Happy Holidays!

 

Ralphie!

Happy Holidays to you and yours!

I hope those of you who have experienced close family losses because you came out to them as transgender are able to rebuild close ties with other non-blood more accepting people. They are out there and it sometimes takes a while to rebuild trust with other people with your feelings I know. Sometimes, you can find connections within your local LGBTQ organizations. I know, around here where I live that is the case when organizations host potlucks as well as Christmas parties for anyone who wants to come and be around others.

Also, as we are preparing to put 2025 behind us, we look to the holidays to provide hope for the future. 2026 will be a huge election year for example. It seems we are building a chance to put the political tragedies heaped upon us by a rotten president leading an equally rotten, spineless political party which has used the transgender community for everything evil in our country. It will take all of us, pulling together, to make a difference which is part of the holiday spirit. That is why I urge even the most closeted cross dresser to look out of their closet to a future of freedoms they may need later in life.

Happy Holidays to me also means thanking all of you who took the time to wish me the best this time of the year.

On Christmas Day, I will be binge watching “A Christmas Story” which hits so close to home for me. Other than the time period which it is filmed in which roughly matches my life, there is the story of “Ralphie” and his BB Gun. If you have never seen the movie, Ralphie is the child star of the show who desperately wants a BB Gun for Christmas. And the movie goes through all the trials and tribulations he goes through to receive one as a gift. Just when all seemed lost, and all the gifts were opened and Ralphie was dejected, when his father pulls out a brand-new Daisy BB Gun he had been hiding and then the fun began.

My major point to all of this is, I had a major role reversal with Ralphie and the BB Gun. You see, I never wanted a gun of any sort for Christmas and would much have wanted a nice doll baby or a new pretty dress. But there I was once again stuck in a male world I wanted nothing to do with.  That is why I am so enamored with “A Christmas Story” which goes right up there with the National Lampoon’s holiday classic with Chevy Chase as one of my favorites.

I know I am so fortunate to be spending my Christmas with my wife Liz who scooped me up off the trash heap of life I was on at the time when we met online over a decade ago. She was kind enough to accept some of my off-the-wall holiday traditions as well as me accepting hers. I guess that is the basis of a good relationship but one which worked out so well for me. Hopefully, you will find yourself in the same situation or will be in the upcoming year. It happened to me when I least expected it. 

In the meantime, here is wishing you and yours a safe and festive holiday season and don’t drink all of the high-powered eggnog which I used to do! Save some for someone else…It is Christmas!

 

 

 

Gender is a Basic Human Instinct

 

JJ Hart, Birthday Dinner.

One of the most basics of human instincts is gender. It comes with us at birth and is then (right or wrong) reinforced by our families. External factors kick in to put us in a tight gender box and keep us there. How we are treated as boys and girls, goes a long way in how our future is shaped. In my mind boys were always told to get out there and conquer the world while girls were coddled in a pretty world. It took me decades of interactions with ciswomen to learn that was not true. In their own ways, women face the same competitive challenges as men, just coming from different angles or perspectives. I told one of the experiences I had yesterday when I waded into the ciswomen’s world for the first time and discovered how brutal passive aggressive behavior could be.  

Examples include boys competing more physically with each other while girls learn to compete just as hard but in a more passive nature. One way or another, gender as an instinct is ingrained into us quite early in life and is difficult to change. One of the reasons transgender women and trans men are so misunderstood in the world today. Not to mention the fact that we are very rare, and very few people have ever met a transgender person. I know my parents from the “greatest generation” were not great enough with me to understand how their first-born son wanted to be their daughter. Taking a page from the great Christmas movie “A Christmas Story”, I never wanted the BB Gun that “Ralphie” wanted in the movie, but I got one anyhow. Instead of the baby doll I really wanted. All my gender instincts were kicking in although I was not sure I knew exactly what was going on, I knew something was definitely wrong.

It was not until I began exploring the public as a novice cross dresser or transgender woman, did I start to understand what was going on with my own gender instincts. Facing up to the fact I never belonged in the male world as an active participant at all never came easy for me. Mainly because I had worked so hard to survive in a gender I did not want to be. To make matters worse, I was becoming more of a success in the male world. Even though I was so self-destructive I kept tearing down all the successes I kept building up as soon as I achieved them.

In my case, I think the war I waged with my internal gender instincts was much worse than the battles I faced for acceptance as a transfeminine person in the public’s eye. Even though they were major hurdles, obstacles such as confidence and impostor syndrome were holding me back. It seemed no matter how successful I was in my new world, I still felt like an impostor or outsider looking in. It took me quite a while to overcome my doubts and feel like I had as much right as the next woman to be in the space I was in. Over and over, I felt I was growing up into the woman I was always destined to be. It was just taking me longer to do it because of many external factors such as a whole train load of male baggage I had managed to accumulate in my life.

Along the way too, I was becoming a keen observer of the public’s gender instincts. Primarily ciswomen who for some reason had no problem with me as men nearly completely left me alone. By doing so, I was able to read other women like I had never been able to do before. Slowly but surely, my life began to turn full circle. Instead of going out to be alone, I was going out to socialize with other women who were mainly lesbians. They taught me a whole different set of gender instincts, mainly revolving on where I stood with the other half of the population, men. While other transgender women I knew were struggling to be validated by a man, I was flourishing when I was validated by women. It obviously is not a world which worked for everyone, but it worked for me.

