Meeting the Ingersoll Center in action
Jul. 8th, 2009 11:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceriI'm very shy. I'm excruciatingly aware of my limited social experience and fearful of making trouble. But I had my counselor as well as real-life friends and some of you who read this journal all urging to me to give a try to some trans group time, and in particularly to the Ingersoll Center's weekly sessions. So tonight I worked up my courage and went.
Wow. Just wow. And then some more wow.
There were about 25 people there, with many quadrants of the gender galaxy represented: MTF and FTM transsexuals, some androgynes, a couple of two-spirited people with their own approaches to balance, at least one intersexed person with a different kind of balance in mind...I forget what all other identifications came up, but it was a lot. And in terms of experience, people ranged from having come to a decision about their desired gender identity later than I did to having done so decades ago.
I think I posted about the very high level of courtesy I've encountered in the Seattle Counseling Service and Capitol Hill Medical offices. that prevailed here, too. This was by far the best-managed group therapy and support I've encountered, with fantastically careful and effective facilitators, but everyone there was trying on their end, too. There was respect and courtesy all around, even with strongly contrasting experiences and priorities. I felt safe and welcome.
It's also now the first place where I'm identified out loud from the get-go as Ceri, which I like very much, and special thanks to all of you who were encouraging a little while back on the subject of claiming a name.
This is going to become part of my routine, I'm thinking.
Wow. Just wow. And then some more wow.
There were about 25 people there, with many quadrants of the gender galaxy represented: MTF and FTM transsexuals, some androgynes, a couple of two-spirited people with their own approaches to balance, at least one intersexed person with a different kind of balance in mind...I forget what all other identifications came up, but it was a lot. And in terms of experience, people ranged from having come to a decision about their desired gender identity later than I did to having done so decades ago.
I think I posted about the very high level of courtesy I've encountered in the Seattle Counseling Service and Capitol Hill Medical offices. that prevailed here, too. This was by far the best-managed group therapy and support I've encountered, with fantastically careful and effective facilitators, but everyone there was trying on their end, too. There was respect and courtesy all around, even with strongly contrasting experiences and priorities. I felt safe and welcome.
It's also now the first place where I'm identified out loud from the get-go as Ceri, which I like very much, and special thanks to all of you who were encouraging a little while back on the subject of claiming a name.
This is going to become part of my routine, I'm thinking.
Re: Meeting the Ingersoll Center in action
Date: 2009-07-09 03:07 pm (UTC)i now know people who went from recognition of their status to surgery without finding any major obstacles in their path. that's a far cry from how it used to be, and it's cheering to see.
and it makes me enormously grateful for the activists who fought hard.
Re: Meeting the Ingersoll Center in action
Date: 2009-07-09 03:24 pm (UTC)