Hello! I hope you'll indulge me in a brief bit of self-promotion as I make my long-overdue introduction to the readers of Psychology Today. My name is Calpernia Addams, and I've lived an amazing life, full of incredible adventures and experiences with many more to come. I'm excited to share my thoughts with you under the auspices of this magazine. I am a veteran of the ground campaign of the first Gulf War, a memoirist (Mark 947), activist (Eve Ensler's V Day, various GLBT issues), actress and I also happen to be a transsexual woman -- someone who was assigned the male gender role at birth, but soon realized that medical, legal and social transition to female was much more in line with how I felt inside.
Whatever you may know, or think, or think you know of transsexual people, I can promise you a bit of new information with a dash of humor. I've seen life from both sides of the gender divide at different points in my life, as well as from outside it altogether, and with that experience comes some pretty interesting insight.
I plan to write about experiences like entering the heterosexual dating pool as a transsexual woman, stories from the current zeitgeist such as Barbara Walters' coverage of children with gender issues, and political news such as the recent Congressional hearing examining the discrimination against gender non-conforming people in the workplace. All of these issues are closer to home for the average American than you might think. What if that fun girl you met at a party revealed to you that she had transitioned? What if your son or daughter did not conform to gender stereotypes? What if your job were at risk because you chose not to conform to gender "norms", such as having long hair as a man or a crew cut as a woman?
Please let me know what you think, and help me out by throwing some questions my way in the comments section. I'll try to answer to the best of my ability, but remember, I'm a person with feelings and boundaries just like you. Thank you for taking time to check me out.
