Just Stay Out of My Lane

 

Image from Navid Solrabi
on UnSplash.

One of the many delights I encountered when I set out on my male to female femininization project was the amount of attention I was receiving from the ciswomen around me.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, I received very little attention from men, probably because I was not attractive enough. Even still, there were the occasional experiences when I let men into my lane out of pure curiosity. I wondered how it would be to be treated as a woman by a man on a date.

Curiously, my first date to dinner was from a lesbian who went on to transition into and live as a trans man. Later on when we talked, he always chided me about how scared I was that night. I never told him, but one of the reasons was I felt he could physically overpower me if he wanted to. One way or another, the evening was so different that I never forgot it.

Other men I ended upgoing out with in my exploration days mostly ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time to ever get serious. Take for example the big, bearded man who I grew close to after his ill-fated wedding to another exotic woman I knew. While others in the group we were a part of either shunned or made fun of him, I was the opposite, an understanding shoulder to talk to. It was so new and different to me and it felt so natural and good that I could react to a man that way. Before I knew it, he transferred out of town on his job, and I never saw him again.

The only other man of note that I enjoyed my self with was Bob, who I was able to go out with only one time because again I was in the wrong place at the wrong time to seriously get involved. Since he lived far away and was just traveling through where I lived in Ohio, we were able to set up a date in a regular sports bar I went to near Dayton, Ohio. Long story short, I let him in my lane and for the first time in my life felt like a woman on a date she enjoyed. We talked, laughed and he even sang karaoke to me. All too soon the magical night was over, and we went our separate ways after a long passionate kiss, never to meet in person again.

For some reason, I continued to be drawn to ciswomen, and them to me. I primarily think it was because most women were curious about me. What was I doing in their world and how different was I. Since women are fortunate to not have the sexuality hang ups men have, I found all but the most hard-core lesbian haters were intrigued by me. I think too, the honesty I portrayed in my life helped my appeal with the women I met who had encounters with men in their lives such as having kids. What worked for me was, I did not have to consider changing my sexuality around and I was used to the specific gender drama I would be facing with women, not men. Who of course I understood too but they did not want anything to do with me, so why bother. I was much more than a fetish object.

I was also having the time of my life as I escaped the extreme loneliness I was feeling after my wife passed away by going to lesbian mixers with my friends. I found that often I was the one doing the mixing as sometimes I was the one out of three of us who was hit on. I was in the lane I wanted to be in for sure. Plus, in many ways, I am still in that lane, as I formed a long-term relationship with one of the lesbians I met and we are still happily married to this day.

From my wife, I have been able to fill in many of the blanks I had in my gender workbook growing up as an unwilling boy. I learned not everything was pleasant as a young girl when I learned the reality of what went on in life with parents and friends. Not being allowed behind the gender curtain when I was young really took a toll on me. It took me years to catch up to what all cis women already knew, and they always made gentle fun of me and said welcome to our world. What they did not know was how badly I wanted to be in their lane.

Now that I have been in their lane for years, I have grown quite comfortable and confident in my surroundings. In fact, I feel as if I have spent my entire life here and most of my male life was a bad dream that I needed to live through to arrive at where I am today. And even though I struggled through much of my male existence, he still taught me how to be strong when I needed it. To maintain the strength to keep my lane the way I wanted it in a transfeminine world.

Even though I had many close calls and bumps and bruises along the way, my interactions with women and men let me choose the lane I wanted to be in. I consider myself to be fortunate in that I survived one of the most difficult transitions a human can undertake. Changing one’s gender is a basic human need and is never easy to change. Before you know it, you can find yourself in a bumper car-like zone and need to get out. I was especially successful when I finally chose my lane and stayed there. No more switching back and forth which was hard on my already fragile mental health. Plus, I felt good when I had the confidence to keep others out of my lane so I could experience it on my terms with no more blind curves and huge hills to climb.

 

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.

 

 

Everything was OK Until it Wasn't

 

JJ Hart. Frozen in Florida

So many times, when I was caught between my genders, I learned everything was Ok, until it wasn’t.

A prime example would be when I was coming home from a night in the gay venues I was frequenting and my car decided not to start when I was twenty miles away from home. Then I needed to figure out how to get the car home before my wife came home and took off all my make-up acting like nothing had happened. What I did was call a towing company and get the car towed back home as I sat in the cab with the driver, trying my best to present as a blond woman just trying to get her car home. Somehow, I did make it that night and learned to never take that car again when I went out on such a pressure packed adventure.

