Gender Lost and Found

Image from Jon Tyson on UnSplash.

I spent most of my life in the gender lost and found department.

It all started when I discovered my fascination with my mom’s clothes and was lost when I outgrew all of her wardrobe. I was fortunate when I found a elastic, stretch mini skirt in a box outside the girls’ locker room one day and managed to hide it away in my gym bag and take it home for myself. What was lost was now found.

Along the way, I ended up wishing my overall gender dysphoria could be solved as easily as finding a skirt I could squeeze into and wear. It was only the beginning of a lifelong search to finally face up to who I really was. Until I faced up to the fact that I was never male at all, I was lost in a life I did not want.

Slowly but surely, I began to find my way out of my dilemma. But before I did, I needed to gather all the courage I could to leave my mirror and experience the world, as terrifying as it was as a transfeminine person. It was only then could I see the possibilities of what my future might hold if I actually followed my dreams and was able to live a life on my terms as a transgender woman. Along the way, I found out more about myself than I lost as explored the world. Surely, initially (as I always point out) I was treated rudely in a world which was different back in those days. The world was more likely to find humor in my efforts to be feminine than today when more and more people are just mean. To a point where they will share their unwanted bigoted feelings with you. Every time I was laughed at as a novice cross dresser, I resolved to head home to the safety of my mirror and attempt to fix the problems which were holding me back.

What I found was, I was not trying hard enough to blend in with the ciswomen around me. I needed to lose my male ego which was telling me to run from the criticism I was receiving and for the first time, pay attention to what the world was trying to tell me. Get out of the teen girl fashions I was trying to be seen in and start trying to determine my strengths and go from there.

The more I learned about presentation as a trans woman, the easier my life became as I began to test the boundaries of what I could do. For the most part, I was successful in building the basics of a new feminine life other than the times when I tried to go too far into venues I should have never considered trying. Ironically, one of the biggest set of venues I needed to lose were the gay bars I was going to. Even though, for the most part I found I could express myself there, my growth as a person was slowed dramatically. I tired of being rejected as just another drag queen and wanted to find something more. Losing the gay bars except on certain occasions was the best move I made except when I found acceptance in a small lesbian tavern I went to regularly along with the bigger sports bars, I found that I could be a regular in also.

As I expanded my feminine horizons, I lost more and more of my male self who had always wondered what it would be like to go to his favorite venues as a woman. I found I was right and enjoyed myself even more as a transgender woman. Especially when I went there enough to be recognized as a person, not some sort of a man in a dress. My golden rules of being accepted almost always worked for me as there were three. Number one, be friendly and not be a bitch. Number two never cause any trouble, and number three always tip well.

The only problems I found were when I needed to separate who I was in the real world when I needed to go back to being a man and existing in my working world, I increasingly wanted nothing of. It was a fast-moving pressure packed macho world which I could never see myself doing a male to female transition in, so I was lost in limbo much of the time. It was the only major problem I found I could do nothing about and had to give up a well-paying job when I retired to a fulltime transgender woman’s world. At least, I found my knowledge of competition carried me over quite well into the women’s world I was in. Of course, I needed to lose all my male privileges’ I had gained over the years and start all over again and often I learned the hard way that women compete just as hard as men. Just in different arenas.

Once I learned the new rules, I was learning quickly and even enjoying my feminine world even more than I thought I would. Probably because I was dealing from a position of gender strength because of all the time I had spent in a male world. Many times, I found I knew what potential problem would be coming at me before it even appeared. One of the gifts of being a transgender person.

Of course, now I feel that I have found much more than I had ever lost. I look back at my all too lengthy male life as the chance I had to learn the basic building blocks of life which I would need later to succeed at being a woman. From there I needed to take all the benefits I found as a new feminine person and use them wisely. To squander all that I had learned would have been a tragedy as I wasted all my time in the gender lost and found.

 

 

 

  

My Gender Timing was Everything

 

Image from Danny G
on UnSplash. 

For me, timing was everything when it came to completing my male to female gender transition. Plus, there was no way possible to think I would take nearly a half of century to do it.

The problem was, I never considered the extra layers of a ciswoman’s life rather than what a man had to go through to live. Just having to put up with a man in a relationship would have been enough for me to drive me into a lesbian relationship. Although I never really understood why more men don’t want to accept trans women because we understand so much about the way they think because after all, we had to live as a man for a while. But that is a long, drawn-out story to be saved for another time.

In many ways, timing comes down to everything when you decide to jump out of your closet and enter the world. Just a few things to consider are what would happen to you if you were out as your authentic feminine self and ran into someone you know. It happened to me one time long ago when I was married to my second wife. I was happily following my shopping routines in the small Ohio town we lived in when I parked in a parking lot, slid out of my car and right into the on-coming face of my wife’s boss. As I panicked and headed the other way as fast as I could, all I could hope for was he did not recognize me in my wig, makeup, mini skirt and matching leotard top. Fortunately, as I got a quick glimpse of his face, he showed no reaction to me at all.

I thought the experience was behind me until a week or so later, we were invited to a party at their house. At the party, her boss casually brought up how he had seen this big woman at a big box store he was shopping at the other day.  As I ignored the comment the best I could, I saw my wife suddenly glaring at me from across the room, and I knew what she was thinking. It was me; her boss saw that day. It took me a long time to live that one down because I was never supposed to leave the house as a trans woman unless I was somehow supervised.

