my ears, I’ve been a woman my whole life,” Allison said.

The decision fractured the family that Allison had created as Todd. Allison’s second marriage ended. Allison’s dad disowned her.

“I love and miss my father very much, and I wish he could be more accepting and supportive of who I am,” Allison said.

Her two grown children have come around and her mother is trying to accept Tara.

“She lost a son and gained someone she never knew,” Allison said. “All my life I knew that I was trans. Even from a very small child I knew.”

Her physical gender did not match her gender identity. It’s called gender identity disorder, Hove reported.

A doctor’s dose of estrogen meant that there was no turning back.

“Moms and sisters and girlfriends you learn how to be a women and you learn all those things to be a woman. I never had that,” Allison said.

But she did learn from books. Words on a page helped transform Allison into the woman she knew she always was.

Along with friends’ suggestions and guidance, along with makeup tips from the counters in the mall, all helped her gain confidence.

“You have to learn how to dress, you have to build a wardrobe,” Allison said about her transition.

Tara took her first steps in public four years ago.

“It was a bright and sunny day on a Saturday morning and it was absolutely terrifying,” Allison said. “The fear was that I would be mocked, ridiculed, harassed and maybe even assaulted.”

A seemingly harmless visit to use the restroom was even a fear — a realistic one, according to statistics.

But Tara was not deterred.

The central Ohio attorney lives life like everyone else while speaking about the challenges the transgender community faces to open minds.

“Nobody in the world would choose to go through this. This is something that chooses you and you deal with it. You spend a lifetime dealing with it as best you can,” Allison said.

Allison said that she hopes that time will help heal her father’s heart.

“Todd’s in the past. I’ve just put aside the façade. I’m now who I am. I’m now who I’ve always been,” Allison said.
Trans Rights:

High heels hit the pavement one foot in front of the other.

Tara Allison walks alone as she often does in life.

“I want to be able to go buy my groceries in peace. I want to be able to sit down and have a meal at a restaurant and if I have to go to the bathroom, then I want to go to the bathroom,” Alison said.

These are simple tasks, but easier said than done.  Tara was born as Todd, but in four short years she has transformed. Diagnosed with gender identity disorder, she lives life as a transgender female.

“Gender identity is formed within ourselves by the age of three.  We have a sense of who we are,” added licensed social worker and Trans Ohio board member Erin Upchurch.

“Just because I am trans I can be fired from my job. Just because I am trans, I can be denied housing,” Allison said.

A study from the National Center for Transgender Equality says 90% of the transgender community reports experiencing harassment or discrimination at work.

19% have been refused a home or apartment and 53% report verbal harassment or ridicule in a place of public accommodation like a hotel or restaurant.

“In a lot of areas in this country, it’s perfectly legal to discriminate against somebody for gender expression,” Allison mentioned.

There is no statewide law in Ohio that protects people like Tara from discrimination.
Only about ten communities in the state have local ordinances protecting transgender people from discrimination at work, in housing, and public accommodations.

“You can go back to integration.  You can say white people felt uncomfortable having black people in the same classroom. But, that doesn’t really justify segregation and it is really the same thing,” explained Equality Ohio Executive Director Ed Mullen.

Tara speaks to groups across Ohio, hoping to open minds in the search for this community’s equality.

“I don’t want to be treated as anything other than the women I know I’ve always been,” Allison said.

Source: http://www.onntv.com

Trans* is an umbrella term that refers to all of the identities within the gender identity spectrum.  There’s a ton of diversity there, but we often group them all together (e.g., when we say “trans* issues).  Trans (without the asterisk) is best applied to trans men and trans women, while the asterisk makes special note in an effort to include all non-cisgender gender identities, including transgender, transsexual, transvestite, genderqueer, genderfluid, non-binary, genderfuck, genderless, agender, non-gendered, third gender, two-spirit, bigender, and trans man and trans woman.

