Trusting the Process

 

JJ Hart Very Early On, 
Trusting the process in a 
rest room. 

One of the hardest things to do as a transgender woman or transgender man, is to trust the process as you continue along your gender path.

Especially when your path is lasting longer and taking you places you never thought of going to. Then you have the probability of picking up more of the gender baggage than you never thought you would. Trusting what you will take with you and what you will leave behind becomes a huge problem.

As you build your new personality, you can use your old gender baggage as positive building blocks if you can take the leap of faith to learn from your past. Perhaps, more than anything else, you must trust in yourself to believe in what others may think of you. This was very important to me as I began to build from my small core of ciswomen friends and have the courage to spread out into society.  I started following my new wife’s Liz lead and joining her spiritual group to start and then spreading out further into other “Meet-Up” groups in Cincinnati which matched our potential interests such joining writers’ groups for me, along with craft groups for Liz. It worked well for me as I was able to work my way out from being so shy around strangers and build more trust in myself.

Trust comes with a couple of drawbacks such as what if your trust is betrayed and how you will ever build trust again. Going way back to my second marriage, I destroyed most of the trust my wife and I developed over the years by breaking the deal I made to never go out of the house alone cross-dressed. I certainly was not proud of what I did but just could not stop myself from doing it. Essentially, I felt as if I was cheating on her with another woman who just turned out to be me and whatever she did was just not good enough for me. As I was busy destroying her trust, she was correct in telling me I made a terrible woman, and it had nothing to do with my appearance. Which at that time meant the world to me.

During this time and beyond, it was difficult for me to try to trust the process I was on during my gender journey. It seemed nothing was going fast enough for me to ever see if I could make it to my ultimate goal of living full-time as a transfeminine person. I guess if you take into account all the years, I spent cross-dressing my life away from the male world I disliked so much, it is no wonder I felt that way.  From start to finish, it took nearly a half a century for my male to female femininization project, which should have been more than enough time to trust the process and have faith where I was going.

My excuse that I always hang onto is that my male life was not that bad and my male self was a powerful ally with my second wife on me ever transitioning into transgender womanhood. And did I trust what all of that meant to me anyhow. I did realize any sort of a gender transition would mean I stood a very real chance of losing all the materialistic male privileges I had built up over the years. In an instance, my spouse, family, friends and job could be wiped out and I would have to start all over again. At that time, I did not think I trusted myself to do it, so my made the worst choice I have made in my life and tried to juggle a life somewhere on the gender border between male and female.

As I am always hesitant to write about, my choice to walk the narrow gender line wrecked my mental health and led me to a self-harm event. I was already diagnosed with being a Bi-Polar depressive person, so it did not take much to send me over the edge. Fortunately, I had a good therapist to help me realize my truth and help me through it. I was slowly coming to a point where I could trust the process and understand where I truly fit into the grand plan of my life the way it always was meant to be. I should have never embarked on any path to being male at all. A place which was foreign to me and I just did not belong. I was no wonder I felt the way I did around other men I was with. Full of mistrust in them for the most part.

Once I was over that hurdle in my life, I needed to begin to trust the world through the eyes of a trans woman which was hard to do. Mainly since I knew the way toxic men treated women from my past. Once again, cis women with their open minds to me joining their club were my secret to building trust again. Even though I still carried the scars from attacks by passive aggressive ciswomen, I was able to build my own new life with a feminine confidence I had never had before. I felt so good, I went ahead with my long-awaited legal name change and even longer awaited plan to be approved for HRT or gender affirming hormones. By doing so, I effectively painted myself into a gender corner I could not escape from. I had to trust the process and not try to turn around no matter how attractive the idea sounded at times when I learned what I was losing with my male privilege being taken away.

Primarily, I lost much of the knowledge of life I had learned as a man as well as needing to keep a closer eye on my personal security. Which was quickly at risk as a transgender woman joining the world for the first time and learning first hand what ciswomen already knew about being around toxic men.

As I said, trusting the gender process path I was on was never easy, but it turned out it was the only path I had.

 

In Praise of Transgender Men

 

Image from Aiden Craver
on UnSplash. 

I am fairly certain that this is the first time I have written a post which almost exclusively deals with transgender men and how they relate to trans women. But it is long overdue as I know I have several transmen who join me on occasion and read along.

Plus, they are kind enough to comment on my writing to give me an idea of what life is all about from the other side of the major transgender border. Sometimes I even have a hard time remembering what the time was like when I was struggling to be a man, so I can understand and comment back.

My actual dealing with trans men goes back to my first dinner date as a transfeminine person. At the time, the person who asked me out identified as a super butch lesbian who had not yet decided completely to live a male life. We went to dinner at TGIF Fridays and yes I was scared to be on my first date as he reminded me of later. It was the first time I was not in complete control (or thought I was) for a date and I got to see life through a whole different viewpoint.

To this day, I still follow his social media to see what he is up to and on very rare occasions in the past, he included me in some of his observations which happened when he transitioned from the other side.

It turns out, many of the same obstacles of crossing the gender border are the same but just reversed of course. Such as the problem of suddenly using the opposite restroom that you were used to using. I wondered what the shift was like from a brand-new male viewpoint when you were expected not to make any eye contact with another guy in “the room”. You were there for one reason only, and that was not to socialize, do your business and get out. Then there is the problem of having to use the stall to pee and having another guy hear you do it. As we all know, cismen have a very fragile sexuality which could be challenged unknowingly at any time when you play behind the gender curtain from female to male.

Not so long ago, I received a comment from a trans guy named “Omey” who said he was not accepted much anymore by the girls he used to know but I would think leaving the girls club would not be dealt with so harshly as leaving the men’s club is for transgender women. I know the club house door was slammed shut on me quickly when I left the men’s club for good. Again, it goes back to a man’s basic lack of belief in his sexuality. I found ciswomen did not care as much that I was living in their world as much as men resented me leaving theirs. And I wonder what transgender men face as a challenge from other men as they try to break into the “team.” Because, like the rest of us, they have no gender workbook to work from.

I know I am forgetting many of the details that went into being a successful cisman for me such as the one-on-one confrontations I had with other men. I was fortunate in that I had built up enough male privilege to get by. Basically, other men could not challenge me at work because I was the boss and could fire them. Even though that was always my last resort. I also found that men are more effective when they build teams and women when they are allowed to form cliques behind alpha-females. Which I know is a stereotype but a successful one for me.