Timing kept me living on the edge with my job too. What if my “hobby” of being a cross dresser was discovered? I knew I would not be able to function the way my male self-had all his life. I was stuck between the rock and the hard place on several personal fronts. I was becoming increasingly dependent on my lessons I was teaching myself as a woman and keeping my personal life together. All I could do was keep on working towards my dream of living as a transfeminine person. As I progressed along my often-rocky gender path, all I could do was look for a quick exit. But I found out, exits were as rare as on a long-deserted interstate highway.

It was not until I reached my mid-fifties, did I begin to see the faint out-lines of a possible gender exit ahead for me. All I needed to do was time my male exit correctly so I could cover the main living basics such as spousal support (or nonsupport), a job to support name changes, all the way to all the identification forms I would need such as a new driver’s license. For me, the name change was the most challenging because I needed to go before a very conservative judge I even knew before as a man. Surprisingly, he just smiled and approved my paperwork and name change and the rest was basically easy. So timing on that exit went smoothly with no roadblocks.

Other exits were not so forgiving for me. Such as what was I going to do about a job at that time. I had just closed my restaurant and was essentially broke, and I needed to find a job fairly quickly to support myself. I guess timing was everything and I took an easy exit into a job that I hated. I took the job anyway and managed to keep it for the couple of years I needed to work to claim my early retirement and keep myself afloat by selling vintage collections that my deceased wife and I had put together over the years. During this time of my life, there were other main detours which were difficult to navigate.

That was when my current wife Liz stepped in along with a huge push from destiny to erase any doubts in my mind that I was making the right decisions. I can not forget to mention this was also the time when I was able to begin HRT or gender affirming hormones and take another smooth exit away from my old male life. Putting him in my rearview mirror was the best move I had ever made in my life. I had a new me to go with my new name, and I was ready to go by the time I hit the age of sixty-two. I did not even have to revisit another job exit and just totally retired and moved in with Liz. Where I still am nearly a decade later.

Timing was everything for me, and even though it took me longer than I ever expected to reach my dream, the trip was worth it and I managed to even stay on a very rocky gender road full of roadblocks without wrecking.

 

 

 

Following your North Star

 

Image from Heidi Fin 
on UnSplash. 

I define my own personal “North Star” as the basic direction I had to go to be truthful to myself. Many times, I found how valuable my star was when I was lost in my own transgender woods and couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

Along my path, there were many times I lost sight of my North Star and needed to regain it before I could continue. As I did, I spent many a very dark night searching for my life’s truth of wanting to shed my male existence for a feminine one. I would not recommend what I went through to anyone because it was a long, lonely journey. Even still, I was fortunate in that I seemed to always have just the right amount of gender euphoria to propel me forward. It did not matter if I was just gazing at my image in the mirror and thinking I was a pretty girl, or shopping for groceries in our local market, something possibly positive came along for me to see my star and wondered if it was still within reach.

Sometimes, life was cruel and dealt me roadblocks which kept me from following my dreams such as the unplanned birth of my daughter. Which turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. At the time of her birth in 1976 I was very much out of control and needed something to ground me. Much more than the excessive amount of alcohol I was drinking at the time. All the beer did was help me to lose sight of my North Star until I could regroup and find it. I did not learn until much later how alcohol was a depressant and did not mix well with my already depressed personality. Even though I was dazzled by the miracle of birth and the rapid growth into a little person by my daughter, life was still not good as I was sliding by in a haze most of the time and losing track once again of my North Star.

Somehow, I was able to emerge from this part of my life on my feet and ready to search for my truth again. But not enough to accept what I was finding. Even though that bright light of a transfeminine existence seemed close enough for me to reach out and grab it, I just kept denying its existence and taking the route of least resistance and was existing the best I could as a part-time cross-dresser.

When I changed professions and entered the professional restaurant business, I developed a love/hate relationship with what I was doing. I loved the extra money and advancement it brought me but hated the hours and extra pressure the job brought with it. I guess the good part also was that the new profession cleared the way for me to reset my existence and locate my North Star again.

Once I located my star, I had to finally face the reality of where it was leading me. Gone were the evenings or days of going out into the world thinking I was nothing more than an innocent man trying to look like a cisgender woman. In, was a new reality that I wanted much more than to look like a woman. I was a woman and needed to see if I could live my truth, I knew all along but refused to face. Even though I was terrified of doing it, I was advancing down my gender path, and the skies were clear so I could see my star and have an idea of where I wanted to go. Better yet, once I was passing my gender mileposts of very much socializing with cisgender women as an equal in my mind, there was no going back.

As I did it, I made certain I was trying to cover all my basics such as what I would do to live in a new transgender world I dreamed of and in reality, had never seen. Such as how I would support myself because I knew my current male job would never support a mid-gender stream male to female transition. At that time, I was still several years away from an early Social Security retirement, so I needed to be careful of what I decided to do. What I decided on was a low impact non pressure job I could work just to get by for the time I needed until I retired. I found that was impossible and I had to backtrack into fast food again and work a job I hated until I could quit and pursue my star.

