Why Trans People will Win

 These days as we transgender women and transgender men are under unpresented attacks from unresponsive bigoted politicians across the country, our future often seems dim. With all which is going on, what everyone against us doesn't realize is, we as individuals and as a community have been through this all before. An example would be how many of us grew up with no family support when we thought of attempting to express our authentic gender selves. We were "born" into our gender worlds with extreme problems on how to survive. As an example, I was born into a very male dominated family where any femininity on my part would have been dealt with drastically. I learned the hard way how to exist with no outlet to my gender needs. 

Equally as important was the fact I had little to no information from the world concerning others who may have felt the same way as I did. I didn't know how many ancient societies actually held transgender individuals in high esteem. Some to the point of worshiping them. In todays' western societies difference is bad and often gender is regarded as one of the most different personal differences a person can face. But face it we do and I use the "tunnel" example to explain why. Once we are able to finally take the steps to open our gender closets and explore, we are faced with looking down a long tunnel with a small light at the end. It takes all of us differing amounts of time to recognize the light at the end of the tunnel is not actually the train but actually an exciting new world.

Now we have the public knowledge and information to never go back into our gender closets. We as a transgender community are also realizing the time to put away petty differences is behind us because the bigots are coming after us. ALL of us, including cross dressers who comfortably (or not) stay hidden away in their closets. Many are now learning the chance to ever escape and live their truth may be taken away. The rejection of drag shows in states such as Tennessee could be just the start of going back to the 1950's and early 60's when merely being dressed in public as a member of the opposite sex could get you arrested. I was a pre teen during those times and remembering it happening where I lived near Dayton, Ohio. Something all cross dressers should think of. 

Another reason we will win is even though we as part of the LGBTQA community are taking the countries bigots best shot, we are becoming more organized than ever before. Even the rather conservative non political transgender-cross dresser support group I am part of came out in public against all the anti-transgender propaganda and legislation. It is very real to those of us who live in Cincinnati, Ohio just across the river from the Commonwealth of Kentucky which just over rode a veto by it's governor to pass a strict anti trans bill. 

What all the bigots don't realize is how hard we have worked and how much we have sacrificed to live as our authentic selves. We simply won't go back. The more we transgender people are out in public and into society the more people will understand what we are really about. It may take awhile but we still will win. 

Trans Reflexes

 

Cincinnati Skyline
From the Jessie Hart
Collection

Quite early during my transition I found myself needing to develop a whole new set of public reflexes to use when I was out in the world. No longer could I fall back on the tried and true old male actions I had crafted over the years to get by. Primary examples include having an interest in sports and owning muscle cars. Anything I could do to prove I was worthy of being called a male which of course, deep down, I always resisted. The benefit was I could participate in the many available male privileges such as job preference. The whole process was helpful in hiding my feminine tendencies and keeping the bullies away. 

Anytime I was faced with some sort of confrontation, I was able to "puff" myself up (since I was never really a small person) and fend off many possible disputes. It became my go to reflex which had to radically change when I began to live as my authentic feminine self. Nearly immediately I was shocked when I was naïve in thinking I would be accepted in man-centric conversations. No one cared about my amount of expertise or success at my job or my overall knowledge of the world. I quickly discovered the art of "mansplaining" and how it was an insult to all women. A prime example came when I needed to have my car towed one time and couldn't even be allowed to explain to the tow truck driver and the policeman where I lived. On the way back home in the truck, to make conversation I tried to play the dumb blond and ask questions about how the tow truck worked. It seemed to do the trick because shortly the driver started to comment about what his wife packed him for lunch. Who knows, maybe he thought I was trying to pick him up. 

Of course the biggest reflex I needed to change (and quickly) was when my personal security was threatened as a woman. Transgender or not. No longer could I rely on my size as a man to keep me out of possible danger. I went from the protector to needing the protection. I was cornered once in a hallway during a party I was attending with my second wife by a much larger man who was coming after me when he found me in a space where I couldn't escape. Luckily, my wife was there and ironically became my protector and he left me alone. I paid the price with her by hearing the lecture of being more careful. Still I didn't learn quickly. There was another night when I was stupidly walking alone between gay venues in downtown Dayton, Ohio. Two men approached me asking for money and all I had was a five dollar bill which satisfied them for the moment and I quickly left and made it to my car. From then on, I made sure I had friends walk me to my car when I went back there plus I made sure I took advantage of closer lighted parking. Security lessons learned. 

Following all of those immediate personal reflex changes, future reflex differences were easier to accommodate and learn from. As my communication skills improved, I was able to be more skilled at reading passive behavior skills from other women. Which helped me anticipate when some other woman was going to claw or knife my back. For the most part men left me alone so I didn't have to worry much about them. Which was ironic since my history with men should have given me more skills to deal with them but then again, I was mostly socializing with lesbians so I was insulated from men altogether. 

Through it all, my inner woman took her cue to live and ran with it. Seemingly, she made up for a lifetime in the closet in a few short years. It was almost as if she was waiting patiently for her time and quickly made the most of honing her reflexes quite quickly when it happened. 

  

Transgender Visibility versus Liberation

Image from Elyssa  Fahndrich
on UnSplash

 Recently I read a post from my statewide organization "Trans Ohio" which made the point Transgender Day of Visibility's  name should be changed to Day of Liberation. I thought what a great idea. Even though due to weather and mobility issues I did not attend the annual local TDOV event this past Saturday, I was there last year and several trans people are still stuck in my mind who were more liberated than just visible. 

Primarily, the one I remember the most was a young transgender girl. Probably around the age of fourteen who was there with her Mom. Seemingly she could not quite contain how proud she was to be in a safe space with many like minded individuals. I thought at the time how wonderful it must have been for her and her Mom to see all the supportive LGBTQA organizations who had set up there for the day. In the young girl's case, she was more liberated than just visible. The great thing was, she wasn't alone. There were many more in different age brackets attending too. 

The entire TDOV process took me back to the actual day when I decided to put away my male life for good and assume a feminine lifestyle. This included a personal pledge to myself to begin hormone replacement therapy to help me as much as possible femininize my exterior appearance to match my internal feelings. When I did it, I could not believe the amount of weight and stress which was lifted from my shoulders. In other words I was liberated and was coming home to an exciting and new transgender life. Not so different than the young trans girl I talked to at TDOV. From that point forward so many years ago, I started to wonder why I waited so long to do it. 

The main reason was my increasingly complex and pressurized male life kept getting into the way. Successes in my job, having a child and loving my wife all provided road blocks to me jumping off the gender transition cliff and liberating myself after living years in a dark closet. To make matters worse, once I thought I had liberated myself from my gender closet, I discovered I had only became visible in the world and the entire liberation process had a ways to go. Those were the terrifying yet exciting days of learning how to react to and communicate with the rest of the world. As this brand new person within me I thought I knew so well but didn't until I was able to liberate her. I guess you could say I was visible first and liberated second.

During the current wave of anti-LGBTQA and primarily transgender legislation from often crooked politicians it would be difficult to consider changing any of the regular annual trans events such as TDOV to Transgender Day of Liberation but it certainly does deserve a second thought.

Gender Enablers

From the Jessie Hart Collection
Jessie (left), Nikki (Center), Kim (Right)

 Perhaps you had a special person or persons who helped you to open your own gender closet and take tentative steps into the real world. Perhaps you did it all yourself. In my case, after a very rocky beginning, I was fortunate  to have had several enablers to help me along in my transgender journey. My rocky beginning started when I enlisted the help of my first fiancé. After much convincing and begging I somehow convinced her to help me dress head to toe as a woman. 

