30,000 Pages

You may recall the blog post on the last day of June about TransLate hitting 20,000 page views since its inception, and I’m happy to tell you that we’ve just hit 30,000 today. This pace is exciting, a full 10,000 views in just about 10 weeks. The first 10,000 required 5 and a half months, and the second 10,000 took about 10 weeks from mid-April, 2008 through the end of June, 2008. You will all get tired of my scribblings, dear readers, and you won’t be able to hide your fatigue, for the stats will tell the tale; however, until that point, I’m happy to keep scribbling, as it helps me process what I’m going through, even as it may speak to you for whatever reason.

Here’s the growth of the blog since its inception, month-by-month. which shows steady, if slow, growth during the blog’s first weeks (2008-3 means the 3rd month of 2008), which coincides with a slow coming out process, followed by the high mountains of April as I disclosed my transsexual transition plans to everyone, followed by a lull in May and another set of peaks probably coinciding with my facial feminization surgery in late June. I cannot account for the relatively flat, moderately high volume of July and August unless it’s just a matter of the blog’s address getting shared around a larger group of family and friends.

Just for fun, this second chart is a time-series graph covering just the past 30 days’ of stats, which shows just how variable the author and readers are, separately and together.

What do people read? Here are the top posts for the past 30 days

2008-08-16 to Today
Title Views

Scenes from Social Security 68
About 67
Trans 101 59
Wade Out 52
Cog and Re-cog 47
Changing the M to F 38
Marriage 33
Lost and Found 33
Surgeonocracy 31

 

TransLaw

Thanks to sarasnavel, who corrected one of my citations in my blog post “Surgeonocracy,” I found a lot of new legal resources dealing with trans*people:

Transgender Law and Policy Institute
http://www.transgenderlaw.org/index.htm

The Williams Institute, a think tank at the UCLA School of Law (the whole thing, but especially the publication section on Gender Identity Issues Studies:
http://www.law.ucla.edu/williamsinstitute/publications/Policy-GenderIdentity-index.html, which includes an excellent article by Dean Spade about the legal complexities involving legal sex and name changes.

Sexuality, Gender, and the Law: National and International Bibliography. University of Chicago.
http://www2.lib.uchicago.edu/~llou/sexlaw.html

Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity & the Law: A Research Guide. University of Tulsa.
http://www.law.utulsa.edu/library/research/pathfinders/so

Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and International Human Rights Law (special issue of the journal Human Rights Law Review Online)
http://hrlr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/8/2/207

The Association of American Law Schools, Section on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues
http://www.aals.org/services_sections_gl.php

 

Fortune

Eating at a Chinese restaurant a couple of days ago, my fortune cookie contained this message: “You will be making many changes before settling satisfactorily.” Quite aside from the humor in the message that all my friends and family no doubt appreciate, the fortune does contain two tricky concepts, the first of which is “satisfactory,” implying that my changes bring satisfaction in my life. The second problem is “settling,” which looks ahead to a time when things aren’t in flux.

To be honest, I’m not sure I want to “settle satisfactorily.” I don’t mind being satisfied; I feel that I am indeed more and more satisfied with my body, mind, and relationships. But I really don’t want to be settled, at least in the sense of relaxing and being happy. I like the mental edge I have developed over the course of this crisis, and I think I have become, and continue to become, more thoughtful and accepting of others. I also don’t mind continuing to change — perhaps not in the same desperate pace that characterized these past 2 years, of course. But in an emotional and intellectual sense, I enjoy change and feel I’ve become a better person by learning to adapt to change.

Maybe I’m looking a Chinese fortune cookie gift horse in the mouth, and should just accept the fate written on that little strip of paper. Perhaps. But I’d rather decide on my own when (and if) I have reached a point of satisfactory settling.

A piece of paper baked into a cookie

 

Smoother Transitions These Days

There’s a nice piece in today’s New York Times about how gender identity is protected more and more these days, leading to smoother and smoother transitions for trans* people.

Here’s a snippet — go and read the whole thing when you get a chance:

Across the country, particularly at larger companies, transgender workers are being protected and assisted in ways that were hardly imaginable a few years ago.

And although this little piece is not in the business section or the news section, but instead appears in the Life and Style section, it’s a mistake to ignore it, especially when it comes to arguing for non-discrimination language in our own firms, universities, and other organizations. I know from talking to my university administrators that statements like “This Fortune 500 company protects transgender workers” have an impact on them, so I keep these little fluff pieces to use as small arms fire in the bigger battles.