Then there is the argument who has an easier route to passing in the world as their chosen gender, trans men or trans women. I am biased, but I think trans men have an easier time of transitioning into the public once testosterone has a chance to take hold of their body. It is the reason we see so many transgender men later in life with male pattern baldness. Before the baldness sets in, trans men also have the benefit of a good haircut which can make them appear more masculine where transgender women usually must wear wigs because their baldness has set in already.

The more intrusive cosmetic operations from both sides of the gender spectrum are pretty much a give and take in my opinion. Trans women can’t wait to grow their own breasts through HRT while trans men want to go through the traumatic operation to rid themselves of theirs. It’s all a matter of which side of the spectrum you are on, but trans women are more apt to go through more severe facial femininization surgeries to rid themselves of their testosterone poisoned male features. Not to mention the incredible expense most must go through to do it.

My praise goes out to the transgender men who can bring the best examples of the feminine culture with them. Such as deep love and understanding and applying it to a masculine world which desperately needs improving. There are far too many toxic males running around these days. I know early on I benefitted from the understanding of trans men and found them to be so much more intellectually stimulating than cismen and their drama. That is why I so enjoy hearing from trans men, ciswomen and the rest of you on a regular basis.

I am sure, no matter where you end up as a trans man or transgender woman, you are more than happy to give up your place in your old gender world to anyone who wants it. We just need to be allowed to take the best of both worlds and build a better one from it.

Thanks again to all of you who read along and even take the time to contribute to my writing! I’m sure in this post I have skimmed over many of the obstacles transgender men face, and I just hope I flipped my usual script and mentioned a few.

 

 

On a Gender Vacation without a Passport

 

JJ Hart

I saw on the news this morning that shortly after the Fourth of July holiday is the busiest time to travel during the year. It got me to thinking about my own major vacations when I shed my male self and began my life as a transfeminine person.

Mainly, I remember the times when I just needed a passport to go past my natural fears, put my cross-dressing past behind me and step into the world of a transgender woman. That invisible passport was difficult for me to come by since I needed to overcome my fragile confidence to step out of my gender shadows to get it. It was difficult because my earliest days of going public as a trans woman were often brutal when the public got ahold of me and I was laughed at routinely. It literally took me years of work in my cross-dressing workbook to get to the point where I could go out into the world and make a good effort to blend in. When I did, I began to earn my vacation away from my male self.

The more vacations away from him that I had, the more I began to appreciate the new world of ciswomen I was allowed into. As rock and roll idol “Billy Idol” was singing, the more I did, I wanted “More, More, More.” (Rebel Yell, 1984) Early on, I was naive and did not realize what I was getting myself into and partially thought my need for a gender passport would eventually burn itself out and go away. But of course, the need to have a passport just burned brighter in my soul. It seemed because of the need for femininity increasingly felt so natural to me.

It turned out at that time, when I was out in the world as a trans woman, either I was getting it very right or very wrong. Mainly because I did not know what I was doing such as how to move the best I could as a woman or how I communicated with other women at the time. Because they were overwhelmingly the only people who were interested in talking to me at all as nearly all men shunned me. I was amazed at how many women in their own unique way wanted to see my gender passport and let me in behind the gender curtain.

It all led me to finally legally change my name with the help of my daughter. We came up with a family name which honored one of my grandparents and my mom too. Who never supported her new daughter, but I forgave her and took her first name as my new middle name anyhow. As a plus, my new initials were easy for my three young grandkids to remember me by, so the name was well accepted by all.

Since I had my new permanent name in place, I could start building a new permanent feminine persona every time I went out to try to carve out a new life as a trans woman. As I was carving, sometimes I hit very hard granite and had to stop and start over until I could find the sandstone softer rock and keep moving towards my gender goal of living fulltime as a transfeminine person. As I carved, I needed to make certain I was always on the outlook for cave-ins which could cause havoc with my male life. Which was still very much in the picture. Because he still controlled most of my life the public saw as well as life with my second wife (who wanted no part of losing a transgender spouse) and a very good job I had at that time too.

As life moved on for me, I discovered brief moments of gender euphoria which kept me going through the dark days of my male to female femininization. Such as when I was able to leave the gay bar venues which I felt uncomfortable in and set out to be accepted in straight sports bars which I knew so well as a man. I was in my gender heaven when I worked my way into regular status in several of the venues I coveted. Once I was accepted by the staff, I could be accepted by their customers also and I thought I had it made. Sadly, by that time the one lesbian bar I used to go to and was accepted in closed its doors and that outlet for me was over.

These days, the closet thing that I have (so far) to an actual passport is my drivers license which has a “F” for female on it and my relocated copies of my name change documents I recently went with my wife Liz on the three-hour round-trip journey to my hometown to pick up. With all the turmoil caused by the idiots in Washington DC it seems in the future I may need a real passport to vote. So, I am getting ready for that if I need one.

Other than that, I am satisfied with the lifetime of progress I have made by having a suitable passport which allows me to live a public life mainly with the acceptance and help of the ciswomen around me. I was able to ignore the occasional hater like the pharmacist long ago when I started HRT who insisted in a crowded pharmacy in screaming loudly did, I know what the Estradiol medications would do to me. Not that she cared, but I promptly took my business elsewhere. It was no business of hers to judge me anyhow and try to out me to the world.

The passport I earned allowed me to open fantastic gender doors that I never thought I could do and the one I need to get will allow me to vote I am afraid here in backwards Ohio. I am not planning to ever travel outside of the country again in my life, so I won’t need a passport for that. Just the one I have already earned the hard way along my gender path.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who take the time to read along with my writing! It always means so much when you take the time to read and comment.

 

 

 

 

 

I Could Never Take my Trans Life for Granted

 

Image from Jeffrey Clayton
on UnSplash.

I learned early on in my life to take nothing for granted.

Especially when I was experimenting with my mom’s clothes and makeup. I needed to use every instinct I had to not get caught cross dressing as a girl. Which I tried to do as much as I could, so I had to never take it for granted I would never get discovered and sent off to see a psychiatrist. My paranoia ran deep back then of my parents sending me to a stranger who would tell me I was mentally ill. Which deep down, I knew I wasn’t. I just wanted to be like the girls around me.

