Loving the Skin You are In

 

JJ Hart.

Loving the skin, you are in is often difficult for a transgender woman or transgender man. In fact, we often come to hate the skin we are in. 

We start early in our lives boxed into a gender we were born into but never felt comfortable with. Many of us go through times of discomfort as we try to sort out who we really are. We have many questions such as are we going through a phase, is it just a fetish and someday will we somehow outgrow our desire to be the gender we always wanted to be.

In my case, it took me decades to accept the skin I was in and to learn to live it in the world as a transgender woman. Recently, I was reminded of my past when I attended a virtual LGBTQ support group meeting at the Veteran’s Administration. Normally it is a very tight knit group of the same people who come every week, but this week we had a new person who joined us who was coming out of her gender shell and slowly learning to live a life as a transgender woman. During the session, she asked if anyone had any advice on dealing with public in general and the police in particular when you are out in the world.

I am not good at giving much advice in situations such as that, so I mainly kept my ideas to myself. Such as the fact that I have had few interactions with the police over the years and those have been mostly positive. Even the ciswoman who called me a pervert once in a women’s restroom, did not call the cops on me. Leaving me with the time I was in a venue I was not a regular in and two women at the bar made it a point to call the police on me after I had used the women’s room. All that happened was I was stopped on the way out by a female cop who told me not to do it again and I went a short distance up the road to one of my regular venues where I knew I would not have any troubles. To make a long story short, I was sorry, but I did not have much of any ideas on a magic cure to dealing with a potentially unaccepting public. You just must develop a thick skin and complete confidence that you are doing nothing wrong and you can make it.

Another problem I have with giving any trans person advice is that I came out seriously so long ago and times have changed. You see reports of so many toxic men harassing ciswomen these days which were barely seen in the days when I was trying my hand at being a single woman at a big sports bar. Plus, I am lucky to live now in a fairly liberal part of Cincinnati where the public at large does not notice me, or care. I am allowed to exist in the world as my true self in my own skin for the first time in my life.

I was fortunate to be one of those trans women who could get out of her gender closet and exist in a stable world where I could flourish and share my ideas about my femininity. Hopefully the new member of the support group will stick around long enough so that I will be able to share thoughts with her about appreciating her own skin. Another problem too is that the group time is at a premium, so I am reluctant to take too much up with my thoughts. Such as, if she is already out enough to wear feminine clothes and paint her nails, what is she waiting for. Maybe she is waiting for someone to come along like I was and kick me out of my closet for good. Which is what happened to me when I was miserable trying to juggle living in both genders, and my future wife Liz told me that she had not seen any male in me at all

Destiny really set in with me when my daughter came on board with knowing the true me by saying among other things that I looked so happy. I mentally added, because for the first time in my life I was having the chance to live in my own skin.

Even with all the positives I was dealing with, I still had to get out into the world and live my new reality. I always had some sort of an idea that ciswomen live more of a complex life than men do, but I had no idea of what I was walking into in my new high heeled shoes. Primarily learning to deal with curious ciswomen and their passive aggressive behavior and potentially drama-filled toxic men filled my evenings when I was going out in my new skin in the world as I knew it. Through it all, I needed to adjust my way of thinking quickly and radically away from the old male way I viewed the world.

What kept me going was the fact that I felt so good and natural in my new transfeminine skin. Deep down I felt this new life I was living was always the way things should have always been for me until the cruel joke of being born a biological male set in. It was something I would have to battle for my entire life.

As far as the physical part of having a new skin, it was way past time for HRT or gender affirming hormones to set in and help me. When I was approved for my life improving hormones, it was like my body was telling me I should have been on them all along. As my overall body skin softened dramatically, along with bigger breasts and longer hair.

The best part of adding hormones to my body was the fact that my emotions set themselves up to better appreciate the whole process. For the first time in my life, I could cry tears of joy which I did when I began to live my life in my own skin. I certainly loved it.

 

 

 

 

 

Every time I Looked Around...

Image from Mahrael Boutros 
on UnSplash

Until I began to become used to the new feminine world I was beginning to navigate as a transgender woman or cross dresser in those days, it seemed as if everyone was looking at me.

I was not used to the fact that both main binary genders look at women. Even though they do it through vastly different lenses. Men of course have the tendency to add a sexual aspect to how they view a woman and other ciswomen often compare other women to how they look and how much work did the woman put into her presentation. As any beginning cross-dresser learns early, it takes a lot of work and effort put into a quality feminine look. Especially when you are making the leap from presenting looking like a man with your testosterone poisoned body, all the way to being able to blend into the world of ciswomen effortlessly.

I know with me, before I could begin to blend in with my new world, I needed to shake all the cobwebs of male feelings I had about doing it at all. For the longest time, I listened to my male self on how he perceived women in the world as sexual objects and tried to influence the way I was presenting myself. What happened was, I was dressing too tight and too short in my clothes and attracting too much unwanted attention. Not only was everyone looking closely at me, I received negative feedback because I was doing it all wrong. I was fighting a losing battle with the age that I was and the body shape I had to stubbornly realize I could not go on that way and hope to ever try to live my dream of being a fulltime transfeminine person.

Then, I went back to my cross-dressing drawing board to set out a whole different way of trying to present myself. Out went the way too short skirts and dresses and in came more manageable denim skirts and oversized flowing tops designed to cover my broad shoulders and lack of hips. I even went to the extent of going on a crash diet so I could find clothes in the thrift stores I was haunting that fit me. Along the way too, it is worth mentioning, I started to take much better care of my skin after my daily shave which helped me to wear less makeup. If everyone was going to look at me, I needed to give them my best effort.