The origin behind the asterisk, as I understand it, is a bit computer geeky.  When you add an asterisk to the end of a search term, you’re telling your computer to search for whatever you typed, plus any characters after (e.g., [search term*][extra letters], or trans*[-gender, -queer, -sexual, etc.]).  The idea was to include trans and other identities related to trans, in the most technically awesome way.  I <3 Geekdom.

The graphic below was created to help raise awareness of this so folks can be more inclusive in their writing when referring to trans* people.  Share the original post on Facebook if you pledge to write “trans*” from now on.

A first-of-its-kind study to be published in the February issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology has dealt a devastating blow to the notion that men and women are fundamentally different when it comes to how they think and act.

“Although gender differences on average are not under dispute, the idea of consistently and inflexibly gender-typed individuals is,” Bobbi J. Carothers of Washington University in St. Louis and Harry T. Reis of the University of Rochester explained in their study. “That is, there are not two distinct genders, but instead there are linear gradations of variables associated with sex, such as masculinity or intimacy, all of which are continuous.”

Analyzing 122 different characteristics from 13,301 individuals in 13 studies, the researchers concluded that differences between men and women were best seen as dimensional rather than categorical. In other words, the differences between men and women should be viewed as a matter of degree rather than a sign of consistent differences between two distinct groups.

Numerous studies have examined gender differences between men and women. Carothers and Reis were able to find a whopping 3,370 articles on the topic in 2011 alone. The vast majority of the research examined the average differences between men and women. The research can easily be misinterpreted as finding that “Men are better at X” or “Women are worst at Y” — ignoring the fact that the studies are comparing averages and contain variance.

“The world presents us with a huge amount of information, so we often take shortcuts to help process it all (this is known as the ‘cognitive miser’),” Carothers explained to Raw Story in an email. “One of those shortcuts is a tendency to categorize things — it’s easier to think of 2 things (men are one way and women are another) than it is to think of all of the nuances of overlapping distributions, particularly if they’re not brought to our attention when we hear about an average difference.”

Many researchers, particularly those who were “evolutionarily oriented,” appeared to “favor a more categorical interpretation of gender differences,” Carothers and Reis wrote. They speculated this was because no research had actually addressed the specific question of whether gender differences were categorical or dimensional.

If men and women were psychologically distinct from one another, then their scores on psychological measures should form large clusters at either end of a spectrum with little overlap between the two groups.

This is the case for physical characteristics such as height, shoulder breadth, arm circumference, and waist-to-hip ratio. Men tend to be tall, have broad shoulders, large arm circumference, and a small waist-to-hip ratio, while the inverse is true for women. A man is extremely unlikely to be taller than a woman, yet have narrower shoulders, for instance.

Yet the same could not be said for the myriad of psychological characteristics examined by the two researchers, including fear of success, sexual attitudes, mate selection criteria, sexual behaviors, empathy, and personality. A man could be aggressive, but verbally skilled and poor at math, for example, combining stereotypical masculine and feminine traits.

“It’s not enough that men, on average, score higher than women on a scale of masculinity,” Carothers told Raw Story. “Nearly all of the men would have to score higher than nearly all of the women on nearly every item of the scale. We did not see that level of consistency with the psychological variables we had.”

SOURCE: http://www.rawstory.com

More often than not, when I am speaking with a TG woman, I feel like I am speaking with a MAN. It has nothing to do with the way she looks – or even the sound of her voice. It’s the WAY she communicates.

Learning how to communicate like a woman is important. If you look feminine but speak like a guy, you’re going to send mixed signals to people. You’ll also miss out on the chance to connect with GG’s on a true girl-to-girl level.

There are a lot of differences between male and female brains and this has a huge impact on transgender communication.

Here are some of the differences between guy-speak and girl-speak:

• Men tend to be more direct and task-oriented in their communication. They use their words for the purpose of achieving results.
• Women tend to be more “circular” and detail-oriented in their communication. They use their words for the purpose of forming relationships.
• Women speak an average of 20,000 words per day vs. men who speak an average of 7,000 words per day.

