Try then Try Again

 

Early Days in my Gender Closet
JJ Hart.

When I first broke out of my gender closet and into the world, there were many cases of failure I needed to deal with.

For example, all the evenings in malls when I was singled out for abuse by groups of teenaged girls. So much so that I tried my best to head to the other side of the mall as quickly as I could in my new high heels before the girls noticed me and started laughing.  When that happened, many times I was sent home in tears wondering what I had done wrong with my presentation. One thing was for sure, I needed to go back to my cross-dressing drawing board and try, try again.

It took me a while to realize I was backwards in my public presentation thinking. I was dressing myself how a man would rather than how a ciswoman would if I stood any chance of blending in and making it in a world I only had just dreamed of. Plus, I benefitted from a crash diet I put myself on which helped me to fit into more stylish feminine clothes. It was the first time in my life that I had been so serious about anything that I could remember.

One big thing I did not realize was the total scope of the male to female femininization project I was taking on. The deeper I delved into the feminine culture I was in, the more I found I had to try to do to become successful and there were many times when I simply not a success. One time that sticks out in my mind was when I visited my gender therapist unannounced as my authentic self and sent her into obvious shock looking around to find out where her son was. I would have thought, since she advertised herself as a gender therapist, she would have been more comfortable around a person cross-dressed as themselves. But she was not. I took it as I had to keep on working on my feminine presentation to hide all the testosterone poisoning male puberty had wrecked my body with.

The more I was able to find myself behind the gender curtain as a transgender woman, the more I needed to try, try again to never stop learning more about how ciswomen spend their lives operating in the world. The circles they run in and their overall dealings with each other as well as men come to mind as I think back on my initial experiences. It was a scary yet exciting time in my life as much of the time I was still risking destroying life as I knew it, if the world discovered my deep dark secret. I had not yet concluded my secret really was that I was a woman hiding behind a man. Not the way I was living thinking I was a man trying to be a woman.

Most of the time, the world did ignore me as my presentation improved well enough to get me by but on the occasions I met the rare TERF (radical feminist) gatekeeper who did not want me behind the gender curtain, I was sent away to try, try again until I earned my way into the places I wanted to go mainly such as women’s restrooms because on my long days out I simply needed to go to the bathroom and not make it such a big deal. It took me a lot of resilience and knowledge of the feminine world to do it but I finally earned my way into the “room” also.

I have always thought that building my fragile confidence into a strong one was one of the best moves I ever made so I could relax in the world and stop trying so hard to be myself. I say fragile because there were so many times over the years when I thought I had achieved confidence only to have it shattered by an unfeeling gender bigot. By trying again and again to overcome the haters, I made it to a point where I could say to heck with them and I was going to live my own life the way I saw fit.  

When I had reached a point where I thought I had enough confidence to get me by was when something unexpected happened to challenge my path. All along, I had some sort of an idea of how complex a ciswomen’s life was than a man’s life, but until I got there as a trans woman, I did not have a real idea of how complex. It was as if every time I thought I could see a clear road ahead on my gender path, someone would throw a stop sign in my way. Making me stop what I was doing and look around. Did I really want to take all these difficult steps I was taking to be a transfeminine person after all.

Of course, once I stopped, looked around and thought about it, I discovered I was in the world which I had always belonged to and I wanted to stay in the worst way. The more I was allowed to play in the girls’ sandbox, the more natural I felt as I felt my life make a seismic shift towards becoming the person I had always meant to be. To keep trying, I needed to decide to risk losing all my remaining close friends, family and employment and embark on the road without any more stop signs.

I was not getting any younger and at the age of sixty my transgender biological clock was running out. It was time to try to see if I was still healthy enough to be approved by a doctor for gender affirming hormones or HRT and I was. Which was actually the last big gender hurdle I had to try because I had already done the social part and I did not desire any extensive facial or genital realignment surgeries. So, I could then try to discover if I could find anyone to share my unique life with.

By trying to put myself out there on dating sites and in the regular straight venues I was going to, that paid off for me too when a ciswoman lesbian from nearby Cincinnati responded to one of my on-line dating requests and we are still together fourteen years later.

All those early years of trying and failing came back to help me years later when I needed it most and my life went full circle.

Thanks for reading along and passing along all your comments and reactions! I really appreciate hearing from you.