How Much Courage did it Take You?

 

Image from Jon Tyson
on UnSplash.

Often, I hear the words courage or bravery kicked around when it came to mentioning someone coming out of their closet into the real world.

In my case, I would have to replace either of the words with just being afraid of what would happen if I did not pursue my gender dreams of living as a transgender woman. Mainly because I was so self-destructive when it came to causing self-harm to my unwanted male self. I drove too fast and recklessly, drank way too much and even tried to actively kill myself once because of my gender dysphoria.

Especially after I had the rare chance to talk to my friends who survived brutal combat in the Vietnam War, I reserved the terms brave and courage for them. Because in many ways, I was just doing what came naturally when I cross-dressed in front of the mirror at home. It turned out staying in my own little feminine world was very easy until I began to want to see if I could stretch my luck and actually leave the house looking as close as I thought I could to a pretty girl. The only reality I did know was I was scared to death.

Little by little, my fear began to subside, and I wanted to expand my explorations to bigger and better venues such as the malls which were just beginning to come into their own back in those days. Still. I didn’t think I was brave enough to do it. Or was I just being stupid by risking losing everything that I worked so hard to build up in my male life. My ego dictated that I did not dwell on the stupid aspect of trying to femininize my testosterone poisoned body. I just wanted to blend in with the rest of the ciswomen I envied so much. As much as I was being abused by certain segments of the public, I began to use another term to describe myself and that was stubborn. In fact, I think that would be a great title to a new PBS show (Public Broadcasting System) called the “Stubborn Cross-dresser.”

As I continued on my gender path towards finally being allowed to join the girls’ club, my stubbornness in trying new things was both a blessing and a curse. A prime example was when I was trying to hang on to my teen fashion sense way too long. It was a curse, and my blessing came along when I became stubborn enough to keep going back to my cross-dressing drawing board until I fixed the problem and became able to blend in better with the women, I wanted to notice me. After the death of my second wife of twenty-five years, I was desperately lonely and did not want to attempt to build another life as a man when the possibility of building one as a trans woman was right in front of me. If I was brave enough to take advantage of a life I had only dreamed of. Was I going to take the easy way out and try to be a man again or build upon what I had learned as a novice transgender woman became my major question to answer.

Finally, I needed to “man-up” and be a woman as my second wife used to tell me and when I had the courage to do it, I felt a deep happiness in life I never had before. In fact the feminine privilege I found to be the most pleasant was the fact that I was allowed the opportunity to be happy. For the first time in my life, I was able to align my sun, moon, and stars so I did not have to fight a gender battle on two fronts which kept me unhappy and on edge. I positively loved my new life along with my first chance ever to just be happy with what I had.

If you are one of the many gender conflicted individuals trying to decide if and when you will make the ultimate choice to go for the gender border as a trans woman or trans man, my only advice must be, look deeply inside yourself for your answer. Your answer is there If you are stubborn enough to find it. Life is like an old merry-go-round and often it is difficult to slow it down to see the real world spinning in front of you. And if destiny puts you on the right path to do it, you can discover a group of well-meaning friends (ciswomen or men for you trans men) who can help you along. Making you a better person than you ever thought you could be. I would never have thought that the gender dysphoria that I felt would end up causing me so many problems in my life.

Before your life ends and you move on to whatever other place of existence you believe in, you have the basic right to be happy. You can deal in semantics and call your gender journey as being brave or having courage all you want but the end result is you being the natural person who you always should have been.

Somehow, we have been chosen to lead a different life’s journey than most of the others in the human race. Call us brave or courageous if you want but as a tribe, we are doing what we were always been destined to do. It is just too bad we are met with such resistance by haters in the world. As well as the gatekeepers who want to keep us away from our chosen genders. When I speak about gatekeepers, immediately radical feminist TERFs come to mind who have no business in ours.

Best wishes on your successful gender journey and summoning enough courage (if you want to call it that) to get out into the world and live your best life.

Thanks again to all of you who join me in my experiences, and I hope we can all learn from them. I apologize to all of you who have commented. I am a little behind getting back to you because of technical problems.

 

 

 

 

 

Open Up, I am Coming In!

 

Image from Jason Hoehne
on UnSplash. 

During the many years I have written my blog, I always have been careful to give credit where credit is due, to the ciswomen who helped me go behind the gender curtain.

Initially, I thought most of the women interacted with me because they were curious about what I wanted to do in their world. But lately I wonder if how I acted had anything to do with it. What I mean is, by that had anything to do from the point I had reached on my gender path as I transitioned from cross-dresser to transgender woman. As I had reached the point of meeting the women who showed a casual interest in me, I had already taken my appearance and movement levels as a woman to a higher level. I did not have to worry about any of that and could concentrate on the matter at hand, communicating with mostly other ciswomen.

When I did so, I was not giving them a chance to wonder who I was as I was not coming off to the world as a clown in drag anymore. I was announcing myself as a person who wanted to be let in behind the gender curtain. Something I had dreamed of for years. By the time I was behind the curtain, I felt so natural that there was no way I was going back. I thought, open that curtain, I was coming in and you couldn’t stop me.

That was the point in my life I could put my potential male aggressiveness behind me because I found more women were willing to help my gender cause rather than hinder it. I encountered very few negative TERF’s or radical feminists who rejected me totally as some sort of self-imposed gatekeepers to the feminine world. So, my very fragile confidence as a transfeminine person was rarely questioned, and life went on. Basically, how I wanted it to.