By this time, I had paid a lot of dues playing in the girls’ sandbox and I had a very good idea of what I was facing if I went full time into a transgender world. I don’t think it is possible to ever capture your North Star, but I do think you can come close to living it. There are many paths to get there, and no one is right. Some transition on their own while others have help like I did. I was always a social critter, and my process happened to work for me but yours could be different. Plus, destiny can often alter your path to following your personal star. Do not panic until you find it again and revive your journey.

Remember, you are in uncharted gender territory, often without a compass. When it happens to you, you need to just hitch up your big girl panties and do it.

 

 

 

A Labor of Love

 

Image from Mor Shani

Lately, it has occurred to me that possibly my posts have been a little negative when describing my journey along my gender path. Sure, my trip had its ups and downs but overall, it was a labor of love. Gender euphoria always seemed to come along at just the right time to keep me centered on my dream of living a transfeminine life. Finally meaning to me that transitioning male to female was the only way to live for me.

From that point forward, I just had to figure out a way to do it. I knew I loved the lure of women’s fashion and makeup, and how it all changed around me on a seasonal basis. So far from the male fashion I was used to. Instead of just putting on a coat when the weather became cooler outside. Now I needed to choose between leggings, boots and fuzzy sweaters to keep me warm and stylish.  Furthermore, I loved the concept of seasonal change and the desirability of going through my wardrobe to see what could stay and what had to go to the thrift store.

Even though, fashion and makeup remained a priority for me, a new love interest set in when I began to explore the world more as a transgender woman. Whole new gender vistas opened up for me relatively quickly as I needed to put my static mirror version of my trans woman self into motion. It became a labor of love to go out and start meeting new people. As I did, I came to the realization that most strangers I met did not mistake me for a cisgender woman, but on the other hand, I could be quite satisfied to be recognized as myself…a woman from a different background. I think in a couple of the venues I became a regular in; I became their token transgender woman to prove their overall diversity. Whatever the case, I loved the extra attention I was getting. Especially from the ciswomen I met who were basically curious what I was doing in their world.

All the on hands experience in the world I was getting helped me to want more and leave my male life behind. As I always say, the gender change concept seemed to be so natural for me as I went forward. The only problems came from wondering what I was going to do about all the male baggage I carried with me. I discovered I was much more than a man trying to put on a pretty face, I was a full-fledged person trying to build a life from scratch. All the nuances of doing so extended way psst making sure my shoes matched my purse, all the way to wondering how I was going to handle the woman sitting next to me when and if she tried to make conversation. In a very short period of time, I became used to the challenge, and it became part of my life and yes, I loved it.

As I increasingly loved this new life I was living, I was able to balance between the two main binary genders. Before it became too much to handle mentally for me. It became increasingly evident that if I was going to survive as a person, I was going to have to choose one of the genders pulling on me. At that point my lifetime of loving everything feminine kicked in for me. Long ago, I had realized I was much more than a casual crossdresser and made it a love affair to learn more about my dream of being a woman on my own terms. Which meant I did not necessarily need all the extensive facial or gender realignment surgeries. I just needed to present well enough in the world as a trans woman to be left alone. Mainly because of the circle of ciswomen friends who accepted me as an equal, I was able to achieve my goal. Even with the added surprise of finding a woman who loved me the way I was.

The tragedy probably was I did not realize the depth of the love affair I was having until much later in life. I would have preferred to have spent more time living as a transgender woman in a world I created. Rather than sharing it with a man I started a life with and had very little control over.

I will never know (of course) what life I missed and maybe the course of destiny I was on would have stayed the same anyhow. Just being able to acknowledge the lifelong love affair I was on is just enough to rationalize where I ended up. So if you are just starting or contemplating starting your journey, try to look down deep inside of yourself to see where your love affair has taken you. It may save you problems later on your journey.

 

 

 

 

Reflections on a Theme

 

Image from Alexsandra King
on UnSplash. 

Reflections on a theme could really go several ways.

The first one goes all the way back to my earliest days of gazing in the mirror at my new girl-like figure. Since I did not have much to work with as far as clothes and makeup went, I needed to use a lot of my imagination when I looked at myself. All I remember is, every article of clothing I could wear was cherished and I hoped I did not destroy it and clue my mom into someone had been into her clothes.

On the other hand, makeup was a little easier to hide, since mom had a whole drawer full of used makeup and samples for me to experiment with until I arrived at the point where I did not think I looked like a circus clown doing drag. As I said, imagination played heavily into my girlish pursuits back in those days until one fact came in loud and clear. Just dressing like a girl fell far short of meeting my expectations of how I wanted to feel. More than just looking like a girl, I wanted to know how it would be to feel like one. It turned out to be an idea I would carry with me throughout my life. Little did I know I would be writing about the same theme some fifty years later as I still struggle to understand all the aspects of the gender dysphoria I went through before I just gave up and went to my dominant side which was OK because in her own way my mom was a dominant woman and had to be to survive in the world of men she was in.

I guess you could say mom was the first feminine role model I had. As I reflected on her, I saw a person who worked hard to get a college degree during the depression years then ran off with a man her parents probably did not totally approve of. In other words, she was strong-willed and often got her way. Except for the daughter, she never knew she had who was watching more than just the way she applied her makeup. I was watching how she navigated the world. In my own way, I went through my own great depression as I learned how difficult it was going to be to be a transfeminine person. Long before the term was ever used.

