Procrastination

From the archives.
JJ Hart

I am well versed in most areas of procrastination. 

After all, I have spent most of my long life procrastinating as a transgender woman. Recently, I received the inevitable question of why I waited so long in my life to finally tackle my gender issues and transition. Even my daughter who has displayed the ultimate in acceptance in my transition over the years (and has a transgender child) shyly questioned me one day about if I had always known I was trans. With very little thought, I answered I had always known but I did not tell her how long I procrastinated doing anything about it.

One of my excuses has been times change over the years and the late fifties and early to mid sixties were dark times for anyone with gender issues. In fact, I remember the stories I saw about the police rounding up any transvestite or gay men in paddy wagons and taken to jail in the pre-Stonewall revolutions in New York City. So, when I included a very non accepting family life, the period of time was not a good time for me to outwardly explore any gender issues. 

Another excuse I had for procrastinating my coming out and living as my authentic self for so long was I lived in the pre-internet dark ages. In fact, my wife Liz and I went shopping for a new computer for her. Long story short, I was intimidated and totally lost in the whole process, I faded into the background. Liz needed a specific type of computer for her art business and had researched the whole computer situation. The only thing I could do was later on compare her research to mine when it came to me even considering I was transgender. Plus I was pleased when the clerk, checking Liz out referred to me as "she".

As times changed and more and more information concerning gender issues became available, I changed too. But not to the point I was ready to accept the fact I wanted to do more than just look like a woman, a part of me was screaming I was a woman. Now I know some would argue there is no way I will ever be a woman and I argue back my mind tells me I am even though in between my legs tells me I am not. Even though I could not experience periods or being pregnant, I went through so many things cis woman could never conceive of doing. Even so, I still went against my inner feelings and procrastinated again and again that I was indeed transgender. 

Deep down, I knew the truth but kept putting off the fact I was trans and letting the pressure build on myself. Finally when I went out into the world, I knew I wasn't trying to fool anyone. I was just being myself. When I couldn't lie to myself any longer, on a magical evening I will never forget I faced an internal mirror and decided who was looking back at me. No longer was I am a victim of the world and I was done procrastinating. From that point forward, I decided to go all the way and move forward to explore my full potential as a transgender woman. Major moves were ahead and exciting yet terrifying such as the major impact of adding gender affirming hormones to my system. 

It wasn't until I was truthful to myself and decided to follow a feminine path which I should have followed years ago did I become happier than I ever thought possible. My mental health improved and I got off almost all of the alcohol I was so fond of. Procrastination was behind me and just do it became my theme. 

The Ultimate Gender Grab

Image from the author, 
JJ Hart.

In many ways, this is an extension of yesterday's post which partially examined my transition from my male self into a feminine world. 

Along the way, there needed to be an ultimate gender grab to be successful. Very early on, the desire to view my image in the mirror was the fun part. I struggled to dream high and stay grounded with my gender desires which always threatened to change my life for the worse if anyone discovered my secret life in dresses and hose. I found I needed to reach out quickly and grab on any small amount of unattended time to cross dress away from my male self into my authentic transgender self. 

Sadly, my male self and society kept trying to grab my gender reality away from me. Some of it was my fault early on with how I presented myself in public. I found any edge I gave the public to "discover" me often led to a bad reaction. Serious side effects included my fragile novice transgender confidence being shattered. When it all happened, it took me weeks or even months to try again to grab my true gender back from the world. 

At that point, all the pushing and grabbing became almost too much to bear and I resorted to therapy to shore up my frail mental health. Plus, I fell back on a high level of alcohol abuse. When I went out to venues to see if I could make it as a woman, invariably I appreciated the false sense of bravery the alcohol gave me. The only positive came when I discovered other women friends in the venues I went to and they helped me to make a giant feminine gender grab which helped me towards my dream. All of a sudden, actually living as a transgender woman became a reality. The need for alcohol faded away.

The grab became so close, my male self panicked and did his best to hang on to all the work he had put into my old life. My feminine self came to the rescue and grabbed back her share of my life and ultimately won the war, even though she had lost all those battles over the years. Amazingly, all the battle scars she had sustained were easy to heal. She was saying, she had been there and done it as a subservient second fiddle to my male self and had enough of the lies. She thrived under the new life she had inherited and grabbed back all of the gender privileges she had only dreamed of. Better yet, she didn't care what the public thought of her and her confidence soared. 

It's no secret to anyone how the final gender grab would end up with me. My trans woman over achieved to an extent I never thought possible. When I was able to set back and trust her to run the show, the future was secure.   

 

Tears of Joy

Image by Anthony Tran'
on UnSplash.

Until I began gender affirming hormones  in my life I never cried as a man. 

Even more foreign to me was the concept I could actually cry three different ways. Of course I cried out of sadness but did not expect the tears I shed when I was emotional and even more so, the most unexpected tears I shed when I was happy. 

It took the layers of change  which began with the HRT femininizing hormones I was taking to enable me to, for the first time cry at all. It happened as I waited for a light summer time thunderstorm to roll in as I sat and waited on my side porch. When I sensed the first soft rolls of thunder, very unexpectedly I began to cry. At first, I tried to hold my emotions in as I was taught to do as a man. Then I realized I did not have to follow those old gender restrictive footsteps any longer and let the tears flow. Even though I did not cry for long, it seemed I cried forever to makeup for all the years of gender repression I had put myself through. 

Little did I know, my experience with tears was just beginning. The more the hormonal changes increased, the less control I had over my emotions. The total range of new feelings I was experiencing was amazing and I found crying out of joy was the most amazing experience I could have. I was even crying when my favorite athletes excelled on television. And had to put up with the good natured barbs of my wife Liz, who seemingly knew I was crying tears of joy before I did. Of course, she had such a long head start on me in the feminine hormone department being born female, she knew what was coming. The standing joke in our house is when did I change my Estradiol patches when I begin to cry.

How different my life would have been if I could have shown any emotions when I was a man. I was even stoic and tear free when my parents passed away. When my wife passed so suddenly, I did not have the chance to grieve or shed a tear with her either and the only time I have cried is recently when she came to me in a dream.

Through it all, the HRT hormones along with being able to express my emotions just re-enforced my opinion women lead a much more layered experience than men. Being able to cry over sadness, joy or even anger led me to believe I was on the right track in life as I sought out the way to living as my authentic transgender self. I sought out the way to be more of a woman and I found it in so many ways. Then again, I was fortunate in that I was healthy enough to be approved to begin the hormonal therapy at all when others aren't. 

Shedding tears of joy was just a portion of the emotional release I felt when I transitioned. Outside of other changes such as resetting my body's thermostat and refining my sense of smell, most of the other dramatic changes were external in nature. 