It was about that time also that I began to learn all the nuances of a woman’s life I would need to survive in it when I jumped into playing in the girls’ sandbox. Somehow, I needed to prove I was not the terrible woman my second wife always called me after the fights we had about me progressing from being a cross-dresser to a transgender woman whose next step was being approved for gender affirming hormones or HRT. The only clue she gave me was she was not talking about my appearance as a woman. Thankfully, even though my feelings were hurting deeply, I needed to somehow figure out what she was telling me. It took me years, but I did.

What she was talking about was I did not have the basic experiences of a woman yet to build a new life as a trans woman. I was stuck in quicksand trying to get the feminine experiences I needed when no one would help me get there. Finally, I decided I needed to find out for myself if I was ever to not being a terrible woman. There were two labels I rebelled at in life. The first that early on I could be called mentally ill because of my gender issues and the second was that I made a terrible woman when I was clueless in what that meant.

The good news was that later in life I learned both were wrong and I escaped my own brand of quicksand and was finally able to leave most all the male baggage behind I wanted to lose and use the rest of the blocks to build a solid future as a transgender woman. Perhaps it was easier for me to build a new feminine life because the weight of my old life was behind me and I was happier. Humans are like sharks and can sense when blood is in the water with another unhappy toxic person and ciswomen are especially good at it. I think they sensed with me that I was honest in my path, and it was OK to open up and let me in.

Ironically, the only real problem I faced was concentrating on taking the old “don’t mess with me” male scowl that I had perfected over the years off my face. The last thing I wanted to do was to come as far as I had in my male to female femininization project was to ruin it all with a simple facial expression.

When I made it to the point where going behind the women’s gender curtain was not going to be a problem, I needed to make sure I was not screaming open up, I am coming in to anyone. That would have been like announcing my arrival in a woman’s restroom. I learned to do it with a small smile just like the other women do in the most sacred of women’s only spaces.

Now that I have made it through the major obstacles of feminization, I learned to evolve myself into the person I always dreamed of being. I escaped all of the quicksand of a gender transition by staying on my feet in my heels as I needed to be quite selfish at times to make sure I stayed in my deadly serious gender game. It was nothing I was ever happy about but on the other hand, I was stuck in pure survival mode looking for the best way out.

Whatever you want to call it, surviving a gender struggle is no joke and all the transphobes need to walk a mile in our existence to discover just that. In the meantime, you may just have to use the “Open Up” on them to let you in.

 

 

Memories or a Dream?

Image from Ian Dooley
on UnSplash

Too many times, when I went out into the world for the first time as a new transgender woman, I wondered if I was making a memory or living a dream.

Sadly, most of the time I was working so hard to succeed for the first time in a new exciting world, I did not have the time to know if I was making memories or working my way towards a lifetime dream. There was simply not enough time to do all I wanted to do, such as present well enough to blend in with the ciswomen around me. It was like I was driving a new car, and I did not know all the new features I was trying to master. How was I ever going to stop being a man with all the male looks such as a scowl and how I walked and turn myself into a pleasant looking feminine person as I camouflaged all the testosterone damages male puberty had caused me.

There turned out to be a way after I worked my way through not dressing like a teen girl which just drew negative attention to me. Certainly, creating more negative memories than positive ones and my dream of living as a full-time transfeminine person, remained just that. A far-off dream. At first, I had many memories to make and learn from as I followed my dark and lonely gender path. Perhaps my biggest problems came when I realized I was trying too hard when it came to expressing my own brand of feminization because I was working so hard to catch up with my own gender workbook and decide where I wanted to be.

The only dreams I was having during this time of my life were the rare occasions when I went to sleep and dreamed that I was the attractive woman I always wanted to be and the pressure was off to look a certain way as a woman which I had always lived with. I was obsessed with trying to try any beauty secret I could to improve my appearance in the world. This obsession very much was with me until I began to settle into my own beauty routine

 The dream took a giant step towards materializing when my daughter took me to her up-scale beauty/salon and spa to color and style my hair for the first time when it had grown long enough to do it. Even though I was scared beyond belief to do it, I knew this was a golden opportunity to go behind the gender curtain into a female dominated space I had never dreamed of going before. It was amazing as I wrote about several posts ago, and I knew right then why ciswomen were so adamant about having their hair done a certain way. I could not wait until I could scrape up the extra money so I could afford to go back. Plus, with my new hair, there was no way I could keep on presenting male in the world as I knew it.

I was so obsessed with putting myself out into the world, I needed to think of different ways to do it and build more memories such as when I started to meet the ciswomen and lesbians who would form my circle of friends and help me slip across the gender border and behind the gender curtain where I desperately dreamed of being.

At this point, I always mention the good and the bad that happened to me along the way to validating myself as a transgender woman. It took a lot of confidence I didn’t have to make it happen. Too many nights of rejection when I attempted to push the gender envelope too far and was sent home in tears with my new dreams shattered. When it did happen, I needed to rely on my deepest inner feminine self to assure me everything would be OK and these were just memories which happened to be unpleasant to add to my dream. She told me that the roughest dreams you ever had are the ones you had to work extra hard to achieve.

Sooner more than later, I began to have more pleasant memories than bad ones and my ultimate dream again began to come into focus. If I tried hard enough to accomplish all my feminine goals, I could join the others ahead of me in the transgender community I was familiar with and leave my male past behind me forever.

Surely, there is a big difference between memories and dreams. I consider memories a less than physical form of dreams. Meaning memories are easier to come by and dreams are something a human should always have to keep their lives headed in a more positive direction.