My initial introduction to having a cis-woman make me up and help me dress turned out to have mixed results. I learned my fiancé didn't really have that much more skill than I had when it came to the art of makeup. Most likely because by this time in my life I had literally years of practice on my own face. Quite frankly, I was a little disappointed by the entire experience. Again it was because I had been trying and trying any new fashion accessory I could afford to help my feminine presentation along. Outside of the temporary thrill of having another woman provide instant feedback to how I looked, the entire experience lacked much fun or relaxation for me. The big problem which came about was not so long after this, she would attempt to use my cross dressing desires against me. 

For some unknown reason, my fiancé had a real paranoia about me going away to serve my country in the military. All the way to telling me if I didn't get out of my draft status by telling the military I was gay, she would leave me. To make a long story short, I wouldn't compound one lie with another by telling the military I was gay. So just before I signed up for three years in the Army, I graduated college and we broke up. Even though the whole experience was very painful at the time, it turned out to be one of the best moves of my life and she certainly was not one of my gender enablers. 

From then on I resolved myself to telling any potential serious relationships I was involved with that I was a transvestite as cross dressers were known back in those days. The whole idea worked well with my first two wives. As it turned out, my first wife was so mellow with the whole idea I think she would have not been surprised if one day I told her I was going back to where I served in Thailand but this time for a sex change operation. I was very close to doing whatever I wanted gender wise until I met and fell madly in love with my second wife who I write about all the time because we were together twenty five years until she suddenly passed away. Ironically, she was a gender dis-abler because she became dead set against any idea of me being transgender and beginning hormone replacement therapy. Through it all, we managed to stay together and I tried to learn from all the "tough gender love" she gave me. If she knew it or not. For example, she was the first one to tell me being a woman was much more than just looking like one. After yet another huge fight we had.

Following her death when I was free to start HRT and begin to seriously explore the feminine world, I was so fortunate to have found several serious gender enablers who helped me find my way in the world as a transgender woman. I have mentioned several times in the past several cis women lesbian friends who taught me so much about finding myself as a transgender woman. To this day I don't think they ever realized what all they did for me as my gender enablers.

Around the same time, I met my current wife Liz. Without a doubt she became my best gender enabler when she told me eleven years ago she never saw me as being anything but a woman. More importantly she encouraged me to grow into the out and proud transgender woman I am today. Even though the journey was rough and filled with tough times, destiny showed me the way to what I should have always known was true. I was just cross dressing as a man and biding time until my true feminine self could emerge.    

Once I Started

 

From the Jessie Hart
Collection...The Ohio State
Student Union

I discovered quite early in life my gender identity was in flux. From the first time I felt the allure of feminine clothes to the first time I glanced at my girl self in the mirror, I knew I could never go back. In the classic feelings  of if I knew then what I knew now, I would have saved myself a ton of gender angst and unrest. Primarily I would have understood why the gender euphoria I experienced when I dressed as a girl was so fleeting. Before I knew it, I was back to my same old struggle to be everything male. I know now all of these feelings were the very beginnings of my desire to look more than like a girl. I wanted to be a girl. Long before the term was even invented I was transgender.

If I was wise enough to write down my deepest secret somewhere and hide it away, I am sure I would have told my future self to relax and enjoy the trip because in the end I would have no choice. No matter how hard he tried, my feminine self would in the end win and I would end up living full time as a transgender woman. Of course there was no possible way I could know all the twists and turns my gender journey would take me. My younger self would have known I would experience transitions in the middle of living in a major transition itself. My primary go to example is when I was living as a very serious cross dresser, I decided to transition again. This time to hormone replacement therapy and into a transgender life. There was no way my early self could predict what she was really asking for. She wanted me to uproot all the hard earned, unwanted gains I had achieved in the male world and finally realize they were all for not. Once I started I should have realized I should have fought harder to let my inner feminine self win and get on with living a better life. 

The major problem I would experience was all of the male gifts I experienced as I lived life as a guy. The biggest gift I experienced was the birth of my daughter who I love deeply to this day and she has been behind my transition since I told her tentatively years ago. I consider the whole experience as I said as the pinnacle of my life as most of the other so called accomplishments were rather shallow, such as success in my working world. 

My fondest hope I should have ever asked for was the wisdom of knowing my dominate gender was female in nature and even though trying to change it nearly killed me, I could never change who I truly was. The whole process was nearly miraculous in how a new wonderful feminine world was opened to me.  Once my she was given the chance, she quickly took over and established herself . Once I started my transition early in life it was a long project but one which was worth it in the long haul.

Transgender Survivors versus Victims

 

Image from Jen Theodore 
on Unsplash

There is a huge difference between being a survivor in life than a victim. Perhaps an over simplification of the two is a survivor takes what is given to them, lives with it and in the end result make it all better.  On the other hand, a victim becomes a martyr in their own mind and is slow to make improvements. It is very easy for a transgender woman or trans man to be a victim. After all, why were we "chosen" to live such a difficult life. Often it takes years to realize we are not victims after all. For some reason we were given the opportunity to explore two sides of the binary gender spectrum. 

By years I mean the struggle we go through to just fit into a society which seems increasingly hostile against us. I went through some of it yesterday when I was running my errands.  My first stop was at the Post Office where I stopped to mail one of Liz's (my wife) packages which contained her handmade beaded jewelry she makes. I could only describe the woman at USPS behind the counter as older and somewhat bewildered with her meeting a transgender woman probably for the first time. But, since it was the weekend of  Transgender Day of Visibility, it was a good as time as any to be exposed to the real world. In a matter of seconds I dropped off Liz's package for it's trip to California and the clerk turned her attention to her next postal patron. 

Ironically, on my way back home, I needed to stop and reward myself for all the errands I attended to. So I stopped at a coffee shop drive through for a special coffee brew. One for each of us. As I pulled up to the window at the drive through, I was waited up by a cute, tattooed obviously young queer girl who was very nice. Perhaps she noticed we were distant cousins on the LGBTQA spectrum. To keep the line moving, I quickly paid and exchanged pleasantries with her and was on my way. Looking back, she reminded me of my transgender grandchild. I left with the hope she has a bright future of life ahead of her.

So, in the matter of two stops I had seen both ends of the public gender spectrum. One bewildered older person and one friendly energetic queer person. By now you may be wondering what all this has to do with victims versus trans survivors. I learned long ago, I couldn't run and hide if I was ever able to progress in the world as my authentic feminine self. I needed to overcome all the nights of coming home crying after being laughed at or stared at in public. I think being a survivor to me was when I came to the realization if I could never be mistaken totally for a cis-woman, I could still live a life as an out fulltime transgender woman. I wish I could tell you where I came up with the strength to be a survivor rather than staying home and feeling sorry for myself. Perhaps my best trans girlfriend at the time said I passed out of sheer willpower. I believe it was because deep down I felt what I was doing was right and felt so natural. Just to be able to go out and free myself from my gender closet encouraged me to not be a victim. Perhaps for the first time in my life. 

The urge turned out to be so strong for me to live as a woman, I was able to overcome the false idea that women have an easier life than men. When in realty, the opposite happened. I learned a cis woman's life was a many layered often difficult existence and I wanted to learn more and more. As I did I became more of a survivor than I ever thought I could ever be as I lost all of my male privileges. No more could I expect to be respected because of my white older maleness and be called the hated and unwanted "Sir" word. I needed to start all over again in a feminine foreign world and prove once and for all I was a survivor versus a victim. Now we all need to be survivors to battle all the gender bigots seeking to erase us. Perhaps now more than ever before.    