One thing I could not hide was I was a big woman, and I needed to not be ashamed of it but to understand there were plenty of other ciswomen in the world who were the same size as me. So, I began to look for them to see how they moved about in the world. Even though I was right around the six-foot tall mark, I could still wear my cherished high heels. Even with jeans and a tight top which accented my new properly proportioned silicone breast forms I was gifted by a cross-dressing friend who was purging all his feminine belongings at the time.

Amazingly to me, my life as a newly realized transgender woman begin to come together for me. I started to be able to move around in society without causing undo attention while at the same time completely enjoying myself. I even went to the point of buying sunglasses which hid my eyes so I could watch others to see if they were watching me. It was a great way to judge how well I was doing in my ongoing challenge of who was watching me and who was not. I learned I was not attractive enough to attract much cis male attention but attractive enough to be sized up in the public by the ciswomen I encountered. Most importantly, I was getting used to the attention I was receiving and often I wondered where it was if I did not receive it.

The way I began to see the attention I was receiving was I craved it because of all the hard work I had put in to being an attractive woman anyway I could. Positive attention was feedback that I was doing something right and the very little negative feedback I encountered could be overcome easily because of my new overall confidence. Which became my number one accessory I needed when I found myself in shark (human) infested waters with potentially dangerous people. My new training as a trans woman taught me to look ahead and do my best to not put myself in dangerous situations in the new world I was in stripped of my old male privilege of personal safety. Very quickly, I learned the problems of being a lone woman in a poorly lit deserted area.

I was able to test my passing privileges when I transitioned away from the gay venues I was going to and tried my best to become a regular patron in many of the very same big sports bars I used to go to as a man. It turned out to be easier than I thought it would be and I was not noticed much at all by cismen or ciswomen. Even though, on occasion, another woman at the bar would take the time to talk to me. I think more than anything else out of curiosity. Why would an ex-man such as me want in her world was the major point women of all sorts were trying to find out.

As I said, I began to crave and even expect the attention I was getting as the only transgender woman in the venue. Except on the nights that my trans woman friend Racquel met me there. We ended up having about five venues we went to that accepted out business with no problems. I also went to monthly lesbian social mixers with my two friends in many of the same places and I was overjoyed when another lesbian approached me. I guess you could say I was causing the right kind of attention.

Getting out and learning how to know and appreciate the right amount of attention even carried over to an on-line relationship I stumbled into with my future wife Liz who contacted me from an ad I had placed on a woman seeking woman dating site. Fourteen years later we are still together, so I guess I looked in the right place for attention.

Thanks for giving me your attention for my experiences! Any feedback or responses is always welcome.

 

 

 

 

The Vampires Approved Me

 

Image from Mike Lloyd 
on Unsplash. 

Yesterday I needed to visit the Veterans Administration vampires to have my blood labs done. Fortunately, I could just go to my local branch office to get them done and not have to go to the congested mess which is the downtown Cincinnati VA Hospital.

I chose yesterday to go because it was a beautiful early August day here in Ohio with coolish temperatures and bright sunshine for the relatively short drive I needed to make to get there. For the occasion, I decided to wear my new Libra themed tank top with leggings and my new tennis shoes. After a close shave, a lite coating of makeup, and lipstick, I brushed out my long hair and was ready to go. Actually, compared to the few other ciswomen I encounter at the VA, I was nicely dressed and ready to face the world as a transgender woman.

When I arrived at the VA, it was a very uneventful visit as no one seemed to notice me for anything other than who I was, an elderly woman who did not have to wait long to be seen and have my blood drawn. Since I was emboldened by the experience, I decided to stop by my wife’s Liz and I’s favorite coffee shop to pick up some breakfast sandwiches and coffee. My morning continued to go good as their drive-through was nearly empty and I was greeted cheerfully. Before I knew it, I had my order and was headed home. It is the coffee shop we go to which has the big LGBTQ flag on the wall, so we always try to support it.

The best part was that only a couple of hours later, the doctor who wanted the bloodwork done received the results and everything came back OK. Which means I am clear with the vampires until I have my Hematologist visit downtown this fall. It is important mainly because it is when I have my Estradiol levels checked. It is certainly no fun going downtown and having to find a parking place and walking but there is nothing I can do about it.

In the meantime, I took my brief moment of gender euphoria and enjoyed it for what it was…a brief moment to be the person I always wanted to be. I was just being me basically for the first time in my life. Now all I need to do is string together more of these moments to make them my reality.

Just a short post today to let you know where I have been and I will be back with you with a longer post tomorrow.

Living the Dream

 

Image from Randy Tarampi
on UnSplash.

I discovered before I could live a dream of living as my own unique sense of womanhood, I needed to discover exactly what that meant.

I knew very early on it was much more than just applying makeup and parading around in one of mom’s dresses. It went much deeper than that. I wanted to be a girl as badly as anything I had ever wanted in my life.

The problem was that I was stuck in an information “never-never” land with no internet or social media of any sort to provide key information on what it really meant to have issues with your gender and not just throw you aside with some sort of a mental illness diagnosis. I did know enough about myself to know I was not mentally ill for wanting to be everything feminine. So, I did the only thing I knew how, day dream my life away envying the ciswomen around me.