During this time, I spent a lot of time reflecting on who I was and why I was this way. Surely, I was one of a very few boys around me who wanted to be a girl. One of the many ideas I reflected on was the fact that I was simply afraid to go out and compete with the other boys. Which even though was probably true to an extent, I knew I had to do it anyway, so I had no choice but to make a half-hearted attempt at doing boy things to throw gender doubters off my path when they realized what an effeminate boy I really was. Since I was not athletic enough to hang with the jocks or smart enough to hang with the brains, I ended up taking some sort of a middle path with a group of troublemakers which at least kept me away from the bullies. Sadly, there was no group for boys who wanted to be girls.

As I stayed in the mirror for years and years, I built up quite the love for my reflection as I went along. So much so that I caught my reflection lying to me. No matter how ridiculous I looked, the reflection I was seeing told me I looked great which hurt my overall feminine approach to life, out of the mirror. It was not until I gathered all my courage and began to explore the world as a novice crossdresser ot transgender woman, did my reflection begin to change. What happened was, for better or for worse, I traded out my home mirror for one in public. As strangers began to notice me, I very quickly received feedback on my reflection from them. Was I convincing the world that I was a serious transgender woman and not some sort of a joke or someone up to no good that was all the craze back in those days on television and in the movies.

All of this reflection on a theme quickly became very important to me since I had finally made the move to get out of my closet and see the world through the eyes of a very serious trans woman. Soon I reached the point of no return and just had to rely on my home mirror to apply my makeup and fix my hair. The rest was up to me to do in the public’s eye, where my true reflection always was. My theme always should have been I was a feminine based individual all of my life with strong ties to woman role models. My goal never was to be the, “Pretty, pretty princess” as my wife called me. I was just going through a phase so get to a point where I could become a strong independent trans woman. I did not know at the time how much the world would change and I would need every bit of my new self to survive under a corrupt president who wants to erase the LGBTQ community.

Now, when I see myself in the mirror, the only reflection on a theme that I see is me. I am a survivor of my internal gender dysphoria wars and external problems along the way too. Some were interesting, some I learned from and most were quickly forgotten as life intervened. All I know is, I would never have found out if I had been stuck in my reflection on a theme. Which was being a woman. Being stubborn enough to keep pushing ahead was what kept me going. Deep down, I knew I was right.

 

 

 

 

Running...Always Running

 

Image from Filip Mroz 
on UnSplash. 

During my life, I have never thought of myself as a runner of any sort. I have never completed any marathons, or long distance runs anywhere except the Army in basic training when I had to.

In basic, all I really learned about running was to never try to look behind you and see how fast if anyone was gaining on you. Mainly because I was never the fastest person running and I was trying to compete against the clock. Not another person. Lessons which came back and helped me later in life when I set out to battle my gender dysphoria. I would have been so much better off if I had never looked back to see who was chasing me.

For the longest time, I took up too much of my mental universe either worrying about what someone else thought about me or worse yet, feeling extreme jealousy over the way another woman looked. I discovered that I was just wasting my time when I spent too much time or effort on both. Which I was doing. There was no way possible that everyone was going to accept me because no matter what I was doing, there seemed to be to be someone else on my wavelength to tell me something was wrong with what I was doing. And as far as being jealous of the way another ciswoman looked, I discovered later in life that there had not been a woman born yet who did not find some sort of flaw in the way she looked. My job was to do the best I could and work with what I had to present my best transfeminine to the world.

Instead of turning around and wasting time and energy watching who was gaining on me, to succeed I needed to throw all my limited resources towards filling out my gender workbook as fast as possible. If someone did like me because I was a transgender woman, that was their problem not mine.

The main problem I needed to solve about me running from my problems was all the moving and job changes I was putting myself and my family through. Even though all the job interviews and moving around was exhausting, I used the process to run from my inner most feelings…that I wanted to quit being a male and live a feminine life. Behind every job move that I made, there was the ulterior motive of wanting to make my life back then as a cross dresser potentially easier. Ultimately, that is the reason I made moves from places like my conservative hometown in Ohio all the way to New York City where I thought I could find a much more liberal existence.

Finally, I went nearly full circle and landed back in my old hometown, but the difference was this time I would be much closer to Columbus, Ohio where I had contacts in the cross dressing-transgender community. By doing so, I even managed to land a much better job which I had worked for years to get. For once, it seemed I was putting my running life behind me, but I really wasn’t. Not until I finally was able to face myself about my true lifelong issues such as (you guessed it) why I wanted to be a transgender woman. To do so, I still had the usual obstacles in the way such as what was I ever going to do about the twenty year plus marriage I was in and the great job I had worked so hard to get, Stopping all the running I was doing was never going to be easy but I kept painting myself into corners I could not easily escape from when on the occasions I was successful in my feminine presentation led me on to wanting more.

More meant taking an increased number of chances with a male life I should have been satisfied with. All my plans were coming together except for the most important one. Except for the most important one I had been running from my entire life. What was I going to do about my increasingly relevant feminine life. The stress I was under became tremendous. Afterall, I was trying my best to juggle two binary genders at the same time. Lucky or not, I was still able to keep most of my feminine life a secret from most of my acquaintances and I continued on as long as I could before the running had to come to a complete halt.