Girls, Girls, Girls

Image Courtesy 
Motley Crue

This morning following a quick trip to the post office, I happened to hear the group Motley Crue sing their song "Girls, Girls Girls".  Hearing it always takes me back to experiences with girls I had when I was growing up. I would say my formative years but then I think I am still in my formative years in many ways during my senior years. 

I grew up outside of a small to medium sized town in a pre-suburban rural area where there were relatively fewer children in the neighborhood. As I remember, only around six and only one of them was a girl. It was definitely a male dominated structure including our family lives. There would be no discussion at all of the possibility of not wanting to be a boy at all. The problem I had was I had very few feminine role models to interact with in my own peer group. Since I was exceedingly shy, my gender issues which I was becoming increasingly aware of became even worse. Much of the problem was I was too isolated from girls and watched them from afar. 

Since I did live in a rural area, the school I went to was small also. In fact I went there from Kindergarten through the ninth grade with basically the same students which meant the same girls. When I hit the eighth grade and puberty began to set in, more and more I began to realize I didn't just want to socialize with the girls, I wanted to be one of them. I remember vividly how a few of the girls would wear their mini skirts, cross their legs and tease all the boys who wanted to admire them. I so wanted to be like them.

Little did I know, the older I became, the stronger my desire to be a woman would be. As I was a disk jockey for many events, I wondered how it would be to be a female groupie for one of the major musical groups they followed.  I was really triggered when my second wife and I went to one of the many Jimmy Buffett party/concerts we went to in Cincinnati. Of course there were tons of scantily dressed attractive women to look at. Even though I was a "Parrot Head "and loved the music, I couldn't get over how much I wanted to attend and look just like one of the attractive women I was admiring. As I did many times back in those days, I just tried to drink my feelings away to no avail.

Sadly, these days, "Jimmy Buffett" still comes to Cincinnati for a fun riverside concert but even though I could go now as a transgender woman, it would be very difficult due to my problems walking any distance at all. It seems my desire to be among the  "girls girls girls" in a big party situation will have to wait for another lifetime.  In the meantime, I can still listen to the song with the satisfaction I made it to my goal of living as a transgender woman.

Transgender versus Bi-Polar

Image Courtesy Fa Barboza on
UnSplash 

Years ago, when I was diagnosed having a Bi-Polar disorder, suddenly a portion of my life I had struggled through so long made sense. At the time I was going through terrible long lasting mood swings that often lasted for days on end. On some days I found it very difficult to even get out of bed and go to work. Plus, to make matters worse I tried to self medicate with immense amounts of alcohol.  At the time I was seeing one of the only gender psychologists in Ohio at the time. Ironically, she almost said immediately she couldn't "cure" my gender desires to be a girl but started to question me in depth concerning the immense mood swings I was suffering through. After a very short time she explained to me my moods were not all attributed to my gender dysphoria but in reality I was suffering Bi-Polar issues. 

At the time, I was relieved. She started me on medications which I remain on to this day. In addition I was able to separate the problems which were hurting my everyday life. At times it seemed unfair I needed to live with being transgender as well as Bi-Polar at the same time. But who ever said life would be fair (said my parents). 

Once I found my way into the Veteran's Administration health care system, I needed to separate my two main issues. I certainly did not want one issue to interfere with the other and somehow the "experts" would say my Bi-Polar condition was due to me being transgender. Then my quest to be approved for hormone replacement therapy would be rejected. At this time I was assigned to a therapist I would never forget. Destiny was smiling on me and way back then there were few therapists who knew little to nothing about transgender issues. Defying all the odds, I was assigned to one of the few VA therapists who did. She never questioned  my two issues and immediately began to fill out and approve the paperwork to allow me to begin HRT.  At the same time she cleared the way for me to continue my Bi-Polar treatment so my moods and excess anxiety was kept under control.  I was with my therapist non stop until last month when both of us decided it was time to conclude our sessions since so many others needed it too and VA staffing levels weren't getting any better. I am extra fortunate also to have an understanding wife  who can help with any of my mental health issues. 

In my past I have encountered several other transgender individuals who said as soon as they completed their gender transition all their anxiety and/or depression faded away.  I was just not as fortunate.  For better or for worse it seems my Bi-Polar issues are irrevocably intertwined with me being a transgender woman. It is something I just had to learn to live with. With a lot of help!

Making It

Photo Courtesy
Jessie Hart Archives

 In many ways this post is an extension of yesterdays which mentioned the feelings you had when you saw your true self for the first time. In this post, I am going to look at the point you when you figured you had achieved a portion of your gender goals. My example is looking back to when I started to break out of my gender closet and explore the world as my feminine self. 

It all happened when I got past dressing as a trashy teen girl in a male body and learned more or less what I could wear to fit in and blend in with the public at large. Without attracting undo attention to myself.  The hard way I learned the meaning of fashion styles such as business professional and boho to name a few. If I wanted to blend in with other professional well dressed women at an upscale mall, I would dress in my best business professional outfit. I was able to purchase on sale a beautiful black pants suit I loved which I paired with black heels or flats and my shoulder length blond wig and never had a problem when I went to an upscale venue. To this day, I wish I had a picture but I don't. 

On the other hand I had several "Boho" influenced outfits I wore frequently to the other venues I went to such as sports bars. The fashion influence came as close as I could come to my late college, pre Army days when I yearned to be influenced by the hippie style of the women I admired. The true success to both of the fashion styles I was attempting was I was all of the sudden "making it" in the public's eye. When I did, I found I could then concentrate on the finer challenges of being a woman. Which up till then, I thought was an impossible goal. In other words, I could concentrate on moving more femininely as well as the most important challenge of all...communicating one on one with other women. Initially I was caught off guard with how many women wanted to start a conversation with me. Looking back, I am sure the great majority of them were just curious of why a former male person would want to join their world. Conversation starters such as I love your earrings were common. When it happened I was scared even more because then I had to rely upon my challenged vocal skills to get by. 

Ironically, making it on occasion brought more challenges than benefits. Every time I made it to one goal such as basic communication, it all felt so natural I needed to move forward to another equally as distant goal. Such as maintaining my feminine self longer and longer before I needed to go back to my unwanted old male self. The longer I waited to go back, the more distant his memory became and the only real hold he had on me was the love I felt for my wife of twenty five years who was adamantly against my final trnasition to a all feminine lifestyle. When she tragically passed away from a heart attack at the age of fifty, my path was suddenly open to change my gender lifestyle to be a full time transgender woman. 

Finally, when all the expected and unexpected effects of hormone replacement therapy set in, I knew I had all the help I needed to never turn back. I most certainly had reached the true point of making it.

Meeting Yourself the First Time

 

Cell Phone Picture from the 
Jessie Hart Collection

Perhaps you remember when you glanced in the mirror and saw your true, authentic self looking back. I know I do. It was such a long time ago, I wondered if I thought this is great but what do I do next. What I ended up doing was going on a lifelong search to discover the feeling of meeting myself again. For the most part the process led me to an often ill fated worship of mirrors. The only other outlet available to me was the invention of disposable camera's. I took the pictures to a drive thru kiosk to be processed. Which led me to an embarrassing moment when I turned in a roll of film which turned out to be less than flattering and then having it developed by someone I knew. From the look on his face when I picked my pictures up, I knew he had a fairly good idea I was a cross dresser. 

