Just Feeling Good Being Me

 

Image from Mathilda Khoo
on UnSplash.

Just feeling good being me took me years to learn. In fact, I needed to go through three male to female transitions to get there. 

First, I needed to go through all my cross-dressing years and feel the angst of how I looked above everything else. In fact, when I go back and read some of my very early blog posts, all I basically mentioned was my presentation as a woman and not how I felt as one. It probably was because I did not feel transfeminine at all at that point in my life. Or, in other words, I had not matured yet in my journey to transgender womanhood.

I wonder if I had known what a long and winding route, I ended up taking, if I would have still attempted it years later. But it turned out, life had a different path for me than nearly all the other people I knew. Since I was deprived of having any input on where I wanted to go with my gender struggles, I was left on my own to find my way. Many times, the only clues that I got came from the dreams I was having that I was actually a pretty girl and was very disappointed when I still woke up in my male life. I was not feeling good at that point until I could make it back to my makeup and dresses to cross-dress in front of the mirror. That was all well and good, except the time feeling good, or gender euphoria I learned it was called, did not last very long.

Somehow, the good feelings took over regardless and I pursued a feminine life even harder. It did not matter that the more I tried to do to transform myself into a pretty girl could result in disaster if I was ever discovered. I don’t know how I never was, except mom maybe knew and just did not want to bring it up thinking I would outgrow it. It turns out the only thing I outgrew was her clothes and I had to be resourceful to find fashion items that I could add to my wardrobe and wear. Like one day in junior high school, I found a discarded stretchy elastic skirt that fit me, and I brought it home with me and cherished it for years to come. I was fortunate in finding me a pair of girls’ shoes in my size at the store where I had first gone shopping with my own money for makeup. I could even afford them along with being able to buy a new pair of panty hose. To come up with the money, I worked a rural newspaper route and put the money I earned together with money I earned from doing chores around the house. I was on a mission to succeed feeling good as me, as a girl.

The mission was due to be paused as military duty came my way during the Vietnam War as I ended up serving three years in the Army. My new task was to put my cross-dressing life on a back burner as I went away to serve. Even though I was bitter at the time since I was drafted by the government to do something I was totally against, I got a lot of good from it as I traveled the world (covering three continents in three years) and learning powerful lessons about life. Army basic training in particular taught me what I could do to survive on a temporary basis without a skirt and makeup to fall back on.

Even on those long-forced marches I was on, during a not so mild Ft. Knox winter, I learned to always look ahead and not behind me. I used the lesson on the days when I encountered a gender hater or TERF (cis woman gender gatekeeper) who wanted to berate me because I knew I could outlast them. The TERF just couldn’t grasp that I was not there to threaten their femininity, I was there to be me and live mine.

After all that learning experience, I still had a long way to go to feel good about being me. As I always say, I was similar to most other men in not understanding what really goes into a ciswomen’s life. It did not matter that I had spent my life admiring women from afar, I was still a novice at trying to go behind the gender curtain to truly understand a woman’s life. And I would not come close to feeling better about the gender disconnect in my life until I did.

I left the world of gay venues and started to enjoy my new life in either one of the very few lesbian bars which were still open at the time, or one of the big straight sports bars I was used to going to as a man. All I knew was I was being accepted as the transgender woman I always wanted to be as a regular in those venues and I loved putting my old male self completely in my past. The new strangers did not know anything about him and the positives and negatives about his life, and I wanted to keep it that way. Until I found a few friends I could trust. At that point only could I begin to fill out my life’s story to them. While at the same time never alluding to the fact that I ever lived a male life at all.

I was a little slow, but my life came full circle from being a part-time cross-dresser to a transgender woman, back to just being who I was always meant to be (me) and I could feel good about who I was for the first time in my life.

Earlier in this post when I was mentioning my military experience, I wanted to take the time to thank Dana and Bobbie for their input on my Fourth of July post. They were both in the Navy and Bobbie in particular is very active in the state of Michigan pushing equal rights for the LGBTQIA+ community. I know too there are other trans vets who follow along and I appreciate you too! All of you who just read and or comment are always deeply appreciated. Trans vet or not.

 

 

 

Can a Trans Girl Achieve Gender Parity

 

Image from Buddha Elemental 10
on UnSplash.

The main question I have is, have I ever achieved gender parity as I have gone this far in my male to female transition.

During my earliest days in the world as a novice transgender woman, I learned the hard way when I presented as a woman properly, I lost a portion of my intelligence immediately. Especially when I had the rare occasion to interact one on one with a man. My tow truck driver, for example, is my best one when one night when I first decided to go out on my own, my car broke down on a fairly busy road. Much to my chagrin, my problem attracted a well-meaning policeman, so I had him and the tow driver to deal with.