As I grew into myself, I learned more about my dream and the overall demands it would make upon my life. Even though I tried not too, I still added extra male baggage such as a child, marriage and a better career to my life. I always thought I would be better off lonely with just having myself to depend on if I ever had to get rid of it all in my male world and start all over again as a transgender woman. Another problem was that I was tantalizing close to encountering other gender conflicted people who were actively following their dreams, so I knew it was possible.

For example, I just missed crossing paths in my broadcasting career with other trans women who were actively following their dream. One at a small radio station I worked at in my hometown and another I ran into at a AFTN Thailand radio/tv reunion in New Orleans. Sadly, the trans woman was so shy and backwards, I could not even get her attention to say hello.

Everything changed when I came home to nearby Columbus, Ohio and was invited to very diverse small parties on a regular basis. Everyone was there, including several trans women who were headed for gender realignment surgeries that I was able to interact with and learn from. How much exactly did my dream entail? Going all the way like they did, or not was my major point of wanting to know about them. The one thing I did find out was that they had taken the time and effort to set themselves up for success in the new lives they were undertaking. One trans woman was a firefighter getting ready to retire and had a good pension and insurance coming to cover her surgery and another was a very successful electrical engineer who was extraordinarily beautiful and knew she would not have any problems continuing to work after the surgeries.

I was in neither of their classes in appearance, insurance coverage or job security to even compare myself to them, but still my dream of ever living as a transfeminine person would not go away.

Somehow, I needed to carve out my own individual gender path to success if I was ever going to make it. Finally, I learned the powerful message to just be myself and most of the rest of my problems in my male to female femininization would fade into the background. No, I was not extra attractive such as thedestiny transitioning transgender women that I knew but I realized that many of the ciswomen that I knew weren’t either. It was very shallow of me to think that all that went into to being a quality person as a woman was just appearance, so I grew past it. My focus shifted into having more confidence in myself as a good person that a stranger would like and away from just how I looked. When I did, my dream began to become a better focus. Maybe I could do it after all.

Of course, my major focus was what was I going to do with all the unwanted male baggage (and some of the wanted too) that I was planning on taking along on to my new life. At that point in time, my second wife was still alive, and she had made it a point to tell me she would never want to live with another woman, so I had to figure out what I was going to do about that major problem. Then I also had the usual conflicts we all face such as what we are going to do about employment and would any of our friends accept us.

For me, destiny came along and in one fall swoop showed me the way to living my dream. My wife passed away. Leaving me alone to consider my future about the time what was left of my close male friends died too. It turned out destiny was giving me a clean life slate to work from when I began to start all over. In addition, I was old enough to retire and work a little on the side to make ends meet and the Veterans Administration health care system which I was already a part of decided to approve gender related care or HRT for qualified veterans which I was. Destiny could not have shown me a better path to my dream than if I had planned it that way. I needed to pay my dues and work through many dark, lonely days to get to the light, but it was worth it when I did.

Finally, my dream became a focus for me when I met my future wife Liz and other ciswomen who let me into their world. I was able again to focus my dream on reality and make sure it was not a nightmare. Perhaps the best part of the entire trip up my gender path was the likelihood that I would ever make it. To say the least, my going forward was a shaky proposition to start with and all too often, my mental gender darkness threatened to catch up to me and my dream.

Thank goodness it never did, and my transgender dream became a reality.

Reality for me is also to have you join in with my thoughts. Thanks so much for doing so!

 

 

 

 

When There is No One to Believe in You

 

JJ Hart

Sadly, transgender women and transgender men spend much of their lives being lonely with no one left to believe in them.

When it happens, the dark lonely closet you have been dealing with becomes even more restrictive and uncertain. With me, the only thing that kept me focused on my gender path was a little voice which kept telling me that against all odds, I was doing the right thing.

Maybe, like some of you, I had the same misgivings of what I was doing as I cross-dressed as a girl. Was I going through a phase, a fetish or was something wrong with me mentally all entered my mind one time or another. I did know, I had very few male friends and for some reason felt uncertain around the ones I did meet. Which only added to my loneliness and made me withdraw further within myself. It was very difficult for me to believe anything about myself during this portion of my life. But I thought I had no choice but to struggle on.

It was not until much later that I found that I did not have to struggle as much as I was doing as ironically, both sides of my dual gendered personality were coming out of their shells slowly at the same time. After military service in the Army, I learned to not be afraid of other competition from men, while at the same time I was learning how to exist in a ciswoman’s world I had always dreamed of. Life as I knew it was becoming unbelievably complex as I tried to balance two genders mentally and physically.  Every day, I needed to concentrate on who I was going to be when I faced the public. Ironically, I needed more room in my closet to make room for marriages, kids and employment.

Even when all of this was going on, I still felt lonely and wondered what I was doing wrong with my life. The problem was I was living backwards, which I would not understand until much later in my life sadly. The basics did not come to me that I was not a man trying to be a woman but was a woman trying not to be a man. It all comes under the old saying “If I had known then, what I know now, what a better life I would have had.” But the fact remained I was still living a very shallow life as a novice transgender woman and had so much to learn before I could claim my own version of womanhood.

For the longest time, I just took for granted I would just be lonely as a part of life I would have to get used to. Especially after my second wife of twenty-five years unexpectedly passed away from a massive heart attack. Even though she did not accept me as a trans woman, somehow, we still did stay together until the end. At least, I loved her deeply and was never lonely with her, or so I thought.