Sadly, I had no one to talk about many of my changes with as my women friends were fond of telling me welcome to their world when I brought up my feelings and I was discouraged about talking at all of my previous life.  It was not till my wife Liz came along did I finally feel secure enough to express my total feelings. It was still difficult shedding all those years of male life to finally allow me to share my true transgender self to the world. Tears and all.    

 

Just be Yourself

 

Image from Cory
on UnSplash

When you are a transgender woman or trans man, finding yourself can be a daunting task. 

Are you a boy or a girl is bad enough when you have to think about it but is even worse when you need to live your gender desires. Just being yourself becomes extra difficult when you are applying it to real life when you leave the mirror and take on the world. We all know that sometimes the world can be a very unforgiving place. Human beings are sharks and will sniff out the slightest hint of blood in the water. A bad place to be in when you are a novice transgender woman or cross dresser who is trying to make it as your authentic self and you are very insecure. 

At this point, many trans folk resort to fairly drastic measures to attempt to present well as the gender they are attempting to be. Fashion mistakes are made, just to name a few potential problems faced. It is difficult with no previous training or input from peers to catch up with the world and not appear as a clown. I do not want to remember how many thrift store items I returned because they did not fit me or flatter my male body style. For the longest time, I did not think I was ever going to find appropriate clothes I could be myself in. Not to mention the hair and makeup I was struggling with. Somehow I managed to fight through my inner gender biases and come up with fashion choices which the public could life with. When I did, I started to explore different venues such as community festivals and outdoor concerts to see if I could be myself.

Even though I was successful, I still fought internally my desire to be feminine. It took me decades to understand I was a woman cross dressing as a man and not the opposite which caused me such inner turmoil. 

Another problem I had when I was transitioning genders was staying in the present. When I was out and about as a novice femininized person, I was so busy being worried about every little thing, I could not enjoy being me. It took me years to actually accept the gender euphoria I felt when I had succeeded in presenting as an attractive woman in public. To battle my instincts, I did events which were more lengthy so I needed to live in the present longer. An example was the Joe Cocker outdoor concert I took myself to, just to see if I could and the NFL Monday night football game a lesbian friend took me to. There were no easy escapes to these events so I had to put my fear aside and try to be myself.

I am not a quick learner and my male self battled me for control of my life for a half a century before I finally gave in to my gender truth. When I did, my inner woman took charge for good and I was finally able to be myself. I could live in the present and not wait for the next time I could run and put on my feminine clothes and feel good about myself. I was wearing the clothes all the time and if or when I felt my old gender dysphoria creep in, I could solve the issue before it became too major.

It is easy to say all of us deserve the chance to be ourselves but it is extra important for a transgender person. Because, first we need to discover who our true inner person really is. Once you do, just being yourself is a much reachable goal to have.

Gender Anxieties or Paradise

Image from Cacique 
Nacimento on'
UnSplash

During my gender transition, all the way to today, I have experienced my share of anxieties.

Early examples revolved basically around the way I looked when I was cross dressed in my very limited feminine wardrobe. I kept telling myself I was OK when I with my cross dressing and I was for a couple of days before my gender anxiety returned. Making me difficult to live with. Paradise was fleeting and hard to find. 

Much later on in life, when I began to try out the public's perception of me, the whole process was anxiety ridden. When I used to shop till I dropped in clothing stores, my feminine life was easy because everyone was just interested in selling me something. Or I was in thrift stores where the clerks barely looked at me at all. Maybe because they were used to waiting on cross dressers? Very soon I came away with feeling no anxiety at all when I shopped so I felt I needed to challenge myself further. I needed to see if it would ever be possible to live my dream of being a full-time transgender woman. It was close to this time also when I began to seriously challenge the world as a woman at various Halloween parties I went to. Most of them happened when I was married to my first wife who knew I was a crossdresser  when I married her, so there were no surprises when she saw the "costume" I settled on. 

Even at Halloween, I experienced growth with my gender issues. When I dressed trashy, early on, I was treated the same way but when I decided to see if I could present as a business woman at the party, I was treated with more respect and even surprise at my true gender. Little did I know at the time when I dressed as a woman, I was presenting as my true gender. Very quickly I learned, Halloween was never enough and I needed to express my authentic self as a woman more than once a year. When I did, I began to do more of the household grocery shopping as a novice transgender woman as well as haunting the antique malls and bookstores for the perfect gift for my wife. Anything to take me out of my male comfort zone. When I was successful I was in paradise and when I failed, of course the opposite occurred and  I was sent back to my gender drawing board to re-think my plans. Could I ever make it to my dream the way I was heading. 

Spoiler alert, I could and did make it. Somehow and through the help of therapy I was able to work my way through a large amount of my gender anxiety. My therapist helped me to realize there was absolutely nothing wrong with my transgender desires. Which was as close as she could come to telling me I should proceed with my dreams. Paradise was reachable if I wanted to pursue it farther and I had already accomplished most of the hard work. I had established myself a foothold in the world as a transgender woman and it felt so good and natural, so what was I waiting for.

The answer to what was I waiting for was the outside chance my male self would finally get on board with my decision. He didn't and hung on to the bitter end. In fact he tried to ruin my transition all the way to when I was medically approved to begin gender affirming hormones or HRT. What happened was, the HRT changes were so dramatic, even my male self needed to finally give up and go away. He finally did, leaving most all of my gender anxiety behind and replacing it with a lifetime of feeling freedom such as I had never felt before. 

I had paid my dues and it was time to move on.

Mental versus Physical

Archive Image
Ohio River in
background.

Is presenting as a woman when you are born male more of a mental or a physical effort?

I think, in my case, I started out with a more physical experience and then moved on to a more mental one. Possibly, it is because it took me so long to grasp the idea I was more of a transgender person in the making and not a cross dresser. I have nothing against cross dressing but it just was not for me. I wanted to go past just looking feminine to being feminine. Sadly, because of the lack of information and other excuses, it took me decades to understand myself. During those times I tried anything I could to resolve my gender pain I was feeling. 

What I did not understand was the amount of pain I was feeling was due to the transition from being a physical appearing woman to a mental operating one. Walking the walk and talking the talk with the public as a novice transgender woman certainly took a toll on me mentally. Finally I was coming closer and closer to solving all the public gender issues I was feeling. Walking and moving as a woman started to feel more natural but communicating with the world as a trans woman was much more problematic. I was very self conscious about the tone of my voice among other things. 