My parents, from the “greatest generation” of the WWII and Great Depression years of our country’s history always made sure I took nothing for granted also. If I got B’s on my report card, where were the A’s I should have been getting. Was how I was raised. The only other real aspect of my life they thought they had to worry about was my interest in sports of all kinds. I was never the athlete my brother was so I was left on my own to do what I could athletically in the small rural school I went to. Even when I did manage to make the football team, I couldn't keep my mind on practice when all I wanted to do was be a cheerleader in their fancy short skirts and be admired by all the boys in school. I admired them too, just because of how badly I wanted to be just like them, and I never took it for granted that I couldn’t. It just frustrated me when I never did.

The years went by; in a hurry it seemed and even I was able to improve my feminine femininization to the point where I wanted to get out of the mirror in my closet and try out the world.

It was a good thing that again I should take nothing for granted that I would have no problems when I went out for the first time. Even though the mirror at home told me I made my male testosterone poisoned self into an attractive woman, why was I getting laughed at by mainly teen aged girls in public. I was stubborn though and kept going back to my cross-dressing drawing board to make any attempt possible to improve my appearance. What I finally learned was I needed to quit dressing the way my old male self was telling me to do and start dressing to blend in with the world of ciswomen around me. To do so, I reversed my fashion course from wearing clothes for teen girls when I was in my thirties and start concentrating on doing my thrift shopping to develop a more realistic fashion approach. That helped me overcome my thick male body with big shoulders that I had been cursed with by male puberty.

I had a dreaded inverted T body shape with broad shoulders, no hips and narrow legs to deal with. I took nothing for granted and set out to attack my fashion problems with better fashion choices. Since I was told I had good legs at the Halloween parties I went to, I built up from there while at the same time, keeping my legs not being a total focus to my look. As I built up from my legs and I wore Demin skirts often, I used foam pads under my panty hose which gave me the illusion of having hips. With my size, breasts were always a problem because I always wanted to be proportioned correctly and have the right wiggle to them. But not too big and look like a clown in drag. I struggled to find what I wanted until a cross-dressing friend of mine gifted me a set of silicone breast forms when he purged his extensive collection of cross-dressing materials. Then I could finish hiding my broad shoulders with longer straight hair wigs which fell loosely over my body.

Speaking of my body, you may have noticed I did not mention anything about restrictive shapewear. I always disliked the feel of being restricted in any way other than panty hose and padding, so I took the diet approach to losing my male stomach and did not have to worry so much about all the potential problems which might happen when I used the women’s room, do my business, wash my hands, smile sweetly and move on.

The one major accessory I was still lacking was confidence that I could present effectively as a transfeminine person in a world where ciswomen ran the show. In my mind, I was still the frightened cross-dresser leaving my closet and mirror for the first time and getting laughed at by the public. Out of sheer willpower I kept on taking nothing for granted until my life as a transgender woman became realized and I began to feel better and enjoy myself in the new, exciting feminine world I was in.

My ultimate goal was to someday have my own “padding” or curves thanks to HRT or gender affirming hormones. I was fortunate that in my later years in life when my testosterone was on the decline anyway (at the age of sixty) I received a doctor’s approval to start the hormonal program and all the changes which happened. Over the years, I was able to develop my own breasts, hips and soft skin as I have never taken the hormones for granted because I know not everyone has the health to do it.

I even went through the efforts of getting approved by the Veterans Administration health care system (which I was a member of) to get approved again for my hormones and take nothing for granted. I guess in many ways, the paranoia of the kid looking at himself in a dress in a mirror all those decades ago never left me. Deep down I still fear for those younger than me in the system having to put up with all the extreme transphobia in the world today.

We can never take anything for granted when our basic lives we value so much are at stake. Be safe out there.

 

 

 

The Best Advice I Never Got

 

Image from Frame Harriak
on UnSplash. 

The best advice I never got came from no one.

There was no one there to tell me anything about what I was doing when I was doing my best just to be feminine. No one to tell me my skirts were way too short and tight and my makeup looked like I just left a circus clown drag show. And better yet, no one to tell me I was heading along a gender path which would ultimately ruin my life if I kept it up.

The only person who was screaming in my ear initially as I cross dressed in front of the mirror was my male self-telling me to hurry up and get done before I risked discovery and the end to the world as I knew it. This was the time too when my feminine side was lying to me by telling me I was a pretty girl. Maybe I could see some of my femininity in my pre-male puberty years but quickly faded with my bodily changes.

As life progressed as it always does, I witnessed the battle of my voices as once again my male side was telling me to stop cross-dressing and never do it again and my feminine side saying keep on trying and things will get better. Even though it was difficult to listen to the best advice I never got I kept deciding to pursue my feminine side and see what would happen,

At that time, I was stuck in a series of Halloween parties where I could dress as myself and not fear reprisal. Plus, I could judge how I was doing with what I wanted to wear and with how far I had come with my makeup skills or lack of them. I was aware that I was at risk for stirring up potential risks of being discovered when someone would ask who shaved my legs and applied my makeup. I just said I shaved my own legs and did not mention who did my makeup because my second wife did not wear any. I was normally Ok because it would take another ciswoman to question my makeup because if a man did, I would figure he may be part of my femininization club. I learned so much from the Halloween parties I went to that not going to them dressed as myself was the best advice I never got.

I think it is ironic that that almost everyone has advice for everyone else except when it comes to transgender women and transgender men. It seems, our situation is so unique that the only advice someone can come up with is just not do it. They have no understanding of what we are going through, and it is so much deeper than just wearing clothes of the opposite gender. Maybe that is why I never got any advice from anyone except one of my self-proclaimed gender therapists who told me there was nothing she could do about me wanting to be a woman. Like a dummy, I ignored the only good advice I could have received at the time.

It wasn’t until I started reading certain on-line computer sites did, I really encounter advice as transgender “Nazi’s” as we called them. Who continually did battle with many cross dressers, who received little or no respect from the transsexuals as they were called then. Being the cynic that I am, I enjoyed quite a few of the comments as the gender battles raged on. Seemingly, respect from some on the site was only gained by how many gender surgeries you had gone through. Why I needed to wait to receive advice I did not want from an internet site which should have been welcoming to all but wasn’t.