I found you do not miss what you had until it is gone, and death is the ultimate version of being gone and starting all over for me at the age of fifty-five was not going to be easy. Even though the relationships I had built up as a man were very few, what I had were all starting to die also. Any relationships with ciswomen as a man that I had were few and far between because I was not sure which direction I would go with my gender. I did not want to start another relationship with a woman just to end it by telling her she was actually living with another woman. As the gays would say, I was keeping my true self on the “downlow” the best that I could.

What happened next was that I was increasingly having a difficult time staying on the “downlow” because of all the explorations I was doing in the straight world I was trying to re-enter. This time as a transfeminine person. I was slowly building social relationships in the world with ciswomen who suddenly showed an interest in me. The problem I had was I was still not on HRT yet and was still in my mind too fake to pursue a relationship with a woman when after I stripped down to my basics, I was still a man without my fake hair, breasts and hips. Even with all the social stimulus I was receiving in my new world, I was still frustrated and feeling alone in my life.

I finally realized that I was the only one holding myself back from learning if I could be approved for gender affirming hormones or HRT.  I made the medical appointment from a doctor’s ad I had seen in a local LGBTQ publication and before I knew it, I was deemed healthy enough to be approved. It was a major step in my life and one I did not take lightly. The first night I took the minimum dosage of estradiol and spiro pills I was prescribed, I saved the special occasion for when my future wife Liz could join me in a venue in Dayton, Ohio.

Very soon, my HRT dosage was increased, and I ended up calling them my “magic pills” before I was switched to patches which would be easier on my system. Thanks to Liz and a few other ciswomen friends, I was able to think about forming deeper relationships with women again. My body had morphed into a curious gender blend of breasts, hips, soft skin with a non-performing male piece of equipment which did not seem to matter to the ciswomen around me who were not as insecure with their sexuality as most of the cismen that I knew.

Most importantly, I gained the confidence to believe in myself, which led me to not suffer the extreme loneliness I had felt during many parts of my life. It was like I was on a wheel, and my life had had the time and good fortune to come around again.

Hey all!!!! Thanks for reading.  Your input makes it all worthwhile to me.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

Why Me???

Image from Barbara Burgess
on UnSplash. 

I have often thought during my life as I was becoming aware of who I really was as a transgender woman, why me?

Those were the days of thinking I was the only male in the world who wanted to be female, and if I was, what was I ever going to do about it. Very early on before I had the necessities to start exploring the world on my own, I needed to rely on just the occasional cross-dressing experience in front of the family’s hallway mirror. It was very difficult to do because I needed to work around a very curious brother and family.

Most certainly, for years, I played the victim as I felt sorry for myself and my gender issues. It wasn’t until I began to leave my dark, restrictive gender closet did I begin to see that I was not so much of a victim after all. Overcoming my gender dysphoria would make me a unique human being with my insight into both genders. But only if I first paid my extensive dues to get there.

As most of you know, the dues transgender women and transgender men pay to challenge and win the battle to change genders is extensive and often dearly expensive as we have to give up spouses, family, friends and jobs. Just for what some see as a selfish pursuit of personal pleasure. If they ever knew the truth, most certainly they would not feel that way as they never had to feel the anguish, we feel about hurting others. During the depth of my struggle, I was down mentally and lonely as I felt why was this all happening to me. It led me to feel selfish and there was nothing I could do about it. I was even jealous of the other cismen around me who could follow their so-called “normal” lives without worrying about something as major as wanting to be a woman.

As I continued to learn what it would take to lead a transfeminine life, the more I respected what I had discovered and wanted to learn more. That was the time I began to see the light of my victim tunnel was not the train but was sunlight which would lead me into a new day. Away from many of the old fears and paranoias about going along my continuing male to female femininization path I was traveling. Slowly I discovered there could be much more to my gender journey than just doing my best to blend in with the ciswomen in the world around me. I still did not know why me, but at least I was not a victim any longer and I just might be on to something much bigger if I could escape all my self-destructive behavior I was engaging in.

I learned the hard way from pure social experimentations that I was on the right path and to keep going. Maybe by doing so, I could climb the gender ladder up to the level of where some of my transgender mentors were. If they could make it, why couldn’t I. It wasn’t why me anymore, it was becoming why not.

I was more certain in my gender choices when questions surrounding things like my sexuality came about. Because I was immediately embraced by so many ciswomen so quickly, I never had to worry about the occasional man that came along and mainly viewed me as a fetish object The last thing I needed was having to deal with the drama of a toxic cisman. So, I never did as I was able to discover my validation as a transgender woman through other strong women. Why me became suddenly very real as I kept going out night after night with the group of mainly lesbian women who accepted me. They taught me more than they ever knew about what it was like to survive in a world where men were basically an afterthought.

In their own way, my lesbian friends helped me to be prouder of the trans person I had become. My why me became why not as I grew increasingly confident in my own skin as a transgender woman. To coin a classic song, I could see the world from both sides now and be part of a special group of humans that could. Which is why I think so many transphobes and TERF feminist gatekeepers fear us and try to keep us out of women only spaces. Like them we gained our womanhood, just from a different and unique vantage point and we are not men trying to slip in. Especially since we work so hard to get away from the male culture.

