Supporting Casts

 Recently I wrote a post concerning (among other things) the power of having cis-gender women friends to help your transgender transition along at key times. If you are similar to me, you started your gender journey in the mirror and dreamed of the day when I could enlist another more experienced woman's aid with my wardrobe and makeup. 

In response, I received this comment from "Anonymous" : " It’s nice to see the positive side, the genuine sense of joy in transition. I know I have felt euphoria as I have gained the confidence to comfortably present myself authentically to the outside world. It’s interesting that you mention feeling more comfortable in the company of women. That has been my experience. I am not attracted to men physically. Frankly, I prefer women as friends or if given the opportunity, as intimate partners." 

Thanks for the comment! 

For some reason, during my life I have always felt more comfortable around women, even though there were very few girls in the neighborhood I grew up in. In order to survive, I needed to develop strong masculine tendencies to basically keep the bullies away. Even though I was successful, I still for whatever reason, never really had many close male friends Maybe, it was a result of my inner feminine self. Or an overreaction to thinking I maybe gay. My own inner form of homophobia. In later years I wondered if the fear of my own sexuality would carry over into my own inner transphobia. Essentially when I feared what would happen if I went too far into living as a fulltime transgender woman. 

In passing the other day, I mentioned certain early cross dressers or transvestites' who were seemingly using cigars to back up their reliance on so called male stereotypes. to which I received this partial comment from Georgette who happens to still smoke cigars, even though she has transitioned:

" Why do so many people break everything down to a Masculine or Feminine thing, I get a laugh or no response from many part-time CD/TV that will say that they still enjoy all those "Manly" things, I started smoking cigars in my teen years and still do. It is a world of difference from smoking in general."

Thanks to you Georgette  for the comment!  I think too many people over-simplify the masculine and feminine thing. Including me. Sometimes I get lazy when I write and get ahead of myself. On the other hand, describing the differences between the two main binary genders becomes very tedious for me. As far as cigars go, they were part of my life when I needed to out macho another man, or at least connect with him. Before I transitioned and grew away from them, a good cigar was a priority of me so I understand where Georgette is coming from in her comment. 

As far as comments go, I always invite any of you to participate in the blog by commenting and I will try to add in your input when I can, Sometimes it is applicable, sometimes not. The same way I felt I couldn't use the makeup advice I was given very early on when I was a novice crossdresser. If the truth be known, I probably had more experience with makeup than some of the women I was with. Later on was when I discovered how much I could learn from the women around me about really being women. As Georgette said going much farther than simply breaking down life to a masculine versus feminine existence. 

It took me awhile to finally learn my second wife was trying to tell me the same thing when she said I made a terrible woman. Perhaps my problem was I was making a terrible person to begin with. It took the emergence of my inner female to recognize the difference with the help of a strong supporting cast.  

Transgender Recipe

Image from Callum Hill
on UnSplash

Every now and then I am asked how I negotiated a difficult and often impossible gender journey. 

As I have been able to sit back and look at my path, I know my recipe for success is in some cases very different from other transgender women  but at the same time eerily similar. An example would be those of you of an age close to mine (73) needed to endure years in a very dark and isolated closet in the pre-internet and social media era. For years, I was convinced no one else shared my own gender issues. My own recipe for success as a novice cross dresser or transvestite (or whatever you happened to call it) turned into a recipe for survival.

Through all the down days of questioning what gender I was, life went on as I built into my recipe different ways to survive in a male world I wanted no part of. I mainly resorted to existing in a very lonely life as the girl in the mirror. The major problem was the girl in the mirror always provided positive feedback no matter how poor I really looked. The learning curve proved to be a challenge since I had no real peer influence to help me. 

My recipe didn't really change for years as I basically just bided my time until I graduated high school and college. Then waited for the military to draft me into their world which shattered any of my possible future cross dressing ventures. They would have to be on hold for my three year enlistment. Surprisingly my recipe did not include my first adventure in letting others in (or coming out) to a select few others. I write often about the Halloween party I went to in Germany when I had approximately a year left to serve, as a prostitute. Weeks later, when my "costume" came up among friends. over many quality German beers I admitted I was not wearing a "costume", I was a transvestite. Even though I felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders, I then had to begin to worry about being outed to my superiors and being ushered out of the military with a dis-honorable discharge. Fortunately, I wasn't. I served out my final year and was honorably discharged. With my gender issues safely hidden away.