The only other alternative available to me was the Polaroid camera when it was invented and coming into it's own commercially. As I remember, the pictures were very expensive to make up for a do it yourself photo experience. Even though I managed to buy a camera finding someone to take a picture became the real problem. I had considered the fact I thought I looked fairly good as a cross dresser in the mirror but how did it all relate to how I appeared in a picture. Which is as far as I could sneak out of my gender closet at the time. Plus, I had just started to receive my cherished editions of "Transvestia" magazine, so I was eager to compare myself to all the featured transvestites I saw there.  Somehow, someway I convinced my wife to take a few pictures of the real me so I could look. 

As I try to remember all those years ago, I still can't say I was seeing any more than the occasional sight of my true self. I was probably teased enough to think I was but all in all I was still missing the mark. I was so desperate to open the door of my gender closet anything I tried looked good by comparison to my old, boring unwanted male self. 

These days, cell phones and their advanced cameras are everywhere and it is difficult to remember when they weren't. I remember vividly of trying to talk my wife into buying me a new cell phone with a camera so I could sneak around and take pictures of myself. Sadly she had passed away before I attempted to become proficient at taking pictures of myself on a cell phone. Now, with all the photo apps available to nearly everyone, you have to take most pictures you see with a grain of salt. Many are out and out fakes. Regardless, it is still a luxury to me to be able to have such a convenient portable device with me which can help me document my true self.

Amazingly, meeting myself for the fist time still happens over and over again when I get up and look at myself in the mirror. Some days I am pleasantly surprised when I see a feminine person looking back at me. On other days, the opposite happens and I am depressed when I see my old masculine self still peeking back at me. Anymore I am used to the process and just move on before my gender dysphoria can return in full force and depress me. One thing is for sure, the ability to meet yourself for the first time is never boring.    

Looking for Love

 

My "Sad Eyes" Photo
from the Jessie
Hart Archives

Perhaps I should say looking for love in all the wrong places. Maybe you remember the country song from the "Urban Cowboy" movie. Sadly due to extreme loneliness many transgender women and trans men experience, we sometimes look for love in all the wrong places. Back a decade or so ago, on line dating was just becoming a thing and due to my extreme loneliness I thought I would give it a try. Due to a lack of finances and overall knowledge I attempted to find dates on three of the free dating sights.  My biggest success turned out to be a real bonanza. 

On one of the sights I had a response when I was on a "woman seeking woman" page. To be clear, I was always up front about being a trans woman which wiped out much if not all of my responses.  Ironically, I had a response from my current wife Liz eleven years ago when she said I had sad eyes in my profile picture. Since she only lived a manageable distance from where I did, we decided to correspond in writing. The "writing" phase of our relationship started eleven years ago and we are still going strong. It took awhile though for me to feel secure enough with my voice to talk to her on the phone but when I survived the test I decided to gather the courage to ask her out on a date. She was a Wiccan lesbian and sad eyes or not I was fascinated,  The first date was a drag show and all went well, even when I followed her into the women's room on our way to the gay bar which was putting on the show. She didn't flinch much and our first date was fun and successful. 

At the same time, I was still frequenting the big sports and social venues where I had become a regular as a single transgender woman. The only problem with all of that was, the usual stigma attached to a single woman drinking by herself in a bar. For the longest time I was unsuccessful in locating any companionship in any way. Outside of a few dates I had with men who actually bothered to show up as they had promised. The brief encounters I had with men were strangely exciting but not to the point I could ever feel comfortable. Especially with the men who seemingly wanted to just wear my panties. As close as I came to really ever getting around to knowing a man I met was the one I ended up meeting briefly at a TGIF Fridays Grille and Bar I was a regular. He was a big sweet heart who drove a classic motorcycle and had just gone through a very messy and brief marriage with a part time exotic dancer he had just met. I was able to lend a sympathetic ear and in a short time we became friendly but not to the point I ever got the chance to ride on his bike before he was transferred out of town for a new job.  As I bid him farewell, little did I know he would be the last man I would be interested in and women were to be my future as I was looking for love or at the least, companionship. 

By pure accident I was able to meet two other women who happened to be lesbians. One was the Mother of a bartender I knew The other indirectly introduced herself one night to me in venue where I was drinking. Together, the three of us formed a bond and we had good times partying.  Topped off by the experience of going to lesbian mixers and being introduced to the culture. It seemed destiny was paying me back for all the recent hard times I had suffered by providing me with a group of friends who provided fun and companionship including one other transgender woman who sometimes joined in and partied with us.

Call it luck or not but somehow I was able to sort through the junk and locate quality friends who helped fill my void of not having any friends. It took awhile and effort but I did find love by looking in all the wrong places. I found good people and to this day I am still married to one of them. 

No Fear

Image from Brian Kyed on
UnSplash

 These days with the advent of all the current anti-LGBT and primarily transgender sentiment going on, it is very difficult not to have some sort of fear of going out in public. I know in my case during my long years of gender transition,  many times I was petrified of trying out my feminine world. Having more experience in failure more than success made me quite timid in attempting more and more on my path. 

I understand how difficult it must be to be a novice transgender woman or man and/or cross dresser seeking to explore the world. I am fortunate to live in a relatively liberal part of Ohio in suburban Cincinnati and I have a nearly constant fervent ally (my wife Liz) who accompanies me almost everywhere. 

Ironically, possibly  coming up at the right time  on the end of the month is the Transgender Day of Visibility celebrated around the world on the thirty first of March but here on the Saturday before. Despite no problems last year when I participated in the event, I can't help having the slightest trepidation on what may happen this year with all the TERF's and other gender bigots being emboldened by all the negative transgender news. Even with all of that, I still plan on being a part in my own small way.

I believe by participating I am honoring all of my past efforts to simply live an authentic life the way I saw fit. Along the way, I had more than my share of testosterone poisoning and conditioning to overcome on my gender journey. Perhaps in my small way, if I encounter any younger transgender women or men I can give them some confidence they can have some sort of a favorable future. I would think many of them are scared about their future. Neighboring Kentucky has just passed a highly restrictive transgender bill and Ohio has tried and failed so far. Which means it is just a matter of time before the bigots in the legislature try again. 

In the midst of all this negativity and darkness regarding our gender quests, it is important not forget our LGBT and transgender friends and allies. I wish I could name all the wonderful people such as the Kim's, Jen's and Debra's  who have touched my life in a positive way.  They embraced me at the same time so many others were rejecting me. Primarily, they enabled me to learn how it would be to live my dream of surviving and even thriving as my true feminine self. 

I'm sure I will mention it again as the Transgender Day of Visibility draws closer but I hope in your own way you have the chance to be visible. Even if you are still existing in your own closet's mirror. You never know when your life may change and you will be able to escape your closet and learn to have less fear and live an authentic life you have always wanted to live. 

Remember life can change on a dime. If you can just locate the dime!

 

Transgender Seasons

Summer Fashion from the Jessie Hart
Collection

Calendar spring is coming around here in Ohio early next week on Monday. Traditionally the calendar change does not mean the actual temperatures will change that much. In fact, we are expecting snow today just days before the season changes. Even though I realize from long experience with the weather around here, finally I am closer to leaving winter behind than ever before. Which means it's time for the exciting wardrobe checking  ritual. 

