Cynthia Majors was born and raised in Teaneck New Jersey. She graduated from Teaneck High School in 1970 and Bergen Community College with a BA in 1972. She and her wife Sharla were married in Sept of 1983 and still live in Teaneck. Cynthia has been a member of Chi Delta Mu Chapter of Tri-Ess for about 10 years and is now serving as President for the second time. Besides being an active amateur drag performer Cynthia is also a member of a Drag Performance group called Flavah which has been a regular in the NYC Pride Parade for the last several years . Their photos have appeared in the NY Daily News and the front page of AM New York. In addition Cynthia has been interviewed on both WPLJ and WINS Radio on several TG issues.
1) You were President of CDM and then you weren’t and now you are again: did you take a break or are you feeling reluctant about leading CDM?
To put it frankly, I took a break. I felt that I was getting in over my head because I was trying to do everything myself and it just wasn’t working. I had gone into being President with what I had thought were some very good ideas but when things didn’t work out the way I had hoped I became frustrated and I think it had a very adverse effect on how I handled myself and the group. When election time came around again I had no interest in continuing as President. Now. a little older and a lot wiser, I’ve opted to try it again for several reasons. First I now have a great team working with me. My wife Sharla is the Treasurer and Linda Mills is my VP. I’ve finally learned that things need to be delegated or you burn out-not an easy lesson for a Type A personality to take in.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Cynthia Majors”
The Partner's Part
In the ‘middle path’ thread, Marlena wrote:
While being single all these days years has sucked in other ways, one benefit is that it helped me find my equalibrium on the trans spectrum. I can dress generally when I want. The fact that I don’t want to do so constantly — and in fact if I do it a lot I get tired of doing so — tells me something. However, since the vast majority of CDs are in relationships where they’re in either the closet or with an SO who isn’t “do what ever your want” enthusiastic, they never really find their equalibrium point. So on other forums, I hear a lot of pent-up desire talking. I suspect if they had the opportunity dress every day, a lot of them would find that doing your make-up every morning soon gets to be a chore.
and michelleNYC’s recent comments made me think: do wives/girlfriends act as a kind of safety, an anchor, for MTF transfolk? Do we give CDs/TGs a sense of being tethered, so that they don’t go flying off into experimentation & sliding down the slippery slope?
Do we provide a kind of relief, even if at the same time we’re resented for how we might restrict our partner’s gender expression?
I’m a little worried about saying the word maternal outloud in this context.
Preview from Crossing Sexual Boundaries
Last month I did a Five Questions With… interview with Ari Kane where we talked about the new anthology she edited (with Vern Bullough) called Crossing Sexual Boundaries: Transgender Journeys, Uncharted Paths. I contributed an essay to it and thought I’d give people a preview of my essay.
A relationship is always a search for balance. All couples try to find the right amounts of disparate elements: commitment and freedom; togetherness and independence; responsibility and indulgence; solitude and sociability; excitement and security; stability and growth. In a transgendered relationship, all of those types of balance are needed, but the strains an emerging TG identity can put on a couple can cause greater stress for both partners. Will my femininity decrease as his increases? Does his need to implement change threaten our stability? Will his urge to be free of his male role upset my sense of our roles within the relationship? Can keeping such a big part of himself private negatively effect our social life? If I can’t connect with, or am not also in love with his feminine self, will my independence from that part of him lead to estrangement? All of these questions – and many others like them – are ones we have had to answer for ourselves. Some balances occur naturally and others are always a little off. I found, however, that what kind of balance – if any – occurs, it is usually a result of long, honest conversation, difficult stare-at-your-feet-while-you-spit-it-out admissions. Some of the things we have to say to each other bring us back to the tension that most people feel at the beginning of a relationship. He worries that his self-expression will finally cause me to say “Enough.†I worry that the changes he needs to make to his body and/or personality will change him too drastically from the man I fell in love with and find attractive. For most people, there is a sigh of relief when someone gets to know you very well, and isn’t going to leave when you tell that dumb joke or admit some lifelong weird habit. My brother is fond of saying “The honeymoon’s over when you fart in bed,†but for most, the end of the honeymoon period leads to one of stability and the mundane that is appreciated by both partners. We never seem to arrive there, as his transgenderedness makes that kind of easy acceptance of the other an impossibility. He doesn’t know who he is yet, and neither do I. We have first dates all the time. First dates are fun when you don’t have anything to lose, but when you’re on a first date after five years of commitment, shared experiences, love and love-making, it’s like coming home every day hoping your house hasn’t burnt down.
I was amazed to find, when I re-read this essay – which I wrote at least two years ago – how much of a nutshell version of the new book it is.
Rhea has posted a lovely review of the essay on the message boards, with further thoughts and comments by others who have read it (& I added a couple of clarifications as well).
Betty (Not) On the Rag
Poor Betty. The other day while wearing her trademark summer thongs, she bumped her toe really, really hard. Her doctor predicted the toenail will fall off in not too long, and so she complained to me tonight that “just as it’s about to be summer, my season for wearing flip-flops, I’m going to be missing my toenail, and I like having manicured toenails.”
Oh, sad, sad day.
I said: “Wow, it’s a good thing you’ve never gotten your period at the absolute worst time, eh?”
She stopped complaining pronto. We will buy her pretty band-aids to cover up her lack of big toenail, instead, if it even falls off, which I doubt it will. (Did someone say Drama Queen?)