The first thing they did was huddle together and decide which route was the best way to get my car back to my house…without me. Who was I anyhow? Just a blond that needed help finding her way home, I guess. Then, when I was forced to ride back with my car in the cab of the truck, I found how much intelligence I had really lost. I was forced to act like I knew nothing about how his tow truck worked when in fact I did know a wheel was round and the cables on the truck were very strong. Before the short trip was over, I even found out what lunch his wife had packed him for work. I suppose I should have been happy, nothing out of the ordinary happened and he never seemed to let on he was helping a trans girl.

Through all of my early days of learning the gender parity I was experiencing, I needed to learn to keep my mouth shut around men and try to soothe their egos and the exact opposite around ciswomen. I threatened men and for the most part they ignored me, and women were curious and wanted to know what I was doing in their world. In my life as a man, I had never attracted so much female attention. While I was flattered, I tried my best to learn from all the new interactions I was having because often, all was not at it seemed with other women. When I played in their sandbox, I needed to learn all of their rules to achieve any amount of parity. Quickly I learned a smiling face did not always mean an accepting woman when passive aggression set in. I had one brutal night when I was caught just talking to a woman’s husband when she went to the rest room. When she came back, she was not happy with me and soon after the couple left the venue and I was left with claw marks down my back. Lesson learned.

The older I get, the more I think the reaction from toxic men in society is a reaction to gender parity. More than ever before, women are trying to step up and be the quality leaders we so desperately need. I can use my trans grandchild who uses the they and them pronouns as an example as they just started a job as a nuclear engineer following a graduation from The Ohio State University. They got a job as a civilian with the Navy so I hope they can be successful before the current batch of felons in Washington catches up with them. But that is a topic for another blog post.

One thing is for sure, when you jump the binary gender border from male to female, you will feel an instant change. I could no longer rely on size and bluster to get me by in the world with my male privilege. In order to be successful in the new feminine world I was in, I needed to be better as a transgender woman. I had to study and be comfortable I all the feminine areas such as restroom etiquette. Out were the days of just going to the men’s room and ignoring everyone else and in were the days of looking other women in the eye and smiling. For the most part, gender parity at that time meant being accepted in the world of women. How to start or continue a conversation beginning with an innocent compliment became important to me.

Right or wrong, any gender parity with men faded in importance with me as my lesbian friends taught me how important self-validation was without a man. I knew and my friends knew I was a valued person in their eyes, even though I had come to my womanhood from another path.

As society tries to minimize our importance as women, especially transgender women, it is time to realize the unique circumstances that brought us to the place we are today. And what we can add to our broken society in the future. So, I have achieved gender parity in my own way.

 

 

                                                                             

Karma?

 

JJ Hart with Liz on left and daughter
on right.

Last night, my wife Liz, her son and I went out to eat at our favorite restaurant. 

We have been to the venue many times without any of the staff misgendering me. Spoiler alert. My record of not being misgendered would go out the window last night. Per norm, the venue was busy, and no one paid me any attention as we were led to our seat. So, outside of a few screaming kids, I was feeling pretty good about my experience. For the evening, I chose my new Jimmy Buffet "Margaritaville" T shirt I bought in Key West and paired it with my favorite leggings. After a close shave and a foundation coat with lip stick, I was ready to go and enjoy a margarita. 

As I said, I was feeling relaxed until we ordered, and here it came out of nowhere, the dreaded "S" word. You guessed it, the waiter called me sir. I was devasted and shocked at being called sir for the first time there ever. Then I began to wonder what went wrong, then I remembered a couple things I did wrong which could have contributed to being misgendered. The one obvious one was how I was presenting myself. Maybe the Buffett T-shirt I was wearing was a little too casual and I had not prepared my arms for a bare excursion into the world. Normally, I still need to shave my arms which I did not. So, my preparation laziness cost me.

The next point is where karma came into play. Today, we were supposed to go north to Dayton, Ohio for a Passover Seder reception at my daughter's mother-in-law. Sadly, severe storms are forecast for today in the area, so we decided not to make the rather lengthy trip. When I emailed my daughter to tell her the bad news, I asked how my trans grandchild who uses the "they and them" pronouns was doing and did they still have a job waiting for them this fall after they are done walking the Appalachian Trail. It turns out, they reached the two-hundred-mile point. 

Now what did I do wrong? As I was emailing my daughter, I thought I was being careful on which pronouns to use. Along the way (dammit) I slipped up and used the forbidden "her" word and ignorantly sent the message before I checked the entire message. Of course, then it was too late, and the message was sent. 

Now I feel as if karma got even with me later that evening when the waiter misgendered me. In the future I will have to be better, and I should be the last one in the family who should mess up their pronouns. When I do, karma should come around and slap me. 

One way or another, I need to do better where my presentation is concerned, and most certainly do better with my grandchild's pronouns. And, by the way, they still have a job as a civilian with the US Navy nuclear program in Maine. The gender haters in the orange felon's administration have not discovered them yet and I hope they never will. 

In the meantime, I am a firm believer in good karma and will work harder to make sure I pay my life forward the best I can to pay it forward to help others and not screw up my grandchild's pronoun's.