Trans Woman in the Sisterhood

 

JJ Hart on left out with Friends.

I write often concerning my gender transition into transgender womanhood. 

Sometimes I wonder if I emphasize the complexity of doing it. Securing a place for me in an unwanted male world seemed to be so simple. Men have just a few power bases to interact with as they proceed through life. Such as money, or athletic prowess. Plus many males never have the chance to grow into manhood at all and never mature into quality human beings. 

Women face the same hurdles. Many females never make it  to womanhood. Which is a socialization process. Transgender women face additional obstacles during their journeys to be accepted into the sisterhood. As my second wife always told me, I did not really know the gender processes cis-women go through and she was right. I had not earned my right to be there...yet. It was not until I made it out of the mirror and into the world did I begin to learn what she meant. In many ways, she forced me to learn it on my own without her help. She was much wiser than I was but I was stubborn and determined to learn on my own about what being truly accepted into the world of women meant.

First of all, I needed to discover women operate in a parallel universe than men and somehow I needed to slide behind the feminine curtain and learn from other women how their world was run. I discovered that just like men, there were the alpha women who once they accepted you, you were in. With women, the difference was they were much more layered than men. Take appearance as an example. While I started out obsessing on how I looked, other women around me were noticing how I acted. I needed to walk a thin line with my communication efforts with women. On one hand, I was the quiet observer of what was going on but on the other hand, if I was too quiet I was coming off as too aloof or worse yet, bitchy. In the end, I was able to walk the communication tightrope and survive in a new exciting world as a transgender woman.

The biggest surprise I continued to have was how layered the whole experience was and is. Take conversations about children as an example. Women who have birthed kids share a special bond with other women who have done the same. I needed to interject my daughter and grandchildren experience on occasion without going too far. I felt the entire process femininized me and kept me behind the gender curtain. Being apart of the group was good. 

After awhile, being in the sisterhood had it's rewards. I mostly socialized with two or three cis women all the time which kept any potential problems from materializing. I was able to be protected from being a single woman out by herself and learn about the life I wanted to live in the meantime. One evening at a time, I was earning my way into my own level of transgender womanhood. Many times the process was scary. Such as the evening I went to a pro-football game with friends but the offer was too good to turn down no matter how frightening the situation was. Since it happened when I was first climbing away from my dark closet into the world. 

In so many ways, I owe several women friends whom I always say helped me more than they will ever know. They ushered me into being a trans woman in the sisterhood. 

Ironically, it was only the beginning as I needed to keep building on the feminine experiences I was having. A prime example was when I moved in with my wife Liz in Cincinnati. When I did, we started to attend small meetup groups with total strangers which added to the layer of meeting and being accepted by other people. The entire process for the most part was very positive and a great way to immerse myself even farther into the sisterhood.