Depending upon where you are on your gender path, maybe you are just in the dream phase of where you want to be and that is fine. It is when you begin to build memories of your journey do you start to build the blocks you will need to make it through. During Pride month, no matter what you may read from haters, TERF’s and bigots, you should be proud of the gender dreams you have.

You are worth it and often there are more silent allies and developing transgender women and transgender men that you know who are ready to join society. Just look at your memories and dreams as what you had to go through to arrive where you are today. Someday you may be able to become that confident trans woman you only were when you were asleep.

When it comes right down to it, it does not matter if you are clinging to memories (past and present you are making) or the life you are dreaming of living, The most important thing is the self-love you are able to give yourself. Without it, you have a difficult time loving anyone else.

Thanks for reading along with me and thinking of your own memories and dreams. Any of your comments are always appreciated!

 

So Many Choices...So Little Time

 

Image from Drew Colins
on UnSplash.

One thing that I learned from experiencing decades of cross-dressing is that there were so many choices and so little time.

It all started when I had to scramble for any time, I could find by myself dressing as an imagined pretty girl in front of the mirror without discovery from my brother or worse yet my parents.  I was born as the eldest son into a very male dominated family, and I was expected to fit right in with that male mold. I had little idea at the time that I was destined to break that male mold during my life and it was not going to be easy.

Back in those days, I had very little income that I scraped together from doing household chores and a newspaper delivery route I had for several years. The first feminine items I could afford to buy on my own were makeup accessories but first I needed to figure out a way to get to a store undetected and then decide what to buy. After putting a lot of thought into my situation, I remembered that my grandma lived in town, fairly close to one of the old five and dime department stores that sold makeup. I used the excuse to visit grandma, then go and shop. Or try to.

The only problem with my plan was that my dad worked downtown close to the store I wanted to try to buy my first makeup in. I was tired of using my mom’s samples, That was all well and good until I gathered my courage and walked into the makeup selection of the store I was in. As I viewed the extensive selection of cosmetics, I almost panicked and walked quickly from the store. There were so many choices and so little time to choose anything that might help me during my novice beauty program. Somehow, I stood my ground and picked out some foundation and lipstick which fit in with my limited budget, gathered my courage and headed for the checkout counter. Just knowing I would get made fun of along the way. Amazingly, the person at the cash register did not give me a second look as she took my money and I was no longer a virgin in buying my own feminine supplies. I just wished I had more access and money to do more.

I would have more financial resources later in life along with the knowledge to go with it as I learned the fun of doing thrift shopping for just the right choice of clothes to add to my wardrobe.  Plus, the thrift experiences gave me a chance to be patient in many of the bigger stores with seemingly an endless supply of discarded fashion. When I took the time to try on a new item I had never tried to wear before, I had two benefits. I didn’t have to pay much for the item and two, I could see how well it either flattered my difficult to please male testosterone poisoned body or didn’t. It helped too, when I was able to streamline the shopping experience and give myself time to vary my day as a novice transfeminine person. Instead of just facing an endless amount of clothes. I actually had time to do other things like take myself out to lunch. Then, again I was faced with an almost never-ending choice of where I could eat. Since I had already tried too many fast food drive throughs with various amounts of success, I decided to step up my game and try to eat at one of the casual dining restaurants I had went to and even managed as a man. Since I was still on a gender time clock and had to be home by a certain time dictated by when my second wife would be off of work, I was still facing so many choices with so little time to enjoy myself as a transgender woman.

My plan was to just get by and improve myself a little at a time in a world of ciswomen I was just discovering. By doing so, I discovered that most ciswomen ignored me if I was dressing to blend in with them or were just curious of why I was in their world. Of course, I did run into the occasional TERF woman who hated me and wanted me out of her world, which I did. One way or another, I was encountering far more women in my quest to be part of their world than I ever did any men because I just wanted to be out of my long-standing membership in the men’s club and they knew it. The only thing I did know was that I was increasingly not so lonely when I went out in the world to my regular straight venues. All my lesbian places had closed up and the gay venues I used to go to just brought back bad memories of me being looked at as just a drag queen so I was stuck…just where I wanted to be and I was satisfied, until I went too far and tried too hard to be accepted.

In my search for acceptance, I began to become too overconfident in my ability to succeed a began to look for more choices of where to go in such a short ill-conceived amount of time. What I did was start going to redneck themed places thinking I could be accepted when I was not and even had the cops called me one night in a venue, I was just trying to drink a couple beers then pee before I went to another place I had been to a lot. It turned out that they would sell me the beer, just not let me get rid of it.

As it turned out, I was/am able to live a long life and see many of my choices gang up on me in a very short period of time. Destiny worked its magic and gave me a full circle of life to live with. Throwing in that I was a transgender woman just added a little spice.

 

Gender Evolution

 

Image from Hoite Prins
on UnSplash. 

Sometimes I think I give the wrong impression when it comes to my reactions to cross-dressing as a whole.

In reality, the last thing I want to do is put myself up on some sort of pedestal because I have survived my own personal gender wars and evolved from a young boy experimenting in his women’s clothes to living full-time as a transfeminine person in the world. After all, I was the one who spent nearly four decades cross-dressing my life away trying to make a final decision on which way my life would take me. So, saying “just a cross-dresser” would be totally wrong for me to do. In fact, cross dressing saved my life from taking off the overall pressure I was feeling from living my gender conflicted life. Just the slightest glimmer of hope I got from the mirror was all I had to get by and I used it to the max.