The entire wardrobe process has always been one of my seasonal treats every year. It is time for me to enjoy the benefits of being a woman. I was always so envious of the women around me when they could update their clothes to match the new season. Which I might mention we have four of here in Ohio. Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. Plenty of opportunities for change. 

Even though I haven't really taken the opportunity to go through all my clothes, I certainly need to do it soon. Plus, this season I feel I need to really get into and accept change is my clothing selection. I think I am still caught up in the Covid isolation times of the recent past. I need bright colors to brighten up my mood. I can also enjoy one of my previous favorite pursuits of being a transgender woman, changing with the seasons. 

I am not a huge fan of summer or for that matter winter. But this year we were able to afford a new installation of a central air conditioning unit. Which will help with our hot humid summers. And, we just got the new furnace installed for hopefully winter's last hold on us. The revival aspect of spring appeals to me too when the brown vegetation turns green and the tree's bud out and flower. For some reason, fall has been my favorite season. Perhaps every fall I thought it would be the year I could finally open my gender closet and explore the world. It was a colorful time of change and why couldn't I be part of it.  Ironically, fall was when I finally was able to transition full time to an out transgender woman. Since my birthday is in October, I felt in many ways I had gone full circle. Fashion-wise wearing boots, leggings and oversized soft sweaters really appealed to me. 

Cis-women probably take the seasonal fashion changes for granted. For transgender women fashion changes provide an extra opportunity to express our feminine side. Just one of the fun aspects of transitioning which at times can be so agonizingly difficult. Seasonal fashion changes are also a part of maintaining a positive feminine public presentation. Not unlike mixing business with pleasure. 

I also hope to for once do some serious shopping for spring fashion. It is definitely time.  

Girl Talk

First Girl's Night Out. I am on the
bottom left. From the Jessie Hart
Collection.

Every so often I reflect back on my first girl's nights outs.  Naturally before each event I was terrified. Here I was having the chance to enter a feminine only space I had previously only dreamed of. I was petrified of thinking what I would say to attempt to add in my input to all the conversations. What do women talk about when men are not invited to be around.

It turned out over the years I was fortunate to be invited to four girl's nights out. It turned out they were all unique in their own way.  

During the first one I learned women (as I suspected) were more apt to discuss, family and friends topics. No more relying on work and sports to get me by. I was lucky I had a supportive daughter I could talk about. Other than that, I had to sit back and be more of the observer rather than a real active participant. I didn't know several of the other women not shown in the picture and one didn't seem to care I was transgender while the other one did. I was a little surprised no one gently probed my reason of being there. It was probably because I was there with good friends such as my future wife Liz, Min and Kathy. 

Most likely the most exciting and scary girl's night out I was ever invited to came at the request of a couple servers at one of the venues I was a regular. One afternoon I was there and the servers came up to me and said they were planning a night out with a couple of other women and another nearby venue. As frightened as I was, how could I possibly turn such an invitation down. Since they were all young an attractive, I really had to try to step up my fashion game to fit in. I decided on wearing my favorite all black outfit. Wide legged pants and short sleeved top along with my long black wig. It turned out not to matter because all the other women, for the most part, were occupied by guys trying to pick them up and I was ignored. All in all, it worked out for the better.

Another girl's night out I was invited to was a Halloween party years ago. I had a fun time wearing my black tight legged leggings with boots and my big frizzy red wig. There was plenty of beer to be consumed and one woman even came up to me ad asked how I ever took care of all of that hair. It didn't  hurt that Kathy was there also and she was every bit as tall as me so I didn't have to feel self confident about being the tallest woman there. 

The one night out I missed through no fault of my own was a bachelorette party I was invited to, then it was cancelled. I knew the bride and her friends were a wild bunch so I was disappointed when it was cancelled. 

All of my "women only" events taught me I did have the confidence as a transgender woman to interact one on one with other women. I was correct in assuming when I subtracted sports and work from my conversation with others and added softer topics such as family and clothes I would be all right and I would be accepted into a new and exciting circle. Girl talk I discovered was fun. 

She Would Not say No

 

Image from Jazmin Quaynor 
on Unsplash

As my life progressed, I found my inner feminine self was certainly the dominate personality of the two binary genders I was forced to live. Seemingly, the male person I found myself trying to succeed at being was overall a dismal failure. I tried sports, auto mechanics and various other male dominated passions to no avail. The only real success I found was masking my inner feminine desires enough to keep the bullies off my back.

In the meantime, I suffered the usual gender problems others similar to me went through. Take sports for example. The long days on the football practice field were mixed in with watching the cheerleaders practice while I day dreamed about how much fun it would be to be one of them instead of yet another faceless defensive end. Finally I could take it no longer and quit the team. In many ways my "she" had won a major battle for supremacy. Of course, this was just one of many struggles to come in my life. There were the small ones such as simply slipping away in private and dressing like a girl. Which ultimately led to completing a transgender transition to a fulltime feminine life.

None of this was accomplished easily. First of all my inner "she" had to face the fact she was born into a very male body. When the very occasional feminine characteristic would creep in, my male self would try to battle back and squash it.  I think deep down all along he knew how the battle would go and he would lose. In the meantime my inner girl was growing into a woman  And the growth would require much more time and effort. All those days of simply admiring myself in a mirror just weren't enough.  More and more, she needed to get out and live.

The more she escaped, the more she wanted. Even when my wife and I came to an agreement I could spend time and money twice a week to get out and free my authentic self, it wasn't enough. Those were the days of trying to go behind her back and go out. The problem quickly became when I was living secretly more as my "she" than as my "he." The only real things which kept "he" grounded at all were my everyday macho work experiences which I was being paid very well to be successful at doing. Even with all the compromises to my life my "she" would not say no. She needed more and more freedom to express herself. Over all, the gender pressure on me nearly ended my life. I just couldn't take the pushing and shoving or ripping and tearing any longer, I needed desperately to find a way out. At that point I tried to kill myself with pills and alcohol and luckily failed. I think it was a compilation of both of my genders which caused the failure of the suicide attempt and ultimately the success of what happened later in my life.

After I tried self harm, I decided it was because of the influence of my "she" side and decided on a purge of everything feminine I was doing.  Little did I know I was doing it for my wife who would only end up living approximately six more months. Once she passed away completely unexpectedly, there wasn't much standing in my way to completely transition. Something I had been working for since early in life. Still my male side fought back because "he" still brought tons of baggage to the table. For a few more years I still had a job to worry about before I could retire and I still had to tell what was left of my family and friends I was transgender. Nothing it seemed was going to be easy. I viewed the whole process as sliding down a very slippery slope towards a very steep cliff.

Once I finally made the decision to jump, I was in my early sixties and it was one of the best decisions I had ever made. Allowing my "she" to rule my life and have the chance to live out her own life removed much if not all of the gender tension I was feeling. The final night when "she" would not say no was one of the best moments of my life. It all felt so natural.  

Trans Boomers

 

Without really trying to do so, I believe the blog has settled into having an older clientele, so to speak. Very rarely do I receive a comment from a younger transgender person or even a parent of a trans youth desiring to transition. By far the number of comments I receive come from other trans women of age. Meaning my age. I also have feedback from many other transgender veterans. Where ever the feedback comes from , I completely appreciate it. Here is my latest comment from a reader who prefers to keep her name private:

"When I look back, as I often do these days, I often feel that sense of regret for things done and things left undone. But, then I try to remind myself that my life has been remarkably good in comparison with the billions of sentient apes that have ever lived and is arguably better than most of the billions of humans who presently inhabit this planet. I do wish I had transitioned earlier and more gracefully, but imagine how many never had the chance at all."