Following my return to the civilian world, my interaction with others as a transvestite revolved basically around the various Halloween parties I went to as a woman. During the parties I was able to mix in interacting with the world as a novice transgender woman into my recipe. The lessons learned are basically too many to share in this blog post but the most important ingredient I added to my gender recipe was the fact I just may be able to exist in the feminine world as a full time transgender woman and most importantly how much I enjoyed it. 

From there my life became much more complex as I enforced my ever-evolving gender recipe. I was at once elated but  at the same time terrified to be giving up what was left of my male life. I suspect those of you followed a somewhat similar path as you wrote and followed your own recipe for gender success. It remains amazing to me how far I have come since the deep dark days in the closet I survived years ago. 

Muscle Memory

Image from the Jessie Hart
archive. Ohio River background. 

If you are into sports at all, perhaps you have heard the term "muscle memory". Athletes use it to describe how they approach certain aspects of their sport. A prime example is how a batter in baseball prepares the same way everytime when he comes to the plate. 

As transgender women and trans men often we face the same dilemma of how to cross the gender frontier and establish ourselves successfully as new women or men. Naturally along the way we have a tendency to carry characteristics of our previous gender we need to erase. One of the first aspects of my old gender I attempted to change was how I walked. What I encountered was, I finally achieved a certain level of presentation in my mirror and then I had to put the entire feminine image into motion. I needed to break so many bad habits when I was trying to cross dress as a man, I felt I needed to practice as much as I could. I even went to extreme measures such as going to big box stores later at night and practice walking as a woman. Even though I was still dressed as a man. I always wondered what the store detectives watching on camera thought of me. 

Over time my ability to move more as a transgender woman improved to a point I felt more secure in public. At that point I discovered another serious problem I was facing was how I held my facial expression. It took a small child loudly telling her Mother "Look at the big mean woman!" The obvious compliment was the kid called me a woman but the bad side was she thought I was mean. From that point forward I tried to take the old male scowl off my face and replace it with a more welcoming look. With my new look, along the way, I attracted more positive communication as a woman in the public's eye. 

Muscle memory for me was difficult to maintain. I really needed to concentrate to make my gender image complete. My old male ways were so ingrained. It seemed on occasion the harder I tried, the more mistakes I would make. An example was the time my high heel became wedged in a small crack in a mall sidewalk I was in or the time I was leaving a venue where I was a regular in. One night I was wearing my high heeled boots, got up to leave and promptly fell in a wet spot. Fortunately I was not injured in either case except for my pride. I went back to the drawing board and I challenged myself to walking better in high heels. All part of the new muscle memory I was attempting to assimilate in order to be a more accomplished transgender woman.

These days I am trying once again to improve my movement muscle memory. Since I went through a period of time when I was having mobility issues. I finally found myself at a point where moving as a woman wasn't as important as just moving at all. Happily I am beginning to do better with my mobility now so I can again concentrate on moving as a woman. 

All in all, muscle memory is a very important phase for all transgender women and trans men to go through. Why should we spend so much time and effort in looking good for the world and destroy the image completely when we put it into motion. 

Gender Euphoria's Backlash

This is an extension of yesterdays post which went into detail of one of the highly successful Halloween parties I went to. In recap, the evening turned out to be so successful gender euphoria ruled my life for several days following. 

Halloween with Kathy
Photo Jessie Hart

By the time this happened, I should have been able to predict it would occur again almost down to the day. Essentially the pressure of being unable to explore my feminine self became so great I nearly could not stand the pressure. The more pressure I felt, the harder to live or work with became. I was so jealous of any cis woman who I perceived was so fortunate to be born female and having the chance to grow into a woman. It was all a throw back to when I was young and woke up in the morning wanting to be a girl. 

