Being a Transgender Victim

Image from University of Cincinnati
Trans Seminar.  

It is difficult not to play or be the victim if you are transgender. 

It is always easy to think why me and resort to various escape mechanisms such as in my case, running home and cross dressing in my dress when anything went remotely wrong in my frail male world. Making the varsity football team just wasn't as important as trying to look like a cheerleader in my mirror at home. 

Many years went by before I grew out of being a victim. Perhaps I made my biggest strides in Army basic training when I had no where to run and hide behind my feminine feelings. Ironically, my intense introduction to man hood would in turn enable me to be a better transgender woman in the future. Or as my second wife used to tell me, be man enough to be a woman. For the longest time, I had no answer to what she was telling me. To begin with, I had no idea of how I would support myself as a trans woman and at the same time, I was still very inexperienced as a woman. I had a ton of learning to do. 

As I finally was able to escape the confines of my male existence, I fell back heavily on his new found idea of never being a victim. When I initially was going through all the trials and tribulations of attempting to present convincingly as a woman, many times I was a dismal failure. The easy thing to do would have been to be a victim and blame the world but I chose the other path and kept going back to my cross dressing drawing board and try again. By doing so, slowly I was able to learn what I needed to get by.

By not becoming a victim, I was able to look the world in the eye and learn to communicate one on one with mainly women in public. Very quickly, I was able to see in their eyes what their perception of me was. Mostly I found the majority of women knew I was transgender and were curious what I was doing in their world. By the time I reached that point in our interaction, there was no turning back and I was in so deep I could not back out and hide at home or in my car. Most importantly I learned to stand my ground and learn a new feminine life. Of course there were many new rules I needed to observe and accept before I could move on but I did. The whole process was not without setbacks and many times I needed time to rest before I re-entered the fray cis-women call life. I had learned from my work experience, women have the tendency to form cliques unlike the teams men form, so I knew once I was accepted by a women's clique, I had it made. Just getting there was the issue.

As I widened my search in the venues I frequented, destiny enabled me to be successful. By pure luck, one of the bartenders who always waited on me set me up on a date with her lesbian Mom and we became close friends  and remain so to this day. Then, one night another woman sent me a note down the bar and we became friends also and the three of us were inseparable for years.

Probably, my most chance encounter of all came when my current wife Liz answered my "ad" on a dating site and we have been together for nearly fourteen years now. She came along on-line after having to put up with an incredible amount of trash. For some reason, I refused to become a victim again and kept trying.

Being transgender is a difficult situation to find yourself in. As I always point out, trans is NOT a choice but being a victim is and it is a difficult burden to overcome.