During my life, I was able to only make and keep a very few male friends and as destiny would have it, they all passed away (along with my wife) in a short span of time. At that point, there was no reason to keep running, so I was able to stop and take the easy way out for a change. I chose going all out into a transfeminine lifestyle and never look back with the help of gender affirming hormones or HRT.

When I stopped all my running and faced the truth, I had been avoiding all along, the feeling I had was euphoric and one I had never experienced before. My next step was not to hold it against myself that I did not stop running much earlier in my life and take the lessons I learned about not looking back in the Army. I never knew what happiness was until I did it.

 

What was Meant to be, Will Be

 

JJ Hart doing Trans Outreach program.

The longer I lived and experienced a feminine based experience, the more I realized my life was turning into what I always expected it to be.

Yesterday, I spoke about the “aha” moment I had when I transitioned from being a serious cross dresser to living as a novice transgender woman. Even though I was scared to death to do it, after the experience was over, I felt so extremely natural I knew my life would never be the same again. In other words, my new life as a trans woman was always meant to be and felt like it. Over the years of thinking about my new life and seeking answers, the only excuse I could find was that my mom had several still births before me and resorted to the new (at the time) DES drug which was prescribed to help problem pregnancies. DES was known to flood the uterus with estrogen to help the birth mother and was “rumored” to be a cause of gender dysphoria in children later in life. But all of that was just a theory.

I was left to be on my own forever wondering why I felt so natural when I tried to cross that gender border into womanhood. As my mind wandered into all the different scenarios I could have been confronted with, nothing was ever placed in concrete. As much as I disliked competing in the male culture, still I was relatively successful in doing it and had managed to carve out a life in a gender I wanted nothing to do with. So, it was not that.

The older I became, and the more experience I forced my way into, the more I felt living in a cisgender women’s world was the place for me. If I could make it happen. First, I needed to get past my appearance paranoia/obsession and open my eyes to what was really going on around me in the world when I was exploring it as a transfeminine person. I was naïve in my gender thinking about women as a whole and tended to put them all up on a pedestal. Which I found out was completely wrong.  Quickly I learned that although women operate on different wave lengths as men, almost all the basics were still there for me to learn. At that point, I had plenty of other “aha” moments when I realized the intricacies of how the two main binary genders operated on a daily basis.

I learned too that there were simply some things I could not do by simply observing the ciswomen around me, I needed to interact with them before they would let their guard down and let me see their true selves. The more immersed I became in their culture, the more I wanted to be and again for the first time in my life I began to feel natural in my own skin and felt like my life was meant to be.

I found I was a quick learner when it came to being a quality trans woman and not a standoffish bitchy one. I learned I could make friends easily with most all other women and the rest did not matter anyhow.  Most of them were evil in their own ways, and I did not need their problems if I was ever going to get where I was trying to be. I had bigger issues to face such as how I could learn to communicate effectively as my new, out, authentic self who I learned could not wait for her chance in the real world. She knew exactly who she wanted to be if she ever got the chance. All of a sudden, I was having fun in my life again and the male to female transition problems I was experiencing began to fade into my past. Even though I carried an immense amount of baggage with me from my male life, I was still able to pick and choose what I always wanted to remember from the male world I came from.

If I paid attention to the knowledge, I had gained from having experience on both sides of the gender border, it gave me a real head start on how to conduct myself around men and women. I even was asked questions from women about how to deal with their man and how he may be feeling and I was very flattered to have tried to help.

As I always bring up, my biggest problem with all of my gender transition was how long it took me to do it. Waiting until the coast was clear and when I was nearly sixty years old took away valuable years of my feminine life which I could have experienced more of the world. If I had it all to do over again, I would have been braver and known the huge gender move I was about to make was always meant to be, so just do it. Pull the bandage off my old male life and get on to the future.

Maybe, if I ever have a tombstone, I can have it engraved with the simple words, “She was always meant to be.”

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.

  

Making the New You...You

 

JJ Hart

Making the new you… you probably know is a lot more than putting on a dress, wig and makeup.

Most of the time, it takes time to grow into what you always had thought yourself to be all along. A fully feminine person. By that, I don’t mean you have to go out and have major gender surgeries to feel complete although many transgender women do. In my case and at my advanced age of seventy-six, I have long since given up on gender surgeries because they don’t define me. But that is like HRT or gender affirming hormones, just because you can’t take them does not make you any less of a transfeminine person.

Going back to my original point, I think it is important that we take the time and opportunity to grow into our new authentic selves which have been a part of us forever. I know forever is a big word which people like me have run from our entire lives. It is especially frustrating when you discover the truth has been right in front of you forever. Instead, I took the long route or path of slowly discovering I could indeed make it to my dream of living life as a transgender woman. I had to go back and back fill my entire personality and outlook on life to do it.

In the book I am writing through another format for my daughter and other family members who have questions about my life. This week’s topic is what I would do differently if I had a chance to go back and do it again. It was an easy question to answer; I would certainly go back and transitioned earlier in life than I did. The problem I have with thinking this way is I am selfish and I would want certain aspects of my male life to live themselves out before I made the big gender jump across the border for good. For instance, I would hate to give up my stake in having my daughter who is one of the greatest gifts of my life. Plus, you can’t forget the world and its reaction to transfeminine people was much different back then and if I transitioned then I would consider surgeries to advance my standing in an often-unforgiving world. Chances are, I would, simply because I had so much longer to live.