Later I learned my all too brief trips into cross dressing as a woman just wouldn't last. My gender backlash would soon be back to haunt me. I also found out, the more intensely pleasurable the cross dressing experience was, the stronger the need to repeat the process. As knowledge of gender became more well known, what I was going through was gender euphoria versus gender dysphoria. In scientific terms, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  

In the case of the Halloween party I wrote about, the euphoria I felt from feeling I was able to compete appearance wise with the other women I was with was intense. In the days following my adventure, it didn't take long for my gender dysphoria to set in. When it did set in, it did it with a passion. I couldn't stand to look at my male face in the mirror in the morning and my day automatically started on the wrong foot. Once again I was stuck wondering why I couldn't live a feminine life more often. My inner self who was feminine in nature was screaming to get out. 

My entire reason in writing this post was my desire to point out no matter how pleasurable to finally burst out of my gender closet it was during these Halloween adventures, finally learning I had a deeper need to be a transgender woman was slowly but surely ripping me apart. When I say was nasty coming down off my gender euphoria I mean it. I was fired from one job for how I treated my employees and almost lost several others. Finally I had to tell my bosses I was undergoing anger management training when in fact I was going to a gender psychologist. It saved my job and helped somewhat with my dysphoria. 

Halloween was such a learning experience for me, I craved the euphoria when I achieved it which was not always the case. Some Halloweens were more special than others and if I knew then what I know now, I would have recognized the true depth of all my gender issues. Putting on the feminine clothes was all well and good but it turned out the clothes were just the tip of the gender iceberg.  One thing is for sure, I would have understood the negative aspects of  backlash better.

Going Back?

Photo Courtesy 
Jessie Hart

 Every now and then I read a post about some transgender person who is considering reversing courses and going back to their original gender. Often I think how easy it would be to do just that. Then I realize how I could never de-transition myself. For several reasons.

One of which and perhaps the most important is the fact once I arrived at my goal of being a full time out transgender woman, I felt so natural. In other words, for the first time in my life, my internal feminine soul was able to be freed from its dark closet and take over my former masculine exterior. This all led to me never wanting to give up and return to my previous life as a white privileged male. 

The struggle however was real. I was deeply involved in my sometimes toxic male existence. It involved stages of growth as I learned the true meaning of what I was attempting to do. It was an all encompassing path I found myself on as I traveled a route to be a transgender woman. 

Regardless, I understand others who struggle with the urge to go back to the safe gender life they led before. Many had to battle unaccepting family and friends and made the decision so much more difficult. Even still, easy is not the best course in many cases. Especially when it comes to deciding who your authentic self is then trying to live the life you were always meant to live.

When I think of all the moments in my life when I was trying so hard to find my true gender self, I wish I could have the chance to reclaim just a portion of the time and energy I spent. I took it so far with my nasty mood swings when I couldn't cross dress myself to relief, I nearly lost jobs. . Even further, was the guilt I felt when I was essentially cheating on my wife with another person who turned out to be myself. All of the transgender ripping and tearing I was feeling led me to many self destructive experiences and eventually a suicide attempt. Sadly she (my wife) passed away before we could come up with the final solution to my gender issues. She held her line at never wanting to live with another woman. On the other hand, I went through my only attempt ever to seriously de-transition. I went as far as to grow a beard. Naturally I was miserable.

From the moment she passed on I knew I was free to live my life as I pleased, in whatever gender I chose. Once I did, soon I flourished as my authentic feminine self. 

From that point forward I knew I had found my true gender home, the one deep down I was always knew I was meant to live. From then on, I knew I was never going back to my cross dressing male self. I went as far as I could with hormone replacement therapy to help femininize what the public saw. The HRT really worked with external as well as internal changes such as emotions. I cried more in the first six months as the result of sadness and happiness than I had in my entire life. 

I especially don't understand how a transgender person who has gone as far as HRT could ever go back to another gender universe but in a world where anything can happen I'm sure I will read about someone de-transitioning again. The current anti LGBTQ atmosphere in more than a few area's doesn't help those who want to gender transition into their authentic selves. It's a difficult path to follow.  

No Fun

 My partner Liz asked me the other day not to write anymore when it ceased to be fun. I'm sure anyone who has ever attempted to write a daily blog will tell you there are so many times when writing is the last thing I really wanted to do. Definitely not what I would call fun. So, you may ask why to I keep doing it. 