Another concept I did not consider was for the longest time I tried to fool the public into thinking I was a cis-woman. Instead of just resulting to being my natural feminine self. When the public interacted with the real physical person who was me, women in particular were intrigued with me and wanted to know what I was doing in their world. When they learned, I was not up to no good, the response was for  the most part positive. At that point, the mental aspect had to kick in with being transgender. I needed to work on what I was going to do with my old unwanted male self and decide what sort of a life I was going to build for an exciting future.

How I appeared to the world as my physical feminine self was still important and I am not saying it still is not. It just that is much of my appearance became easier to approach because I was all of a sudden I was just dressing to blend in with the rest of the feminine population. An example was this morning when I did not have to put on a fresh face of makeup and a dress to make the short trip to the street curb to pick up the trash cans and bring them back to the house. I could do what the neighbor lady does and just pull her hair back, throw on a pair of jeans and get the cans. This is an extreme example I know but a realistic one when the mental part of being transgender meets the physical part. 

When the two aspects did come together, my life improved dramatically also. There was less stress on my mental health primarily when my feminine inner self took over. It was as if she was saying what took so long. The main reason I took so long to transition was I ran from the gender truth I was feeling for all those years. I should have realized I was born to be a girl/woman long before I did. I did not and paid the price.

I also do not feel good about convincing people like my first two wives to come along through my turmoil. I convinced them I was just a casual cross dresser at the beginning and I was trying not to go further into a transgender world. It was unfair to all of us, Since  I was the driving force in both relationships, it was up to me to do better. Instead, I decided to take the lonely gender path for most of my life. Until I could put the mental and physical aspects of being a transgender woman together and discovered I could settle in and live a good life.      

Legacy?

Messy Office, Messy Mind?

As I see it, leaving a legacy is mostly a male topic.

Little did I know, being a transgender woman was probably the only legacy I could leave with my only child (daughter) and my three grand-kids. As it turned out, I did not have much else to offer. Especially not the usual male attributes such as wealth, possessions etc. A prime example was my Dad who was a self made man. Building his own house and rising to the position of bank president, mainly with just a high school education. 

Along the way, I was surprised to learn one of my grand-kids is transgender, so all of a sudden I became a role model. A role I never thought I would have during all the years of struggle I went through as I transitioned from my old unwanted male life. It turned out in many ways, I proved to my grand-kids anything was possible if they wanted it bad enough. And I was fortunate in that my daughter accepted me the way she did and wanted to share my new self with the kids. So I could not run away and hide. 

I was so successful, I made it to heights I never asked for or ever thought I could achieve. Without a doubt the biggest one when two years ago I received my first Mother's Day card and gift. The card brought me to tears because it was something I never asked for. It meant to me I made it to the pinnacle of my gender transgender transition. 

Adding to my legacy is a year long project my daughter gifted me this Mother's Day from a company who takes questions about me from the family for the duration and then combines them all into a book. When it is completed, I will have had the chance to write about myself and maybe equally as important, is the fact the kids will have the chance to learn about their great grandparents who they did not know anything about. It is important for me to be some sort of a bridge from the "Greatest Generation" my parents were part of to the kids of today. The entire gift is quite the chance to explain my legacy to my daughter and grand-kids. Since I have a degree in history from college, the entire process is important to me.

Legacy was something I had given up on when I left my male life behind. I thought no one would care. When it turned out they did, I was impressed and needed to change my attitude completely. In a way, all of a sudden having family care about my life made me proud of my gender accomplishments.  I indeed would have a legacy as a transgender woman past just someone who changed their name in the family bibles. 

Years ago, a friend of mine did a deep dive family tree research on my families, mother and father and found we had a revolutionary war relative. Perhaps now in the future, after I am gone, some other person with gender issues will read my story and understand they are not the first, not alone and can be successful living the life they want to live. 

  

Transgender Confidence

From the Archives, banquet image.
My wife Liz on left.

One of the most important accessories we can chase as a transgender woman or trans man is confidence. Especially when success is never guaranteed. 

Finding confidence is often very difficult when you are crossing the gender border. You can succeed in the public's eye for awhile, only to crash and burn in a moment of weakness.  It turned out there were so many points to consider when you are transitioning. It's always one thing to appear as a woman and another to walk and talk as one. If you are familiar with the term "muscle memory", very simply means keep doing something until you get it right and it describes perfectly the process of entering the sacred spaces of a gender you only dreamed of. In my case, there were plenty of girl's nights out and rest room visits to provide me the confidence to keep moving forward and challenging myself. Another problem of sorts I had was experiencing too much gender euphoria. Many times, I forgot where I was and resorted back to my old male self without thinking of it. 

When I did fall back into my old male ways, I often thought the whole gender transition process I was in was never going to make it. Had I spent too many years working hard to make it in a male world to ever change. Another problem I had was I was still living part time as a man so everytime I had mastered any aspect of being feminine, I lost most of it when I went back to being a man. It was similar to a child in school who forgets most anything they learned during a summer break. It was very frustrating for me to keep starting from the beginning again and again which was shattering my confidence.

Finally I tipped the balance in my gender world where I was living more feminine than masculine. I could make real progress in what I really wanted to do which was follow my dream to live as a fulltime transgender woman.  Most importantly, I was feeling natural when I did it and the increased confidence followed. When I was invited into the so-called sacred women only spaces, I discovered why they were or weren't sacred at all. First of all, I knew women didn't always keep their restroom as pristine as men thought they did from all my years running restaurants/bars but, on the other hand was totally unprepared to have to look other women in the eye and speak when I was in the women's room. For the most part I was very successful except for the notable occasion when I had the police called on me. Naturally, my confidence was shattered for quite a while after that. On the other hand, there was no way I was going to go back to using the men's room when I was dressed as my authentic self.

When someone asks me how I developed the confidence to progress in my gender transition, the easiest thing I can say is, I had a single minded desire to keep trying until I made it. Sure the gender affirming hormones helped but I needed to go through therapy to earn them from the Veteran's Administration health care system. Which proved to be a positive experience for me. As I pointed out in yesterday's post, I kept working towards my dream until destiny showed me the way to success. Plus, I can never forget to point out, I had a small group of women around me who showed me the way. Even to the point of believing in me when I was faltering. They refused to believe I ever was the old male person I was desperately trying to leave behind. I guess you could say I had a tremendous peer group. 

It always took quite the effort to put him behind me and tears were shed along the way. To be on this journey you sometimes have to be selfish and one sided to make it but that is just the nature of the beast. When you do arrive, sometimes you are fortunate enough to forget the selfish days and pay your life's knowledge forward. 

It takes all the confidence you can muster to correct a gender situation you never asked for into a positive. With a little, or lot of willpower you can make it to your dream.   

Trans Girl Destiny

 

Image from
the JJ Hart
Archives.

