Gender Evolution

 

Image from Kyle
on UnSplash.

After all these years of pursuing a male to female gender transition, I view the process as evolution.

I am biased, but I think I have been fortunate to have lived through all the ups and downs of gender dysphoria to be able to have an up close and personal look at how both of the two main binary genders live. Similar to being able to actually live on the economies of Thailand and Germany when I was in the Army during the Vietnam War. By living on the economy, I mean I received off base housing and food pay from the Army, so I went on base only to work. Seeing how other societies work did wonders for my young self.

It took much longer to do the same thing when it came to my gender issues. I knew they were always there from a very young age, but I had no help to discover what my issues really were. I needed to live my life as a transgender woman to learn what I needed to do to achieve my childhood dream of living as a woman. No being a doctor or lawyer for me, I wanted to be a woman. At the time, I was naïve and thought all I needed to do was work on my appearance in the mirror and I could reach my dreams.

As my gender evolved, I needed to evolve as a person with it. What kind of a woman would I become became a major issue. I could be a standoffish bitchy woman, or a worldly feminine being who enjoyed being herself in the world. Ironically, my male self-helped me to arrive where I wanted to be. He had over the years provided me with ciswoman role models to look up to and try to evolve into overtime. When you added a potent mix of male and female into my personality, I ended up with the perfect mix. Even though I was appearing more and more as a female, my old male self-provided me with a firm base to evolve.

One aspect I do not want to underplay is how long it took me to do all of this. As I evolved, I began to make mental mini bucket lists of things I wanted to do in my exciting yet terrifying transfeminine world. The only problem I had with making bucket lists was I was spending too much time in my male life daydreaming of the next time I could be feminine. All too often, my gender lines blurred, and I needed to make sure I kept my male and female lives separate. It was intensely difficult for me to do as I was increasingly discovering I wanted and could pursue a life as a transgender woman I always had wanted to do and still was unable to do because of the male life I had worked so hard to build. The pressure just kept on building as I continued to try new things as my feminine self. I was in an intensely lonely world at the time as I left my closet.

I evolved to a point where I was able to create an entirely new person from the two, I had left behind. I transitioned again from being a basic weekend cross dresser into an accomplished transgender woman who could blend in with the world at large. Suddenly, I went from being shy and backwards to being confident and aware of my surroundings. Which I found I needed to stay safe in my new world. It was then I found many women were curious and friendly towards me while nearly all the men ignored me. Which I had no problem with as I had evolved past caring what they thought.  They had kicked me out of the men’s club.

As I look back at this time of my life, it seems to be a blur of activity.  Since I had changed my gender outlook in the middle of my life, I was learning from watching my new women friend’s what life was all about. Primarily, since most of them were lesbians, I found I did not need the validation from men to feel good about myself as I fit in with them. Evolution felt so good, I wanted more out of my new life. Again, I was fortunate when my wife Liz approached me online and we struck up a love affair which lasts till this day. I never thought I would ever find someone to love me as a sixty-year-old transgender woman at all, but I did.

My final evolution turned out to be wonderful, and I understand now why all the gender bigots hate us so much. We transgender women and trans men have had the chance to do what they never have had the chance to do. Experience both sides of the binary gender experience. The haters will just have to work their way through it. We have evolved and they have not.

 

               

Trans Girl in a Beer Garden

Image from Igor Omilaev

Following moving in with my future wife Liz in a Cincinnati, Ohio suburb, I went through another unexpected transition. 

When I moved, I threw out all my male clothes and started living full time as a transgender woman and I still had my very small circle of friends who had ever known anything about my male self. What I ran into next was being accepted into Liz's circle of friends. Sure I was scared or terrified to meet them all, I had no choice to hitch up my big girl panties and go with it. Long story short, I survived and most of the group seemed to accept me with open arms. What it all did was add another layer of acquaintances to my transgender journey. 

Then the group began having Halloween Witches Balls in the metro Cincinnati area and Liz and I became organizers of the big party. By doing so, we needed to help select the annual venues. It just so happened, several of the potential venues were owned by brew-pubs in the area. In order to check out the venues, we (or I in particular) had to check out the craft beer. Through it all, I enjoyed myself immensely. One venue I remember in particular was in a retired huge old church and the second was a second floor area which featured an outdoor on street beer garden of sorts. After we looked at the party venue, we were able to find a table outside and enjoy a couple of their beers. Even though the brew was wonderful, the company was better. I was able to relax, not attract any undue attention and watch the world interact around me. As a relatively new transgender woman, it was the first time in my life I could live as a free person. 

From this point forward, I knew I was included in the group and had added another layer of gender transition to my life. I already know how much I enjoyed beer gardens from my days in Germany, so I was just combining the two for more success. Plus, for the first time, I was on the feminine side of life so I would not have to be envious of all the women around me. Now, since I drink so much less, experiencing an outdoor beer garden is a rarity. Fall, is not so far away and I hope I can experience several Cincinnati October fests to celebrate a big birthday I have coming up. Cincinnati is a heavily German heritage town and has some fantastic fests to experience along with the fall weather. 

Perhaps, it will be a great time for this transgender girl to experience more time in a beer garden. 