It would have been interesting because back then, I had such little understanding of what I was really facing if I continued along my gender path. I was still laboring under the impression that a pretty face would be all I needed to get by as a trans woman. There was still so much to do to enable the authentic me to emerge into the world. What would I do when and if I needed to have the pretty face actually communicate in the world with other humans. I had come to the point where I could make her move more convincingly as a woman, now I had the biggest jump to make. I did the best I could. Even to the point of taking vocal lessons on the small ways ciswomen communicate with the world. The entire process was intense but worth it.

The only way I made it through the rebuilding process was to make it a completely selfish pursuit which I spent every spare moment thinking about. My male time in life shrunk to a bare minimum, or just enough time to get by and keep him moving on the essentials of life such as a job.

On the feminine side, I found I had help from understanding ciswomen that accepted me. I write about them often. Emphasizing their warmth and humor when at the same time were the best gender teachers I could have ever asked for. Together, they all helped the new me be me and move on from there.

From there meant I could begin to attend “meet up” groups in the Cincinnati area with my wife to be Liz. We went to writers’ groups as well as artisan/crafts groups which helped me to come farther out of my gender shell and just be the new me. If you live in an area which has groups such as meet ups, I highly recommend them as vehicles to experience new vistas of your gender experience. I always looked at them as a way to expand who I was in the world as I shed my old male past. Which led one step farther into a spiritual group which Liz was already a part of. I was invited in with open arms which gave me yet another new outlet to experience.

Making the new you, you will never be an easy experience depending on how much gender baggage you had to shed along the way. The longer I waited, the more I had to figure out what to keep and what I needed to get rid of. Whichever way you decide to go, just try to make the best possible decisions and keep moving towards your dream. Just think, your whole journey could be a labor of love.

 

 

Practice, Practice, Practice

 

Image from Mor Shani
on UnSplash. 

Sometimes I wonder if some people don’t take the time to understand how much practice I needed to do as I became my authentic self. I guess I could say I went through nearly a half century of work to become who I dreamed of being. It was far from easy.

Starting at the beginning, I never had much to work with as far as being an effeminate boy. Not to mention, I was born into a very male dominated family. Very early I learned I was going to have to work hard to not look like a clown in drag when I tried my best to look like a pretty girl in front of the family mirror. I always equated putting on makeup with painting the plastic model cars I had. Which I was always very bad at doing.  

It did not help when I earned my own meager amount of money working around the house or delivering newspapers in the neighborhood. Then I used the money to try to shop for makeup. I still remember to this day, the first time I was confronted by the sheer number of various makeup brands and variations to try. I finally selected several products out of desperation and hoped for the best as I was trying not to use my mom’s makeup anymore. Now, I don’t remember how successful I was, but I kept on trying to practice on my face until I got it right. Or so I thought. It wasn’t until years later that I visited a true professional makeup artist that I discovered I was not working on the true potential of my makeup to its maximum effectiveness. I was merely making the same basic mistakes over and over again.

I was fortunate to have the makeup artist who was able to explain to me in terms of understanding what he was doing, so I could repeat the process later. Practice for once made perfect. I was able to paint my model cars in a way that my friends admired them. But this time, I was actively admired at the crossdresser-transgender social mixer I was at, and this time when I tried to hang out with the “A” listers (as I called the beautiful, more advanced crowd of attendees) I was accepted. The best part of the whole evening was I then had a basis of where I needed to be as far as being an accomplished cross dresser but on the other hand, I was presented with a deeper set of questions about what I was going to do about my male life as I knew it.

What I decided I had to do was take my transfeminine show on the road so to speak and see if it would play at all in the public’s eye. Away from all the safety of mixers and gay or lesbian mixers. That is when the real practice set in. I needed to stop all of the hard-earned male muscle memory I had learned and start to learn the best that I could the graceful, fluid moves of a cisgender woman. Naturally, the whole process was difficult to do. Especially when I was switching back and forth between the two main binary genders almost daily. Constantly, I needed to remind myself of who and where I was so I would not end up at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Through it all, when I thought I was being successful in going down my transgender path, roadblocks always emerged which sent me back to my drawing board and started setting up more practice. Those were the days of taking every spare moment I had to sneak out of the house and begin to carve out a new life for myself as a trans woman. Once I made it successfully out of the gay venues I was going to and into a few of the big sports bars I was used to going to as a guy, I started to relax and enjoy my new exciting life even more.

No matter how much I try to gloss over this part of my life, the fact still remained I was essentially cheating on my wife when I went out as myself. Deception was never my strong suit, and I was never proud when I needed to lie about what I was doing. By this time, I had reached the point of no return but still was afraid to face it. I hid it by staying in the so-called practice mode I was in. If I could have just one more experience being a transfeminine person, it would make it so much easier when I decided to permanently put my old unwanted male self behind me for good.

Finally, I quit kidding myself, and I was doing so much than practicing over and over again to live a transgender life. I had always dreamed of doing it, so it was time to do something about it and live it. Who knows, maybe all that practice at living a feminine life saved me in the end as I finally learned to move and communicate my way around in a ciswoman’s world.

 

As the Clock Strikes Midnight

 

JJ Hart

New Year’s Eve is upon us again.

