It Was Exhausting Waiting for the World

Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie"

 Over the years, it was exhausting for me waiting for the world to catch up to me.

As I always mention, I was born into the pre-internet and social media years when information about any gender issues was difficult to find. I am old enough to remember the sensationalized reports on television in Dayton, Ohio when the police staged raids on “homosexual” venues and I saw them arrest men dressed as women.

In addition to the negative publicity I was watching, I knew from my limited research from books at the library, that cross-dressing was considered to be a mental illness which I did not feel was true with me. I was not mentally ill, I just wanted to be a girl, and it was simple as that. All it did was put extra pressure on me to never be discovered by my family or my brother in the feminine clothes I had found.

I felt so all alone as a “transvestite” as we were known back in those days until my second wife and I purchased our first home computer. Which opened a whole new world to me including a way to contact others with gender issues such as me. Before that, all I had were the “Transvestia” Magazines I subscribed to and the “Tri-Ess” social mixers I drove hours to get to. I could not believe the world was suddenly at my finger tips when it came to discovering others outside of the “Tri-Ess” community.

All went well, until my second wife caught me in one of the old “AOL” chatrooms having a private conversation with another cross-dresser in a nearby city. I needed to learn quickly on how to cover my internet tracks better if I was ever going to stay out of trouble. The world was not catching up to me as I was catching up to it through the power of the internet. Then 1982 rolled around along with the classic gender movie of all time, “Tootsie” with Dustin Hoffman in the lead role as an actor who lands a soap opera job playing a woman with life changing experiences. For once, there was a film which did not portray a man in a dress as a criminal up to no good and I could not wait to see the film.

With the resultant good publicity which came from “Tootsie” I thought that maybe the puritanical gender ideas of the country would have changed and the public somehow would be more receptive to cross-dressers and transgender folk forever. Of course, I was being naive and over time, the public shifted back to the same old place it had always been…not accepting to people with gender issues like me.

Sadly, I had to go back to carving my own path as a novice transgender woman on my own without the publicity of a movie to help me, including the daytime talk shows which were the new television craze. It seemed to me that every week, one of them featured something about a cross-dresser on their show. In all fairness, some productions such as “Phil Donahoe” tried to present a fair view of our culture while the “Jerry Springers” of the tube just sought to sensationalize us. So, once again, the world had not caught up to me at all and did not help me when I needed to carve out my own life for a change in the world. I did not want another ciswoman thinking she was talking to a future “Jerry Springer” person, and I was real and down to earth. I was just trying to live a normal down-to-earth life like she was.

By this time, I had given up on the world ever catching up with the complex lives that transgender women and transgender men lead. It is why unless you are a very open person and secure in your world, you will never understand where we are coming from. That is fine, you do not have to understand, just do not try to stand in our way as we try to live.

Now I worry that all the fragile transgender rights we had gained under recent presidential administrations in Washington will be erased to an extent it will take decades to ever get them back. Then, I will have lived long enough to go from the “Tootsie” era of understanding to the “Orange Clown’s” world of rejection of our right to even exist. An experience I never wanted to have, and it is even worse here in my native Ohio where the state recently revoked their gender change requirements for driver licenses. So as they used to say back in the day on Top 40 radio stations the hits just keep on a coming.

Every once in a while, I hear rumblings from the regime in Washington trying to do away with my gender care through the Veterans Administration. So far (knock on wood) I have been part of the program for so long, and it is tied to my depression issues I have flown beneath the radar, and I hope others can too.

As a tribe, transgender folk have always existed through time, and if you are just realizing your potential as a trans person, welcome to a scary yet exciting world where you can be yourself. At least you can fall back on the resources you can find on the internet to help you and bring a little light into your dark closet you have been in for so long. Just remember not to let the brightness of your new day blind you to your new reality.

In the meantime, the world has caught up to you in your own way. Enjoy it because you have endured so much to get here.

Thanks so much for joining me in my lifetime of gender trials and tribulations! I set out to help anyone I could, and I hope that is you! All comments are welcome.