When I was given the keys to a transgender existence, on occasion I have to pause and consider how I have arrived here.

Unlocking all the mysteries of crossing the gender border proved to be more than I could deal with on occasion but I kept on moving forward. Trying to find out what it meant to achieve my dream of living as a transgender woman. Finally I learned to relax and let destiny take it's course. Before I could even begin to relax, I needed to learn the new rules of the road.

The rules of being a woman were not easy to learn before I was accepted for admittance into the club. I discovered along the way there were more female privilege's other than having doors opened for me by men. One of the biggest ones was being allowed to communicate with other women on a mostly non confrontational-passive aggressive platform. Along the way, the lessons learned were brutal and I ended up walking away with many scratches or claw marks on my back. Primarily I found not to even try to look at or get close to a woman's man. It frustrated me because the man always made the first move and I had no real interest at all but none of it mattered to the other woman. Another mystery solved as I worked my way towards my transgender destiny. 

During the years in between my final solution to my gender issues, I was held back by many circumstances beyond my immediate control. I felt pressure to maintain my marriage of twenty five years and a job I was rapidly progressing in. To maintain my life, I tried to balance my existence between the two primary binary genders which only provided temporary relief and in some cases, even made it worse. When I became more successful in living as a trans woman, I felt so good and natural, I just wanted more and more. Which included no going back to my old male life which ironically I worked so hard to maintain. Destiny was trying to tell me eventually I would have to give it all up and start over but I could not find the courage to do it.

As I waited and waited for my chance to transition, I came to the point of no return. Magically, at the age of sixty destiny really came into play. First of all, I was to the point when I considered gender affirming hormones as the next huge move I could make concerning my chance to live as a full-time transgender woman. As I was considering the move, the Veteran's Administration suddenly announced they would now cover HRT as part of their health care for veterans. Which I happened to be a part of. The only hold up was I needed to see a therapist at the VA for an approval. I still remember how nervous I was the first time I went to see my therapist and after a second visit, I had my approval for my life changing hormones. 

It was around this time too, my second wife had passed away. Leaving me very much on my own to consider any gender decisions. My choice as clear and impactful as destiny was showing me the way forward and leave my ill-fated dual gender life behind and live as a transgender woman. When I did, I found I had other major decisions to make such as the possibility of undergoing major gender realignment surgeries. I decided against it for several reasons such as I did not have any insurance to cover it and the VA in those days was not covering SRS at all. Similar to Medicare covering breast augmentation or facial femininization surgeries. I am not sure how much any of those entities support those surgeries to this day, so don't quote me on it. The only aspect I decided on was my gender was between my ears and not my legs and those closest to me viewed me as a woman. So I had achieved my goal.

I can't forget the final part of my transition life which destiny played an important role was the financial part. Since age wise I was so close to being able to retire early on social security, I could sell my vintage items on the side and make enough to go ahead and retire. Which meant I would not have to worry about doing a gender transition when I was working. 

So, I had secured my big three aspects of my transition so I had no real reason not to pursue my transgender dreams. Destiny worked for me.

Damn it is Complicated

 

Image from Amanda Dalbjorn
on UnSplash

Crossing the gender border is never easy for the average human being. 

To begin with, you need to be very serious concerning your gender passion. You need to trust your instincts, close your eyes and leap. I took over fifty years before I could come to the point of being able to trust myself. After all, I had spent all of the time as a very serious cross dresser exploring the world to see if I could survive as a transgender woman. Some times I was good about making plans, sometimes I was not. As I took the good with the bad. Ultimately, taking the good with the bad, just walking a path I knew very little about. 

As I walked my new path, there were several points of reference along the way. Such as the mixers I was attending in nearby Columbus, Ohio. Many were big and more than a couple were very small and intimate. Regardless I learned from both and how internally complicated they were. All layers under the so called transgender umbrella attended one or the other. Everyone from seasoned transsexuals to very novice cross dressers often out for the first time in their lives away from the mirror. Through it all, I was trying just to find my way to discovering who I really was. All I did finally learn was I did not fit the mold of a stereotypical transsexual or a weekend cross dresser. I was somewhere in between. I found I was not everyone's cup of tea, I enjoyed being my own. 

Examples were everywhere, including the guys who cross dressed for certain mixers but not for others all the way to the impossibly feminine transgender women who made their appearance. I was drawn to the feminized crowd but often I was left out because of my looks. I had a long way to go with my appearance but I was trying hard. With the help of a professional makeup artist provided by the group one night, I learned the intricacies of applying makeup and could really help me because he explained everything to me. Thanks to his magic, I was able to move up in the eyes of the transgender or transsexual crowd. Even still, mainly because they shunned most of the rest of the average cross dressers, I stayed to myself. Except when the trans women went out to other gay venues after the regular mixers were over. When I did so, I was exposed to a whole new world of exposure in the world in my own transgender universe. 

As I did, my life became increasingly complicated. I needed to overcome inner clashes with my genders as well as trying to deal with the problems of dealing with my second wife who was against any idea I was transgender. The major problem, every bit of my self was telling me being feminine was the only way I could survive. All of my turmoil just led to more stress to my already fragile mental health. I ended up in therapy again, which did some good but were for the most part wasted because I refused to face the truth about myself. My authentic self was feminine and I needed to express it. The only thing therapy did was make my wife think somehow it was going to magically "cure" me or at the least, I was trying to help the situation. Which at the time was growing into a major problem between us.

When I first looked into the mirror as a kid so many years ago, little did I know how complicated my life would become as I grew into my gender issues. My gender path was so convoluted as I followed it, I often became lost. The only aspect which kept me going was the deep down knowledge I had been born to be a girl. Dealing with it was always the issue.

It's All in the Eyes

Sad Eyes
Image from
the Archives.

Over the years, my eyes have helped me out in many ways.

Of course there is the obvious reason such as the blessing of eyesight but then, life steps in- very importantly for a cross dresser or transgender woman trying her best to improve her makeup art. For me at least, the hardest part of conquering the mystery of makeup  involved making up my eyes. At the time, I equated it with applying paint to the plastic model  cars I was fond of building because I struggled with both. Ironically, at the age I was at, I am fairly sure my Mom would have did her best to forbid any use of makeup at all by the daughter she never knew she had. 

Still I persisted and grew more proficient with buying then applying my eye makeup, The availability of all the colors fascinated me. Along with the chance to match colors up with my limited fashion choices I was capable of finding. It was close as I could come to all the girls around me who I admired so much. 

Fast forwarding many years, my eyes continued to be a focal point in my makeup art. I had learned along the way women communicate through the eyes in many ways. Much more than men who rely on vocal cues. I knew as I transitioned into transgender woman, I was on the right path with my makeup techniques. All the years I put into my art was worth it.

