It’s 4PM EST and if your visiting Beck’s Cafe it’s because it is nice and sunny outside and your brain has decided it’s done for the day. Well how about some funnies to get you in a good frame of mind for that commute home? So what gender are these things?

ZIPLOC BAGS – male, because they hold everything in, but you can always see right through them.

KIDNEYS – female, because they always go to the bathroom in pairs.

SHOE – male, because it is usually unpolished, with its tongue hanging out.

COPIER – female, because once turned off, it takes a while to warm up. Because it is an effective reproductive device when the right buttons are pushed. Because it can wreak havoc when the wrong buttons are pushed.

TIRE – male, because it goes bald and often is over inflated.

WEB PAGE – female, because it is always getting hit on.

SUBWAY – male, because it uses the same old lines to pick people up.

HOURGLASS – female, because over time, the weight shifts to the bottom.

REMOTE CONTROL – female… Ha! You thought I’d say male. But consider it gives a man pleasure, he’d be lost without it, and while he doesn’t always know the right buttons to push, he keeps trying.

(Jokes courtesy of The Romantic.com )

Your transgender, your unemployed and now your looking at your options. Should you just work for anyone and hope no one finds out your transgender? Should you just go find a job and just not worry about it unless the issue comes up? Maybe you don’t present as the gender you really are at all but it’s who you are and you need to take some action eventually and yet you still need to work. What do you do?

These are all very personal questions and effect each and every transgender person, regardless of if they are transitioning or if they’ve found a life balance that allows them to live productive, healthy and happy lives.

One resource that you may want to consider is from a relatively new job search engine called Simply Hired Job Search Engine. Simply Hired has coupled their search engine technology with the Human Rights Campaign list of companies the have studied that support LGBT employees (see HRC Corporate Equality Index). It’s easy to do, you simply do a search with the Simply Hired LGBT filter on and out pops the jobs!

You can reach the Simply Hired Job Search Engine with LGBT Filter at their site HERE.

Also, don’t forget to checkout the SCC Transgender Career Expo or the Washington D.C. Transgender Job Fair. Finally Dr. Weiss over at Transgender Workplace Diversity has some excellent articles on this topic in general that are well worth a read over a tall, cold iced Americano.

When your about ready to sputter out your coffee at the cafe ’cause you see an amazing idea, well, you have to blog about it. The web site Bag Borrow or Steal is exactly that.

How would you like access to bags such as Louis Vuitton, Chloe, Jones New York and more for…$15?

Okay you can get up off the floor now.

The site works like a NetFlix for Handbags. They have a huge selection and you get to KEEP them as long as you want till you need to turn them in. Need a bag for that hot date? Need a bag for a night at the opera? Need a bag to go shopping with mom? No problem…they have bags, and good ones, for every occasion.

Swing your hips on over to Bag, Borrow or Steal to get in on this deal.

It started innocently enough. Three guys, some with beards, hanging around a table, talking about the days events. If it was five-PM they’d have had beers in their hands. Then five trans-women walked up and asked if the three ladies had a good time at the conference. Ladies?

That story angered a couple named Mike and Natasha West. How could one group of transgender-women show a group of transgender-men such disrespect at a major national transgender conference they wondered? The answer, they determined, lay in lack of respect within the transgender community for each others changes. Surprisingly, for the “T” part of the LGBT community, this is harder than it looks. Mike and Natasha decided to take some action to influence the transgender community to change their own attitudes about respecting each other; male-to-females and female-to-males.

Mike and Natasha have both seen their own share of disrespect within the transgender community. In some sense, they form a small sample size for how disrespect is practiced within the community. For Mike that has taken the form of transgender women asking him, after he discloses to them his transgender status, why ‘she’ would want to be a guy, why would ‘she’ want to have such beautiful breasts removed and moving from the pronoun ‘he’ to ‘she’. Natasha has been a victim of similar disrespect and witnessed similar events as well.

Mike’s three computers are humming in his office with various programs for his web and graphics design consulting firm as we talk. As he puts it, “The transgender community has the constant issue of dealing with respect, or mostly disrespect, from friends, family, loved ones and other members of the non-transgender community…All transgender people can relate to one another in at least some way, regardless of background. Each and everyone of us has had to deal with the looks, the gender slurs, the wrong pronouns and the rude remarks. The entire transgender community needs to respect one another. If that respect does not start with each and everyone one of us; how will we ever expect the non-transgender community to respect us?” But why does this happen at all when it appears that both transgender-women and transgender-men have similar paths?