Thanks for the comment! I like the parts about your life being arguably better than others who never stepped out of their comfort zone to live their dreams. Plus having the ability to have transitioned earlier with more grace really struck a chord.

I find the main things I have in common with other readers, is what we went through when we started to question our gender to begin with. The main problem we all had was the lack of internet communication with our peers. I remember distinctly the days when I communicated with other transvestites by writing letters, remember those? I believe my first experience with another "friend" on line was on an old "AOL" dial up chat room. All was proceeding past my expectations until my wife caught me one day. Then my brief experiences in chat rooms came to a halt. Until I could find a more secure way to do it.  Those were dark and lonely days in my closet but I was still desperate to get out and sample a more feminine world. 

It wasn't until I discovered Virginia Prince and Transvestia magazine, did I finally have a way to see there were actually others who shared the same desires as me. I was very excited when I learned the "Tri Ess" cross dresser organization  (which was somehow connected with Prince and/or Transvestia had regular meetings in my native Ohio. The first transvestite mixers I ever went to were a three hour drive away in a location up near Cleveland. Even better than that, I learned other organizations were planning get togethers in Columbus, Ohio which was only an hour away. I can't remember for certain now how many of the mixers I needed to attend before I began to feel more comfortable. I mostly was so dazzled to be around other people with similar gender pursuits to mine, I just came to view and judge the proceedings. 

The first thing I discovered was how layered the group really was. It seemed everybody quickly formed their own little cliques. Almost everything on the female stereotypical spectrum it seemed was there. And perhaps most dramatically, the rule that everyone had to be a heterosexual man was quickly thrown out the window. Too many people were disappearing behind closed motel doors to be totally innocent. Then there were the "mean girls" or the attendees who were often impossibly more feminine than the rest of the crowd and knew it.  I so wanted to look as good as them but without the attitude. The best part about knowing the mean girls was being able to go out with them and party after the mixer was supposedly over. That's where the true feminine action took place. Usually, a group went out to a large gay dance venue in downtown Columbus. Just being able to tag along and watch everyone else was my favorite part of the evening. Mainly because I was finally having the chance to live out my dream of living femininely. I felt I could never look as good as the mean girls but I could still enjoy myself.

Today I feel much has changed for the younger transgender population and that is mostly the reason for the "boomer" niche I find the blog to be in. These days (in at least many larger metropolitan areas) there are special LGBTQ organizations to reach out to. I can't imagine though the extra fear and even panic a younger person has these days when they consider coming out as transgender. I guess it proves no one gets a break, young or old, when it comes to being trans. 

I just wish as a trans boomer I could have helped provide a clearer and safer path for the younger generation today.  

Past, Present and Future

From the Jessie Hart Archives
The Ohio State Student Union with 
Brutus Buckeye

I know I write about my past experiences quite a bit but my excuse is I am old and allowed to. If you believe it or not it's my excuse and  I'm sticking to it. One thing I try not to do is dwell too much on the past to the point it effects my present. On the other hand, I find many of my readers who take the time to comment (thank you) share the number of years lived and similar experiences lived  as I have. Even more are very similar. Take the military for example. Since most of us who share the same age will agree, like it or not, the whole experience was a life altering time. Including what we were able to do concerning our gender issues.

In my case, the whole impact of losing three years of my life to serving my country did not impact me as much as what was going to become of my more than serious cross dressing urges. I couldn't imagine my drill sergeants in Army Basic Training would have approved of my favorite mini skirt or heels. On a serious note though, I learned several lessons in life from my gender dysphoria and the military. My biggest lesson learned from both was I could essentially make it through anything if I tried hard enough. In basic, for the first time in my life, I couldn't hide behind my skirts and use the excuse if I only was a girl, life would be better. Which might have been true but the problems would have still been there in a different form. 

The truth was the only unescapable fact that separated my past gender problems was my overwhelming jealousy women could not be drafted into the military and the burden of fighting all the wars and possibly dying fell upon the men. I learned the hard way in basic, to get over my problems and move on. Which was the best possible result which could have happened to me. I think too, my cross dressing-transgender past helped me to get by too. While it was true I couldn't sneak off and practice my feminine craft, I brought the idea with me that someday in the future, I would be free again to be as much of a girl as I wanted. 

Another part of the past which was really important to me was when my daughter was born. Little did I know how much she would force me to begin to settle my life down and be some sort of a father. An art form which I had little past knowledge of because for the most part, my Dad was very unapproachable. Even though my daughter was raised in two separate homes due to her Mother and I divorcing, later in life I found I must have done something right because my daughter grew in to having much of my spirit and also turned out to one of my main supporters during my gender transition. 

The problem is having the opportunity to learn from the past while still attempting to live the present in it's fullest.  Surely there are times I have a tendency to dwell on things I should have done differently in my life. Most certainly the possibility of transitioning earlier was one of them. Even though I know the world was vastly different. As the old saying goes, you can't cry over spilled milk and it quickly becomes useless to worry about the number of bridges you may inadvertently burned. It's a fact a long successful gender transition is better than never taking the chance to do it at all. I wonder how many tombstones in the cemetery would read "I wished I could have lived as my authentic self".  Which leads me to the future. Since I will be seventy four this year, I can see the end of the line and I worry about my health as well as the health of my loved ones. Then, of course what will become of me if I live long enough to find myself in an assisted care facility as a pre opt transgender woman. 

In the meantime, I do my best to honor the past, live in the present and plan for the future the best I can.

Is Seeing Believing?

Image from Unsplash

 Many cross dressers or novice transgender women and trans men spend a majority of their time living in their mirror. Many because they don't feel secure in totally leaving their gender closets and checking out the world. I know I spent years over respecting whatever the mirror was telling me. I would think I looked extremely good, then immediately get laughed at when I gathered the courage to go out the door. I learned the hard way the mirror was lying to me. 

Once I did learn looking good in the mirror wasn't my primary goal, my life changed. Instead of the mirror the public became my focus in judging how successful my feminine presentation was becoming or, how far I still needed to go to be successful in my gender dreams. Once I started to begin to communicate one on one with other women, I began to see in their eyes and actions how I was doing. The whole experience of stepping out of the mirror and into the world was at once exciting and terrifying. But everytime I felt as if I failed, I picked myself back up and decided to try, try again. 

Along the journey also, I learned there were so many different kinds of women. Some were attractive and had their own sort of extra special passing privilege and others needed to work harder on their hidden strengths to get by. I finally concluded being the most attractive woman in the room was not a reachable goal for me but perhaps being the most authentic one could be. By setting a more realistic idea of how I was presenting helped me to survive in the world.

I wonder now with all the anti-transgender feedback going on in the country, how it will effect the segment of cis-women who do not possess passing privilege. What  will happen when other people begin to question their restroom usage?   Will the transgender community gain more allies by default? It will be interesting to see what a cis-woman thinks when she is faced with the same discrimination trans girls grew up with. 

If by chance you were a "natural" and your feminine transition was relatively easy, perhaps your life in the mirror was too. For the rest of us the learning curve was so steep, hanging on was often the main problem. The mirror was all we had to get by since we didn't have a real peer group to rely on. I have included the infamous "faux" teenaged dressing years in this thought. Sadly, most of us were far beyond our younger years when we first escaped the closet and tried out a new world.  