By the time I hit my experimental stage to judge where I should be in the world as a man or a trans woman. I was not in much of a mood for much advice, and it was the best advice I could ever get. I was very much on my own in the world as a new transfeminine person and loving it. If someone had told me to stop what I was doing, I would have said hell no as I was having the time of my life.

I think other ciswomen sensed my confidence in who I was and mostly just interacted with me out of curiosity and at the same time, without knowing it showed me the way behind the gender curtain. I needed their help to achieve my dream, and not much advice. As the curtain parted and I learned what I needed to exist in a world I had only dreamed of, the best advice I got was none because I did not seek it out.

I cannot say I did not need advice when it came to making my final gender decisions. Primarily the day when my future wife Liz saw me mentally struggling again with my gender issues and flat out told me she had never seen any male in me. Go ahead and transition into a feminine world. In all fairness, I heard the same thing from my second wife years before but could not figure out how to do it. This time I could do it and received a doctor’s approval for HRT gender affirming hormones and major changes to by external and internal body was underway.

It turned out to be the best advice I ever got. Especially when my stubborn self-listened and decided to change my life for good. To the place it should have always been. Making my way in a world of ciswomen. Now I want the time back that I lost, but it is too late. I will just have to take my own advice and make the best life I can with the time I have left.

Thanks to you all who read along with all my experiences. Hopefully they will help you with yours and of course I will offer my own advice from all that I learned when you comment. Without all of you, none of what I do would be meaningful to me.

 

 

 

I Was Afraid of the Truth

 

Image from Brett Jordan
on UnSplash, 

It took me a while to understand that facing the major truth in my life was not possible early on for me.

As I cross-dressed in front of the mirror in my early years, I could not believe it would be a part of my permanent existence. Even though, it was screaming at me that it was. I learned quite early, just looking like a pretty girl (or so I thought) for just a quick moment in time never held up and very soon I would be wondering what it would be like to live among the girls around me as one of them. In other words, I did not know I was much more than a casual cross-dresser attracted to feminine makeup and clothes, I was so much more. Later I would learn I was a transgender woman when the term began to be popularized.

Even when I realized, for the first time in my life, I had found a term which described me, I did not totally accept it. My truth still evaded my consciousness.  I was afraid to face it and lose all the male privilege I had built up.  All along, I resisted building up those benefits, but then again took them when they were offered. Which deep down made me feel like some sort of a gender hypocrite. Regardless of my guilt, I needed to work my way through my gender issues all alone and I had no gender workbook to follow. No all-nighters with girls my age to learn what it meant to play with the essentials of makeup and clothes all the way to learning the foundation of what it would take to build me into a mature transfeminine woman someday. If I worked hard enough on my goal.  

I was frustrated even more when I got the tiniest bit of gender euphoria when I was able to go out in the world for the first time as a trans woman and do my own clothes shopping in women’s clothing stores. Even to the point of being emboldened enough to use the changing rooms to make sure my selections fit me as well as could be expected before my weight-loss program. Increasing my shopping confidence was the fact that the clerks did not really care about my gender as much as they did about my money. Another truth I needed to learn the hard way and not be so naïve.

The deeper I got into the world of cisgender women, the more I wanted to stay. As my time behind the gender curtain was beginning to feel so much more natural every time I did it. Sometimes, the whole process felt so good, I almost panicked because I did not know if I was ready yet to give up all my male existence. I had too much vested in him to just give him away, so I continued to explore my new world as a transgender woman.  

My bottom line at that time was again what was I going to do about an unapproving spouse who was still my best friend and major problems about what I was going to do about finding work as a new trans woman. I was intimidated and forced to deny my gender truth for many more years. I tried all sorts of ways to do it. I tried everything from therapy, to trying to drink it away, to trying to outrun my truths by changing jobs and moving my family many times. Of course, none of it worked and still I refused to face the facts that were staring me down in the mirror every morning that I was not meant to be a man at all. It was like life was playing a cruel prank on me because on occasion I could still be a success in a male life without really wanting to. It seemed that every time I did enjoy myself as a man, my woman self would come along and do him one better.

Finally, I had reached the point of no return and just had to begin the series of moves I would have to make to put my male behind me forever. Tragically, my wife passed away leaving me alone to do whatever I wanted, and I was old enough to retire early and sell collectibles online to scrape up enough money to survive, so destiny all of a sudden was opening doors for me to live my inner gender truth. And to make matters even better, I even gained approval from a doctor to start on HRT, or gender affirming hormones that I had always dreamed of taking. The changes I went through under the new hormones proved to be miraculous for me. As all the external and internal emotional changes took effect were worth the wait. Even though I waited until I was sixty to start them.

Perhaps the HRT hormonal shift was the final straw in me having to face the biggest truth of my life. I was a woman pretending to be a man all along.

Truth was always hard to face for me as I did my best to run from it or just ignore it…it never went away proving my transgender womanhood was the only way could go if I wanted to respect myself in the end. Plus, the end of my life was not getting further away at my age. If I was going to act, it was a now or never situation.

One night when I was out to be hopefully left alone in one of my favorite venues to watch sports and drink beer, the blinding realization that my male life was over came to me. The only future for me could be feminine if I was going to be able to live my truth. It was when all the disastrous gender wars I had lived with over the years came to an end and I all sudden, was on the right path.

Most importantly, I had worked hard to know it was the right one.

 

 

Dealing with Stress as a Transgender Woman

 

Image from Ksenia Berjoz 
on UnSplash.

In the male world I did not want to be in, I had a difficult time responding to pressure except where I worked where oddly enough, I thrived.

I suppose the gender pressure I was under started very early in life when I needed to struggle mightily to even find the private time to even try to be the pretty girl I wanted to be in front of the mirror. From my early cross-dressing years, instead of growing away from feeling the pressure I was feeling, I grew into it. On one side, I had the fond thoughts of gender euphoria dominating every spare moment that I had and on the other side I had the reality of having to compete in a world I never wanted to be in. Football was a prime example of me trying to overachieve and ended up breaking two bones doing it before I just quit.

Moving forward to the time when I left my closet and started to discover the world as a novice cross-dresser or transgender woman, the pressure was on more than ever before to succeed as neither of my egos were taking getting laughed at by the public well. My feelings hurt, and the pressure as I said was building to do something about it.