The easy answer is the great majority of days  I do enjoy writing, which I separate from fun. An example would be back in the day when I first started exploring wearing my Mom's clothes then began using my meager funds to buy select items of makeup and/or clothes on my own. It all was so exciting and fun but all too soon it wore off. Looking back at it now, it was the first milestone in my life when I should have known my gender issues were far from being just wanting to wear feminine clothes. I wish I had realized there was so much more to just looking like a girl...I wanted to be one. As the fun began to wane, a sense of satisfaction set in when I thought I had achieved a certain level of excellence when I adored myself in the mirror. 

As the years went by, I learned an even more important lesson. Not only did I enjoy the feminine world I was increasingly enjoying, the lesson was how natural the whole process felt.

Maybe writing is the same way. I started this blog hoping to help others dealing with their similar transgender issues. At the time, of course I had no idea that over ten years later I would still be writing as many times as I do. Along the way I have managed over 6000 posts and I wonder how I can come up with different things to write about. I enjoy blaming my friend Connie for the whole blogging adventure when we shared experiences with each other about our feminine lives on another transgender - cross dresser web site. I wish I could bring back a few of the exchanges she had with a few of the other participants who we ended up calling "trans-Nazi's"   They were the ones who felt they were better than you because they had more operations to prove their femininity. In today's world, they would be the bigots who want to point out they are more transgender than you. Many just for the reason they started to transition earlier than you did.

Maybe there was very little fun along the way because crossing the gender frontier is such a deadly serious journey. Often at stake are families, jobs and friends. Very few of us also are lucky get through the process unscathed.

Whatever the process has been for you, I hope you have managed have a little fun along the way. The same is true for my writing. Even though certain days it is not easy to write and I hope I don't recount the same experiences from my past very often. The problem is many of the happenings are tied together similar to a huge collage of my life.

Thanks for being along.
 

Walls or Closets?

 It was long ago it was when I first took the big steps and leaped into the feminine world as a full time transgender woman. To refer to it as only coming out of a closet was an over simplification.  It seems to me rather than coming out of a closet, I climbed enough walls to build a house. 

Of course, a closet is often small and dark and a house gives a person increased freedom to move around. When you are transgender, the house is never enough . The quest to being a woman is much more complex.

Examples? One of the biggest one I write about often is learning to look another cis woman in the eye and communicate. I learned quickly the subtle nuances of eye contact, vocal intonation and factors such as passive aggression. Lessons came fast and furious as I built the foundation to my authentic self. 

Even though as I built the foundation it felt natural, it was also terrifying. I was tearing down another house which contained the remnants of my male self. Over the years, I had worked so hard to cross dress and present as a macho male. I was successful. I gained a small family, a good job and all the trappings of a middle aged man. I was awarded the honorary title of "sir" whether I deserved it or not. I guess another example of impostor syndrome.

Now, lets get back to building a gender house. Obviously each wall involved quite a bit of work. Just moving from walking around and window shopping in malls evolved into interaction with clerks. From the shopping trips came having the courage to stop for lunch and attempt to order food and beverage. Looking back at the process now, it seems to have progressed fairly quickly. So quickly I decided for the first time to shed my inner image of being a cross dresser all the way to attempting to go to an upscale restaurant/ bar and interact as a woman. I will tell you jumping the wall was one of the most terrifying things I have done in my life. 

As I continued to build and expand my house, there always seemed to be the "what's next" problem. I was hanging out at a couple lesbian bars about this time. One was extremely non inviting, the other the opposite. The only reason I can see now for building this room was a desperation to be accepted which I wasn't in the male dominated gay venues where I lived. Very early on, I closed the drag queen room in my gender house. What's next quickly became going to large cis gender venues to watch sports and drink beer.  With my career in similar venues, becoming accepted by the staff was fairly easy. Be nice and tip well was my way to getting my foot in the door. In one of my regular stops I was even invited and went on a girls night out with several of the servers. Even though I was scared to death, I ended up learning key lessons interacting with other women.

Finally I came to a point where my house was built as far as I could get it. I had provided myself a quality second existence which rivaled my cross dressing male life. The next major wall I had to escape involved the major step of starting HRT or hormone replacement therapy. The problem was my wife of twenty five years who I loved deeply was deeply against it. Her rational was she didn't sign up to be with another woman. 

Then, in a prime example of life changing on a dime, I was destined to see the doors of my walls swing wide open and I could make the lifestyle moves I needed to do to fully transition and live in a feminine world. 