Pope Maledict Rides Again
Apparently our current pope – who I prefer to call Pope Maledict – has called LGBT relationships “weak love.”
Sometimes I wish I could take people and shake them, or – as Jim Johnson of Straight, Not Narrow points out: to tell them to shut up when they don’t know what they’re talking about.
I could have never explained to anyone before Betty started presenting as female what it’s like to live in the world as an LGBT couple, and I thought I knew. I really did. Faghag for years, lesbian hangabout for years – but really, I didn’t know. Weak is not the word for it.
There is some good news, though – the religious left is on the rise. (Where have you guys been?)
No "Them" Or "Us"
STRAIGHT RIGHTS UPDATE: I’ve been running around with my hair on fire trying to convince my straight readers that religious conservatives don’t just hate homos. Their attacks on gay people, relationships, parents, and sex get all the press, but the American Taliban has an anti-straight-rights agenda too. As I wrote on March 23: “The GOP’s message to straight Americans: If you have sex, we want it to fuck up your lives as much as possible. No birth control, no emergency contraception, no abortion services, no lifesaving vaccines. If you get pregnant, tough shit. You’re going to have those babies, ladies, and you’re going to make those child-support payments, gentlemen. And if you get HPV and it leads to cervical cancer, well, that’s too bad. Have a nice funeral, slut.â€
After raising the alarm for months back here in the sex ads section, I was intensely gratified to read Russell Shorto’s brilliant cover story, “The War on Contraception,†in the New York Times Magazine last weekend. To readers who think I’m being hysterical: So you don’t think the religious right would seriously go after birth control? Fine, don’t believe me. But maybe you’ll believe Shorto when he lays out the American Taliban’s plan to deny access to birth control—any and all types, folks, not just emergency contraception.
“In particular, and not to put too fine a point on it, they want to change the way Americans have sex,†Shorto writes. “Contraception, by [their] logic,†Shorto continues, “encourages sexual promiscuity, sexual deviance (like homosexuality), and a preoccupation with sex that is unhealthful even within marriage.†Shorto quotes Judie Brown, president of the American Life League: “We see a direct connection between the practice of contraception and the practice of abortion. The mind-set that invites a couple to use contraception is an antichild mind-set. So when a baby is conceived accidentally, the couple already have this negative attitude toward the child. Therefore seeking an abortion is a natural outcome. We oppose all forms of contraception.†And there’s this from R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary: “I cannot imagine any development in human history, after the Fall, that has had a greater impact on human beings than the pill… Prior to it, every time a couple had sex, there was a good chance of pregnancy. Once that is removed, the entire horizon of the sexual act changes. I think there could be no question that the pill gave incredible license to everything from adultery and affairs to premarital sex and within marriage to a separation of the sex act and procreation.â€
I’ll say it again, breeders: The American Taliban is not just opposed to straight premarital sex, with their abstinence education and hilariously ineffective virginity pledges, or gay sex, with their “ex-gay†campaigns and their anti-gay-marriage amendments. The American Taliban doesn’t think married heterosexual couples should be able to use birth control. If you care about your own freedom—not just your right to have premarital sex, but your right to decide whether, when, and how many children you’re going to have—you need to read “The War on Contraception.†And don’t comfort yourself with the notion that these are just some antisex religious wackos: The Bush administration not only listens to these wackos, it appoints them to important positions all over the federal government—and let’s not even think about the members of the American Taliban that Bush has already appointed to lifetime positions in the federal judiciary.
This is some serious shit, breeders. You’re being attacked. It’s time to fight back.
Copyright Dan Savage. Thanks to JoanieC for calling it to my attention.
Call for Submissions
It’s not often that I put a call for submissions up here, but this one is from Morty Diamond – and he wants to put together a book by trans folks, about dating, love, sex and relationships.
Great idea, so get to writing, and click here for all the details.
Trans-Trans Relationships
At the IFGE was the second time recently that I was reminded that when talking about trans relationships, I had failed to mention trans-trans ones. (The first time was at my TransNYC presentation.)
My apologies – I’ll try to get my act together on that one. I’d love to hear from any of you who are trans and who are in or who have been in a relationship with another trans person, no matter if it was a sexual relationship along the lines of a one-night stand or a LT platonic relationship/living situation, or anything inbetween.
Seven Years Scratched
So it turns out Betty and I scratched the Seven Year Itch, as today is our 8th anniversary of meeting. And since we were practically married on the 1st date – or at least knew we were fated to be together, or something like that – it’s *really* our anniversary, though why not celebrate both? (The other is the day of our wedding, and not the day of our legal marriage, which was the day before our wedding in a no-frills ceremony at Brooklyn City Hall. So we really have three anniversaries, but this is getting ridiculous now.)
To us! To trans couples! To another 80 years (at least, if the marvels of medical technology keep up). To my beautiful, sexy girlfriend and my delicious husband!
(In a week in a half it’ll be 8 years since I first met Betty, too. When she was “Betty,” I mean.)
Need a CD's Wife, asap!
I’ve been contacted by a national women’s magazine for a wife of a crossdresser. The hitch is that you can’t use a pseudonym & they do want a photo.
They also want it all by Wednesday at noon.
The article is going to focus on how women make decisions – in this case, how a woman might decide to stay with her crossdressing husband.
& Obviously I would do it but for another hitch: they want someone who hasn’t told their story before.
So if there’s someone out there who’s just dying to break out of the closet, do let me know asap & I’ll put you in touch.