The first thing I knew I could do was go on a diet which quickly slimmed my body so I could find and wear more fashionable clothing and started to take care of my skin better everyday after I shaved. All of this helped me to feel better about myself, and I kept on trying to perfect my makeup techniques to improve my public presentation. With all of this, it still took me quite a while to build my fragile confidence to a point where I could go out in public again.

Then I found myself in a spot where pressure was coming at me from different angles. On the days I thought my makeup and clothes were at their peak of success, the pressure would set in about how I was moving as a transfeminine person in the world. I needed to concentrate on two things, not moving like a linebacker in drag and making sure I put a pleasant look on my face. Replacing the male scowl I had perfected for so long. If I was enjoying my new life, I would have to make sure I showed it to the world.

As I did all of that, my inner pressure began to change once again as I began to free myself from the drag atmosphere of the gay venues I was going to (where I was considered as just another queen) and into the straight world I was used to where I could at least have a fighting chance of being treated as another woman in the world where the ciswomen ruled the scene I wanted to be accepted into. For the most part, I discovered that most ciswomen did not notice me, or if they were, they were just curious why I was trying to play with the girls’ club and leaving the universe of men.

At that point, I nearly panicked from all the pressure I was under as I desperately tried to maintain what was left of my male life which included my wife and job and at the same time try to allow my feminine transgender side to flourish also. My main reason to panic came when I needed to learn immediately how to communicate one on one with other women. To relieve the pressure, I went all out and even took feminine vocal lessons and I had to focus for the first time in my life on really listening to what someone else was telling me because I found that ciswomen were the masters at non-verbal or passive aggressive communication and used both methods to by pass the men around them. Which was the main reason men said they could not understand women. The women had set it up that way.

I did maintain that life as long as I could before the pressure increased again until the forms of relieving it, I was using, just did not work any longer. On top of that, I was becoming more and more self-destructive, and I kept putting my life in danger. Fortunately, before anything severely happened to me because of the pressure I was feeling nothing severe happened to me and I began to build a new exciting life out of the ashes of the male life I used to live. I took what I could from him and added it to my new transfeminine life I was beginning to carve out for myself.

Magically then, much of the pressure I was feeling about my male to female femininization started to drain off me. I can’t take all of the credit because I fell into the open arms of so many ciswomen who had problems of their own and took the time and effort to help me with mine. All their efforts reinforced why I wanted to be allowed behind the gender curtain to start with.

After the pressure was released, it was like the sun came out to me on a cloudy day, I can’t say how much weight was lifted from my shoulders when I finally saw the sunlight and decided to put my male self in my past and begin HRT or gender affirming hormones under a doctor’s supervision.

I can’t say before then I had any knowledge at all how to live a life without experiencing gender pressure. As I matured into a confident transgender woman, I finally realized I did not have to live that way, and I had the built the confidence to change it.

Certainly, living under pressure is no fun, and I would not wish it on anyone. Also, I know everyday humans have stress in their life, but I am biased, but I think transgender women and transgender men have more than their fair share to deal with. How we are able to handle it can define our lives.

 

 

 

Luck or Destiny makes a Trans Girl Tick

Image from Maia I 
on UnSplash

Along with my regular blog postings, I am writing I book about my life through a company called “StoryWorth.”  My daughter purchased it for me, and it only goes to selected members of the family, so it is intensely personal and made to read in my opinion, after I have passed away. This week’s question was based on what I have done in my life, which was the most difficult to accomplish and what were the lessons learned and did they happen due to luck or destiny.

My answer was an easy one the two biggest accomplishments I had in life which surprised even me were when I was able to be accepted into the American Forces Radio and Television Service as a broadcaster during the Vietnam War. And the other was when I finally kicked my old male self to the curb and started to follow my dream of living my life as a transgender woman. For the longest time, neither seemed to have any chance at all in coming true, but the slimmest of hopes kept my dreams alive.

Along the way, I learned to not believe in luck during my life, however I became a firm believer in destiny. I need to make the point that destiny only found me because I made the effort to put myself out there in the world and try. I would never have made it to AFRTS without all the time and effort I took to write letters to my congressman, and I would have never made it to a transfeminine existence without leaving my closet and experimenting in the world. It was like I needed to scream destiny here I am, now find me. None of it was ever easy as I was swimming upstream against what society said I should or should not do. I should have quietly went about my way and let the Army recruiters have their way without question or had done the same when I rebelled against being in the restrictive gender box I was born into. I just couldn’t do it.

By far, the greatest act of rebellion happened when I went about seriously crossing the gender border. Presenting as a convincing ciswoman never was easy for me as I had very few natural characteristics. Like many of you, I have the prototypical male body with the thick torso and broad shoulders which I needed somehow to cover up if I was ever going to make it in the world as a trans woman. In fact, the shape of my body always threatened to derail all the work I was doing with my makeup, hair and clothes before I ever got started. I don’t think I ever would have made it without me finally taking the time to look at all the different shapes and sizes of the ciswomen that were around me. Like many of them, I would never be thin and attractive but just maybe with the right padding and wardrobe, I could be a presentable thick woman. By “padding” I meant I needed the right size of breast enhancements as well as hip padding until much later in life, I could add my own “padding” through the help of gender affirming hormones or HRT.

Then I started to realize that maybe I could do this and become a fully functional transgender woman, if I worked hard enough at it. That meant I needed to overcome the bumps and bruises I encountered along the way when I refused to stop at stop signs along my gender path. To do it, I needed to build up much deserved confidence in what I was attempting to do. Which was stop my life and start it all over again. It was as if I was packing for a trip and only had so much space to take things along. I had to decide what could stay (if anything) from my male past. Again, I needed to look around at the ciswomen I was close to and notice what their interests were. A major example was when I began to think I would have to lose my passion for sports, I began to notice many women with their favorite team jerseys watching games and drinking beer on the big screen televisions in the venues I was going to as a man. It didn’t take a genius to figure out if they could do it, so could I.

Destiny, in all its glory began to show me I wasn’t building anything new when I crossed to going behind the female gender curtain. I was just going to where I always should have been. I started to see that I could be accepted in lesbian circles as a sports loving femme (or lipstick) lesbian and I was relieved I did not have to institute some sort of a forced sexuality change I never wanted to do. Even though I kissed several men to see if there was any real attraction, there wasn’t so I happily moved on to where I was comfortable.