As I look back from the journey I took from wearing my mom’s clothes when they still fit me, all the way to getting rid of all my male clothing altogether (except my Army uniform), it was quite the lifetime of evolution. Sadly, not all the times were good, but they were all deep learning experiences. Such as all the times I was dressing to thrill myself. Not to properly attempt to blend in with the ciswomen around me. Very difficult lessons to learn as I needed to put my faux teenaged cross-dressing years behind me quickly if I ever wanted to be a success. I was far from being a teen girl since I was in my thirties with the testosterone poisoned body I was working with. I needed to evolve and do it fast if I was ever would be able test the idea I could survive as a transgender woman, leading a successful life.

Suddenly, out of the clear blue sky which was my existence more or less back in those days, something mentally clicked in me as I was preparing to go out into the world one night. As I slipped into my panty hose and heels, put on my makeup and wig, my whole thought pattern changed. I was no longer trying to just go out and successfully present well as a look-a-like ciswoman, I was going out to fit right into their community as a novice trans woman. The thought hit me like a thunderbolt and scared me to even think that way, but I could feel my life making a seismic shift for the better. If I could be successful, which still was a big question.

I am not shy about writing about one of the most exciting nights of my life went I went to mingle with a group of professional ciswomen who worked at a nearby mall. I don’t know what scared me worse, the fear of being recognized as an intruder and embarrassed or the fear of knowing if I was successful, I could never go back to the male life I was starting to evolve away from. I just know I was so scared I thought I would need an oxygen tank to help me breathe when I went in the venue to mingle with all those young attractive women.

You can probably guess what happened from there. I was very successful and knew my future as a cross-dresser was behind me as I had evolved into a novice transgender woman. Complete with two new straight venues I had established myself in as a regular. Something I never thought possible just a few months before when I was frequenting gay venues getting mistaken for just another drag queen. I should be more appreciative towards the reaction I received from the gay community because their attitudes sent me flying to places, I knew and enjoyed as a man. If I had evolved enough as a trans woman to do it.

At that point, my evolution into being allowed behind the women’s gender curtain was forced fed to me quickly. Mainly from other women who I met and wanted to help me adjust to the world I so desperately wanted to be a part of. Sometimes, I was overconfident and was sent back to my gender drawing board when I tried to go too fast, too soon but I never had to go back to the days when I was learning to adjust to the world outside my closet as a cross-dresser. Every angle I pursued in the world seemed to be new and exciting as I learned my feminine lessons well. You might say, I was the ultimate gender sponge because I was finally realizing my gender light at the end of the tunnel was not the train and a good life as a transfeminine person was certainly possible if I kept evolving. All the years of worrying about my future I had wasted in my life were just that…wasted and I needed to move on.

Better yet, I learned the world of ciswomen I was evolving into was worth every bit of the work I had put into it. Sure, I did encounter a few haters, bigots and TERF’s (ciswomen who hated me) but with my newfound confidence I had evolved into, I could quickly ignore them and get along with my life. If I got to the point where I ever needed my new friends to step up for me, they would but I had made it to the point where I could fight my own battles if I needed to.

In many ways, I see the evolution of transgender women and transgender men as the future as now the genders seem to be blurring for the younger generations. Maybe when the old white men finally die out, their bigotry will die out with them. Right now they are scared of the potential a trans tribe carries to understand what goes on both sides of the gender coin and we will be allowed to evolve back to where we were with native American cultures which honored us. But that is an evolvement topic for another time.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Looking Both Ways at Stop Signs on my Gender Path

 

Image from Alex Azerbache
on UnSplash.

I learned the hard way; I needed to look carefully both ways when crossing my gender path from male to female. If I did not, I ran the risk of being caught in the wild world of everyday traffic around me. When I left my mirror for the first time, gathered all my courage and went out into the world, I discovered basically three groups of people.

By far, the biggest group I didn’t need to pay much attention to were all the people who were going about their lives and not needing to notice anyone else. The second group was smaller and mostly just curious. They were mostly women and were curious why a man would leave a life of privilege to want to live as a woman. Or at least try to look like one. Sadly, the most vocal of the three groups were the gender bigots, TERFS (cis women who hate trans women and want to deny our existence) or just plain haters who wanted to make my business theirs. I learned the hard way several times to take nothing for granted when I went out in the world and look both ways at stop signs on my gender path.

I also learned the hard way that no matter how good I thought I looked and moved on a certain day, someone would always see through my efforts to be a presentable transgender woman and take exception with it. Some were mean and wanted to make fun of me, and some were not but I always had to be aware of the possibility of ill-will coming my way. I needed to come to a full stop until the unpleasantness went away, and I could go about living the new life as a transfeminine person I felt so comfortable in. When my confidence began to grow to a point where I could navigate most of the public comfortably, I did not care what the occasional gender bigot thought, and my confidence turned out to be my biggest weapon against hatred against me. It was tough to do, because the confidence was so frail but somehow, I was able to do it as I became more effective in my feminine presentation skills.

It probably was because this was the time of my life when I was obsessed with every little aspect of my appearance as a woman. Every now and then, I take the time to go back and read some of my earliest posts and I am continually amazed about appearance centric my writings were woven around. Just the right amount of makeup and how I did my eyes, all the way to just the right accessories to go with my outfits were prime examples of what I was writing about. It was no wonder that my second wife delighted in calling me the “pretty, pretty princess” when she told me I knew nothing about being a woman.