With it comes a flood of memories, some good, some not so good from both sides of my transgender border. First, let’s remember one of the ugly male experiences I had. This came from years ago when I had completed my tour of military duty and we were celebrating that as well as the New Years.

Being the huge drinker that I was, I ordered a keg of beer and a bottle of mezcal for a smallish party my second wife (to be) and I were having. Too much booze it seemed to stay socialized at all. To make a long story short, after a hard night of trying to drink the mezcal and the barrel of beer, when the clock struck zero and the ball in Times Square dropped, I did not kiss my future wife first, I committed the ultimate sin of kissing her more attractive sister. Needless to say, there was no way to hide what I did, and I was in deep trouble no matter what I had to say about it.  The damage was done, and I would have to live with it for years. In fact, I don’t think I ever lived it down.

I could blame the entire unfortunate episode on toxic masculinity setting in, but in fact, I was trying desperately to bury any thoughts that I had of being a woman on yet another New Year’s Eve. From then on, the yearly debacle which was a party on New Years went on by me in a blur. At the least I proved I could outdrink anyone else and at its best I learned the problems of acting like a fool and being careful to kiss the right person at the right time.

Nothing really changed until I met my current wife Liz approximately seven years ago when we went out on the town in downtown Cincinnati for a New Year’s Eve celebration. We began with having an Uber ride to our first destination, which was the Cincinnati Music Hall for a performance of the symphony orchestra. Even though I thought I was dressed appropriately for the occasion in my black sequined gown, I was still very terrified about going at all. It turned out that once again all the worrying in the world did not help me at all because nothing happened. I went, I blended and I conquered all those around me who may have questioned having a transgender woman in their midst. And probably, the best part was that the night was just beginning.

From the music hall, we took a terrifying taxi ride in a cab company called Einstein Taxi (really). He drove us at breakneck speed to a venue where we had dinner reservations down by the riverfront. Once we safely arrived, we did not have to wait long to be seated and once again I was met with no resistance to being me at all. The venue was also a micro-brewery which featured German food, so we ate well as we waited for the ball to drop on a New Year. This time, I made sure I was kissing the right woman. Liz of course, before it was time to head back home and no, we did not drive.

This marked the first time I can remember I did not have the thoughts of failure hanging over my head. I was not going to spend another year as my hated male self again. What a relief!

This New Year’s we have a huge college football game to watch as The Ohio State Buckeyes play Miami of Florida. Since the game does not start until seven thirty, we will have plenty of time to open a bottle of wine and toast the incoming 2026. Without dwelling on all of the problems the transgender community had heaped on us in 2025, maybe the upcoming year will be the one when the rest of the world says enough is enough and the upcoming mid term elections will sweep the evilness and the liars out. It is the country’s two hundred fiftieth anniversary. It is time to reclaim some of our past which made us great.

That is my hope for the New Year, as well as I hope you have a better year too, no matter what your goals and dreams might be. I will be spending it in the comfort of my own home with my favorite person who did more for my male to female gender transition than anyone else. It does not get any better for me and I don’t have to worry about who I am going to kiss.

Happy New Year’s!

You're so Vain

 

Image from Ava Sol
on UnSplash

Expressing yourself to the world as a transgender woman carries with it a certain amount of vanity.

Until you begin to relax in your new feminine world, I think you need to obsess over every detail of your exterior appearance. Since we all have such a vast amount of catching up to do to compete with other ciswomen in the world, details matter. Perhaps one of the first lessons you learn is how competitive the world is when you are a trans woman. Ciswomen are every bit as competitive as men but in certain areas not readily visible to the male gender.

For example, the major question comes to mind that do women dress for men or for each other. Sadly, we never had the input of mothers, sisters or girlfriends saying, “are you wearing that?” I know if I had that sort of input, it would have saved me a lot of embarrassment when I first began to go out into the public’s eye. It was a resounding yes for me when I learned who women really dress for…themselves. My problem was, my male self-kept getting in the way and had me dressing like a trashy teen girl. All poorly concealed in a testosterone poisoned male body. It was no wonder I was creating negative attention and getting laughed at. When all I was doing was trying to present myself well the best way I knew how.

After I began to learn and change my thought patterns concerning fashion and makeup, I began to have success in the world. So much so, that on occasion (when I was so vain and did everything right) I received a compliment or two from a cisgender woman. One thing was for sure; it takes a woman to know the work it takes to perfect a public image with makeup and fashion. Plus, I needed to be better than the average woman because I was working at the whole image after I started as a man.

It turned out, having to be better in the world worked well with my increasing source of transfeminine vanity. All I thought of was how much better I could look if I tried just the right foundation and mascara, as I haunted the many thrift stores, I went to looking for just the right piece of clothing to add to my wardrobe of feminine clothes. My personal newfound male to female femininization vanity was in full force as I was having fun. In reality, I saw nothing wrong with being vain in how I appeared as my authentic self, until I clashed with my second wife.

She rarely wore makeup or dresses at all and did not like the way I presented myself at all. On the rare occasions we went out together as women, I tried to tone down the amount of makeup I was wearing along with putting on my most conservative clothes. All because I wanted her approval, which I never got. If I wore any less makeup, I might as well say to hell with it and go out with her as my old male self. I was stuck between the rock and the hard place as far as my feminine vanity was concerned.