Sadly, I needed to learn the hard way as I followed my gender path through many blind curves and major potholes. I would usually start out with a final look in the mirror thinking I made an attractive woman from the testosterone poisoned male I had to work from. Confidently, I moved ahead to whichever venues I decided to go to that night. And the stakes were raised significantly when I decided to leave the relative safety of the gay venues behind and attempt to see how I could do in the straight world of big sports bars. It turned out, if everything was going to be OK, I would find out quickly.

Normally I found everything was going to be OK, except on the nights I encountered problems using the women’s restroom and I ended up having the police called on me. That turned out to be more embarrassing than anything else because the cops had better things to do as I was just sent on my way. A more embarrassing night came along much later when a group of drunk guys decided it would be fun to play “Dude Looks Like a Lady” about five times in a row on the juke box. Which ended me getting asked to leave by the manager, even though I was a regular. Well, liked by the staff, who actually tracked me down at a close venue not long after and asked to come back. Telling me, the manager who told me to leave got fired. I was flattered and accepted my welcome back because everything I thought was OK, actually was.

Other times, I was not as fortunate as I began to learn the basics of being allowed to play in the girls’ sandbox. Learning the time-honored tradition of passive aggressive behavior which ciswomen practice so well, proved to be a challenge. I was used to taking another man at face value most of the time until he proved himself unworthy which did work with women. I learned a smile could be hiding something much more sinister. Resulting in claw marks down my back. Once I did, again everything really did turn out to be OK and stayed that way for the most part.

In no way, do I want anyone to think this gender male to female feminization project was a quick one. There were so many nights when I hurried home to return to my old unwanted male self that I wondered what I was doing. I was risking so much on what often seemed to be an empty dream of someday being able to live as a fulltime transgender woman. What kept me going was the deep feeling I had that when I was my feminine self, I felt so natural and I felt as if I somehow was home. And someday, all the setbacks I had would just disappear and everything would truly be OK.

Through the magic of gender affirming hormones (HRT), and strong ciswomen role models, I was able to weather the transition storm I was going through. I knew everything was going to really be OK when I found I could validate myself in the world as a trans woman without the validation of a man, or anyone else. The whole process was so much more complex rather than just looking like a woman. I needed to be my own woman, on my own terms so I could exist on the path I had always been on. Even though sometimes I did not realize it myself. Those were the days of feeling like a failure when a group of teenagers laughed at me for how I looked. Rather than staying and trying to do better, I had to run home crying and go back to my cross-dressing drawing board. Seeking the idea that everything was going to be OK, even though it was not at the time.

As I said, what kept me going was a small spark of feminine energy deep down inside me. Knowing for sure, being the woman I dreamed of being was going to be an incredibly complex gender journey to make. Just lacking the communication skills, I needed to survive in the world as I went one on one with other women made my life a scary one. Since I was shy to begin with, I needed to start from scratch in a new world and work hard to gain an equal footing as a novice trans woman trying to make it alone in the world until I was able to make new friends.

The new friends I made helped me to cushion when I got into situations when everything was OK until it wasn’t. During those times, I could fall back into the group and learn from what was going on. Every learning experience became so important because I could make sure to never try that again. Even what was left of my stubborn male self-learned the misconceptions he had about how women truly lived and did he really want to let go of his life for good.

When he did, I found that everything was going to be OK and it always was.

A Little Success Goes a long Way

 

Hair by JJ Hart. Bead Work
by Liz T Designs

In the life of a novice transgender woman or man, a little success can go a long way. Mainly because very few of us are blessed with the natural gender characteristics of the gender we feel is truly us to get us started.

At that point, we must feel our way along. Sometimes submitting ourselves to abuse from the public as we go forth in the world for the first time. In my case, I make no secret of the many times I headed back home in tears after being laughed at to my face in public. Somehow, through it all, I was able to catch and enjoy brief moments of gender euphoria to keep me going to a distant dream of possibly living a life as a full-time transgender woman. Of course, I did not have any idea that I actually could do it.

I was fortunate that practice made perfect (or close to it) as I was able to improve my makeup and clothing skills to where I could survive in public when I left my mirror. Which I discovered was one of my biggest problems because it had the tendency to lie to me when it came to my overall appearance as a woman. Too many times, I went out thinking I looked great and then had the world slap me down in laughter because of the mirror. Plus, my male ego was giving me the wrong impression of how to look as I attempted the sexy look when I was in my thirties not in my teens. There could be no shortcuts in being able to present myself well as a trans woman, I would have to concentrate harder on my makeup and wardrobe than anything I ever tried before. Just because I was trying to dress sexy and show too much skin would not work in the real world if I was to blend in with the other ciswomen around me.

