Turning Your Gender Corner

 

Image from the JJ Hart Archives.

As I made my way towards coming out of my closet and living as a transgender woman, I found I had many corners to navigate.

At first the corners were easy to take on but then became progressively more difficult as I moved closer to my impossible dream of escaping my male life. Through out the fifty years I lived as a serious cross dresser, it seemed I spent too much time researching to see if a life as my authentic femininized self was even possible. What was I going to do about a disapproving group of family, friends and bosses. All corners I needed to see around and judge what was next. 

At times, a few of the corners were more frustrating than others. My primary example always is when I spent years thinking my appearance as a woman (trans or not) was the all important driving factor in how I lived. There was so much more to being a woman than just how I looked. Appearance did open or close many doors but it was only the start. Also, as the internet began to have an impact in my life, I started to research more and more about what the new transgender term was all about and how did it define me. Initially, I thought it did because when I went to transgender - cross dresser mixers I did not mix well with the transvestites and leaned towards the transsexuals in the groups. I was somewhere in between and it was evident to me I had many more corners to turn before I discovered where I wanted to be.

Looking back, during that time in my life, I was gender fluid but had no way to express it. 

As I did begin to aggressively pursue my gender path, I needed to put all the labels behind me and try to determine if my dreams were indeed reachable. Right or wrong, I began to slip out of the house when my wife was at work to live an entire whole new existence as a woman. To do so, there were many blind corners I needed to face, Perhaps the biggest one was when other women wanted to strike up a conversation with me. I found they would start innocently enough with a small compliment on a facet of my wardrobe such as ear-rings and move on from there. Fortunately, most of the conversations were innocent enough as most of the women just were curious about what I was doing in their world. After the first shock of having to communicate in a brand new world, I actually turned the corner and began to appreciate the attention I was getting. I never had that amount of attention from women in my male life. The roles were reversed because I was receiving little to no attention from any of the men I met.  

Even though sometimes we follow similar paths as transgender women and trans men, the gender curves and corners are vastly different. We all have spouses or girlfriends who provide various levels of support or push-back. Often the push-back leads to mental health stress all the way to suicide attempts. 

Through therapy, often turning the gender corners you face may be easier. I know in my case, a mixture of going out on my own to start a new life along with therapy to do away with the old one worked for me. 

Now, at my age of seventy-five, I have come to realize the gender corners I will have to face will always be there as I face the possibility of advanced elderly assisted living. It all seems just a part of the problems we face as transgender women and trans men.