More on it later.

A Night at the Theatre

 This will be the final post concerning how Halloween parties paved the way for me to actually come out of the closet and live a fulltime feminine life. 

This one goes way back to my post Army days in the mid 1970's and happened in Columbus, Ohio. 

When Halloween rolled around that year, Columbus had just restored and reopened the "Ohio Theatre" a very ornate and beautiful structure complete with the original restored theatre organ. For the event, they decided to present a costumed event complete with a silent horror movie and the organ music .I thought it would be an ideal time to reprise my "costume" I wore at the Army Halloween party I went to. 

For the evening I managed to persuade my future first wife and two other friends to attend with me. The first mistake I discovered I made was when we had to park approximately two blocks away. Up to that time in my life, I had never attempted to walk that far in high heels before and I felt it! Other than feeling the fall chill on my exposed legs, the only other real impact I felt was how much attention my outfit did not cause. I guess with all the other unique and wonderful costumes, a guy in a mini dress didn't cause much attention. 

However, none of that mattered as we found our seats for the show. The theatre was magnificent. Especially for a person such as me who is really into history and restoration. I do remember trying my best to enjoy being dressed as my authentic self.  After all, it was very close to the first time I was able to actually go out in public as a woman. 

Looking back at all of it was, once the thrill wore off, I was coming to understand how natural I felt

and how would I ever make it an entire year before I could attempt going out again. Finally the realization slowly came to me indeed I couldn't make it and would have to find other ways to express myself. About this time was when I started to research Virginia Prince and subscribed to the cross dressing Transvestia magazine. Wow! There were others like me after all!

Bottom line was, once the door to my gender closet was opened, it could never be closed again. As I have written sever times, I felt too natural as my feminine self to go back. 

A night at the theatre proved to be only the beginning as I was able to enjoy watching the show around me as the woman I was destined to become.   

I Can't Help It!

 Here in Cincinnati, Ohio in the Southwest part of the state, hurricane Ida remnants have passed on leaving us with beautiful pre-fall weather. I have some sort of genetic malfunction which tells me fall weather is football time. 

On top of all of that, one of the baggage items I brought with me from the times I cross dressed as a guy was my love for The Ohio State Buckeyes. I never went to school there but grew up approximately fifty miles away. 

When "Trans Ohio" still used to have an in person symposium, I regularly signed up to give a presentation. In it's later years, the Symposium was held in The Ohio State University huge student union which of course didn't break my heart. 

The Ohio State mascot is "Brutus Buckeye" named after the state tree. One year I had my picture taken sitting next to a life-sized bronze Brutus in the student union.

If you are a Cyrsti's Condo regular you have seen this picture before, if not I resend it because Ohio State kicks off it's regular season tonight against Big Ten opponent Minnesota. 

Go Buckeyes!

Photo credit Cyrsti Hart

 

Life

9th Anniversary Dinner. Photo Credit Cyrsti Hart

 Looking ahead to the week I have coming up,  I began to think of my life as a whole. As I have mentioned before, I have two specifically female related medical procedures coming up. A mammogram and a bone density scan. Hopefully, I will have no issues. If I do with my breasts, I am sure my days of dealing with hormone replacement therapy are over.

But when you come right down to it, it's all part of life. Since I have nearly reached seventy two years of age, it is easily to realize life is but a circle. For all the lows, there are highs. 

Some would argue transgender women and men add a unique struggle to their lives. Of course I am biased and would totally agree. Crossing the gender barrier is brutal for the greatest majority of transgender people. It's not beyond life to throw you a curve ball. You have to start all over with a new life without your former family or even job.

It's no wonder I receive so many comments praising me on my "bravery". When I wasn't brave at all, I was just doing what I had to do to survive my life after a suicide attempt. I will say though, life became much easier after I managed to match my external cross dressing desires with my internal feminine being. It turned out all those years of thinking I was a guy cross dressing as a woman, the opposite was true. I was a woman cross dressing as a man. My only regret was it took me so long to accept the truth.

As I enter the twi-light of my life, I know I am blessed to have had a couple women along the way who guided my life. Especially my second wife who once told me to "Be man enough to be a woman." I wish I had been profound enough to say it as I was busily trying to destroy our relationship. Then there was my partner Liz who finally kicked me out of my closet.