Finally, success did come to me as I haunted the thrift stores in my area for just the right fashion to attempt to flatter my testosterone poisoned body. It turned out I could not attempt to test my success until I left the gay venues I was going to and tried to go straight with my public excursions. The gays did not care how I looked and just viewed me as a drag queen any how so I was wasting my time until I discovered how I could make it or not in the big sports bars I was used to going to as a man. When I followed my three-step method of acceptance, I had no problems being accepted. My three steps were to put my fear behind me and smile, never cause any trouble and tip well earned me the right that every regular had. Especially the one I cherished more than anything else, the right to use the women’s restroom.

With my success came responsibility. I needed to be on the alert for other strangers who wanted to talk to me. Especially ciswomen who were curious about why I wanted in their world. Success in my communication skills led me to learn more about living behind the scenes as a ciswoman than I ever though I could. My primary example I always use is how women use the power of nonverbal and passive aggressive communication to get by in the world. Especially when it comes with dealing with men. It was very difficult for me to learn the basics women use to live but as I did, a whole exciting new world opened to me. Perhaps the best part of it all was that it felt so natural, so I knew I was on the right gender path in my life for the first time.

My success then began to go a long way when I discovered a small circle of women friends I could socialize with on a regular basis. I was always a social person anyway, so the fit seemed fun and natural to me as I gained the confidence I never had before when I was a solitary, lonely cross-dresser. And the best part was, I was having the opportunity to learn from the other women around me about knowing how it really was to interact with the world as a transgender woman rather than how I always dreamed it would be. Needless to say, I learned a lot.

I looked at my whole experience as paying dues as I went from being laughed at in public all the way to having my own set of ciswomen friends to socialize with and even marrying one later in life. Ironically, it was my wife Liz who convinced me once and for all to put my male self behind me, give away all my male clothes and start gender affirming hormones. Which I had always considered the next logical step in my male to female gender transition. It turned out, hormones would be the great “aha” moment in my life as the femininization process took hold. It was as if I should have always been on the hormones because the process felt so natural. The changes went way past the external softening of the skin, breast and hair changes all the way to all the internal changes such as emotions and more.

For me, success took a long time coming, and early failures at passing in public made me very timid. Once I made it through all of that, success came more naturally to me. All the way from just leaving the house cross dressed to HRT, my life became a blur of changes. Sure, the battles I needed to fight came at me fast and furious because I was so embedded in the male culture but I was able to fight my way through them and be successful as I discovered a little success went a long way and kept me going along my gender path towards a life I had only dreamed of.

Invisibility as a Trans Girl

 

Image from Lindsey Feanzke
on UnSplash, 

Another major realization I had during my wife Liz and I’s vacation journey was how invisible I had become as a transgender woman.

It was not an easy realization to come by since I have been out in the public eye full time for over a decade now. During that time, I went through all the stages of going from sheer panic all the way to suffering from impostor syndrome when I found myself in a feminine world for the first time. Along the way, I had heard the term stealth applied to the impossibly feminine transgender women I had seen who had passed the public perception of beauty easily. A standard I never thought I could reach with the testosterone poisoned body I had to work with.

In many ways, I found I never could but then I began to look around me at all the other ciswomen in the world who did not achieve a high standard of classic beauty either. And they found a way to lead successful fulfilling lives as women. When I realized they had a path, I knew I had one too. I could be secure in my own womanhood even though my path was different than most of the world. The only real problem I had was dealing with the late start I had dealing with my realization that I was a transfeminine person all along. I was blessed with having the advice or criticism from moms or peer groups to help me out of my gender shell. I only had a mirror which was highly capable of lying to me on my feminine presentation. Even though I looked like a clown in drag because of my poor makeup skills, my mirror friend kept telling me I was pretty.

It was not until It began to have the courage to use the world as my mirror did life begin to change for me. I needed to pay closer attention to what the ciswomen around me were wearing so I could blend in with them and not create unwanted attention to myself as a transgender woman. In other words, I did not know it yet, but I had my first lessons in being invisible in the world as the person I had always dreamed of becoming.