Long ago, I was able to put my why me victim mentality about being transgender behind me and get on with my life. It marked the turning point when I could be accepted into the only club I ever dreamed of being in…the girls ‘club and I never have regretted doing it. Following several not so good decisions in my life, I finally made the right one and put the necessary work in to earn the title of proud transgender woman.

Today I will put my public gender persona to the test again as I go with my wife Liz to two of her doctor’s appointments. It is usually the easiest test of all because all the people I run into are mostly concerned about themselves. Plus, these days, I normally mentally have gone back to thinking my newer transgender self has been me all along. No more victim mentality. I always point out I did not have much to work with when I started my journey except a deep will to do it. I also wonder, if I knew all the bumps and bruises, I would have along the way, would I ever attempt the trip across the gender border. It took me taking the chances to get out into the public to make it at all, and if I did not, I probably would have been in my closet crying, why me.

For the first time in my life, all I knew was I needed to get out of my closet and fight for the life I really wanted.

 

 

Gender Affirmation Day

 

Image from Ava Sol
on UnSplash.

Recently, I had a rare opportunity to meet and enjoy the company of a small group of family for breakfast which I like to call a gender affirmation day.

Precisely, there were four of us including my daughter, son-in-law, my wife Liz and myself. For the morning, I chose a breakfast only small chain venue which we had never been able to go to before. Since it has been a while since I have seen daughter and son-in-law, I was very happy to see them. In addition, I have three grandchildren who did not come since they are adults now and have their own lives to attend too. Plus, the oldest, is a nuclear engineer and lives in Maine and the next two in age (both boys) are traveling in Japan. The youngest is some sort of a bio-engineering student at “The Ohio State University.”

Getting back to my experience, I was dressed very casual in my favorite jeans, new OSU T-shirt and comfortable tennis shoes to face the world at large in a place I had never been to at all. Plus, I did put on some light makeup and partially tied back my increasingly long hair. We were lucky enough to beat the Saturday morning breakfast rush and got a seat as the place was filling up. As I always do, I try to find out if anyone is paying any extra attention to me as Liz and I made our way to our seats. Nobody did except this pesky kid (boy) who would not stop staring at me after we sat down close to where he was sitting. Through it all, I managed to ignore him until his family finished eating and left before we did. Leaving me to completely concentrate on my food and the pleasant conversation that was going on.

As I always point out, being transgender in my daughter’s extended family is not much of an anomaly after all. The nuclear engineer in Maine is trans and my first wife (who is my daughter’s mother) has a transgender man cousin. Diversity runs in the family, whether the naysayers, which are a few, like it or not. My first wife’s in-laws are very redneck conservatives, the same as my ex-communicated brother’s. So, I have not talked to him in over a decade.

My daughter was and is one of my strongest allies and used me as an example to all three of her kids on diversity in the family. She has always been by myside during my male to female feminization journey and I love her deeply for that and how she turned my out-of-control life around when she was born. As a point of reference, she will be fifty years this year and I am trying desperately to come up with something special to do for her but she I like most all of the other ciswomen in my life, they do not have a grasp on what they did for me.

Since now, I spend so much of my time isolated from the real world and because I have mobility issues, I don’t have a chance to match wits with the public anymore and face people such as the pesky kid who would not quit staring at me. It is a good thing he was not sitting at an angle where Liz or my daughter could see him or there could have been some sort of an altercation about having manners. That would have been bad because I am used to fighting my own rare battles. As most kids do, he got bored and turned his attention back to his breakfast. Per norm, is mom was too busy on her phone to be paying any attention to her kids and at least they were not screaming.

Since my daughter’s world is so busy with work and acting as a home care person for her mom, it is difficult for us to put together the time to get together, and I can take advantage of a powerful shot of gender affirmation. Because I can still benefit from it so much and I have always been just me to her and the rest of her extended family no matter what gender I was living as. As a matter of fact, it took me longer to adjust to them accepting the authentic me than them to me. One of the reasons was because the pressure of living an unwanted life was over and I was free to be happy. They knew me better than I knew myself.

More than likely, I won’t have to wait as long as I did this time for another shot of gender affirmation from person who went through my transition with me because my daughter has access to many old pictures of my family I need for my book I am writing for them about my life. She lives in Dayton, Ohio about an hour away from where I live in Cincinnati so it’s not like we live right around the corner from each other. Plus, her big birthday is coming up on Labor Day, so perhaps we can pick up the photos then and if her mother-in-law throws a big party, there will be more gender affirmation for me to selfishly enjoy. Maybe my second wife was right, my gender struggles were all about me.

In many ways, gender affirmation is just another term for having an extended period of gender euphoria. It is just another way of saying that I need to be relieved of my transgender insecurities because they run so deep. Maybe it is because I was forced into that male box, I wanted no part of for so long yet eventually learned to master in so many ways. Or me just wanting to be a transfeminine person was so difficult for me to accomplish, I could never forget the struggle and still bear the scars from him fighting me for control.

Regardless of my insecurities, I still try to keep them hidden around my supporters and do my best to show my appreciation for the gender affirmation they have given me.

 

 

 

It's All in the Details of Gender

 

Image from Liam Nguyen 
on UnSplash.

Quite early in life, I learned to pay attention to the details when I followed my instincts and started to cross-dress into mom’s clothes and try to put on her makeup. I thought all was good after I had snuck around and managed to shave my legs again without anyone noticing.