Of course, one of the less profound things we humans do...is die. 

I just hope the funeral directors get my pronouns correct.

Shake and Bake

 Connie referred to the previous post here in Cyrsti's Condo called "Faking it till you make it." as "Shake and bake." 

The reference aptly describes many of my early attempts into the feminine world which were mostly unsuccessful. My wife was convinced I dressed too slutty and she was right. I was stuck in the concept that revealing clothes validated my femininity when truthfully my choice of outfits was doing exactly the opposite. 

In essence my skirts were too short or tight and I was having a difficult time adjusting to what my feminine image should be. Looking back now, I feel as if I could come up with a reasonable fashion statement if I stayed in the professional fashion image. I owned a black jump suit I loved and wore repeatedly to upscale shopping malls in the area complete with my black heels and long honey blond wig. The problem I began to run into was when I began to encounter the same people over and over again, I needed other outfits to wear. I remember vividly several outfits I managed to come up despite rigid budget constraints which fit the late 1980's and 1990's fashion scene. Since for the most part, big hair was in, my wigs fit right in as did my shorter skirts if I wore them with flats or low heels. Also there was quite a bit of Demin and Boho influence in the 1990's which I loved. Check out the picture below.

With all of that, I still couldn't fulfill my wife's standards of how she thought I should look. In my defense, she was a very natural person and didn't wear much make up at all. Every now and then though she would still consent to going to a nearby town to go out and eat. To dress to her standards would have been difficult for me. So being the determined person I was (and am) I did the best I could to wear what I wanted. So in her eye's I was still a "shake and bake" person.

As with any transgender woman or man and/or cross dresser, we are all survivors. So if we are faking it or baking it, we find a way to get by.

  

Fake It till You Make It

 I saw this quote on a another blog I follow and it started my thought processes on my gender transition. The other blog is written by a cis woman who was detailing how to feel better concerning her/your appearance. 

The post brought back to me in a much clearer sense how all women (transgender or not) carry the social stigmas of how they look. A good example is my partner Liz who lost nearly one hundred pounds and still has a hard time escaping ideas of how she appears to the public. There have been several times when other people may be staring at me and she never notices and I am astounded. 

I think much of my remaining paranoia with the public goes back decades ago when I was faking it to making it as a woman. Or, my old cross dressing days before I finally admitted to myself I felt so much more natural in a feminine world. I have detailed several times here in Cyrsti's Condo the first night I decided to go out and try to exist as a woman and not someone who was dressing up to fool the world. There was a huge difference for me and I was terrified yet excited. 

This is the point I always have to add my disclaimer...being a cross dresser is quite fine. It just wasn't good enough for me. It was immensely difficult to do but I found myself more and more faking being a man in my life.  

Then again, you have to do what you need to get by. Faking it or not.

A Real Loss

 The passing of "Ruth Bader Ginsburg" creates a massive hole in the US Supreme Court. One I fear will be impossible to fill with a qualified candidate. Here was one of the news releases: "Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the demure firebrand who in her 80s became a legal, cultural and feminist icon, died Friday. The Supreme Court announced her death, saying the cause was complications from metastatic cancer of the pancreas."

Seemingly, before the body even had a chance to cool off, "Moscow Mitch" McConnell in the Senate was starting the fight to replace Justice Ginsburg who had also voted to help gender causes. 

For all of you who didn't vote for Hillary and identify as transgender and/or crossdresser, your desire to have all of your gender rights taken away could become a reality.

In the meantime, Rest in Power Justice Ginsburg. You will be missed. 

I'm not Brave

 I find it generally humorous when someone describes me or any other transgender women or men as brave. 

In my case I had to move forward to live as my authentic self as a transgender woman before it was too late and I was successful in committing suicide. I then embarked on a gender journey which at some points was down right scary and at other times completely wonderful. In other words, I learned I wasn't so brave as much as I never had a choice and was beginning to live a life I was always destined to live.

Of course at times, my transition was less than fun. I can't begin to tell you the number of times I was driven to tears by very rude people. I don't believe it was being brave to keep subjecting myself to abuse, it was beginning to feel more and more natural and the abuse faded away. 