Little dd I know, the more I was out in the world, the more lessons I would have to learn to just survive carving out a new niche in my life. It was one thing to talk to myself in the mirror and a whole other to communicate one on one with another woman n the world. Early on, before I gathered much courage in what I was doing, I would lay back and let the other person (normally a woman) take the lead in any communication efforts she wanted to do. I found it was the best way to go as I learned what the gender I so desperately needed to be a part of operated behind the gender curtain which men could only guess at. I became comfortable in women only spaces such as restrooms and parties where men were not invited. In doing so, I was making myself more invisible as a trans woman and more visible as a well-rounded person.

All of this brings me back to what “stealth” as a transgender person means to me. For the longest time, as I said, I thought the word applied to only the upper echelon of transsexual beauties I saw online back before anyone could use filters to make themselves look better. Back in those days, feminine facial surgery was the way to go to re-arrange what you were born with in the appearance department. Seeing how I could not afford any surgery and was still working as a man, I was stuck with trying my best to improve my looks through the miracle of makeup.

By this time in my life, I was approaching my sixties and had managed to carve out a nice little life with affirming women friends, I decided to take to heart again what my trans friend Racquel had told me years ago. She profoundly said I passed out of sheer will power and I took it as it was intended. That I would never be the most attractive woman in the room but I could survive anyhow as I found my path as a transgender woman beyond the point of ever living a male life at all and I was now invisible to the world as my former self. After all the decades of attempting to live as a mix of the two main genders, I had made it to the point of just being me. More importantly, I was able to show the public around me who I was too. Now, it could be when one ciswoman on the trip came up to me to tell me how much she respected me coming along on the tour, it could have been she was referring to me making my way with my walker on wheels, or the she sensed I was transgender. One way or another, I respected what she said.

It turned out she was not alone. To my surprise, I had several other couples tell me the same thing and they were the ones I least expected to do it. Which teaches me once again not to prejudge people ahead of time. Shame on me, because I hate it when people prejudge me.

I guess becoming invisible for me came the same time I learned to just be me and I my life’s journey just happened to include being transgender. Now I need to keep trying to adjust to my new realizations. Since it took long enough for me to do it.

 

 

Setting New Traditions

 

JJ Hart bottom row, left. 
Girls Night Out Birthday Party. 

Establishing new traditions or routines can be difficult when you decide to finally live as the gender you were always meant to be.

In my case, the biggest moment of change was when my regular invitation to the family’s Thanksgiving feast was rejected by my brother and sister-in-law who did not have enough backbone to stand up to her rightwing Baptist family. The excuse I was given was, what would the kids think. I was fortunate that my dramatic change was by my daughter and my future wife Liz. Both of them invited me into their family gatherings with open arms and I ended up having an even better time than I would have had with my brother.

Other traditions I was invited into were girls’ nights out for various special occasions such as birthday parties. I cherished the chances I had to go behind the gender curtain and see how ciswomen interact with each other when there are no men around. Sure, I was terrified to go at first but quickly calmed down and warmed up to the experience when almost all of the women there treated me as an equal. Surprisingly to me, I ran into no problems except for one woman who acted as if she was mad at the world anyway. Plus, my most important lessons were if you take men out of the picture, women are looser acting around themselves and the only real difference in the conversation is the lack of sports and job talk. The bulk of the conversation was built around family and spouses.

I took these new learning experiences with me and ran with them into my everyday life’s interactions with other women. I subtracted any talk of employment and my major interests (sports) unless I was asked about something specific. Which surprisingly I was not and my private life which I had not merged at that time, stayed mine. No one pried, and I did not offer. Which worked well for me.

As I slowly began to build on the experiences I mentioned, life became more fluid and natural to me, and I knew I was on the right path. I felt better after spending a night with the ciswomen than I ever did when I was busy posturing with other men. It just took me time to establish new traditions, and I came to expect the occasional invitation to join other women in their celebrations. I became my own woman, just from a different background than the rest of the group. As I learned so much, most of the women never knew how much they benefitted me by just allowing me into their lives. Including the lesbian experiences, I had which went such a long way towards shaping my future.

From the earliest days of going to diverse mixers in Columbus, Ohio and ending up leaving with a lesbian I talked to, all the way to attending lesbian mixers with Kim and Nikki in Dayton, Ohio years later, I again was able to learn so much about the sort of woman I wanted to be. As many of the transgender women around me were stressing about finding a man, I learned I did not need a man’s validation to be me. It really helped me to not needing to change my sexuality while I was building new traditions in my life. I had always appreciated the company of women around me and nothing changed.

If you are considering, or are building new ones, as you know it is a major deal and one that can take a while. My advice is fairly simple, pursue as many avenues as you can and be prepared for the occasional rejection you may receive. Especially from men who may perceive you only as some sort of fetish object. And of course, be safe and meet strangers in public places initially.