Alawys Going Somewhere

Image from Louis Paulin
On UnSplash

 Back in what I call my formative years, I grew used to trying to outrun my problems. Between college and my military service I literally was moved or decided to move on my own an average of every year and a half. It all started when I left home for college for a year and a half. Amazingly, during this time my gender dysphoria disappeared and suddenly I was free to live a somewhat normal gender life. I say normal because during this time I had several dates with girls from the East Coast who were much more sophisticated sexually than anything I had seen in my shy Midwestern upbringing. In fact, my Mom unknowingly set me up with my first sexual experience with one of her older (not a minor) students where she taught high school.  I think she was nineteen and I was eighteen, so I had a lot to learn. 

The school I went away to was one a group of Midwestern Ivy League schools for students on the East Coast who couldn't make it into the top notch schools or universities in their back yards. What happened was I ended up partying with my friends mainly from Philadelphia and Baltimore and not studying enough to maintain grades to not get drafted into the Vietnam War. After a year and a half I picked up and moved back home to attend a much more academically forgiving nearby university where I could thrive. Which I did by even making the Dean's List several times before I graduated. More importantly to me back then was the fact I was drawn back into my old cross dressing memories of home while I was able still to land a Disk Jockey job at a small local radio station which happened to be owned by a very powerful congressman which turned out to be very important to my future. For awhile I was quite satisfied with satisfying my cross dressing desires by putting on my feminine clothes when my parents weren't around just like the old days while at the same time attending to school while I built my self a career in the commercial radio business. 

Just when I thought I had it all together, Uncle Sam came along with several all expense paid tickets to work and travel in exchange for three years of my life. I was able to salvage my radio career with the help of the congressman I worked for but my cross dressing would certainly have to be on hold for the foreseeable future. My first move was a bus trip to beautiful (?) Ft. Knox in Kentucky for Army basic training. I didn't get to see any gold but I saw many fellow recruits going through tank infantry school. A nice way of saying they were headed to Vietnam to be cannon or grenade fodder for the war. Basic was tough but not tough enough to wash out any or all ideas I had of ever following my feminine dreams. In fact in many ways I think basic just made my dreams stronger because I couldn't wait to get out and live them.

Following Basic at Ft. Knox, little did I know the amount of travel Uncle Sam had planned for me. It all started innocently enough by getting transferred for advanced training at the Defense Information School in relatively close by Indianapolis, Indiana. It was close enough to my home I could drive back and forth for weekends and leave but not close enough for me to cross dress when I was home. It turned out I wasn't going to stay in Indy long before I was sent to Thailand along with my close knit classmates to help run a radio/tv station in Udorn which had recently been destroyed by a battle damaged F-4 fighter jet which crashed at the end of the runway killing all working in the station. Since we were Army working for the Air Force, we received extra pay to live off base. Of course living off base put me face to face with the Thai Ladyboy culture. As advertised, many were indeed beautiful but all I did was admire from afar. I was afraid of any stigma which would have been attached to me if I had tried to know any of the alluring creatures further. 

After my year in Thailand, I was trying hard to get assigned to Europe and work for the AFN Radio Network. I finally did make it but not with more moving around. What happened was I had two sets of orders. One verbal and one paper. I decided to follow the one on paper and report to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland for duty in their information office. What turned out was I wasn't supposed to be there and was sent back home with another weeks worth of leave before I had to leave for Germany, where I wanted to go to start with. After all those convoluted military moves I finally had the chance to live out my dream of seeing Europe because once again I received extra pay to live off base.

I am fairly sure all of this moving affected me in many ways when I was honorably discharged from the military and through with school. More on how it affected my gender dysphoria in another post. 

Transgender Upheaval in Germany

 "Degrading, expensive and illogical" — that is how one trans* person described her experience of legally changing her gender in Germany.

Felicia Rolletschke (below) is one of many transgender activists who is fighting for a reform to the so-called Transsexual Law, which determines the legal process for trans* people to change their gender and name in Germany. By the beginning of 2021, the law will have been in place for 40 years — a time frame in which many countries around the world have seen great upheaval in their legislation around trans* rights.

There are currently two bills before the German parliament that aim to ease this process with a new "self-determination law" (Selbstbestimmungsgesetz). Activists hope such a law would reform the current costly, lengthy process — but the reform has faced some stiff opposition.

Seeking Transgender Change in Germany

 "Degrading, expensive and illogical" — that is how one trans* person described her experience of legally changing her gender in Germany.

Felicia Rolletschke (below) is one of many transgender activists who is fighting for a reform to the so-called Transsexual Law, which determines the legal process for trans* people to change their gender and name in Germany. By the beginning of 2021, the law will have been in place for 40 years — a time frame in which many countries around the world have seen great upheaval in their legislation around trans* rights.

There are currently two bills before the German parliament that aim to ease this process with a new "self-determination law" (Selbstbestimmungsgesetz). Activists hope such a law would reform the current costly, lengthy process — but the reform has faced some stiff opposition.

Transsexual German Star

Just a couple pictures of how Germany's transsexual singer  Kim Petras has been able to follow her heart in more ways than one!

"Kim as Tim growing up"