Rather than discourage me, her comments spurred me on to try to figure out what she meant. All along I thought I was the ultimate student of the ciswomen around me, only to learn I had not yet scratched the surface of what I needed to learn to earn myself a spot in the girls’ sandbox. Looking back, I do think my expertise in making my feminine appearance better did help me because for the most part (except for my wife) most ciswomen knew I was serious in my journey to be let behind the gender curtain as I needed to stop on my gender path, look both ways for ciswomen, let them through and then move ahead on my own. And by the way, the “princess” got her revenge one night when my wife needed to ask for advice on which makeup to wear.

When I finally was allowed to play in the girls’ sandbox, the stop signs I routinely faced really began to multiply. I had gone the extra distance to lead my inner feminine trans person out of the mirror and into the world by doing a deep dive into the basics of makeup and appearance all the way to working diligently on my feminine movements so I would not look like a linebacker in drag in heels at the mall. All my efforts worked out so well that the world wanted to communicate with me. Which put me into shock because I was woefully short on any experience to do it. All I had ever done was speak very briefly with cashiers and was not prepared to carry on any sort of a conversation.

All I did know was ciswomen communicate on a different wavelength than men and I needed quickly to find out what it was and how to do it, so I could survive my next stop sign. Surprisingly, I was a quick learner and mimicked the women around me the best I could until I became semi-comfortable in conversations with them. Primarily, I learned that for the first time in my life I needed to listen closely to what another woman was telling me because she could be talking in feminine “tongues.” In other words, I learned ciswomen use a lot of nonverbal communication when they don’t want men to know what they are talking about and use a lot of passive aggressive words when they communicate. When I stopped at the verbal stop sign, I needed to use extra caution to make sure a smiling face was not hiding behind my back aggression when we interacted.

I survived my communication days partially from taking feminine vocal lessons which specifically helped me to use terms which were more feminine in nature and not so male orientated. Which I was used to. I said I was a quick learner, but learning fast was all I could do to survive in the new feminine world I loved so much. I found myself immersed in a labor of love that I wanted more and more of every night that I spent interacting socially with my ciswomen friends. It was like I was back in grade school again learning the basics of being a quality feminine person.

From then on out, the only stop signs I saw were the ones I learned on my new path with women to stop at which they had done their whole lives and I was making up for in my own way quickly. The “pretty, pretty princess” had grown up, but sadly my second wife missed my progress when she tragically passed away early in life from a massive heart attack. I don’t think we could have ever stayed together. Being friends on the other hand was probably a possibility because we were together for twenty-five years of our lives. It will be forever one of the mysteries I will never solve. A giant stop sign.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pressure Tested as a Trans Woman

 

Image from Jayson Hendrickson
on UnSplash. 

As I moved along in life, I became pressure tested on both sides of the gender border.

On the male side, I became embroiled with restaurant jobs which involved immense amounts of pressure to succeed and on my female side, I felt the same pressure to succeed when I was finally able to leave my mirror and enter the world. For the most part succeeding as a male meant more financial rewards, while the success as a transfeminine person meant more inner freedom to express myself.

Ironically, my success as a novice cross-dresser or transgender woman often came at the expense of my male self when he failed at a project in life and came running back to dresses and makeup for comfort. Even that became old though when my trans woman kept increasing the stakes in the basic battle to just be seen in public. She wanted more than the easy trips to women’s clothing stores where money was more important than gender. As she began to interact more completely in the world, the pressure to be tested time and time again increased dramatically. Especially when she had to do more than try to communicate with more than a simple “Hello” or “Thank You.” For the longest time, I was panicked and very insecure about holding any sort of a conversation with another person, woman or man.

The way I relieved the pressure of communication was simply tied to doing it over and over again until it became as natural to me as possible. I learned from my feminine vocal lessons, it was not as much about what you were saying as how you were saying it. And how I could interject little feminine vocal patterns into my speech, even though I still had a deeper voice than most women. I say most women because I immediately began to notice a few ciswomen who had lower voices but still managed to communicate in the world with no problems. All because they had the benefit of growing up around other women. As I said, the only way around my communication potential problem was to hitch up my big girl panties and begin to communicate with the world. Which in some cases was one of the last frontiers I needed to face as I climbed out of my mirror and into the world as a trans woman.

I discovered I did not really know any pressure on my initial excursions as a feminine person until the time came to use the restroom. Initially, I was very intimidated and made sure I waited until “the room” was empty before I snuck in to use it until I began to build some confidence in myself. When I did, I began to learn restroom basics such as making sure I took the time to smile and interact with any other women I may encounter. The exact opposite than what I was used to in any men’s room I used. Since I was not using the women’s room as any sort of a fun test just to prove I could, I needed to learn as much as I could about other women because of a natural need to do so. I did things such as trying to mimic the sound of “flow” when I went to the woman close in the stall next to me and of course, I needed to remember to look for toilet paper, hang my purse up and always, always stop to wash my hands as I examined my hair and makeup in the mirror. No matter how much of a hurry I was to get out of there.

Surviving the restroom wars gave me the confidence to lose some of the pressure I felt as I entered the world for the first time as a transgender woman. From there I could move on to bigger and better things such as being recognized as a regular in the selected venues I wanted to go to. When I did, I knew I would have the backing of the staff if and when I was approached by a gender bigot or TERF (ciswoman bigot) about what I was doing there at all. In fact, I think I became the token trans woman at several venues who were proud of their diversity and safely for the LGBTQ community.