Sooner rather than later before you know it your new traditions will become established and second nature to you. That is when the woman who has always been a part of you can emerge and live the life she always imagined. Jumping the gender border may be something you were always destined to do but never dreamed you would have the chance to do it like I did. I needed to wait for decades as I experimented with my gender but finally the doors opened wide for me to find myself in a do or die situation. Either try a male to female transition which was always a female-to-female transition in my world or forget it and move on with my life at the advanced age of sixty. It would have been easier just to do what I always had done and live a life with one foot in each of the binary genders.

I took the hard way out and decided to pursue the next step in my transition (it was a big one) and seek a doctor’s approval to begin gender affirming hormones or HRT. It was a huge step for me and one I did not take lightly. My body took to the new hormones like why did I take so long to do it? It fit right in with the rest of my life of waiting too long to do what was right. Establishing new traditions in a life I always should have known was just the beginning.

 

 

 

 

Merging your Past with your Future

 

Image from Sammy Swae 
on UnSplash. 

We speak a lot around here about merging your life’s past circumstances with the future of what you may be facing.

Depending upon the number of years you have spent living as your birth gender, you may have an incredible amount of baggage to bring with you from your past. Including the input of spouses, family, friends and jobs. What to bring with you to merge with your new lifestyle as a transgender woman or trans man is often an agonizing decision. One thing is for certain you can’t bring all of your past life with you. However, no matter how you may want to cut it, the basic building blocks of your life remain. Such as how your parents raised you. My parents raised me to be a contradiction from the beginning. I was expected to stand up for what I believed to be right, as long as it did not interfere with what they thought was right. So being a childhood cross dresser was being an individual in my mind but an embarrassment in theirs. So, I had no chance of winning my gender battles.

On the other hand, I was taught the difference between right and wrong but not enough that I could bring it with me when I needed to face the biggest battle of my life, what was I going to do about my unwanted male life. Deep down inside, I knew the right answer then just refused to face it.

For the longest time, I was guilty of putting ciswomen and girls up on some sort of a pedestal as I viewed their lives from the outside looking in. Basically, all I saw was they had the chance to wear the pretty clothes and be pursued by the men or boys in school. I so wanted to be the cheerleader on the sidelines rather than the defensive end I was on the football team. Without seeing all the work, it took to being a good cheerleader. In fact, I never saw any or all of the work needed to transition from being a female to being a woman which I found to be a huge difference. Females are born; women are socialized in the world which means not all women ever make it. If and when you are attacked by a TERF about how you were born, rest assured she has problems if all she could come up with was a so-called birthright.

Getting back to how you merge your past with your future, the first thing you have to remember is not to forget about your present. Your present is so important as you live a daily life, often between two powerful genders, male and female. Your present is often the time when you are working hard to see how your gender dreams will impact your life in the future and how much has it done for your past. In my case, all I had really learned about being in the world as a transgender woman was to apply makeup well enough, so I did not look like a clown in drag, and I learned to shop in thrift stores to find the right fashion to flatter my testosterone poisoned body. I knew nothing about putting my new improved feminine image into motion in the world.

Once I did get serious about looking around in my present-day world back then, I wondered how I was going to ever merge my past with my future. After I determined how badly I wanted to.

My main concern was how one sided my interests were. I was mainly a sports addict with the usual male preoccupation with my job. Most certainly, I would be sacrificing my job if I male to female transitioned but what about my sports hobbies? It was then I became very serious about looking around to notice who all was watching sports at the big venues I was in and I was pleasantly surprised that all those years, I had been missing the number of women who were involved. It turned out that unless I was trying to talk sports with a man, my baggage was safe with other ciswomen, and I was not out of place in my favorite team jersey. To make matters even better, when my wife Liz and I got together and began going to “Meetup” groups, I was able to go to writers’ circles to interact with a whole new set of people. I highly recommend groups such as that to expand your social horizons as a transgender woman or trans man.  The only negative experience I ever had was with a lesbian social group who refused to accept me because I was trans. Which was their loss, not mine.

Then I began to look at my future as just downsizing my life. I was leaving friends behind who did not accept me all the way to going from two wardrobes to one. As Liz once told me, it’s not often a human gets to stop a life and rebuild it, so don’t mess it up. With me, I was fortunate to have help in merging my past with my future. When I was with my new circle of women friends, I just had to learn what to needed to omit from my past which would inadvertently out me as a past male. I was able to talk about my family because I had a daughter, which was a good example, I just could not share birth stories. But in reality, I was in the room, just not doing any of the work.