Perhaps the most rewarding feedback I received from my eyes came from my wife Liz. For all the wrong reasons. We met on line when she responded to a post I listed as woman seeking woman. Keep in mind I immediately pointed out I was a transgender woman. Thankfully, none of my gender issue mattered to Liz and she said she was attracted to me because I had sad eyes. If the truth be known, during that part of my life, I did have sad eyes. Over the past two or three years before the picture, I had just gone through very dark portions of my life. Primarily due to death of my second wife and four of my closest friends, mainly to cancer. Along with the loss of my business, I had lost nearly all the self confidence I had ever had in myself. In fact, the only concrete thing I had to grasp onto was my identity as a trans woman. 

Regardless of my sad eyes, my girl self became my deepest passion. In many ways, just to get by, I needed to become a deeper researcher of women. Instead of becoming my father's son which I had chased for many years, I became my mother's daughter she never wanted, to my knowledge. The gender guilt I felt was only grief with no where to go. 

Led by my eyes when I communicated with other women, I found my way out of the darkness of life I was in and regained my confidence. Even though it was a different confidence than I had ever felt before. My confidence as a transgender woman was a hard earned quality which went all the way back to the days when I was struggling with makeup and shaving my legs when I was a kid. Living and learning was always an exciting experience. Even in the days when I was a dismal failure in the world. Somehow, deep down, I knew I was doing the right thing by pursuing a life as a trans woman. 

It was always in the eyes, I just had to learn how to use mine. They were such an important part of my life when it came to communicating with other women. Perhaps it is true when it is said your eyes are the window to the soul.

Bonding with Yourself

 

Club Diversity Image. Columbus, Ohio

As strange as it may seem, it took me many years for me to fully bond with myself as a transgender woman.

For years I wondered if I was a woman or a man. Everyday was like groundhog day when I woke up in the morning. Some mornings I felt more like a girl and others as a boy before the reality of my existence set in. No matter how gender fluid I felt that day, I needed to be ready to compete in my unwanted male world. I wish I could say the competition just made me stronger as a male but it never did. Most of the time, the competition just made me want to head home and cross dress as a girl. Plus, I was put into an even deeper frustration place when my brother was home and I didn't have any privacy to try on my feminine wardrobe. 

Bonding was difficult when I was not allowed into the feminine world at all and was destined not to until much later in life. In the meantime, I struggled from one gender struggle to another, All the time, hiding my authentic self from everyone in the world. I suffered so much, I needed all the help I could get to maintain my life as a man and still have any sense of stable mental health. Especially when I was diagnosed with having Bi-polar depression. If you are not familiar, I suffered from terrible highs and lows. When I was up I could do anything. Including transform myself into an attractive woman and when I was down, all I wanted to do was lay in bed and sleep and try to drown out my gender issues with alcohol. Finally I was diagnosed by a therapist and was prescribed medications to help me out.

As we all know, the medication has not yet been invented to relieve the pain and tension of having gender dysphoria. Even now I suffer from dysphoria when I wake up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror. After all these years, I have learned to take the good along with the bad and take the middle road. It has been a good coping mechanism for me. Along with those mechanisms, I learned other ways to structure my life so I could finally bond with my myself. When I did, I found I was a stronger human because I had the chance to experience life from both sides of the binary gender spectrum. Since it is the rare individual who can claim to be all male or all female in the gender spectrum, I was able to find my special place where I could exist in society. The question always was, was society ready for me or any other transgender woman or trans man.

I quickly discovered most of the world did not care if I was trans or not. They had lives to live and were busy doing it. On the rare occasions I did encounter a negative transphobe, my strong personal bonds gave me the confidence to survive. 

Again, bonding my unwanted male self with my stronger, more natural female self took me years to complete. Mainly because I did not have the courage to admit who I was to my true self. Once I did close the gap, my long awaited bond was complete and I could move on in life as a total person as a transgender woman but never forgetting the man who helped get me here. A topic for another blog post. 

Ditching Good with Better as a Trans Girl

 

Archive Image
from Witches Ball
Tom on Left.

Ditching good with better has always been a difficult obstacle in my life. 

I always blame my parents for my feelings on doing the best I could on anything I tried. Nothing I did was good enough. If I got B's they should have been A's was a prime example. Even though I was an above average student, I don't remember ever being told I was doing a good job. I think now, their influence carried on with me in every facet of my life, including when I was a novice cross dresser and budding transgender woman. 

It all started with my appearance as a girl. When I was younger and before I went through any testosterone poisoning at puberty, it was much easier to look like a girl. But just looking like a girl was never good enough, I wanted to be a girl and enjoy their life. Or at least as I perceived it to be. I guess my parents attitude was rubbing off on me. At the time, all I could really do to further my looks was to over achieve with my meager allowance and take on a rural newspaper route. Between the two, I could sneak out to the store and buy the occasional wardrobe item or makeup I could experiment with. I was doing my best to ditch my good with better as a trans girl during my early age. If I had given the same effort to everything else I tried during that time, at the least I could have received better grades and my parents would have been pleased. 

On the other hand, my parents in no way would have been pleased if they had known I had issues with my gender. I shudder to think what would have happen to me if they had discovered me dressed in my feminine wardrobe and makeup. At the least, I know I would have been sent to a therapist during a time when even being a cross dresser was considered a mental illness. I never wanted to even consider what the worst could be. Perhaps since we were not particularly religious, Christian conversion therapy would not have been in my future. The only thing I know for sure is, I would not have had any understanding at all. All along I did the best I could and was able to hide my cross dressing with the world. How I don't really know.

The older I became, good certainly did not become enough. A prime example would be the Halloween parties I went to when I was first testing the world  I started with just trying to be a sexy sleaze of a woman thinking I would receive some sort of a validation. Several parties later, I grew more bold and wanted to see if I could be mistaken for a real woman, so I wore my business attire and then waited for reactions. Overall I was received well with strangers who did not know me mistaking me for a woman who did not have a chance to dress up for the party. I was discovering better was always best when it came to how I presented as a transgender woman in the world, under the cover of Halloween or not. 

All of my experiences led me to establishing myself in a new feminine world. I needed to try very hard to do away with all my old values to do it. My whole world became a concentration of new friends and life. In my own way, I needed to be better than the world to succeed in chasing my dream of living full time as a transgender woman. Sure I needed to look the part but suddenly I needed to be the part which meant moving and communicating as a woman. 