It's always a debate too about how much different the situation has changed over the years and decades. When I came out, it was primarily a solitary time for novice cross dressers or transgender women. There was no social media and very few groups who would hold monthly "mixers". The times were so solitary, trans individuals who went the distance all the way to genital realignment surgery were expected to go stealth by moving away and completely starting a new life. In many ways, I felt they were the brave ones.

Currently, in many parts of the country there are LGBTQ groups which a person can reach out to for support. The group I am part of locally has helped many trans people come out of the closet and a place for cross dressers to explore more fully where they want to go. Small groups are able to go shopping and socialize in socially distanced situations. In fact, there was a virtual social this weekend. 

I am fairly sure most of the girls/guys don't consider themselves brave. It is something they just had to do.

Do You Pass?

 Recently, "passing" seemed to be a term which may be finding it's way out of our main vocabulary as transgender folk or cross dressers. Then again, maybe not. These days, if you can afford it, or your health allows it, you now have several different avenues to achieve passing privilege. There is surgery including facial feminization, breast augmentation all the way to genital realignment available for those who can afford it or have access to good insurance. Plus, let's not forget electrolysis to get rid of those pesky facial beards. It seems to me, after you go through all of that, you damn well better "pass". 

Personally, I feel hormone replacement therapy has helped me to present favorably in a feminine world. But that is just me.

Sadly, though, just passing doesn't bring happiness to many. A transgender friend of mine years ago once told me I passed on sheer willpower. Which I took to mean if someone had a problem with me, they could go to hell. While that was true in many instances, I still suffered the same paranoia other novice cross dressers or trans women felt as they began their journey into the feminine world. I could fill several blog posts alone with my adventures waiting for a stall in women's bathrooms. 

During my endless searches for quality posts to share with you, I found this one about a transgender woman in the UK who ran into problems just trying to try clothes on in a store. It;s called "Joni's Story" and you can find it here. Joni is below.  A brief synopsis of the lengthy post looks into how Joni was rejected from a women's fitting room and how the episode led her to an unwanted public life and a search to fit in with the butch lesbian culture. 

The end result of passing of course is how you feel about yourself. Sadly, no matter how much work some people have done on themselves, they still have difficulty finding a gender piece within.  

Building a Dream

I am currently working on one of chapters of my book which focuses on the past decade or so of my life. I did it because it occurred to me a large majority of the book dealt entirely with my life before that time and nothing more current. 

One of the ideas which occurred to me was how long it actually took me to leave my male self/life behind.  I literally wasted decades seeking out an answer to my gender dysphoria which I had known all along and was afraid to confront. I only knew the time I was spending as a prospective transgender woman felt increasingly natural. The changes came because the time I was spending in a feminine world had changed because of my perspective. Suddenly I was approaching my life as a transgender woman as just that...not a cross dresser. There was a huge adjustment to face when I did it.

There was also the question of what I was going to do with the decades of male baggage I carried with me. I was fortunate in that I discovered I could go to and be accepted by others with similar "hobbies" such as drinking draft beer and watching sports. In fact, back in those days, it was just becoming fashionable for all women to enjoy a craft beer and watch a game on one of the many new giant televisions in the venue. 

I began to appreciate the male years which had did their best to deliver me to the spot I had finally arrived. After all, the body I inherited proved to be very resilient to health problems and provided me just enough background to not be bullied much at all. Plus, good or bad, my body had carried me through three years in the Army and provided my share of DNA to reproduce a very talented and intelligent accepting daughter. 

I'm not a big fan of "what if's" but if I had it all to do over again, I would have followed through on my wife's advice to be man enough to be a woman much earlier. I was just too stubborn to do it.  

What you See Is What you Get

Monday night I did participate in the on line cross dresser-transgender support group meeting. I was surprised it was less well attended than I expected. I wasn't so surprised in the number of new participants who were just coming out of their closets (at least with others) to explore their femininity. Remarkably to me, there was another person who checked in who was ten years older than even me. She is 80! I was interested to see also, what sort of effort the attendees put into their appearance. For the most part, those few who did "dress-up" mentioned it was to relieve the boredom of dressing in their old boring guy self as they are stuck at home. At that point I added I am a what you see is what you get person. In other words, I don't have any male clothes to be seen in. Even if I wanted to. 