Natasha’s sense for the cause is that both sides know the right thing to do in their hearts, but, “they have to break old ways. I think it takes a conscious effort to start and gradually it gets to become automatic”. She continued saying, “I believe low self-esteem and a lack of self-respect have alot to do with an overall lack of respect within our community. Kind of like, you can’t love others until you love yourself. The teenager in high school who picks on everyone to make himself or herself seem more popular, usually is hiding their own insecurities and flaws”. Both Mike and Natasha also highlighted that the seeds of disrespect are often sown in how people were raised as children. This baseline sense of disrespect for other people and their differences isn’t connected to being transgender or not but is rooted in deep learning at an early age. The unlearning of these lessons takes conscious effort. As they grew to understand this problem within the transgender community they realized they could be a part of the solution to improving it.

First, they co-authored a booklet, targeted at the transgender community, entitled, “Respect Starts with the Community”. This booklet encourages the transgender community to consider how to respect each other; male-to-females and females-to-males. Mike used inspiring quotes, clear guidelines and common sense examples to communicate the message of respect within the transgender community. The examples are particularly important as they provide a sense of modeling of what respectful behavior is. As Mike put it, “I felt it was necessary to spell the examples out. In my travels within the transgender and even non-transgender community, some people unfortunately do not have common sense. I think providing the examples is one of the best ways for people to get an insight on how others feel when they get disrespect. Sometimes, the examples, or stories are enough to wake some people up to different forms of disrespect”.

The booklet was the first practical step and the next was a natural outgrowth; live seminars on the topic. Mike and Natasha held one of their first seminars on disrespect within the transgender community in January 2007 at First Event 2007. First Event is one of the largest transgender and diversity conferences in the United States and is held each year in New England, usually in the Boston area. The seminar was very well attended among the 600 event goers at First Event, proving the topic of respecting others within the transgender community was more important than both Mike and Natasha had oringally believed. Mike noted the feedback they had gotten, “I have had many people come to me and say they had no clue that some of these things were going on. I have also had people tell me that they were unaware that some of the things listed in the book would be taken as disrespectful and often hurtful. And lastly in the process of talking about this topic, I have had some transwomen tell me that they are beginning to understand transmen a little more”.

The topic of disrespect within the transgender community is not one that anyone would generally think of as a hot button. And yet, respect is a fundamental need for every person and group. And, it’s fundamental to the transgender community actually supporting itself. As Natasha noted about the transgender community, “We can’t be united enough to stand up for ourselves as a whole as long as there is this rift that’s been caused due to disrespect within the community”.

© 2006 Beck’s Cafe, http://www.beckscafe.com

Okay so I haven’t yet started getting my official mailings from the AARP BUT I do get mailings from the LGBT aging project. The LGBT Aging Project is, in their own words:

The LGBT Aging Project works to ensure that LGBT elders and their caregivers have equal access to the benefits, protections, and aging programs, services, and institutions that their heterosexual neighbors rely on.

Typically, LGBT elder activists replicate existing, mainstream services and provide them directly to elders. This is very important work. But the LGBT Aging Project works from a different perspective: we focus on the significant aging services infrastructure and expertise that already exists. We believe that LGBT citizens and taxpayers should have full access, and a real choice about whether or not to use it. And we teach the system how and why to create an LGBT-friendly atmosphere and culturally appropriate programs and services.

One little thing they are doing, which sounds totally cool, is to sponsor an OUT to Brunch, a gathering of Lesbian, Bi and Trans-women over 50. It sounds neat…here are the details and how to get more info:

• When is the event? Saturday September 29, 2007
• What are the times? 11 am to 1 pm
• Where is the event? Christopher’s, 1920 Mass Ave (Porter Square), Cambridge, MA
• What is the Cost? $5 (Includes coffee/tea, juice and brunch entrée)

Reservations required:

Give Lisa Krinsky a call at the LGBT Aging Project at (617) 522-6700 x307 or email: LKrinsky@ethocare.or