If I was a more intelligent person in math, maybe I could come up with a quotient relating to how pressure relates to confidence, but I cannot. I am stuck just trying to explain what it meant to me and what it might mean to you if you are considering a gender journey such as mine. The easiest way to describe it is that it is an intensely personal journey that is often lonely and full of self-sacrifice. Which could also describe why the path or journey is so full of pressure to succeed in so many different ways. I say that because I learned on my path that there were so many different ways to achieve my dream of living the way I wanted to as a fully functional transfeminine person. Primarily I learned I did not have to be the most attractive woman in the room to be accepted. Maybe I could make it on my personality. Which is exactly what many ciswomen do.

When the pressure was off, the pleasure set in for me and I could begin to refine who I wanted to be as I pursued a rare second chance in life to rebuild myself in the image I had always dreamed of. I was fortunate when I found the right people, cis women, to help me along in ways they never knew as I filled out the little nuances of my gender workbook. As I always say, I had no idea of how many layers women have to go through other than men just to live their life.

I don’t think I had a choice in my life to not live the pressurized existence that I lived. It was all built into the path I chose to take, and I grew used to it. As a transgender woman, often it seemed I had more than my fair share of pressure to deal with. That is why as a tribe, trans women and trans men have proved to be very resilient over the time we have populated the world. Regardless of what haters and bigots think.

 

 

I Got Scammed

 

Image from Markus Winkler
on UnSplash.

Years ago, I discovered I was scammed when I attempted to climb my gender path towards my dream goal of living completely as a transgender woman.

My first mistake was believing what I saw in the mirror when I was cross-dressed as a girl was a true indication of what I really looked like. The mirror was more than capable of lying to me by telling me I looked attractive, when I really looked like a circus clown in drag. It wasn’t until I began to go out in public as a feminine person, did I find out the brutal truth of how far I still had to go to present well as a novice cross dresser in public. Rather than create attention to the way I looked, I needed to blend in with the average ciswomen around me and just get by.  I was scamming myself to think otherwise.

Sadly. The scamming continued unabated until I woke up to the true world around me. My life was restricted by outdated thoughts I carried through from my still very active male self who thought dressing sexily was the way to go. The only good thing that happened during this part of my life was that I went through my cross-dresser “adolescence” fairly quickly and began to attempt to dress my testosterone poisoned body the best I could to hide my flaws. I was aided by fashion styles back then which favored miniskirts, bare legs, opaque stockings with oversized sweaters. I was even able to continue a version of the fashion basics when I changed into a bohemian style denim mini along with a flowing loose top to hide my oversize male torso. For once, fashion trends were playing in the right direction for me and my scamming decreased from my male self and the public.

At that point, I shifted my emphasis on where I was going when I was learning the world for the first time.  Initially I chose more malls and safe places such as coffee shops and bookstores until I got bored and chose other venues to go to at night when I began to sneak out of the house when my wife was working. At first, I was satisfied with going to a few male gay venues in downtown Dayton, Ohio. Even though I did not like the overall atmosphere of the places, I kept going because I thought they were safe. That was until I was stopped on a sidewalk outside one night by two men looking for a handout and I was lucky I still had a five-dollar bill to give them, so they left me unharmed. I learned a valuable lesson that all ciswomen knew which was to always be careful of your surroundings and I never went back there again unless I had friends with me.

I also felt I was scamming myself and wasting my hard-earned money by going to gay venues at all. Lesbian bars for the most part were fun for me for a number of reasons. Including the attention, I would receive on occasion from a few of the other patrons. Male gay bars however just treated me like any other drag queen which I hated. I even had a hard time being served which drove me away. It was then; I decided to stop being scammed and take my business to straight sports bars where I knew I could enjoy the atmosphere if only I could be accepted.

I was surprised how quickly I was accepted at venues I used to frequent as a man, and I felt comfortable in. The difference in venues was in the straight sports bars, other women wanted to actually talk to me. Which opened up a whole new world of possibly being scammed by ciswomen and their passive aggressive behaviors. I don’t want to recall how many times I went home with claw marks on my back after I assumed another woman’s smile actually meant she was being friendly with me. That scam became old quickly and I learned to be careful in the world in a whole different way.

The biggest scam of all came when I learned I was not a man cross-dressing as a woman, I was a woman cross-dressing as a man to get by in a life she never wanted. If I had only learned that earlier in life how much easier I could have made it on myself. No such luck, as I was destined to be scammed by a world and my male self into thinking I was doing the right thing by fighting hard to keep my manhood. These days, I am older and wiser when it comes to scamming myself and have accepted the transgender truth, I always denied myself.

As I wrote in a recent post, I would not recommend the path I took towards achieving my dream because the world has changed since I did it. Harsh anti-transgender politicians have made it harder to come out in the world as well as making it harder for some of us to exist at all. (Like in my native Ohio). Hopefully though, the younger generations seem to be resistant and blind to the bigotry of their elders and there is hope for the future. That was, none of us will have to worry as much about scamming ourselves or each other about who we truly are. Just people who have been around forever and are trying to live a basic, honest life.

One way or another, the path we have chosen as transgender women and transgender men is much more difficult than the average person next door. And I can add scammers along with stop signs, blind curves and steep hills on our route to finally discover who we are with the opportunity to live it. It just makes it worse when we learn the person who was our main scammer was ourselves.

As always, thanks for joining me in my journey. Any comments, claps or subscriptions are always welcome!

 

Choice? What Choice

 

JJ Hart on Mt. Washington

What angers me more than anything else is when some hater or gender bigot says we transgender women or trans men ever had a choice about who we were destined to become in life.