Any way you cut it, when you do make the decision to cross the gender border, you will naturally have to leave part of your past behind. Just be careful, you do not leave any of the basic building blocks behind which make you the person you are. From there you can build a new and better you as your authentic self maybe you never thought you could be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gender Lost and Found

Image from Jon Tyson on UnSplash.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

  

When What You See is Not What You Get

 

By request, Liz on right at a summer picnic.

Most all of this post comes from the early days of me being out in the world as a novice transgender woman.

Early on, when I was hanging out in the gay men’s venues, I had a difficult time separating myself from the drag queens in the room. While I appreciated their artform, I certainly was not a part of it. The only time I had tried to ever perform on stage was at a crossdresser-transgender mixer I had went to years ago in the Cleveland, Ohio area. I was a dismal failure, and my performing career was over, for good. But I walked away from the experience in my high heeled shoes with a newfound respect for what good drag performers go through.

Life really began to change for me when I left the gay venues and began to see if I could make it in a more normal universe in the big sports bars, I was used to going to as a man and wondering how it would be to experience them as a transgender woman. Surprisingly, I found less resistance to me being there than I did in the gay bars where I sometimes had to fight to get a drink. Not unlike the clerks I met in mall clothing stores, I found I was no more than a dollar sign to most all the servers and bartenders I met. As long as I followed the basic rules of smiling, never causing any trouble and tipping well, I was cool to most all of the employees I faced and for the most part, just another face in the crowd. Which is exactly what I wanted.

In the venues I went to, it did not take me long to become a regular and I took advantage of perks such as restroom privileges. Plus, when the bartenders knew me so well, it helped me with other new patrons who may question my existence. I wanted anything but them thinking they were encountering a man in a dress.  To preclude that happening, I worked hard at blending in with the other ciswomen around me. I knew exactly what most of them were going to wear so I could wear the same thing. When I did and my makeup and hair were on point, it gave me the confidence to try new things as a trans woman.

I discovered at that time, my own little rating system I used with the public. I felt a high percentage of the world was just going on about their business and did not care about me one way or another. Then another percentage who did notice me were curious (not evil) women who wondered what I was doing in their world, and finally there was the group of haters who had sensed I was different and wanted to confront me. Fortunately, they turned out to be the smallest group I needed to face when I was out in the world because I was certainly not what they thought they were getting when they saw me in public. I was more than a fearful spineless person trying to act like someone they were not. I was rapidly becoming more comfortable as my authentic self.

Perhaps the biggest learning experience I had was when I did know I had the confidence to be myself and what the world saw of me was all true. No drag queen, no parttime cross dresser, just me a transgender woman. Since the great majority of the world had no idea of what a transfeminine person was, I knew I would have to educate anyone who needed to know more about me. On occasion, I needed to answer insensitive questions from people who had known better. Like the nurse at one of my mammograms years ago, who blurted out something to the effect did I still have all of my equipment down below. Like it was any of her business. But, for the most part, people treated me with respect. It was all in how I treated strangers. If I acted as if nothing was wrong with me, most people went right along with the program and did not ask me any invasive, personal questions.

Then came the portion of my life when I began to be able to surround myself with people who never knew anything about my old male past. Amazingly to me, they accepted me as I was and never asked any probing questions. The only outliers were my transwoman friend Racquel who told me I passed out of sheer willpower and my wife Liz who sent me down a permanent path to transition when she told me she had never seen any male in me at all. She was particularly profound at the time because I was still trying to live part-time in both of the main binary genders. Liz knew what she saw was what she was going to get when I went through my male to female transition and even started HRT or gender affirming hormones. In fact, I took my first doses (I was on pills then) when we celebrated New Years Eve together one year when we first met over a decade ago.

I desperately wanted the world to see in me what they saw in all women, just a feminine person trying to live her life as easily as possible. It took me years to build the confidence and courage to shed my old male self and do it but certainly it was finally worth it to live my truth. My motto became, what you see is exactly what you get and if you for some reason don’t like it, it is your problem. Not mine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Labor of Love

 

Image from Mor Shani

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

Reflections on a Theme

 

Image from Alexsandra King
on UnSplash. 

Reflections on a theme could really go several ways.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

Practice, Practice, Practice

 

Image from Mor Shani
on UnSplash. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

You're so Vain

 

Image from Ava Sol
on UnSplash

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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