Ditching good for better in my transgender world was one of the best moves I ever made. By the time I was medically cleared to begin taking gender affirming hormones or HRT, I was more than ready for the results. Almost instantly I knew I made the right decision.  Since my parents have long since passed away, there is no possible way for me to communicate to them they were right. For all the wrong reasons. Their resistance  to giving me any positive feedback early in life made it easier for me to find my own path in the world as a trans woman. A place where good was never enough for me.  

Buckle Up!

Image 
from the 
Jessie 
Hart
Archives

Recently, I have happened across several posts on my social media feeds from novice transgender women just beginning HRT or gender affirming hormones. 

In many ways, as I look back on my hormonal experiences, I am envious. Mainly because my experience was so exciting. Possibly because I was finally realizing my attempt to take a major step forward in my transgender transition. For years, I had dreamed of starting HRT, much to the chagrin of my second wife who was completely against it. She had always told me, she did not want to live with another woman and the hormones would take me dangerously close to doing it.

When I actually started down the HRT path, little did I know how right she would be. I was naïve and I thought my new journey would involve growing breasts and hair but never dreamed of all the other changes which would take place. My skin softened along with my facial angles which helped  my feminine presentation in the world. I could use much less makeup and do away with wearing wigs because I was fortunate I did not inherit any male pattern baldness.  

Before I knew it I really wanted it to happen, I was becoming very androgynous and had to do something. With my hair, breasts and skin alone, it was time to begin to think about the circumstances to what I was doing. Plus, I have not even mentioned all the extra benefits of going through the second major puberty in my life. When I did, I discovered so many new things about myself such as when my sense of smell suddenly improved and my body's thermostat went away. What happened was I was cold all the time and suddenly understood women were not making it up all the times when they said they were chilly.

Then there were the onset of emotions I went through when I started HRT. Previously in my male life I had become very insulated when dealing with my emotions. Sadly, I became so callous, I had a difficult time shedding a tear when my parents passed away. Suddenly, one night, when a late summer thunderstorm moved in, I sat alone on my side porch and started to cry for the loss of my old male self. It was such a powerful moment in my life, I will never forget it. 

Of course if you are just starting down your path to femininizing hormones, there will be many peaks and valleys or ups and downs. Similar to so many others, I questioned the gender path I was taking. Was it the correct one? So, I buckled up for the ride. I'm not sure now if I was ready for the first hot flashes I went through which hit me when I was out in public and I ended up wondering if the world had noticed I was getting ready to internally combust. Perhaps back in those days, the worst part of my gender journey was I had no one to share it with. I was just getting to know the small circle of women friends I started to hang out with on a regular basis and knew they would only say welcome to their world if I brought up anything such as hot flashes to them. 

After awhile, I came to the conclusion I had buckled up for one of the best roller coaster rides there were. The best part was, for the most part, I had no idea what was coming up next. When I was approved for larger dosages under the care of a doctor, changes continued to come at a rapid pace. Under medical care, I went from pills to patches which supposedly helped with the wear and tear on inner organs such as kidneys. Life was good as I adjusted to the new hormones and I felt as if my body was telling me I was a natural for gender affirming hormones all the time. 

The very few people who knew me pre-transition said it the best, I just seemed more relaxed and happy now as a transgender woman. I never said anything but I gave most of the credit for my new found joy to the hormones I was on. HRT had helped me to sync up my internal and external gender feelings. It would have been "TMI" or too much information for the average person to understand. 

I will always wonder how my deceased second wife would have reacted to me as a transgender woman. Would I ever have paid enough dues to move out of the pretty pretty princess mode she threw me in and ascend to the woman mode she was so afraid of. I would like to think at the least we still could have remained friends.  I will never know.

At the least, your journey will be different than mine in many ways and will include many twists and turns. Just try to enjoy the journey many others will never have the chance to take.

Much More than a Phase

 

Civil War Cemetery image
from the Jessie Hart Archives. 

When I was first experimenting with wearing woman's clothing, I worked long and hard to hide all my feminine wardrobe and makeup. 

Due to transportation and financial constraints I always had a difficult time adding to my very limited collection. Plus, I always wondered if my Mom ever really discovered her clothes and others I managed to "borrow" for my cross dressing trips to my mirror. If she did, she never confronted me about it. Perhaps she thought it all was a phase and I would grow out of it. Similar to the fallacy, being transgender is ever a choice, I learned my gender issues were much more than a phase.

Very early on, I discovered a lesson I should have relied on but kept on ignoring. The lesson was, I wanted to be a girl, not just look like one. The very beginning of the realization I was transgender as I envied everything girls around me did.  Which went far past their pretty clothes while I was stuck in my drab male clothes. All along I was stuck in a family which valued male superiority and I wanted to rebel but couldn't. I often wonder if I had been born into a more diverse family (if that was possible back in those days) I could have made my feelings known and thrived. Instead, I did the only male thing I knew how to do and internalized all my inner feelings. I even thought, if I ignored my gender issues long enough, they would turn out to be a phase and go away.

Of course my gender dysphoria never did go away and just grew worse as I began to understand the full depth of what I was facing. As I look back, Halloween parties were my first indication I could do more than living a shallow life in front of the mirror as a cross dresser. I learned the hard way, heels weren't so much fun when I first wore them on long walks all the way to how much fun I had experimenting with the clothes and learning from the parties as a whole. Another step towards showing me my phase was not going away, I was just growing into it.

Halloween parties proved to be false feedback in many ways. Most people who saw me were friends who thought Haha I was the clown dressing as a woman for a laugh. Even though I was going as far as shaving my legs. In my mind, my legs alone would do the trick and everyone would know I was much more than a once a year man putting on a dress. At least I wanted it to as I grew confident I could present more and more as a real woman at the party. When I had achieved my goal, I felt I was ready to pursue a future as a successful transgender woman. 

When I did, the work really started. Life was so much more challenging as I left my male phase in my past. I wonder now if my Mom ever thought my simple love of girls clothes was a phase, what would she think now. Outside of the one time I tried to come out to her as a transvestite and she rejected me, we never discussed it again before her death. I can't help but look back and regret how much life I may have lost if she would have ever accepted me. I on the other hand took the high road and honored her by using her first name as my new legal middle name.  

Normally, phases come and go but certainly none of it applies to being a cross dresser or transgender person. Once the public at large learns to accept we are not a phase, trans kids especially could benefit from more understanding when they are young. Parents and siblings could have a more serious outlook of what being trans is all about, helping the whole situation. Or, leave the phase out and help the person. 

Sink or Swim

Image from Trans Wellness Event. 
Jessie Hart Archives. 

Many times when I first entered the world as a new cross dresser or femininized male, I wondered if I was going to sink or swim.  