Seeing is believing for me came when I became confident I could negotiate the world as my authentic feminine soul had wanted to do for so many years. Mostly pursuing my goals as a very serious cross dresser. It took me many years to realize the truth I wasn't cross dressing as a woman at all. In reality, I was cross dressing as a man and the mirror never told me.

Impostor Syndrome Revisited

 

Pride Ohio River Photo
from the Jessie Hart Archives

For many years as I started my transition from male to female, I felt as if I was an actress just trying to fit in with the world. In many ventures into the public eye I felt I needed to concentrate on having a feminine walk, among other important things. In many ways I was creating my own problems as I began to settle into a public presentation which fit in with other women. As I was having fun exploring all the new aspects a woman takes for granted, I was feeling guilty about my progress.

All along I wondered why. After all I was beginning to live a life I  previously could only dream of doing. Perhaps it was because I was still experiencing my age old guilt I suffered in my lonely, dark gender closet as I was growing up. In other words I was experiencing the same old problem expressing my true authentic self. At times the struggle seemed to be to much to bear. As the saying goes, what doesn't kill you, just makes you stronger, did make me stronger in many ways and hurt me in others. I overcame by trying my best to explore ways to power through my gender issues. 

By powering through, I attempted many less than successful opportunities to express my new self. I ran the gamut of reducing a young grocery bagger to a stutter all the way to be snickered at and or stared at in public when I tried too hard to be sexy. I  found when I did that, I never had the chance to experience impostor syndrome because I was attracting the attention for all the wrong reasons. For awhile, one of my favorite activities was making sure my short skirt was even shorter when I slowly passed a semi truck on the highway. When the driver responded with a horn blast or the flashing of the lights, it validated my femininity. Which I discovered was all wrong.

My impostor syndrome really began to kick in when I found myself in situations when I needed to communicate one on one with other women. All of a sudden I needed to evaluate what I should talk about and how I was able to voice it. Often I would be talking with another woman feeling great then the doubts would set in and I needed to try to encourage myself to keep going. If you are familiar with bowling at all, it is similar to bowling three strikes in a row then overthinking the next attempt and totally messing it up. 

It took me many years to overcome my impostor syndrome by primarily realizing I had as much of a right to be a woman as the next person. As with every other female I had earned my socialization rights. I can't stress enough how difficult the process was for me. My deep seated paranoia (from childhood) that somehow living as my chosen gender was wrong took almost as long for me to completely overcome it.  But I did and these days my primary response to impostor syndrome is to get over it. Especially if I encounter any out spoken gender bigots.

My Last Date...as A Man

 

Long Dark Haired Wig Look
From the Jessie Hart 
Archives.

In many ways this was the final straw in my attempt to live in a male world. Approximately two years following the passing of my wife, I had the opportunity to date the Mother of one of my servers. She was smart, single ( near my age ) and very attractive. If I was a "real" man, she was the ideal woman I had ever wanted. As always, I realized nothing had really changed with my gender issues when it came to dating other women. Still I went ahead and tried and succeeded on setting up a few dates.

Along the way, we went on dates to places such as the Frank Lloyd Wright designed home in Springfield, Ohio all the way to a company sponsored suite at a Cincinnati Reds professional baseball game. Seemingly we were moving along at an reasonable rate until she sprung the question on me which probably ended it all. She asked me what my deceased wife would say about the situation I was in life without her.  I fired off the answer I drove her to an early grave without thinking of the consequences. Even though essentially I told the truth, I didn't immediately realize my future days with her were numbered. Obviously I decided not to mention any of my gender issues as probably added to the extreme stress of my wife's life.  

Through it all, my daughter had monitored my return to the dating field with some interest and at that time I hadn't come out to her as a transgender woman yet. As a gift she gave me two tickets to the late Joe Cocker who was performing at a nearby outdoor venue. I immediately took the opportunity to invite my new friend to join me. Initially she said yes and I thought all was good. Then about three or four days later she abruptly called me and said she wanted to end all dealings with me. I was shocked and said goodbye forever. Then I had to decide who I would invite to go with me to the concert.. Fairly quickly i decided I only knew one other woman well enough to invite and that was me. It was a great opportunity to judge how well I could present in a totally different situation. 

First I had to come up with a proper wardrobe choice which would blend in with a probable slightly upscale audience. For the evening I chose my black slinky wide legged slacks along with a black sleeveless top. The outfit was one of the benefits of having nearly hairless arms. By this time, I had arrived at a point where I didn't have to worry anymore what people may think of me for having hairless arms when I was still presenting as a man. For the evening I selected my long black straight haired wig to go with comfortable flats and sensible makeup to fit in. 

To my knowledge, all went well during the concert. Nobody gave me an extra glance and I was able to enjoy a cocktail as well as the concert. I ended up being one of the better dates I had ever had. A fitting end to my often discouraging history of my dating as a man. Something it turned out I never wanted to do anyway.  

When I transitioned to a transgender woman and was dating women such as my future wife Liz, I relaxed and was finally able to enjoy a new and wonderful life. The entire process was similar to everything else I had discovered about myself. Living a gender lie was never easy or successful, My last date as a man just proved it again.

Transition within a Transition

For someone who has never followed a gender path to their authentic selves, they don't realize  the path

Nesting Dolls

includes many different separate transitions. Once I began to think about it, I started to equate it with a set of Russian Nesting Dolls.

The first major transition I went through was when I realized just living in the mirror looking like a girl was not enough. After the feeling of exhilaration or gender euphoria quickly faded, the true desire to actually be a girl remained. You could say I was going through the earliest realization I wasn't a cross dresser at all. My gender issues went much deeper than just dressing like a girl. I was similar to the smallest nesting doll in the picture.

As I began to follow my new gender path in life which always reminded me deep down I should have been a girl, I desperately needed to find ways to satisfy my urges. Sadly the entire process wasn't the smoothest and led me to the point of desperation when I faced the fact I would not see the light of day as my feminine self except once a year at Halloween. I compare it to being doll number five in the set. the more I learned about my feminine side, the more I wanted to learn. which included getting out into the world and escaping my mirror and very dark confining closet.

Once I began to get out of my closet, there was no going back. I began to quickly move to the bigger nesting dolls following successful journeys into the world as a novice transgender woman. Slowly and very unsurely I found my way into ever larger gender challenges.  To me the fourth nesting doll from the top represents the times I had to learn to communicate with other women and men in this brave new gender world. I was trying to make my way without any of the old male privilege's I had built up over the years. Looking back, I'm lucky I didn't break this fragile doll.  Many times during this period of my life, I thought I had it made to some extent but I didn't realize how much farther I had to go. I thought the biggest dolls would be the easiest to obtain.

Surprise, they weren't. I view the second to biggest doll as when I started hormone replacement therapy. HRT provided me with the chance to improve my external appearance as well as opened my internal self to a new softening I never thought possible. All in all my second doll provided me with all I needed to know to move forward to the biggest doll. The biggest doll was my ultimate goal of living full time as a transgender woman. 

I managed so far to find my largest Russian  nesting doll and not break it. I survived many gender transitions within a transition and I am happy for it.

Transgender Fear versus Ignorance

Ohio State Student Union
Jessie Hart Archives

 Often I think all the right wing attacks in our country and elsewhere come from fear of what a transgender woman or trans man can bring to the table. After all we have had the opportunity to experience the two primary binary genders from both the male and female perspectives. Some people have a tendency to become uneasy when you have the possibility of knowing just a little too much of where they are coming from personality wise. Others carry very little self esteem and are always looking for the slightest edge when it comes to thinking they are better than someone else. I perceive many "TERF's" as suffering from gender insecurities normally reserved for men. "TERF's" by the way are Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist's. 

