Solving the Gender Puzzle

Christine Jorgensen. 

Many times, during my life, I have looked at my gender issues as having a big puzzle to solve.

From my earliest age of recollection, I can remember thinking that something about me was really wrong, but I could not put my finger on what the problem exactly was. Most likely, it was not until I began to have a fascination with my mom’s clothes did, I began to discover what the puzzle I had was really all about. At that point did I embark on a lifetime journey or path to figure it out. I had no idea of all the twists and turns my path would take me on until I could finally put the pieces of my gender puzzle together.

Perhaps the biggest part of the puzzle to me was the fact that I was born into a male world with no way out in sight. I lived in a rural area around the same kids growing up from kindergarten through ninth grade, so I figured no one else had the same puzzle to solve that I did. Plus, in the pre-internet days, when I was growing up, there was no easy way to access any outside information. Especially none as radical as having anything to do with gender issues. As close as I could come was sneaking a look at all the “National Enquirer” type trash rags at a friend of mine’s aunt’s small neighborhood convenience store. Every once in a while, they would run a sensationalized story about “Christine Jorgensen” or another G. I. who wanted to change his/her sex. I remember the first time I saw one of the stories, I was hooked and could not wait to go back and look for more stories.

In some ways, just looking at these stories made finding pieces to my puzzle even more difficult to do. There was just no way I could ever see myself ever arriving at the point where I could go through such drastic measures to be a woman. I would just have to rely on my dreams to give me hope of ever living my life the way I wanted. Which of course was that of a transfeminine person. Hell, the word did not even exist back then in the sixties and having any sort of gender dysphoria was still considered to be a form of mental illness. Any hope of piecing together my gender puzzle would somehow just have to wait. For a bigger problem called military duty.

As I entered my formative years of high school, the Vietnam War was still escalating and the government had to establish a military draft to fill the ranks of unwilling participants, which included me. With all the stress hanging over me, I went off to college to at least prolong the draft position I had for four more years. Surely, the war would be over by then, but it wasn’t and it was my time to serve in the Army. I had the dual problems of not wanting to experience a military career from what it might do to me along with the problems I would have expressed any of my gender issues which I was just starting to do when I was drafted. My one certainty was miniskirts on soldiers would be frowned upon in Army basic training. Any work on my gender puzzle would have to wait for three long years.

Three years later, I survived my military service much better than I ever thought possible. I got to travel the world on Uncle Sam’s dime and even was able to experience the beautiful, exotic “Lady Boys” of Thailand when I was stationed there for a year. Even though I was fascinated with their culture, I was never brave enough to approach. Much later on, when I was in Germany, I gathered my courage to go to a hospital Halloween party dressed head to toe as a woman which led me later to my first coming out piece to my puzzle. Over huge amounts of good German beer one night, I admitted to three of my closest friends that my Halloween “costume” was more than a one-time deal. I was a transvestite and was attracted to dressing like a woman. Luckily for me, no one else cared and my secret was safe for the remaining six months I had to serve in the Army.

After I had served my time in the military, piecing together my gender puzzle became a bigger priority. Initially, I needed to rely on Halloween parties every year to express my need for public exposure as a transgender woman as by that time, I was realizing I was much more than a cross-dressing part-time guy. One of the biggest “aha” moments of my life came the night I made the mental shift from cross dresser to transgender woman and went out into the world. Despite being scared to death, I made the evening a success and knew deep down there was no going back. I had found a giant piece to my puzzle and I began to wonder what took me so long.

From then on, the pieces to my giant puzzle began to come together quickly as I began to carve out a life for myself in a world of cisgender women. To this day, the path I took seemed like a blur and once I began rolling downhill towards living my dream I could not stop. I was going crazy looking for the final pieces of my puzzle until I discovered the magic of gender affirming hormones or HRT. The hormones evened out my testosterone poisoned personality and enabled me to feel emotions I never realized I had. For the first time ever, I was able to feel the feminine way I tried so hard to appear like.

I have never been good at puzzles my entire life and find them to be exceedingly boring and frustrating…except my gender puzzle. Even though I don’t think I will ever finish it in this lifetime, the amount of work I put into it turned out to be very satisfying and just what the therapist in me ordered. I was able to finish to the point where I could see myself in the puzzle and was satisfied with what I saw.

  

More than Theatrics

 

Christine Jorgensen circa 
early 1950's. 

Deep down I knew being feminine for me was much more than a theatrical exercise dressed in front of the mirror as a girl. I wanted to do more than just look like a girl; I wanted to live like one. I wanted to be the one with the pretty clothes that all the boys admired.

It turned out I was ahead of myself as far as my gender dysphoria was concerned. Gender dysphoria, as well as the term transgender had not yet caught up with the public at large. It was still transvestite, transsexual or Christine Jorgensen or nothing for me as far as having any idea anyone else in the world was like me at all. Perhaps you may not know it, but Jorgensen was supposedly the first widely known transsexual to come out with the very public news of her gender realignment surgery in the early 1950’s.  No theatrics involved, just a lot of publicity, I guess.