Here are 3 way to feminize your communication:

1. Talk more

Studies show that women speak three times as much a men, so the first step towards feminine communication is to open your mouth – and keep it open!

If you’re one of those people who answers questions with one word, this might take some work. Practice expanding your answers and embellishing your stories with more details. What happened before, during, and after the event? Who else was involved? How did you feel about it? (Yes, talk about your feelings, girlfriend!)

Note: This does not mean you should drone on and on about yourself. Women are also typically good listeners, so make sure you also LISTEN to the person you are speaking with.

2. Feminize your vocabulary

If you’re going to talk more, you want to use the RIGHT words to express yourself. Men and women have different vocabularies, so it’s important to incorporate feminine words into your speech. For example:

• Women tend to use more descriptive adjectives. A woman wouldn’t tell you about the “pink dress” she just bought. She’d tell you about the “sleeveless fuchsia Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress” she just maxed out her credit card on.
• Men and women use different words for the same thing. For example, a guy might call the lower abdomen the “gut” or “belly”, whereas a woman would be more likely to call it the “tummy” or “abdomen”.

To expand your feminine vocabulary, listen to women in real life, on TV, and in movies and read women’s magazines. Look for words you don’t use and incorporate a few new words into your vocabulary each week.

3. Ask more questions

Finally, since women use their words to form relationships, they tend to ask more questions. Men tend to tell, rather than ask. If a man asks a question, it’s to get down to the point.

Practice asking more questions the next time you have a conversation with somebody. Ask for more details or ask somebody how they felt about a particular situation. Not only is this more feminine, it makes the other person feel validated.

Remember, the POINT of feminine communication is to form relationships. Relationships are formed by becoming a better speaker AND listener.

Check out the video below for another good explanation on the differences between male and female communication.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic. How important is feminine communication to you? Do you struggle with this or have you mastered the art of girl talk? Leave me your comments below!

Source: http://feminizationsecrets.com/communicate-like-a-woman/

1. Lean back

I recently attended a teleclass hosted by my friend, relationship and intimacy coach Annie Lalla. One of the participants asked how she could feel more connected with her femininity. (Yes, genetic girls struggle with this, too! A lot of women have too much masculine energy and it drives guys away.)

Annie’s advice was to “lean back”. I LOVED this and thought it was also great advice for transgender women …

First, check your body. Are you leaning forward or leaning back? Leaning forward like you are poised for action is very masculine. Get into the habit of leaning back. When you are sitting down, imagine you are a queen leaning back in her throne. Feels good, doesn’t it?

Then, check your behavior. Are you one of those girls who pushes her way through life? If so, you need to “lean back” in your actions and in your conversations with others. Try less muscling and more allowing. “Leaning back” is a great metaphor for living from your feminine.

2. Try a different perfume

The right fragrance can connect you with your femininity like nothing else.

While it’s great to have a “signature scent,” don’t get stuck to an old perfume. Since scent is strongly linked to memories, your current perfume might be bringing you back to a time that doesn’t represent who you are now.

If so, it’s time to go shopping! Look for a perfume that matches the qualities you want to express. Think floral scents if you want to express your romantic side and oriental or woody scents if you want to bring out your inner seductress.

3. Smile

Ok, hear me out before you dismiss this last tip as a cheesy platitude. There are loads of reasons why smiling is a fabulous beauty and femininity booster:

• Smiling releases endorphins in the brain that boost your mood.
• Smiling lifts your cheeks and gives you a natural facelift.
• Smiling makes other people happy.
• Smiling makes you look more feminine.

The last point is especially interesting. According to a Japanese study, smiling faces are rated as more feminine than serious faces. That’s because women and girls smile more frequently than boys and men.

There is an art to smiling, so practice in front of a mirror until you find your best smile. (Try big and small smiles and smiling with your mouth open and closed.) Then work that feminine smile as often as you can!

So, girlfriend, what are YOUR favorite ways to feel more feminine? You know I love a good discussion, so leave me your comments below!

Love,

Brooke