Perhaps the radical feminist's are fearful transgender women will find out too well how it is to be a woman and have access to too many feminine privileges. I have been fortunate in that my personal dealings with TERF's has been fairly rare. Going back several years ago when I was asked at a lesbian Valentine's Day dance what my real name was, all the way to being refused acceptance into my wife Liz's lesbian social club. Which she promptly left. 

I looked at the groups refusal to accept me as pure ignorance and nothing more.  These days though I perceive all anti-transgender rhetoric is mostly fear based in where it comes from. How could we trans folks have the courage to live as our authentic selves when others in the world are stuck in their mundane existence. Plus, as I have mentioned before, gender all by itself is a powerful force. So much so, many parents are afraid to discuss it with their children. They would rather take extreme measures such as banning books on the subject from schools and libraries. All stemming from a deep seated ignorance of the subject. Since the number of true transgender women or men is a small portion of the overall population, very few people ever have the chance to meet and know a trans person and realize we are not much different than the average person.

Then there are the drag queens who all of the sudden became threatened with all this far reaching anti-LGBT legislation. Once again it seems in some circles, transgender women are being mistaken for drag queens. Or vice versa. We will see how a few of the smug seemingly protected cis gay males take it when their rights come into question again. If motivated, they can bring at the least, monetary resources to help with the upcoming battles. 

Maybe I am making too much of the fear aspect out of all of this. In many circumstances fear comes from ignorance on a subject. The only way around all the ignorance is education. I consider being able to be out and proud with my authentic life is a blessing. Hopefully I will be able to help those coming behind me with my actions.

Transgender Misconceptions

Image from Markus Spiske
on UnSplash

Since I had worked in the restaurant business for nearly thirty five years before I retired, I had a fairly good idea of how cis-women could trash a bathroom. So I often read with humor when I saw a novice trans woman and/or cross dresser singing the praises of how pristine women's restrooms tended to be.  Over the years, even before I began to use women's rooms exclusively, I began to develop a complete problem over how women discarded feminine hygiene products.  One restaurant in particular seemed to be more vulnerable than others I managed and I had to call the plumber approximately every two weeks for a stopped up toilet. In one restaurant I even put up signs asking women to please use the proper waste receptacles provided. All to no avail. Plumbers remained on my speed dial.

Little did I know, all of this would be just the beginning of the realization that women really weren't that much more tidy than men in the rest room world.  My first example comes with a warning to always look before you sit to pee. Sadly, it doesn't take very many wet butts for the point to get across that the last woman or two didn't bother to clean up after themselves. Plus, as the years flew by, I saw women using the rods holding the stalls up as acrobatic holders for their tricks. Wearing skirts or not.

Perhaps the ugliest women's room (if you really wanted to call it that) was at a venue in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. As I remember, the room had just enough space for a toilet and a sink. But the worst part about it was the smell. The place reeked of sewer gas so I hurried up and finished my business. It was so bad the tank lid on the toilet was just a piece of wood. As I said, I didn't waste anytime getting out of there and I was sure I had spent more pleasurable restroom experiences in "Porta Potties" or the green heavy plastic toilets you see at many construction sites. Even still, unbeknownst to me, a line of women had formed at the door waiting for me to finish. The first woman in line flashed me a disgusted look, probably thinking I was  responsible for all that smell. I didn't stop to return the favor  and headed back to our table while warning my then date Liz of the nasty potential which awaited her in the woman's room. 

By now you are probably thinking of all the gross men's rooms you have been to and most certainly that is true. Nature is an equal opportunity provider when it comes to rest room slobs. It's too bad when part of your job is having to clean up after a person or persons who don't care how they act. I can't begin to tell you all of the toilet stalls I have been into where the door latches and even the purse hooks have been broken. Even in newer venues. And, there is more.

The worst acting person outside of a restroom comes from a transgender woman She was in a group I was with viewing  an Any Warhol museum exhibit. She was coming down an escalator in front of me when all of the sudden she held on to both sides of the escalator and spread eagled flashed whoever happened to be watching below. She had a lot of class. It happened to be all low. Proving once again it doesn't matter if you are dealing with cis people, male or female and/or transgender people, it takes all kinds to screw up a world.

Plus, it doesn't just have to be in a rest room, where on a couple of occasions I had to nearly push my way through a group of gossiping women just to get to an hand dryer after I washed my hands. In fact I ended up giving one nasty cis woman a hair dryer experience when she wouldn't move and got too close. It was good for me.

If you are new to the restroom world expect the best but don't be surprised by the worst.

Fake it Till you Make It

 

photo courtesy Jazmin Guaynor
on UuSplash

I heard this comment from an unknown cis woman on a television show I was watching last night and it brought back so many memories. Some were pleasant, some not so pleasant. Similar to so many of you, I share many days and even years of living in the mirror as a young cross dressing girl. During these formative gender years I worked diligently on my makeup. While my other male friends became proficient at painting model cars, I increasingly became better at applying my own makeup. Even to the point of being able to buy my own makeup supplies with my meager allowance and earnings from delivering newspapers. Even though I did become fairly good at applying my own makeup, I still thought I was a pretender until my second wife began to ask me for help with her own cosmetic usage. 

The problem I had was, or one of many, I still didn't realize I had the entire gender situation backwards. All along I thought I was a cross dressing male but in reality I was a girl cross dressing as a guy. Not realizing this basic fact cost me decades of torment as I struggled to find my way out of a very dark and lonely gender closet. The only good which was coming out of the entire process was, the better and more I faked it, the more I slowly began to make it. 

The making it came in stages. I needed to grow out of my girlish adolescence and be able to dress my male body the best I could so I could make it better in the public's eye. Once I was able to accomplish this difficult task with little or no feedback, I was able to begin to sync up my overall feminine appearance and be successful. Or so I thought. I thought if I applied the lessons I learned the hard way in the public's eye and didn't get too outlandish, I could present fairly well as a woman. I did so well on a couple of occasions in New York when I was mistaken for a cis-woman at transvestite mixers, I went on a giant gender ego trip. I was so excited with my results making it a woman, I couldn't wait to do it again and again. It was all good until my wife stepped in and interrupted my ideas of further expanding my feminine pursuits and we began to have massive fights. One in particular which I have mentioned in my previous writings was when she told me I made a terrible woman. 

Of course I finally told her I wasn't trying to make anything but I still didn't have the courage to tell her what I really thought. I loved it when I could try new things as a woman. As it turned out, after she calmed down, she told me her comment didn't have a thing to do with how I looked. It was how I acted and the comment changed the trajectory of my life forever. What could I ever do to understand exactly what she was telling me. I was finally making it on appearance but still faking it as far as feeling good as a woman. It didn't come over night but after many years of trying I finally came to understand what she was talking about. In fact it took the presence of estrogen in my hormone replacement therapy for me to learn the effects of both male and female hormones. Sadly my wife passed away before she ever had the chance to see the complete transgender woman I had become. I don't labor under any ideas we could have stayed together but maybe we could have remained friends.

Age played a role in me being able to fake it until I made it as a transgender woman. I had enough time to make all the gender mistakes I made and still learn and survive. I most certainly faked my gender as a guy until I made it as a woman.