How to Create an In-Case-of-Emergency Everything Document to Keep Your Loved Ones Informed if Worst Comes to Worst [lifehacker.com]

Melanie Pinola — If you were hit by a bus today or were otherwise incapacitated, would your loved ones be able to quickly locate your important information or know how to handle your affairs? Many of us have a great handle on our finances, but our record keeping systems might not be obvious to family members or friends who might need immediate access to them in times of emergency. Here’s a step-by-step guide to organizing your vital information so it can be conveniently and safely accessed when needed.

The Goal: A Master Document or Folder with All Your Important Information 

Full size

Perhaps the easiest method for creating a centralized document or set of files would be creating a Google Spreadsheet that you could share with your family and friends and keep updated regularly. We’ve created a basic Master Information Kit template just for this purpose. The spreadsheet includes prompts for the information below, but you can customize it for your particular needs. To use the template for yourself, in Google Docs go to File > Make a copy… to save it to your Google account (make sure your version of the document’s sharing settings go back to the default “Private”).

Update: Due to high traffic to the template, Google Docs is only showing it in list view, making it impossible to copy. This zipped file has downloadable versions in PDF, XLS, and ODS formats. You can still import these into your Google Docs account.

There are really only a few steps to setting this organizer up: gathering your records, securely sharing them, and keeping them updated. Follow along and you’ll have your kit set up in no time—and a little extra peace of mind.

Click to continue reading this important article: http://lifehacker.com/5817021/in-case-of-emergency-how-to-organize-your-important-records-in-a-master-information-kit

Wrong Reasons: A Warning for Those Considering M2F SRS [lynnconway]

by Lynn Conway

What if you “succeed” in completing a TS transition, but did it for the wrong reasons? Yep, you get the idea! This is one place you do NOT want to go!

In the large majority of cases, transsexual (TS) transitions work out well over the long-term, as we’ve seen in the many stories documented in Lynn’s Transsexual Women’s Successes page.  However, in some cases a complete TS transition may totally fail to meet very unrealistic expectations, and way too late the transitioner may realize that undergoing sex reassignment surgery (SRS) was a BIG mistake.

In Lynn’s TS Informational pages, we discussed some of the social risks that face TG and TS transitioners.  In the SRS information page, we discussed some of the medical risks of the surgery itself. Here in this page, we focus on the risks involved in undergoing SRS in cases where the overall rationale for transition and/or for undergoing SRS is questionable.

Some examples of “wrong reasons” and wrong situations for undergoing SRS are (i) efforts to become a center of attention and live a “sexy life”, (ii) thinking it will “automatically turn oneself into a woman” in others’ eyes, (iii) deciding to become a woman on a whim (for example, in the midst of a mid-life crisis), (iv) doing it for autosexual “thrills”, (v) doing it while suffering from preexisting serious mental conditions unrelated to GID (depression, bi-polar conditions,…), etc.

Regrets and adjustment difficulties seem to occur especially frequently in the cases of older intense crossdressers and sexual fetishists whose drive to transition is based primarily on male sexual feelings and habits. These individuals will gradually lose their male libidinous responses to their new female body as time passes after the removal of their testicles during SRS.  This loss of libidinous rewards, combined with accumulating practical, social and emotional difficulties in postoperative life, can lead to serious long-term adjustment difficulties for those who’ve “made a mistake”.  (This effect is quite different from the experiencing of a heightened female libido and improvements in lovemaking capability that occur in many other postoperative TS cases). The bottom line here is that EXTREME CAUTION is advised if you are unsure of your motives for SRS.

Examples of cases of “regrets”: Following are stories of people who have experienced regrets and have openly talked about their particular regrets. We can learn a lot from such cases, which help clarify the nature and validity of this serious warning:

Renée Richards

Dani Bunten Berry

Sandra MacDougall

Samantha Kane

Summary

For more please go to: http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Warning.html

Renée: Los Angeles Film Festival Review [hollywoodreporter.com]

by Kirk Honeycutt / Hollywood Reporter

Eric Drath’s documentary explores the life of transsexual tennis star Renée Richards before and after her 1975 gender reassignment surgery.

Renée, Eric Drath’s documentary about transsexual tennis star Renée Richards and her battle to play as a woman in the 1977 U.S. Open, is as fascinating as it is frustrating. Made for ESPN Films and shown in the current Los Angeles Film Fest prior to broadcast later this year, the film brings you up-to-date on a personality who once dominated headlines but has now largely faded from public view.

Drath tries to get to the bottom of two people, Richard Raskin, who was born in 1934 into a comfortable upper middle-class existence, and Renée — “French for ‘re-born,’ ” she reminds — following Raskin’s gender reassignment surgery in 1975. It’s fair to say both remain an enigma.

Richards has written two autobiographies and seen two movies made about her life, the TV movie Second Servestarring Vanessa Redgrave and now this one. Yet she remains elusive. This enigmatic quality isn’t just about the schizophrenia of Dick and Renée but about the contractions and self-doubts each possessed.

Drath, who comes from a tennis-loving family, remembers as a boy Dr. Raskin, an eminent eye doctor who treated his sister, yet later appeared in a skirt at the U.S. Open, and wants to find out what happened. Good luck.

Observing Richards in an interview today and then in old footage and old interviews, one clearly observes a war going on within this person, not so much between male and female, as between what one friends calls the “private person,” who is extremely wary of all this attention, and a headstrong and arrogant individual who craves the limelight.

Click to read the rest of the article: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/ren-e-los-angeles-film-203165

Just Another Girl (Who Used to Be a Boy) [glamour.com]

from Glamour Magazine May 2010

A striking blue-eyed blond deftly navigates Los Angeles’ Melrose Avenue in her blue convertible Beetle. Her name is Amy Karn, and she could be any 26-year-old girl headed to Friday after-work drinks with the top up, windows down and her hair blowing in the breeze. Perma-glued to her cell, she’s usually talking to Valerie Reynolds, her best friend. This time Valerie’s calling to ask: Did Amy bring the halter bra she needs to borrow? Check. “We share everything,” says Amy. “I don’t know where I’d be without her.” Every woman needs close friends to lean on, but for Amy, this has never been truer. Over the past two-plus years, between settling into her first “grown-up” apartment, getting her career off the ground and trying to find love, Amy has made one mind-blowing transition her friends have not: She’s changed from a man into a woman.

Read More http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/2010/04/just-another-girl-who-used-to-be-a-boy#ixzz1QihYJrHD