That was until I snagged mom’s hose on an unkept fingernail and ran yet another pair of good stockings or pantyhose. I learned the hard way to take better care of my nails as well as the rest of my body on my path to femininity. Little did I know, paying attention to just the smallest of details would rule my world as I climbed my gender path towards my dream of living fulltime as a transfeminine person.

My major problem was that I was restricted to viewing what a woman’s life was like from the outside in a male dominated family. Through it all, my mom became my mentor and role model more than she ever knew and it went way past just using her makeup and wearing her clothes. I could see how she worked behind the scenes to make sure that the family ran as smoothly as possible. Way past all the traditional female duties such as cleaning and buying groceries. She taught me all that a ciswoman could be at a young age. All the time not realizing what she was doing because she actually had a daughter, not a son.

It was not until I began to get out on my own as a novice cross-dressing transgender woman did; I really have to develop my sense of detail. It was very difficult for me because I was never a detail orientated person. When I went out initially as a trans woman, there just seemed to be so much to concentrate on and remember to do to succeed. Even if I thought I had perfected my fashion, hair and makeup for the evening, there was the problem of putting it all together outside of the mirror and getting all my movements down, so I did not look like a linebacker in drag. The details weighed on me heavily and they were all I thought about in every spare moment I had. So much so that I needed to think ahead to which gender I was at key moments in my life.

It all carried over into life events such as weddings and dances when I had to step back and wonder what I would be wearing if I ever had the opportunity to attend as a trans woman. Sadly, I did get to experience attending a funeral when my wife Liz’s dad passed away after I had transitioned. I wore my best black outfit and did the best I could to blend in properly with all the other ciswomen who attended.

The funeral was just another reality check for me as I needed to face how far I had come in my male to female femininization journey. At my age, I always knew attending a funeral as me was a possibility, but I never knew how real it was until it happened. At that time too, reality and details were becoming increasingly important as I expanded my life in the world to new and exciting groups of strangers such as in spiritual circles and Meetups of writers in Cincinnati. They were the first groups of strangers that I had ever met outside of LGBTQIA+ support groups I attended locally and at the Veterans Administration in Dayton, Ohio. Meeting new people as I said was exciting and kept me active at an exciting time of discovery in my life.

By this time, repetition replaced my need for detail as my makeup habits, along with clothing needs became ingrained as I finally knew who I was in my life. No more searching in a dark lonely closet for an answer. I had it with the help of the world of new and exciting discoveries I was in. I had brief moments of releasing my gender euphoria before but nothing like this before as all the possibilities of the world were opened to me. When I sought out and was approved for HRT or gender affirming hormones. Which I write about a lot. New emotions outweighed the need for details as I moved ever closer to being the person I always wanted to be.

One thing I never forgot as I male to female transitioned was how I was treated early on and how I needed to respond by going back to my cross-dressing drawing board time and time again until I got my details correct. There was so much more to what I was trying to do than my home mirror had told me as I tried to exit my gender closet for good. All I knew was, once I was released from my loneliness, I never wanted to go back. I spent as much time as I could out in the world working on my feminine presentation so I could overcome my testosterone poisoned body and make it.

I cannot stress enough how much of my journey has been filled with fear and or panic when I lost key male privileges such as intelligence and personal security. Details just weren’t enough to help me through all the anxiety I felt meeting strangers in my new exciting world. In fact, just yesterday, I felt the same old twinges of panic sneak in when Liz’s son and I had to take our old lawn mower into the shop for a tuneup. After all these years in the public eye and I still have the same problem is ridiculous I know, but I still do when I am entering predominantly male spaces for any reason. Again, all went well as the young person at the mower place was only interested in taking care of us. Not my gender.

All in all, the extreme work I put into crossing the gender border was worth it as I achieved my goal of living the life I wanted to live. Even though there were times when I did not think I was going to make it.

Thanks so much for joining me with my life experiences. Hopefully you can gain some insight into your life from them. Comments are always welcome!

 

Imagine your Dream

 

JJ Hart on left, Pic Nicking with Liz on right.

Yesterday, I went with my wife Liz to her appointment with her “vampires” to have her blood labs done.

When I did, I had a chance to sit around and watch the other ciswomen in the waiting room and see if they were watching me at all. They were not and went on as they all were too busy on their cell phones to even come close to noticing the trans woman in the room. Instead of me joining them on my phone, I thought back to a time when just going to a doctor’s appointment was not such an easy task because of all the gender paranoia I was feeling. A gigantic case of impostor syndrome to be sure.

Early in life, as I imagined my dream of living a transfeminine life, I never factored in all the mundane things a woman does during her life. I was too busy being the “Pretty, pretty princess” as my second wife always called me. And to her I would have been about the furthest thing away from being any sort of a princess in the waiting room that there was. I would have never dreamed I would have been seen in public without being dressed from head to toe as close to an attractive woman than I could.

Nobody but me cared that my dream had changed and I was alright in jeans, t-shirt and light makeup to be seen anywhere in public. I was just another person with very long hair and breasts in a doctor's office. Had I become lazy in my old age or just dressing to blend in with a public who increasingly does not seem to care about feminine appearance.

Maybe I was just being selfish in that I was OK with just dressing to blend in with the rest of the world around me who were too busy on their cell phones to notice me at all. Is that what my dream had become? Perhaps I am being too demanding in my dream that I wanted it to turn out a certain way. And, I certainly did not set out to be some sort of a leader in the ciswomen’s fashion world, I had had enough pressure on me to lead for a lifetime when I was living in a cisman’s world. I just wanted to fade into a new world and learn it totally. As I come closer to the age of seventy-seven, I think I can safely say I have reached that goal I set so long ago.