As I progressed with my makeup and fashion experience, I understood how much work I would have to put out to achieve the transgender goals I wanted. I knew I would never be able to transform my old male self into the prettiest girl in the room but on the other hand I could present well enough to get by. Everything that I was doing at that point just became a blur of change. Especially when I was approved for gender affirming hormones or HRT. As my skin softened, hair and breasts grew, it all was a welcome addition to all the work I had done all those years to just survive in the world. As I wrote yesterday, just not having to wear a wig anymore was a huge deal for me since I had no male pattern baldness to contend with. All of a sudden, I needed to contend with a new form of vanity when I went to beauty parlors to have my hair done just a certain way.

During all the years it took me to fully come out into the world as a trans woman. I learned the true meaning of competing with ciswomen in the appearance arena. Once I did. I needed to move ahead to the larger context of being allowed to exist in women only spaces by the alpha-female gatekeepers. In many ways, my second wife was an alpha female who never let me in, so I wonder what would have happened if she had lived long enough to see/know the person I am today. One thing is for sure; I am no longer the “pretty, pretty princess” she used to call me because I have paid my dues as a transgender woman.

All I know is I did go through my periods of extreme selfishness and vanity to arrive where I am today and I don’t know if there is any other way to go down the path, I ended up taking. Changing a gender is such an intense way to live, especially when you started with so much success as a male that it took me a massive effort to change. Not to say, all of the effort was not enjoyable but at least, it was interesting and challenging to see behind the gender curtain.

For many of us stuck in our own form of gender dysphoria, vanity is just one aspect of our larger need to survive.

 

 

 

Dark Side of the Gender Moon

 

Image from Maria Kovalets
on UnSplash.

Exploring the dark side of the gender moon for me meant a lot of work.

I equate it to the first times I could experience wearing my own hair in public without the help of a wig of any sort. The satisfying part was that I did not have to worry about the style and color of the wig I selected and how hot it was going to be on my head during the warm summer months when my makeup threatened to melt off of me as soon as I put it on. On the other hand, I needed to master the art of looking at the back of my head in a mirror to see how my new hair looked. I began to think of it as the dark side of the moon. No longer would I have the ease of styling a wig on a wig stand in the back so I knew it would look good on my head.  

Also, not wearing wigs anymore opened up a new wonderful world for me of visiting women’s beauty salons. I will forever remember the first time my daughter gifted me a visit to her upscale salon/spa. I was just coming out of my gender shell and the whole prospect of having my hair done terrified me, but I hitched up my big girl panties and said yes. Little did I know what was instore for me. Thanks to my daughter, first of all I needed to walk through seemingly an endless gauntlet of women in chairs in various stages of having their hair done. I gathered up all of my courage and tried to walk as femininely as I could until I met my new stylist.

The first of many decisions I needed to make was what color I wanted my new hair to be. As my daughter and stylist hovered over me with what seemed like an endless set of examples to choose from, I chose a red/blond streaked shade and then had to pick how long or short I wanted my new hairstyle to be. I had no idea choosing the dark side of my gender moon would be this difficult. Quickly though, I chose an off the shoulder look which maintained most of the hair I had grown. All too soon, my appointment was over and I was spun around in the chair to see the new me and I loved her! All the years of frustration of not being able to afford quality wigs or take care of them faded away and the best part was I had been blessed with visits to women’s spaces such as beauty salons and I walked away from the experience knowing why so many ciswomen value their beauty visits to the hair salon the way they do. The day following my first visit to a serious upscale salon, I thought I had been exposed to so much estrogen, I could skip my daily dosage.

I guess you could say, having my hair done was just the first of dark side of the moon gender moments in my transfeminine life. When you add in all my other journeys into women only spaces, there were plenty of other experiences to mention. Like the one I rarely recall when I was invited to go out and party with a few of the servers, I met at one of the regular sports bars I hung out at. Like the experiences of having my hair done, I had been out several times on girls’ nights out invitations in my past, but never like this one. These women were all much younger and prettier than I was so I wondered how I would fit in. The answer was that even though they were all nice to me, I did not really fit in at all. The other women were too busy getting hit on by guys so there was little time for other socializing. I quietly sipped my drinks and pleasantly left with the group when most of them did. More lessons learned.

As far as any major male to female feminization process goes, there are inherent risks to be taken when you go through the process of losing your male privileges and discovering your new feminine ones. I know in my case, I was starting to know I was successful as a transgender woman when I began to be treated in certain ways. Such as when men in particular began to question my intelligence as I talked to them. I thought to myself, did I treat women this way?  I was definitely on the dark side of my gender moon as I explored a new world.

As you begin to explore your new world, there is plenty to do such as gathering the courage to use the women’s rest room. Which is a natural need when you are out and about for any length of time as your new trans woman self. Not any of the rightwing paranoia being spewed by the bigots saying we are men using the women’s room.

Actually, exploring the dark side of your gender moon can be an exciting experience and one you have waited your whole life to take. Take it far past just styling your own hair and/or wig and expand it all the way to discovering a new world you wanted to live in so badly. Just try to enjoy the discoveries you make and any aha moments you live through. There is so much to be learned when you jump the binary gender border to live on the other side. All the work I put in was certainly worth it.