In my case, at least, deep down I always knew I had something wrong with me. Even if I could not quite put my finger on what the problem might be. It was not until I got the first glimpse of myself in the mirror in pretty girls’ clothes did, I know for sure what my issues were. Then, the issue became what I was going to do about it. At that point, I had no choice but to continue doing was I was doing. Cross-dressing in front of the mirror. Being the pretty girl in my mind was just too much to pass up as I worked continuously towards improving my makeup skills and to do what I could to acquire more articles of women’s clothing which actually fit my fast growing, testosterone poisoned frame. I was the last person to see the results of puberty as a positive development.

As I learned in my latest LGBTQ support group meeting yesterday at the Veteran’s Administration, the legislative bigots have effectively blocked the use of puberty blockers for all young Ohioans. One of the lesbian mothers in the group was seeking blockers from her doctor because her young daughter had started puberty at the age of ten and she wanted it to be put off for a couple of years. The group member was told no, they could not do that in Ohio anymore. Yet another win for the Republican majority in the house legislature who felt they could overrule a parent’s choices.

Back when I was young, no one knew what puberty blockers were anyhow and we all went into our tweener years with no choice at all to how our bodies were going to turn out. The only positive I saw from the changes I was going through that I had no choice over were the extra muscle and size I was adding which helped me to keep the bullies away.

When I began to go out in the world as a novice transgender woman, I began to discover I did have other choices when it came to becoming what it meant to be myself. It all started with what I would wear fashion-wise to fit in with all the ciswomen around me and then expanded to how I would interact one on one with the world. It was all so new and exciting that the world was a wonderful blur at that time in my life. I could pick and choose if I wanted to go casual in my jeans and sweaters or professional in my pants suit and heels when I went out. Depending on where I was going of course. All my choices gave me feminine privilege choices I had so envied for so long. The only problem came when I needed to go back to my old boring male world. I was depressed for days.

The most important thing to note is, all along I never did want to go back to my exclusively male life where all I did was work, drink and watch sports. I had the unique choice to attempt to carve out a female life, and it felt as if I was taking the right path in life to do it. But if someone was holding a gun to my head and telling me I had no choice but to give up the new life I was leading, I would have said go ahead and shoot me. That is an example of how powerful the true lack of choice about my gender was with me.

Unless you have had the transgender experiences I have had, I don’t really expect many other people to understand. But I do expect them not to try to take away my right to live my life the way I want. I used to think that was part of being an American was all about until the transgender community was barraged last year alone with over one-thousand anti trans bills across the country. Through it all, many of those seeking to wipe us outthink we had a choice to uproot our lives and change completely. No more spouses, family friends and employment we were used to, because we had a choice. We did not want to change our lives so completely, we needed to.

As I look back at over fifty years of upheaval in my life due to transgender issues, it is obvious to me that I never had a choice. Regardless of what the bigots said, and they should not be able to use the choice word against me in potential anti-transgender laws everywhere.

Choice is one of the issues all trans women and trans men share. We all have the powerful drive to succeed, and it will never go away no matter how hard the haters try. We have always been part of the fabric of the world and always will be. The difficult part is that we follow our paths to stay on the course until we get a resolution we can live with.

In the meantime, survival is not a bad way to go until you can not take it anymore, then depending on where you live, a cautious peak into the world might get you by until you can do more. Sometimes, you can check with nearby LGBTQ organizations for resources near you. Many of which are on-line to help you find an outlet to talk with others with similar gender interests.

Even though you never had the choice to live your life the way you wanted to, where there is a will, there is a way to live out your gender choices on your terms. You just have to find it to begin to truly live out your own choices which you never really had.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More Downs than Ups on the Gender Roller Coaster

 

Image from Pietra K. 
from UnSplash.

The gender rollercoaster of life was very real to me.

That is the reason I attempt to mention all of the ups and downs I have experienced over the years as I battled gender dysphoria. For me, the trip up the coaster was not often worth the trip down as my depression set in. Until I received the proper care for my depression, I would often not want to even get out of bed for days at a time. Of course, I could not do that, and life would have to go on. That life included an increasing interest in cross-dressing. When I was on an upswing, life was better and I thought I was even making strides towards possibly living my future dream of living in and competing with a world of cisgender women. All of which had a very large headstart on me towards possibly achieving their womanhood before I could.

All this turmoil sent me down the rollercoaster of life and right back to where I started from…deeply frustrated. It was not until I began to leave my closet or shell and explore the world, did I begin to experience any relief. In the world, I discovered that not everyone noticed me and it was true what my second wife told me that it was not all about me. I was relieved when I learned that most of the world was just living life on their own terms and outside of few haters, I could live my life too. It was when I discovered that I was able to ride the level part of my dysphoric roller coaster, for a while.  

It never failed that when I started to come off the flat spot of my coaster, I needed to fight my depression again. Nothing I was doing was good enough as a man or a woman. I was so involved in wanting a transfeminine future, I could not maintain a good solid relationship with my long term (25 years) wife. The only things I was doing was keeping my head above water at work as I carved out the beginnings of a new transgender life. While I did all of this, I managed to make myself miserable as well as those around me. If I could not live with myself, how could anyone else, was my main thought pattern as I rode the roller coaster of life. All I knew was, I needed to hang on tightly for the ride ahead.