Coming up Saturday, my daughter and son-in-law are making the trip down to Cincinnati from Dayton, Ohio to bring me a scrap book of family pictures and have breakfast with Liz and I. For that visit, I will certainly attempt to dress up more for the occasion, which will include a new top I bought, along with new flats and even tying my long, long hair back also. She is the only accepting blood relation I have left, so it will be good to get out of the house and see them.

In many ways, the visit will prove my dream is not dead as I get to relive the fun of dressing up different as a transgender woman. Which was one of the fantasies I had when I started so long ago up my gender path. I should have known that my path would have been different as I veered away for just wearing skirts and dresses and sticking with slacks and women’s pants. Much to the chagrin of the cross-dressers around me who kept asking me why I would want to wear pants when I had to wear them all the time as a guy. My only answer was that I liked the way I looked in them, so now you can go away and mind your own business.

I guess you can say that even in my formative years as a novice transgender woman, I have always been a “tom-boy” of sorts. Which is probably another reason I fit in so well with the lesbian culture that I did in my jeans and boots. One way or another, the pieces of my lifetime dreams puzzle were coming together and even though I was too stubborn to initially accept it, the finished puzzle was all me. “Tom-boy” and all.

I was fortunate too when I discovered that and became a firm believer in my gender was completely between my ears and not between my legs. Which made feel less bad about not having any access to the early sex-change or gender realigning surgeries which were available at the time. My complex life was slowly coming into focus, and the best part was that I increasingly felt comfortable and confident with it.

Coming full circle back to Liz’s blood work appointment, I had the chance to remember the bad old days when even such a mundane trip such as that could cause me strain and paranoia. It felt so good to feel good about myself and confidently walk in proudly holding Liz’s hand. I never wanted to go back to the early days of gender dysphoria and impostor syndrome that I suffered through.

The moral to the story is that if you are on your path to a gender dream goal, there is no real unique way to get there. Ciswomen lead such complex lives that they leave you many ways to carve out your own. Way past the shallow aspects of appearance and sexuality. Which gives you more interesting sidelights of your life to explore and live. Just remember to stay safe as your personal safety privileges you had as a man go away forever. You are just learning what ciswomen have always known…stay clear of toxic men.

In the end, it is your dream to claim if you can get there, and to do it you may face challenges until the final pieces of your puzzle come together. Just remember, you are attempting one of the complex and difficult efforts a human can try and even if it so difficult to do, it can be worth it in the end.

 

 

 

 

Gender Gatekeepers in the Way?

 

Image from UnSplash

Perhaps you have gender gatekeepers blocking your gender transformation.

It is often a hot button issue for people drawn into the fray by unreasoning political debates which more times than not center around transgender girls in sports as well as trans women and men using the restroom of their choice. The problem is we all have had the gender label slapped on us from birth if we liked it or not. And what’s that old saying about everyone having assumptions? Everyone has one…Well that certainly applies to gender also. Gender is such a powerful building block for humans today, as they think they are vested in a certain gender simply by being born into it.

As far as gatekeepers go, leading the charge along with the religious right are the Trans- Exclusionary Radical Feminists or TERF’s for short. Mainly TERF’s arrived on the scene around 2008 as a way to block transgender women from having any access to women’s only spaces. Even though I would venture a guess that the average trans gatekeeper has heard the TERF term at all, she still attempts to practice it. My prime example was the night a ciswoman was yelling at me at the top of her lungs in a women’s rest room (at a venue I was a regular at) by calling me a pervert for just trying to pee. After she backed down, I got her to even give me a card to her beauty salon she ran, so I could pass it along to the very powerful LGBTQIA+ organization in town. Even though I emerged with a modest sense of success, the experience still influences me to this day. Even though I have been able to use the women’s room for years now with no problems.

Another problem I see in our trans world today are the people who assume (yes, I used that word again) that they have reached a certain age, they can be anointed with the term woman or man. When becoming a woman or a man is a socialized term and just because you were born female or male, you don’t have an automatic right to it. Beyond everything else I have gone through to achieve a transfeminine womanhood; this fact has given me more confidence than anything else when I am being stared down by an unfriendly person anywhere, I go. Chances are, I have gone through more to achieve my womanhood than they had, mine just came from a radically different path. Plus, it was more mentally driven as I rejected the gender status I was born with.

Even so, it took me a long time to not fear the gatekeepers who were trying to keep me from experiencing my dream goal of slipping behind the gender curtain and seeing if I wanted to permanently live there. To do so, I needed to take chances with my male life which had provided me with so many positives. Also, I needed to overcome the haters who thought I was up to no good as I tried to learn a new world.

From my days dealing with serving teams in the restaurant business, I learned of the power of Alpha-females. Or I discovered once I was accepted by the Alpha women in the bunch, the easier time I would have it. Many times, my plan worked to perfection when my gatekeepers paved the way for me and opened doors, I never thought possible. I was approached for the first time in my life by well meaning women who were curious about me and more importunately shunned by potentially toxic men.

As I bring up the gender with the frail sexuality (men) I need to mention most all of them were all too happy to act as gatekeepers to me. Unless they wanted to treat me as some sort of a fetish object, they were all too happy to slam the door on me. Even the gay men who just saw me as another drag queen. I grew used to having my hands well out of the way when I was dealing with a cisman.