Believing in myself was certainly difficult to come by and took a lot of learning to do as I switched my life from a fairly successful man to a new transgender woman. Because at times, I thought I was in over my head until my confidence stepped back in and I started to move forwards towards my dream goal once again. I just had to remember how far that I had come from that scared, excited boy in a dress and make-up in the family mirror.

If I had it all to do all over again, I am sure I was given a bad deck of cards when it came to dealing with my gender and for the longest time, I played the victim card to delay the obvious. I was a male only because my genitals told the world I was. It took a while for me to mature into the trans woman I am today. But with the help of destiny, I put myself out into the world and made it. There was no luck to it.

 

 

 

I Wish I Knew Why

 

Image from Anderson Rian
on UnSplash.

It is not like I am new to being out in the world as my authentic feminine self, so I don’t know why I feel certain ways.

One of them happened this morning when I needed to take our car to the shop to get the oil changed before we take a rather lengthy trip to my old hometown later this week. As I have written before, I am still fearful of going by myself to any male dominated businesses.

I think it goes all the way back to when I was a kid when I used to go with my dad to an auto parts business a friend of his owned. There were never any women, and I felt totally out of place. At the time, I felt it was because I was young at the time and I would grow out of feeling self-conscious there. But now I think, it could have been my inner female rebelling at the ideas of being around all that intense masculinity.

Back to this morning, even though I did get an early start, I wanted to be there when they opened at 7:30 AM to get my paranoia over with. I was worried since we are headed into a holiday weekend, they would be busier than they were. Which was a moot point, since I had to figure out what I was going to wear, shave, put on my light makeup and head out the door. After doing all of that, I was still out the door by eight and still was able to get right into the oil change location.

Since I would not be getting out of the car for either of the places I could go ultra casual and wear my jeans along with my “Libra” themed burgundy tank top which I wear with my long hair pulled back so it softly falls over my shoulders which is my revenge for having to cut my hair extremely short when I was young and even later when I was in the Army. I am very fortunate in that I have never had any male pattern baldness, so I have always had a great head of hair.

It turns out all my paranoia was unfounded as none of the male workers did anything out of their way to make fun of me and were professional in every way. Before I knew it, I was on my way and breathing normally again. On my way to my nest stop at my wife’s Liz and I’s favorite coffee shop to pick up coffee and a light breakfast. Other than having coffee and food we like, the coffee shop also has a LGBTQA+ flag proudly on one of their walls. Again, the person who served me was very nice and put me at ease.

On the way home, during my short trip trying out the world again as an independent transgender woman, I was wondering if changing my estrogen HRT patches out today had anything to do with my moodiness about going out in the world alone. Friday, when I make a much longer trip back to my old hometown, Liz will be going with me as I must pick up more copies of my name change documents from all the way back to 2015.

Sadly, I have more negative memories of my hometown than good ones, but I need the legal copy with the judge’s signature on it for a life insurance policy I forgot so long ago. I can procrastinate with the best of them!

To make a small joke about my visit to have the oil changed this morning is that all my fluid levels turned out to be OK. Maybe the true win was to realize what the basic reason I still fear going into male dominated spaces so badly. It is a deep-seated problem which goes back to my youth which makes it very difficult to get rid of.

 

 

 

In the Wrong Room

 

JJ Hart

The first time I realized I was in the wrong room was when I was out as my transfeminine self in one of my regular venues when somehow, I found myself with a group of four men. Let me preface my thoughts by telling you the men were just having typical men type discussions on sports and work and no one was a rocket scientist.

Very quickly, after I was made to feel below their dignity to even acknowledge me, I went away with my first lesson learned. Stay out of male conversations unless invited, and even then, don’t expect your opinion to count for much. It seemed I had entered a place where my impostor syndrome was replaced by out and out rejection. I wasn’t worried about being in a group of ciswomen being worried about what to say and do, to entering a place where I was not wanted at all. I just can tell you this, I was never treated rudely by the women I faced in my first girl’s nights out as I was during my impromptu meetings with men. Which helped me to understand I was headed in the right direction on my gender path.

It could be too, that I did not give men a fair break. I was not attractive enough to be desirable, and I had not developed any sort of personality, yet which gave me any other positive characteristics. In other words, I was still an unsure new trans woman who had just left the men’s club, and it showed. At least to a transgender man who asked me out to a dinner date and later he said I was scared and nervous on our date. He was right, and I was just going through being in the wrong room as myself.

Fortunately, that feeling of being in the wrong room did not last long as I grew more adjusted to my new life as a transfeminine person. My inner self kept telling me I was in the right room at the right time as I felt natural doing it. As we all know, confidence plays a huge part in being successful as transgender women and transgender men and when I gained the confidence, I needed to say to the world who I was, there was no turning back. The more I accomplished in my new life, the more I realized that my male life was living a lie. The problem was that just deciding I was not going to live that lie any longer was not going to be as simple as just doing it. Because I had accumulated so much male baggage along the way as I fought to succeed in a world I never really wanted.

Even though I was fighting to switch rooms, the battle was never easy because of the major roadblocks which were in my way. Primarily, the roadblocks came from my second wife who was struggling to maintain her marriage to a man who did not want to be one and my male self who was fighting for his total existence. To make matters worse, my life as a man was not that bad all of the time, so the gender decisions I needed to make were so much more brutal in nature.

When I finally found myself in the right room as a trans woman, I found I needed to furnish it into what I needed to live. It was totally barren of anything I would need to live successfully, and I had to start by doing the best I could to present well as a woman and then learn the basics of survival in a world run by ciswomen. It was their room I was trying to be given admission to but not before I earned my way in.

That was when I needed to take a deep dive into myself and produce more of a one-sided effort to do something than I had ever tried before. Always before, when I was trying something new, I would get discouraged and quit, but this time I could just not and kept trying because I knew my dream of living as a transgender woman was certainly achievable. Before I did, I needed to somehow be allowed into other women’s lives and rooms to see how they lived. I was especially interested in the women who were not especially attractive because they showed me the importance looks do not have to play in a woman’s life. There were plenty of other things in a ciswoman’s multi-layered life to concentrate on other than beauty.

Since I lacked beauty, I needed to decorate my room with it, I needed to seek out other ways to do it. Such as was I treating other women the way I wanted to be treated became a main goal. A smile took me so much farther than my old male scowl designed to keep people away that I could not believe it.