Of course, you all know I did manage to hang on, or I would not be here writing this today. Many times, it was because deep down inside I had this unmistakable idea of what I was doing was right. I had waited a long time in line to ride this gender rollercoaster, and I was not ever going to give up my spot. Once I came to this conclusion, I was able to stand in line with other ciswomen and not be so intimidated. And they were less intimidated by me and the rollercoaster hit another exhilarating turn as it headed into a tunnel. This time though, coming out of the dark did not mean I was heading into so much depression. Still, I knew I had a lot of work to do before I could reach my goal or dreams of living a fulltime transgender life.

Every time I thought I had finished a ride on the roller coaster, I found I needed to turn right around and get right on. A ciswoman’s life was so much more complicated than I had ever planned for, there were more challenges ahead. I still had key decisions to make concerning how I was going to live my new life. Such as how I was going to support myself and what was I going to do about telling my remaining family and friends that all along I had been living a lie. Last but not least, I would take the major step of seeking out approval to begin HRT or gender affirming hormones.

Amazingly, each time I jumped on the roller coaster, my rides became shorter and less eventful. I had taken the time and effort to set myself up as a regular in certain venues I went to all the time, so I did not have to go out just to be alone. I was always a social animal as a man and now I was too in my new exciting feminine world. Most importantly, I was able to develop a small circle of ciswomen friends who unknowingly boarded the coaster with me. They showed me the final steps I would have to take to get off my lifetime ride permanently. Maybe the best part was they never knew what they did for me. Eventually, what came out of it all was my marriage to my third wife Liz. A lesbian ciswoman who was instrumental in kicking me off my roller coaster permanently.

Even though I was ultimately successful in reaching my transgender dreams, I am not so sure I would recommend how I did it to anyone. I took too many chances and consumed too much alcohol along the way. Often, I used alcohol to give me a false sense of security when I was riding a scary coaster. Those were the days when I had to internalize my emotions and fear and “be a man.”

Finally, and thankfully, the world around me changed and I stepped down off my roller coasters all the way to less intimidating merry go rounds. Even they didn’t last as I decided to leave the gender amusement park altogether. Truthfully, I never got much of anything which was amusing anyway, and on some occasions, bigots and haters even put me into the freak category. Sadly, I never won any prizes for the most rides on a roller coaster or had a chance to reach for the ring on the merry go round. I was at least a survivor. I did not have to be a man at all.

Up the Down Gender Slide

 

Image from Abbs Johnson
on UnSplash.

Maybe you remember Ralphie (In a Christmas Story movie) who desperately wanted a BB Gun for Christmas and froze up when he was in a department store telling Santa what he wanted for the big day. What happened was Ralphie got kicked down the slide when Santa told him he was getting a football. Finally, Ralphie struggled his way back up the downslide and told Santa he really wanted a BB Gun and was then told he would shoot his eye out.

This scene paralleled my life in several ways. The main one was, I never asked for a BB Gun but got one anyway and secondly, I never asked Santa for the baby doll I really wanted. In many ways, the whole idea of struggling up the down slide when I considered my gender became routine. Instead of shooting my eye with a BB Gun, I became more concerned with hurting my eyes with my mascara stick. Plus, when I tried to hide my cross-dressing activities from my second wife, I tried to be more effective in removing all of my eye makeup so my wife couldn’t tell. It was a challenge to say the least. But not the biggest challenge of all.

First, I needed to break all the male tendencies I had built up over the years. How did I present as a trans woman, all the way to how did I move and communicate. I knew ciswomen operated on a different wavelength than men but how different I never planned on. For example, the amount of nonverbal communication between women surprised me. I quickly learned to watch for the visual cues I picked up when I was in a potentially dangerous situation, I was not aware of.

Ironically, the more I struggled to go up the down slide, the more slippery it became. I had to become more mentally tough as a transfeminine person to even survive in a potentially hostile world. It meant going back to the drawing board when I was pushed down the up-gender slide even more. By mentally tough I mean with my resources, facial feminization would not be possible and there was nothing I could ever do about the testosterone poisoned thick male body, I would have to work with what I had. That damn slide was not going to get to me. What I did do though, was put myself on a highly effective diet which ended up in me losing approximately fifty pounds as well as beginning to take better care of my skin after I shaved every day. By doing better skin care, I was able to use less makeup and look more natural.

With these changes, I was able to actually start climbing up my gender slide, so that someday maybe I could get the baby doll I wanted to have instead of a BB Gun. Mentally, at least.

Other changes I had to make as I climbed to the top of my gender slide was conquering my fear of heights. There came times when I thought I was moving too fast, and I was in danger of losing all my hard-earned male privileges such as family, marriage, jobs and friends. I did not want to beat myself and my male self-had me looking over my shoulder. Then I resolved to never stop working towards my goal of transgender womanhood and moving on to a totally different goal of being able to interact more effectively with the ciswomen I met. I always called it playing in the girls’ sandbox.

Maybe it was my gender paranoia weighing in on me, but I kept seeing potential problems coming at me when I was out of the mirror and into the world. Some turned out to be real, but most were not. I found I did not meet as many gender bigots or anti-transgender ciswomen TERFs as I thought I would. Men were for the most part always standoffish and ciswomen just were not for whatever reason. Maybe, in their own ways, they had climbed their own gender slides and understood what I was going through and did not mind sharing with me.

If you are starting your own gender slide, or even reaching the top, just remember the trip will never be easy. But to coin a saying, if it was easy, would have it been worth it. I know for me; it was the toughest trip of my life. Plus, you are human and will make a mistake on occasion. Especially, when you are not allowed behind the gender curtain to learn the basics cisgender women were raised with. At that point in time, it is up to you to climb your slide and thrive. Not just survive.