Leaving the mirror (who never lied to me) was difficult because the public didn't lie either and let me know if I blended in with other women or looked like a clown. Of course when I was stared at or laughed at I sank to depths of depression as I thought I was in too deep and would never make it to my transgender dreams. 

I discovered sometimes the hard way when I was out in the world, I could not turn back and needed to stick it out, even when the going got tough. It included the times that got so bad when I was laughed at. Then, something deep inside of me kept saying move on because times would get better. Similar to when I learned to swim at an early age, I gained confidence in the water and I began to swim onwards and learned women's fashion, hair and makeup which came closer to flattering me. 

Often my biggest problem was myself. My old male ego was telling me I needed to try to look a certain way when the opposite was true. I needed to blend in with other women in the venues I was going to which was especially important when I made it out of the gay venues I was going to and into the world I was used to as a man. Perhaps I was mistaken for a drag queen in the gay bars because I was dressing as one. Slowly but surely I started to be accepted as a transgender woman in the preferred venues I went out to and I began to swim with the big girls. By doing so I accepted the extra challenge of communicating with them. Far beyond just appearing as one of them.

As I always say, women lead a much more layered lives than men and here I was right in the middle of them trying to swim with the current. Which at times was difficult to do. I had so much to learn in a very short period of time. In order to not sink in the situation I was in  It took me tons of lonely soul searching to figure out if I was moving my life in the right direction and was losing all my white male privileges worth it. Of course you know I knew it was and I kept swimming towards my dream of living as a transgender woman. 

I was lucky when women along the way threw me life jackets to keep me afloat in my time of need. Their efforts just helped me to decide somehow I wanted to be more like them. If I survived my male to female gender transition, maybe then I could pay it forward and help other novice transgender women. Which is the primary reason I write. Most certainly I am biased but I think crossing the gender frontier is one of the most difficult tasks a human can undertake, so any assistance is good assistance Especially when we are swimming against the tide of society. 

Hopefully, if you are becoming tired or confused during your gender swim, I can throw you my version of a life jacket or boat. You can beat society's system and succeed if you are careful and keep trying. I sank so low once I tried severe self harm (suicide) to myself and was lucky I made it to the surface and survived. I bring it up simply as an example for those who think being transgender is some sort of a choice. It's what happens when trans women or men are round pegs being forced into square holes and never given the chance to sink or swim.

There are many ways to find your way to womanhood as a transgender woman, you just need to be patient until you find your path.

The Gender Waltz

Image from Clarisse Meyer
on UnSplash

Since the beginning of time, the two binary genders have done a special dance with each other. 

Being transgender, I have been fortunate to have seen and experienced dancing from both sides of the spectrum. Before I go any farther, I do need to say I am a terrible dancer. In fact, the only time I have tried to dance was when I was so intoxicated I could barely stand up. Sadly, there were recordings made of my dancing struggles.

Certainly, my struggles with dancing were with women . I still tried but since I was so shy, I had very few interactions with girls or women at all. No dancing for me outside of the lessons my Mom made me take. It made it worse as I was at the embarrassing age when many girls were taller than the boys. We learned such trendy dances way back then such as the Cha-Cha as I remember. The grand experiment failed and immediately, I tried to put the entire experience behind me.

Of course gender waltz's go way past just real live dances. Just one of the main ones is inter-gender communication. When the book came out called Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and appeared on the book stands, I wondered where was I from? It took me years to figure it out. I was from neither. Regardless, it did not take a genius to figure out there are very big differences in the genders other than biological. It is the reason, men and women have such a difficult time understanding each other.

Interestingly, the differences between  the genders extend to what friends we choose. In my case, since I grew up with only other males in my neighborhood, early on all my friends were boys. However, as I grew older, the vast majority of my friends were with women and I had very few close male friends at all. I guess deep down, I was getting ready for my future. 

Recently, I read a post from another transgender woman how she vastly approved having men friends over women. Why? Because she didn't  really like the interaction with other women including the body language on how they crossed their legs  all the way down to how they were sitting. In addition, she didn't enjoy the feminine give and take very much. She much more preferred to talk to men. In my case, I waltzed in the opposite direction. I didn't like the reaction I was receiving from men when I talked to them as a transgender woman. So I resorted back to when I was a guy and was able to communicate the best I could with the women around me. It was all I could do to survive in a new gender world. 

None of my new dance was easy to do. Even though it felt more natural to me. With women, especially, I needed to try to judge what they were really trying to say to me, often in a round about way. Was a compliment really a compliment or merely an opening to try to find out something else about me. I learned the hard way how to dance in a new world not as a cross dresser but as a novice transgender woman. Who knows, maybe other women sensed my innocent approach and it helped me to be accepted. Until the newness of meeting a transgender woman wore off and life resumed. 

Outside of a few exceptions, I rarely had many interactions with men I sought out and was accepted into a world of women. I enjoyed my new dance so much and wanted it to go on forever and so far, without a few exceptions, it has. Maybe I was just trying too hard to dance the wrong way after all. 

  

 

There is Always a Transition

 

Archive
image
Jessie Hart

In an expansion of yesterday's post, today, I am beginning a post on the extra transitions we go through in life. Many are relatable to everyday life, some are not. Everyone goes through changes or transitions. For example when and if they ever become parents.

My biggest transition came when I crossed the gender frontier from viewing myself as a cross dresser I could possibly live without to a fulltime life as a transgender woman. My transition also came along when I was negotiating raising a daughter, building my career and attempting to outrun myself. Life became very busy as I struggled to find myself. I resorted to therapy to try to balance my mental health. Along the therapy path, I was diagnosed with a Bipolar depression disorder to add on to my gender dysphoria which was dominating my life. Through medication I take to this day, I am able to control my depression and my gender dysphoria became much better when I finally decided to fully leave my gender closet. 

As I lived on, maybe I should have taken up the motto, "Later is Greater" as I took my time exploring the possibilities of living a totally femininized life. My excuse is I wanted to make sure I had it all right before I risked it all and left my male self behind. Eventually, I learned from all the trips I was making out the door of our house, doing the best I could to blend into the world as a woman, transgender or not. Then, another transition was facing me head on. It was the great leap from being an experimenter to being a doer or practitioner of being feminine. I took years of watching and learning to understand what my second wife was telling me when she said I didn't know anything about being a woman. Not only was she right, she did did her best to hold me back from learning what she was talking about. There was no way she wanted to show me much about what truly being a woman was all about. Instead, she persisted in calling me the "Pretty, pretty princess."