Once I learned the difficult lessons of feminine decoration, I no longer had any vestiges of being in the wrong room. In fact, the deep belief that I was in the right room kept me going through out the trying times of legal name changes to the fun times of HRT therapy which sent me into the second puberty of my life. It turned out, it was the one my body was always waiting for.

Rooms are always difficult to plan for as you decorate a new one. Especially if your gender workbook is blank and you are struggling to catch up. The paintings on my walls were of my friends who showed me the way as well as my wife Liz and daughter who finally kicked me out of my old room and into a bright new one. As you can tell, they all mean so much to me.

As all of you do who follow along with my experiences and daily goals on a regular basis. Without you all, everything I do would be worthless, so thank you! And I hope the room that you are in is not a closet you are trying to find your way out of. Hopefully, you can do it soon.

 

 

 

 

My Biggest "AHA" Moments

 

Image from Valentia Conde
on UnSplash.

During the long gender path which I have been fortunate to live, I have had many “aha” moments to look back on.

The problem I had was realizing that the times in my life were something I would forever remember, forget immediately, or just refuse to understand what they meant after my own ignorance set in. For my first example, I have to go way back to the first times I was exploring my mom’s clothes and makeup. I knew something was up, but I did not know exactly what and how deep it would run with me. All I knew was my desire to be feminine in any way was deeply forbidden in my family and most of society which called it being mentally ill at the time. Through it all, even though I did not fully understand what was going on with me, I did think I was mentally ill for thinking it.

That was the good news. The bad news was I was decades away from understanding the “aha” moment that I was living the wrong life as a man all along. Even if I was warned by a therapist that I respected very much that she could essentially do nothing about me wanting to be a woman and I was on my own to save a marriage that I really wanted to save. If I would have listened to her and started my male to female femininization earlier, I would have saved myself so much inner turmoil that it would have been amazing. But I did not and stubbornly hold on to the idea I could live as a man while at the same time cross-dress when ever I wanted as a woman.

Another problem was, I had moments when my feminine world was opening to me and I thought, “wow is that what being a woman was all about.” Like the day at the grocery store when I positively melted a young bagger who was stuttering as he shyly asked if he could take my groceries to the car. Right then I knew why I had such a difficult time talking to pretty girls in school when all my perceived smooth vocal abilities just disappeared. It was a giant “aha” moment when I had the chance to reverse course and cross that gender border so long ago.  

As I held on for dear life that I was just following my hobby as a cross-dresser, slowly but surely the idea of going through another male to female transition gained on me. I went back to the times when I was thinking that just putting on makeup and a dress was good enough. I always wanted to do more like the pretty girls around me did at school. I wanted to be the one being chased for a date in my new pretty clothes any time that I could. Which turned out to be never back then. Years flew by before they ever did as I began to test the world of ciswoman as a novice cross-dresser. Then, one night out of nowhere, the thought came to me that I was done just looking like a woman again, I wanted to inter-mix with them and see if I could be accepted. If I was, from that point forward I would change my self-gender perception from just being some sort of a harmless hobby to thinking about myself as a thriving transgender woman. A super scary, but exciting thought because once I went there and was successful, I could never go back to ever just thinking that I was just a man again. A real, enduring “aha” moment in my life.

The problem I had was once that I was becoming successful as a new transfeminine person, how could I stay there. Initially, I made up a new feminine persona to go with my new look. I wore the same wig and used my same new name every time I went out and before I knew it, I was being treated as a regular in all the venues I was testing out in the straight world I knew before as a man. Another big “aha” came when I was able to break the influence of all the gay venues I was going to which I really disliked and was accepted as me in a new world. Then I learned I could have fun doing it as I enjoyed my new feminine self so much that increasingly I did not want to go back at all to my old male world.

As I did, I began the all-important job of getting rid of all the male baggage I did not want or need anymore. At all costs, I hoped I could maintain a relationship with my daughter which I did, and if my brother did not accept me, so what. Which he didn’t and we went our separate ways as those two were the only two blood family that I had left. With all of that turmoil behind me, I was free to concentrate on my transgender future which did not include any surgeries at my age of sixty, but hopefully a chance to test out my body on HRT or gender affirming hormones. I was approved first by a doctor and then by the Veteran’s Administration to begin the hormonal treatment and positively loved it. It was as if my body was saying the hormones were an “aha” moment and were the missing ingredient to leading a fuller transfeminine life.

I am sure there were other “aha” moments which turned out to be bright light posts on my often dark and lonely gender path. Such as when my current wife Liz came into my life to love me and make me whole again by saying that she had never seen any male in me. I never realized that I had built up that much good karma to help my life along.

Thanks for reading my lifetime of gender experiences as a transgender woman. Hopefully, you can gain some insight to help you along.

 

Living the Dream before it Consumed Me

 

JJ Hart

As I crossed the six-decades portion of my life and spent at least five decades of it trying to stay under control by cross-dressing, I was trapped and had nowhere else to go.

It happened because I had embarked on such a complete path of looking like and moving like a ciswoman and my gender bucket list was shrinking due to too much use. All the trips to malls, antique stores, and thrift stores just became boring when I was passing through them with no problems. Even though I was bored, the idea of being successful as a transfeminine person still consumed me. And, to make matters worse, I was finding less challenges to undertake as I increasingly painted myself into a gender corner I had always dreamed about but never thought I could reach.

I always made excuses such as I was never going to be good looking enough to present well in the new world I was seeking when truthfully my overall confidence as a trans woman had more to do with my approval than my appearance ever did once I had went beyond the basic point I needed to be to blend in with the ciswomen around me. Life changed when I realized there were plenty of women in the world who dealt with being bigger in stature and even had broad shoulders such as I had. My realizations helped to give me the boost I needed to continue to let my so called “hobby” consume me.

The reason was that I was ignoring the fact that cross-dressing was much more than a hobby, it was becoming a lifestyle. The biggest problem was that nothing I did as a novice trans woman was ever good enough. Even my second wife did not like the person I was becoming when I took the time and effort to show off to her as I thought were my best feminine efforts. Even though I desperately was seeking her approval, it was becoming obvious to me that my inner feminine self and my wife were lining up to fight it out. I was left behind to pick up the pieces as I was realizing how consumed I was when I had one of my rare, sanctioned (by my wife) outings at Halloween in NYC when my wife decided she did not want to go with me. The night turned out to be a dream evening as I ended up going out with four other women dressed to thrill as I was and they all happened to be as tall as I was in our heels. The night even ended on a high note when I was asked to dance by a guy in the venue we went to. I turned him down because he had no idea that I had one basic difference from the other woman I came with.