With all the help I was receiving, I made it to a point where I did not consider myself trans when I was out in the world. I was just me, and I had all the confidence to go with it. It took me over a half a century to completely figure out my gender instincts, but I did it with some powerful help such as HRT or gender affirming hormones. The meds I was approved for helped me to understand what ciswomen go through in their lives such as hot flashes and other effects of female puberty. When I tried to talk about it to my women friends all they did was laugh and say welcome to their world. What I could not say was how happy I was to be there.

Cracking the code of human gender instincts is very difficult to do because it is so deeply ingrained in all of us and in many ways, it is a selfish thing to do. It takes a special person to understand when you have to immerse yourself in the other binary gender to just survive in life. If you are blessed to have found such a person, be sure to cherish and hang on to them because they are so rare.

In the meantime, keep your head on a swivel and be on the outlook for ways to improve your gender instincts. It is a difficult process and never one to be taken lightly. For me, at least it was a lifetime journey to finally discover something I already knew I refused to accept. I had my gender identity totally backwards and ended up paying the price for years. Just because I was afraid to face myself.

 

 

I Wish

Ralphie from the
Christmas Story Movie...

 Christmas is perhaps the peak holiday of the year to wish for things you may never receive. 

I always thought my wish was the impossible dream . It was to wake up in  the morning and leave my old male self behind. If I had my way, which I never did, if anyone asked what I wanted as a gift. I wanted so badly to be gifted a doll or a toy kitchen to play with. I was so deeply hidden in my boy life, all I received as gifts were boy things such as BB Guns. If you are a fan of the movie "A Christmas Story" as I am, I was the direct opposite of the child star "Ralphie". In the movie, he wished and hoped for a "Daisy" BB Gun, which he finally received. I, on the other hand was gifted a Daisy and all I really got in return was shot in the arm by my brother. 

In those days, I did quite a bit of wishing I was a girl. When we went on vacation one year, I spent the boring times on the interstate highway looking for, then admiring teen girls in other cars. Especially a dark haired beauty I remember who I really wanted to be. I ended up putting my pillow over my head and existed somehow until we stopped the next time. In fact, my whole life was just existing until the next time I could sneak around and put on my feminine clothes. 

I don't know what I was thinking but I was never sure what my older years would be. The only certainty at the time was the likelihood I would have to serve time in the military because of the Vietnam War which seemingly was endless. I just knew my search to be my authentic self would have to be on hold at some point. I say search because I was never certain what the ultimate gender question with me would be. 

As I have detailed in several earlier posts, when the holiday shopping season turned out to eclipse Halloween as my favorite holiday. I learned so much about my feminine self during this time of the year while at the same time I was gifting others. The end result was I could indeed at least live a life as a transgender woman if I wanted to. All the wishing I had endured in my life could finally end and reality could set in. 

It all turned out I was gifting myself with the ultimate gift I ever could receive. Before you think such a gift was selfish, it was a desperately needed gift I needed to even survive. Attempting to live in a world I never wanted was killing me, literally.  It wasn't much longer when I decided to write about my life in the hope it could help others who may have gender issues. 

This Christmas, I hope you are able to celebrate the holiday as you see fit, religious or not. I know this is the most difficult time of the year when LGBTQ+ and primarily transgender individuals suffer. Too many of us have lost family (including me) for just being ourselves. Sadly, all I can really do is wish you the best and as always thanks so much for taking the time to stop by Cyrsti's Condo. 
 

Colder Than?

It's downright cold here in Southwestern Ohio. Yesterday and today, wind chill temperatures went down as low as the single digits (Fahrenheit).

Of course, as luck would have it, Liz and I had plenty of errands to run yesterday. Getting bundled up for the adventure reminded me of Ralphie's younger brother in the holiday classic movie "A Christmas Story." If you are not aware, his mother dressed him so warmly, he looked like the "Michelin Man."

For the weather and cold, I pulled out my heavy duty tan and brown 3/4 length fringed sweater coat and added a warm hand knitted cowl to keep my neck warm. Liz's son referred to me as a character from "Game of Thrones." No matter, I figured it was a popular series and I just wanted to stay warm.

We needed to make three stops yesterday. The places we shopped were for food and medications so there was no lingering over any fashion needs. By this point in the season anyhow, I'm starting to reassess my Spring wardrobe. I did buy refills on my daily moisturizer, skin deep cleaning wipes and foundation.

For some reason, my gender confidence level was at a recent all time high. You might say I was out and proud. Of course it's so very rare anymore I get any negative reactions, I don't expect anything else. So the afternoon of errands was over fairly quickly and we made it home to warm up with a big bowl of Liz's home made chili.

A good cold day, ended up a warm cozy one.

A "Red Ryder" for Christmas?

I am still being gentle with Liz about when the lap top will be "entrusted" to me to "rock and roll" on the web. Until then, I am moving fast in short bursts with posts! 

Recently, I posted about hearing an excellent live performance of Bob Seger's "Turn the Page" and received a couple wonderful comments back, believe me - I will get to them-thanks.

In this post I am turning to one of the all time Christmas Classics from 1983 "A Christmas Story."

In the show, "Ralphie" on the left in the glasses was peeing down his frozen leg (literally- the movie was shot on location in Cleveland) wanting a Red Ryder BB Gun. 

Didn't every boy???

Well no, I didn't and vividly remember trying to feel like I should in the 1950's. Something was wrong.

If you haven't seen the movie, it is a hilarious look at a family circa 1940's.


One of the best things to come out of the movie for me was the very simple imagery I can use from it to pass along to the transgender "uninitiated." I simply ask if they remember "A Christmas Story"   when every red blooded American boy wanted a BB gun.

I guess I should have accepted then, I was not going to live up to the standards of being that boy, and you know some of those girls clothes looked to be lots of fun! 

Oh well! Making up for lost time now.