I thought of Jorgensen and the gender loneliness I felt the other day when I got to watch “Some Like it Hot” on our local PBS station. I was approximately ten years old when the film was released in 1959 and I remember being mesmerized by the idea men could be women at all. Even still, I don’t think, or remember, if I connected the dots yet to how I was feeling about myself. I was still very much stuck in the everyday struggles of being a boy.

When the internet became popular, I began to discover a whole, wide wonderful world of gender possibilities. Including a term which I had never heard of before, transgender. As I understood the term, it took away all the possible theatrics of just looking like a girl and brought up the possibility of living as one. At that point, I began to wonder if I was a cross dresser at all, and not more. The only thing I thought I knew was I was still in some sort of middle ground as my gender dysphoria went. I felt much more that I was so much more than the average cross-dresser, but not quite there yet as far as I wanted all the surgeries Jorgensen and others were going through.

To maintain any sense of mental stability at all, I began to explore the world the best I could to see if I fit in with this new transgender term I was reading about. My best and exciting evenings came about when I was able to be invited to and attend small diverse parties at a transsexual’s house in nearby Columbus, Ohio. It was there I learned about the dangers of being trapped by a much bigger and powerful man, all the way to being picked up by a lesbian I had never met before. Most importantly though, I was there to observe and learn anything I could from the hostess, a transsexual retired fireperson from Columbus who was headed to surgery. Michelle was beautiful and I was dazzled. I discovered there were no theatrics from her, she was as real as could be and I wondered if I could ever achieve what she had.

The main thing I did learn was, my deep feelings about living as a transfeminine person may not go the same way as Michelle’s did, but it was possible for me to live my own successful life as a woman if I tried hard enough. That is when I learned to put my cross-dressing theatrics away which had served me well and I entered another phase of my life. Michelle was beautiful and exotic in her own way, but I could do it too, just in my own way.

I would be kidding myself and all of you if I said finding my new self was ever easy. I needed to make all the difficult decisions about risking everything in my life which was important to me. Such as a loyal, long-term spouse, family, friends and good employment. The same things we all go through as we struggle to transition as a transgender woman. When I finally decided I needed to go the distance and give all my male clothes to charity, the weight was off from my shoulders to not live a theatrical existence as a man anymore. I spent over fifty years fighting a gender battle I could not win as the cards were stacked against me.

I was able to put all the gender questions I suffered through in my past and build a new transfeminine life the best I could. I just had to quit the theatrics to do it.

 

 

 

 

 

When Did you Kniw

 
Not long ago my daughter asked me indirectly how long was it since I knew I was transgender. Then she corrected herself  by saying I probably had always known. To refresh your memory, my daughter has always been a staunch ally of the LGBTQ community and has a transgender child. Of course I said yes, I had always known. Which perhaps wasn't always true. Back in the dark ages before the internet, as I always refer to, there was a huge gender void filled only by the sparse offerings of Virginia Prince and her "Transvestia" publications or the news of an American G.I. (Christine Jorgensen) who changed their sex. I was having a difficult time figuring out all my gender issues. 

Photo Christine Jorgensen
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It wasn't until social media  became popular along with the world wide web did I learn how others shared the same gender issues as I did. One example is Paula from across the pond in the UK  when she wrote in and said: 

"  Our generation growing up had no role models, no concept of transition, hey, we didn't even have the word transgender. Without the vocabulary it us difficult to understand the concept, or more importantly the feelings we were having."

 And she goes on to write:

"Younger generations growing up now have different issues, but at least they have the vocabulary to investigate them ~ I suspect this is the reason why so many of our generation transitioned later in life ~ long live the interweb!"  

Thank you Paula. I imagine similar to so many age related disparities most younger transgender women and men can not relate to not even having a word (transgender) to describe their condition growing up. 

Looking back also, I discovered many unresolved gender issues which would have led me to believe I was indeed transgender. A prime example of how envious I was of girls my age and the perception I had that they had life so much easier than me. Or how one Christmas I wanted a doll baby but was gifted a BB Gun instead, The list could go on on and on but the point which kept on proving the point indeed I had been transgender my entire life. 

While we are on the subject of generational transgender change, social media and the internet too have contributed to a more cohesive LGBTQ group for political action. I am proud to say the Ohio version of yet another anti transgender bill was rejected in committee yesterday. So at least for the time being the State of Ohio is not joining an increasing amount of states with crippling anti transgender legislation.  

When you come right down to it, young or old, transgender or not we spend a lifetime growing into ourselves. Sadly on occasion we can't see the life forests for the trees. It happened to me, I missed the reality of the fact I was transgender for too long. I should have always known. 

LGBT History Time

"From Denmark one day in June 1952 did there arrive at the Bronx home of Board of Education carpenter George Jorgensen and his wife, Florence, a letter from 26-year-old George Jr., or Brud, as the family called him, who, several years earlier, following a brief service in the United States Army and a term of employment at the New York office of the RKO-Pathe newsreel people, had relocated to Copenhagen to pursue a career as a magazine photographer. Brud's tone suggested that there was something he wished to share."


For the letter she wrote go here to the Daily News of New York.