Anytime I experienced such a wonderful evening such as that Halloween party, I wondered if the gender euphoria I felt was worth it when I came crashing down. I was consumed with the moment and wanted to re-live it time and time again, but I was tucked away in my male work world and could not get out. Looking back, I don’t see now how I survived the balancing act I was putting myself through. I needed to physically show up as the man I never wanted to be. While at the same time spend all my mental energy remembering the transgender woman, I was. If I could have cried during that time in my life, I am sure I would have cried myself to sleep many nights worrying about my gender dysphoria and how it always threatened to wreck my life. Even to the point of almost destroying my marriage to the woman I loved deeply when my frustrations would boil over into yet another fight about me. Some of the fights were so severe that my second wife told me I was not man enough to be a woman, or why didn’t I just go away and fix the problem and make both of us happier.

Perhaps, by this time, you are wondering too why I did not take her advice and do it. The main reason was, at that time, I was not ready to give up totally on the life we had together when I was a man and even though I was increasingly being consumed by the idea I could be the trans woman I always dreamed of, I was not ready to pull the cord and jump out of the plane just yet. Because I was still afraid of the new gender heights I was reaching and selfish enough to think my wife may still come around to accept me. For those of you who don’t know, she never did and died tragically of a massive heart attack at the age of fifty.

The whole experience sent me into a major negative tailspin which I had a difficult time emerging from. I think the only reason that I did was because I had let my feminine self-consume me, and she could not wait for the opportunity to take over and live. My life had come full circle, and all the time and effort I put into my male to female femininization came back to help me. I had already put the work into how I wanted to look with my make-up and fashion basics and was already out into the world actually discovering how it would be to carve out a new transfeminine life for my very own. I had gotten what I needed as I moved ahead towards beginning HRT or gender affirming hormones. Which were something I always wanted to try as part of my overall commitment to being as close as possible to being who I always was destined to be.

When life consumed me, I was always somehow able to accept it and even thrive with it. Even though it took me decades to do it with all the ups and downs of what I had to go through. At the least, it made life interesting.

 

So Many Ways to Come Out

 

Image from Nicola Dowie
on UnSplash.

Recently, I had a response from a young transgender man on how he should attempt to come out to the world.

First of all, thanks for the comment and yes there are many ways to leave your closet and enter the world of the gender you are trying to live among. I know too that I have many trans men who stop by and read my comments which flatters me because as we flip the gender script, often the worlds we must conquer are not that different. Gaining the female or male privileges when you feminize or masculinize yourself often are the biggest issues. After you come out to spouses and family.

Over the years, I have read about coming outs that have ranged from just showing up cross-dressed as your authentic self, all the way to writing letters trying to explain the way you feel. As far as I am concerned, just all of a sudden showing up as a woman (or a man) has too much of a shock value and is counterproductive when you are trying to explain how you want to live to the person sitting across from you. Writing a letter may be more preferable if you feel more comfortable expressing yourself with written words rather than speaking one on one with someone. In my case, even though I did not feel comfortable talking to family about my upcoming changes, I hitched up my new big girl panties (under my male clothes) and asked to speak privately with those family members closest to me.  My first attempt at coming out was with my only child, a daughter and as I always write about, she took it extremely well. Just to show me life could never be that easy, my coming out to my only brother went off the rails quickly and we have not spoken since about 2014.

Having said that, I do caution trans women and trans men who are just coming out to family and loved ones that you are in a marathon not a race and sooner more than later, your family might come around. Plus, there is an increasing amount of information available now to explain your desire to live as yourself. If you have the chance, you maybe able to direct them towards the positive aspect of what you are doing and away from all the negative news they may see from politicians on the media ads. In my case, the split between my brother and I ran so deep when he refused to stand up for me and invite me to our family’s traditional Thanksgiving Dinner, I just can’t forgive him for that.

On the positive side, the relatively few people who knew the former me notice almost immediately that I am happier now. And if you give someone the chance to calm down and see the real you, they will respect that and the real you.

Of course, as we flip back to the negative side, there are always those family members that will try to throw religion in your face. Unless you are more of a biblical scholar than I am, I usually just give up on them.

Overall, I find the different sides of transitioning between transgender women and transgender men to be interesting. Since I was raised around the male dominated world of trying to force my way through difficult situations, I never gave much thought to trans men having to adjust to not being passive aggressive so much. Then there is always the idea of using the restroom which hangs over both of us. Even though trans men are in a new world in a men’s room where no one wants to make eye contact or speak, there is always the idea of having to still find a stall to use. Which conceivably could attract unwanted attention depending upon how well you present and how long you have been on testosterone. I know I have oversimplified the men’s room process and if you are a trans man, I am always up for ideas on restroom survival.

Flipping the script again, using the women’s room as a trans woman is something I know quite a bit about. The first thing I quickly learned was I needed to make contact and speak when someone else was in “the room.” From there, much of what I learned was either common sense such as never placing my purse on the floor and making sure my stall still had toilet paper all the way to trying to pee in the bowl a certain way to mimic the ciswoman in the stall next to me. Then, no matter how much I was in a hurry to leave, I had to always stop at a sink, check my face and always wash my hands.

Anyway, you cut it, when you have desire to cross the gender border either way from male to female or female to male, you must learn so many nuances of the moves you are making. Even though there are strict rules you need to follow, often times you will find yourself making up your own rules as you go along. It is just the nature of the ultra-serious game we play. What has worked for me in the past may not work for you and often I hear from readers who have supporters and non-supporters in the same family. The only advice I can offer is to embrace your new gender allies and hope your detractors come around.

The end result always must be it is your life to live and you need to live it to be happy. Sometimes your path will lead you the wrong way, just like your GPS does on occasion but it is not time to panic until you can get readjusted. Be patient, and it will happen.

As always, thank you for the comments I receive, often they are difficult to answer seeing as how we dealt with such a complex issue such as gender. I just hope, in my small way I can help.