The more I tested the public as a novice cross-dresser or transgender woman, the more skilled I became on testing the gatekeepers I was going to face. My biggest drawback by far was adjusting to the passive aggressive attacks from ciswomen who for one reason or another were out to get me. I learned a smile from some women was just masking their claws that were out to get me and I needed to move on from them quickly. As I learned, the more I was able to become my own gatekeeper and even help a few others come out for the first time themselves in the public’s eye. I was humbled and flattered anytime it happened to me.

Today I believe that the government gender gatekeepers have been emboldened by their recent political successes. But even that is being challenged here in backwards Ohio as the number one anti-LGBTQ politician in the state is being charged with child sex crimes. I bet that sounds familiar right? Whatever comes from the charges here in solid red (conservative) Ohio, it is the slightest chink in the armor of the heavily gerrymandered Republican party and brighter days may be ahead of us.

What it has to do with you is an incredible chance to vote and change the system. No matter if you are a beginning cross-dresser looking for answers in your dark closet, or an out and about transgender woman or transgender man, you need to have your voice heard. Because when you finally make it out of your closet, you will need the fewest gatekeepers in your way as you follow your gender path. Look at them as some sort of a gender haunted house of scary attractions you have to overcome to make it.

Gatekeepers can be won over and help you to survive in the world if you are a survivor and want to make it. It is a learning experience but an interesting one if you take the time to enjoy it.

 

 

 

Trusting the Process

 

JJ Hart Very Early On, 
Trusting the process in a 
rest room. 

One of the hardest things to do as a transgender woman or transgender man, is to trust the process as you continue along your gender path.

Especially when your path is lasting longer and taking you places you never thought of going to. Then you have the probability of picking up more of the gender baggage than you never thought you would. Trusting what you will take with you and what you will leave behind becomes a huge problem.

As you build your new personality, you can use your old gender baggage as positive building blocks if you can take the leap of faith to learn from your past. Perhaps, more than anything else, you must trust in yourself to believe in what others may think of you. This was very important to me as I began to build from my small core of ciswomen friends and have the courage to spread out into society.  I started following my new wife’s Liz lead and joining her spiritual group to start and then spreading out further into other “Meet-Up” groups in Cincinnati which matched our potential interests such joining writers’ groups for me, along with craft groups for Liz. It worked well for me as I was able to work my way out from being so shy around strangers and build more trust in myself.

Trust comes with a couple of drawbacks such as what if your trust is betrayed and how you will ever build trust again. Going way back to my second marriage, I destroyed most of the trust my wife and I developed over the years by breaking the deal I made to never go out of the house alone cross-dressed. I certainly was not proud of what I did but just could not stop myself from doing it. Essentially, I felt as if I was cheating on her with another woman who just turned out to be me and whatever she did was just not good enough for me. As I was busy destroying her trust, she was correct in telling me I made a terrible woman, and it had nothing to do with my appearance. Which at that time meant the world to me.

During this time and beyond, it was difficult for me to try to trust the process I was on during my gender journey. It seemed nothing was going fast enough for me to ever see if I could make it to my ultimate goal of living full-time as a transfeminine person. I guess if you take into account all the years, I spent cross-dressing my life away from the male world I disliked so much, it is no wonder I felt that way.  From start to finish, it took nearly a half a century for my male to female femininization project, which should have been more than enough time to trust the process and have faith where I was going.

My excuse that I always hang onto is that my male life was not that bad and my male self was a powerful ally with my second wife on me ever transitioning into transgender womanhood. And did I trust what all of that meant to me anyhow. I did realize any sort of a gender transition would mean I stood a very real chance of losing all the materialistic male privileges I had built up over the years. In an instance, my spouse, family, friends and job could be wiped out and I would have to start all over again. At that time, I did not think I trusted myself to do it, so my made the worst choice I have made in my life and tried to juggle a life somewhere on the gender border between male and female.

As I am always hesitant to write about, my choice to walk the narrow gender line wrecked my mental health and led me to a self-harm event. I was already diagnosed with being a Bi-Polar depressive person, so it did not take much to send me over the edge. Fortunately, I had a good therapist to help me realize my truth and help me through it. I was slowly coming to a point where I could trust the process and understand where I truly fit into the grand plan of my life the way it always was meant to be. I should have never embarked on any path to being male at all. A place which was foreign to me and I just did not belong. I was no wonder I felt the way I did around other men I was with. Full of mistrust in them for the most part.

Once I was over that hurdle in my life, I needed to begin to trust the world through the eyes of a trans woman which was hard to do. Mainly since I knew the way toxic men treated women from my past. Once again, cis women with their open minds to me joining their club were my secret to building trust again. Even though I still carried the scars from attacks by passive aggressive ciswomen, I was able to build my own new life with a feminine confidence I had never had before. I felt so good, I went ahead with my long-awaited legal name change and even longer awaited plan to be approved for HRT or gender affirming hormones. By doing so, I effectively painted myself into a gender corner I could not escape from. I had to trust the process and not try to turn around no matter how attractive the idea sounded at times when I learned what I was losing with my male privilege being taken away.

Primarily, I lost much of the knowledge of life I had learned as a man as well as needing to keep a closer eye on my personal security. Which was quickly at risk as a transgender woman joining the world for the first time and learning first hand what ciswomen already knew about being around toxic men.

As I said, trusting the gender process path I was on was never easy, but it turned out it was the only path I had.