Her failure to help me just pushed me farther and farther towards my next transition which was a huge one. The more I settled on a feminine look and style I liked, people I previously didn't know began to recognize me and I was forced to begin to build a whole new life as a trans woman. Primarily it meant I needed to communicate with the world with tools which were totally foreign to me. Trying my best to develop a softer feminine sounding tone was a real challenge along with adjusting to a society of women where passive aggressive behavior was the rule. There were too many times I suffered when I didn't perceive exactly where the attack on me was coming from. Instead of usual male frontal attack I was used to, I needed to start watching my back. Communication with the world was a huge part of my next gender transition. 

After I thought I had the communication and appearance transitions down, seemingly there was another challenge awaiting me at every turn. Who knew it could be so difficult to cross the gender divide? I was often frustrated when the smallest details would trip me up, not to mention the big ones such as the ill advised use of water balloons as breast forms. The balloons worked well enough until one exploded on me one night in a venue I often went to. Fortunately, I was on my way to the woman's rest room when it happened and it was empty. I was able to clean up,  quietly finish my drink and leave with no one noticing me, I was wearing a loose fitting top so no one saw or mentioned the one breasted wet woman on her way out of the venue. Needless to say, my next investment was silicone breast forms. 

As I near my seventy fifth birthday. transitions are harder to come by yet more meaningful These days, I mostly just present as old. Plus, my ultimate paranoia of having to go to assisted living and having my gender attacked looms large. As I always say, I need to do my best not to dwell on the future and live in the present. 

None of us control the final transition, no matter how much money or power we have. It is up to any higher power you believe in to make it happen..   

Going Through the Motions

Image from Dibakatur Roy 
on UnSplash.

Looking back at my fifty plus years of life as a cross dresser, I wonder when and how I crossed the gender barrier into being a transgender woman.

Also, how many years did I spend just going through the motion to arrive at my destination. I started with going through what I call now my mirror worship period. During this time, I couldn't wait for any opportunity I had to slip away from my boring, unwanted male life to slip into what feminine fashion and makeup I could find which fit me. Invariably, the mirror would give me positive feedback until I could come back for more. 

I am guessing now but I think approximately twenty years or so went by before I was brave enough to leave the mirror behind and see what if anything the world had to offer a novice cross dresser. On the other hand,  I know it took me longer than the two decades to figure out my truth. I was just going through the motions as a cross dresser and my gender issues ran much more deeper than just wanting to put on a dress and walk in front of the mirror. After years and years of doing the same thing, for some reason something clicked in me which made sense but at the same time was very scary.

It was the time I decided to find out if I could go co-exist with a group of women as a woman in their own territory. Previously, I had scouted out the venue I wanted to go to and when I wanted to try out my idea. It was the "Friday's" I write about often and yes I was petrified for several reasons. What if I did not make it and was ridiculed or maybe worse yet, what if I did and my life would change forever. If I did make it, I knew I could never go back to just going through the motions of being a part-time cross dresser. I was so much more. 

Finally, I got in so deep with me thinking I was transgender I reversed all of my gender thinking. Primarily I wasn't a man cross dressing as a woman at all I was a woman cross dressing as a man. Or, I was just going through the motions of being a male because I was born into it and was just attempting to get by until I could change my life for the better and live as a transgender woman. It represented a seismic change in my thinking on how I was going to live my life. 

By the time I was sixty, I could not take all the self destructive behavior I was experiencing any longer and decided to cross the gender frontier and live as a transgender woman. I embraced all my new gender thinking and set out to discover all I had missed by living my life as a man. Since my inner feminine soul had been observing my life and struggles the whole time, surprises were kept to a minimum. It turned out she was plotting all along how she would live once she got the chance. 

The last major step my male self gave her was going to the doctor and getting approved for gender affirming hormones. HRT just helped to further sync up what I thought I needed to be with what I actually was. Or, I thought I needed any help I could with femininizing my body to help me blend in with the world.

Of course, now I feel as if I was robbed of my life when I was going through the motions of being a man. On the other hand, I made the best of an unfortunate mistake. I gained a daughter, built a solid career and even survived my tour in the Army, so it all could have been so much worse as I battled my own gender dysphoria. It turned out, being transgender just led me into going through more motions than most people.   

A Trans Woman's Intuition

Anniversary Image 
from the Jessie Hart Archives

The world makes a big deal about woman's intuition, as they should 

I feel women as a whole have a deeper understanding of the world than men do. I have always believed women live a more layered life than men which leads to a need for more intuition. Not to mention a less secure life than men when it comes to personal security. Simply put, women have to learn at an early age the problems they could face dealing with toxic males. 

Add to all of that and you can imagine (or have experienced) the problems a transgender woman can face. We have to experience the impact of toxic men and toxic women also.  Lately it seems the anti-transgender societal atmosphere has made it a necessity for trans people to develop their internal intuition more effectively just to survive.

Early on, I was just so starved for male attention, I put myself into dangerous situations. I equated a man's attention into a validation of me as a woman. Fortunately, I was able to live through that portion of my life without any serious harm coming to me. Even though I barely escaped on occasion. I can not claim all of the credit for my escapes as I had other cis-women around me who helped. I can remember one night in particular when a man approached me at the bar in one of the regular venues I was a guest. When the server at the bar saw me and the man approach she did not say anything. Instead she just gave me a look which in no uncertain terms said to be careful. I took her advice, paid my bill and took off before he came back around to me. 

Also, toxic men are attracted to transgender women because they somehow think we are desperate for male attention. Which is the reason so many lonely trans women react to scammers on social media sites. Conservatively, I think I receive two or three scam requests a week from generals and doctors who happen to be widowed. I laugh them off and quickly block them. It never takes much intuition to know where they are coming from.

It is a different story in the real world of course. When women as a whole are warned to be so careful just when they are out to socialize. These days, women have to protect their drinks and make sure they go out with friends. Just another example of how a woman's intuition comes in handy. 

I think when I transitioned into a woman's world, gender affirming hormones aided my progression. In fact, I just answered a question from my transgender grandchild about my favorite smells. During my answer, I made sure I brought up the influence of the femininizing hormones on my sense of smell. One of the first big inner changes I experienced on HRT was the better sense of smell I realized. I am interested to see what reaction (if any) I receive. 

Most certainly I learned a transgender woman's intuition was a priority in order to survive. My inner woman, who waited so long to live her life in the world, knew it also. I learned when she took control how easy it was to let her take the reigns of my life. Early on she proved she knew what to do when she had the chance. I also learned I needed to be better than the average cis-woman. I did not have any of the benefits of growing up as a young girl. Catching up on the fly was often very difficult to do. Little did I know I could benefit from my old male life and use the lessons to help me when I jumped into the girls' sandbox.

Knowing where guys were coming from helped me to get by in the dating world on the very few occasions when I decided to enter it. I found I needed any advantage I could hold to help my gender life along. Including a better knowledge of my transgender intuition.