GRISHNO.com

That's right, I finally got a new poll up.  I realize that I've been slacking a bit on the weekly polls, but hopefully I can fix that and make that be a more regular/consistant thing.  In the mean time feel free to take the new poll about discrimination and review the results of last "months" poll.

Read more about these results after the break:

2009 was a big crazy year, full of major changes both good and bad, failures and successes, ups and downs; but let's end it on a positive note; what was your biggest transitional success of 2009.  For me it was taking my advocacy work (youtube videos, website, etc) further than I thought possible.  This year was the first year of Grishno.com, and it's come a long way from its inception.  It's been an amazing experience to be able to have an effect on so many peoples lives, and being able to expand that work through my website has been an experience I will never forget.

But enough about me, what about you?  Take a look at the poll results above, or add your own successes as a comment to this article.

Also, don't forget to take this weeks new poll about what your biggest transitional goal is for 2010.

I don't know what to say about last weeks poll besides: "it was kind of interesting to know."  The way in which people choose their "new" name when transitioning in very situational, and so this poll isn't necessarily indicative of anything, but like I just said... "it was kind of interesting to know."

I completely changed my name from my birth name for several reasons, but the big reason that I didn't just go with 'Christine' or "Christy" is because at that point in my life I wanted very little to do with my "previous life."  Had a had a different reaction from my family that might be very different... in fact, I'm sure that if my family would have accepted me I WOULD HAVE gone with a variation of my boy name.

Other situations can dramatically affect ones choice of name.  Someone with a name like "Kalen" doesn't really need to change their name to fit in as a girl socially, someone with the name of Chet, Bruce or Lance would have a harder time not changing.  Likewise, names like Aaron or Michael can be easily changed to Erin or Michele, while the above mentioned boy names don't have well-known female counterparts.

I've said it twice already, but I suppose that the third try is the charm, so while this may not be ground-breaking information... it was kind of interesting to know.

I've always said that even if I could never pass as a woman that I still would have transitioned, simply because the peace and satisfaction that comes from being myself.  However, if I'm being honest with myself, I don't think I'd be nearly as happy as I am now if I couldn't pass.

So how important does that make passing to me?  Honestly, I could have chosen any of these options (except "I'm not trans") and it would have been accurate to some extent.  In the end I went with "It's secondary" since passing wasn't my primary motive for transition... it is a nice perk though.

Find out more after the break:

Once again I've been blown away by the number of people who took last weeks poll.  A big "Thank you" to all of you who took it , and an even bigger "Shame on you" to those of you whoe didn't.

With most of my polls, I haven't been terribly surprised with the results, and this week is no exception... though I wasn't expecting the positives to so greatly outnumber the negatives.

Shortly after posting the poll at the beginning of last week I had one of the regular chatters pop into the chat room to tell me that there wasn't an option for her to pick on the poll.  I'd intentially only had the "More positive..." and "More Negative..." options (along with the usual cisgender option), and had done so with the intent of forcing people to pick a side.  When I asked this person what option they would have chosen they mentioned the "It all evens out" option, which wasn't something I had considered.  So while I wasn't surprised that the positives outweighed the negative, I was surprised at the amount of people who chose the option I hadn't even thought of.