On the other hand, I did (like I always do) put on a light application of makeup and brushed out my hair. I am fortunate in that my former hair dresser and I decided to let my hair revert back to it's natural shade. So I don't have to worry about going back to the old days of trying to color it at home. I went through more than a few adventures attempting to make my hair a different color and presentable. I found out the hard way how easy it was to color everything else other than my hair. 

So, with a touch of makeup and a quick brushing of my hair, I was ready to go and I hoped the camera on my lap-top would help me too. It turned out not to matter much anyhow. Predictably, the new people spoke at length about their coming out (as they should). All I really added was how my endocrinologist had approved another six months of my recently increased estradiol prescription. 

All in all, I found the meeting to be interesting but no substitute for the real thing.  

By the way, the picture is from last years' Cincinnati, Ohio pride. My hair is rapidly getting close to that length again.

It's a Waiting Game

This morning as I was thinking about what I was going to wear to the grocery store, I wondered if I should pick a quick outfit which would match the mask Liz made me. Then I wondered why bother? On the other hand I figured I could be a proper transgender woman and at the least focus on my making up my eyes. So I did. Leggings, cowl neck hip hugging sweater and tennis shoes completed my fancy once a week time to go shopping outfit. Predictably, the early Easter Sunday morning market was sparsely populated. Surprisingly, the shelves were still fairly well stocked so we found everything we went shopping for.  

As we returned home, I said a silent prayer to the Goddess asking for protection from the nasty virus. Then I began to think I need to be patient once again and stay in as much as possible, Looking back on my life, I should be used to it.

Aren't all trans women and men involved in a waiting game? From our earliest moments exploring the fantastic feminine clothing and makeup we found to the time we had to wait before we could find a safe time to explore again. Then, as our lives fast forwarded, many of us had to wait a year at a time for Halloween to cross dress, often for the first time in the public's eyes. For many of us too, the waiting was just beginning.

Perhaps the longest, most intense, waiting game of all involves beginning hormone replacement therapy. I remember vividly how quickly I wanted to progress with all the promised feminine changes. It seemed the stronger the desire for progress, the longer the process took. In other words, "a watched pot never boils." Well finally, the boiling began and I did begin to develop the feminine characteristics I so craved. Before I knew it, I was carefully trying to wear very loose fitting shirts to hide my budding breasts. Following seven years of being on the HRT regimen I can safely look back on it and realize nothing came easily or quickly.  

There are plenty of waiting games to consider too. Take for example the time it takes a transgender person to realize they were living a lie and desperately needs to come out. Or the time it takes many cross dressers to decide they may be more than a lover of feminine clothes and more of a woman. And, let's not forget the time it takes to either unravel old relationships and begin new ones. 

After all this waiting, what's another couple months (I hope) before life returns to a new normal. 

  

More Such a Girl

In a recent Cyrsti's Condo post, we took a quick and all too simplistic look into what happens when a husband comes out to her spouse and family. Of course the path is a rocky one paved with all sorts of misplaced good intentions. Lets' check in with Connie concerning her long term relationship with her wife:

"While all relationships differ in an infinite number of ways, so do those in which one person is trans. Any combination of when, why, where, what, with, whom, and how will make a relationship unique. Also, no relationship is really perfect, and I have to imagine that a gender change by one party would not go toward making things closer to perfection.

In my case, I need to add coulda-woulda-shoulda to the list of variables. I met my wife at seventeen, just four months into a concerted effort to suppress my gender dysphoria. There was no need, I thought, to tell her of my perversity (what I believed it to be back then), because I thought it to be completely under control. I didn't tell her nearly four years later, when we married (still under control). I didn't tell her even after the births of our two daughters (Dad's in control!). When I did finally lose control, it was the end of a seventeen year suppression - but I still tried to keep control through compartmentalization - so, still no need to tell. Of course, the activity of cross dressing in secret eventually becomes no secret at all - even if not talked about. Our relationship had to hit rock-bottom before we could start to really deal with my gender identity together, which - keeping with a theme - occurred another seventeen years later. As I write this, another seventeen years have passed, and our forty-eighth anniversary is coming soon. Our marriage looks nothing like what it started out as (few marriages do, even without a gender conflict). I'm sure that it wouldn't have started at all, had I come out when we met 50+ years ago, nor would it have survived, had I come out to her at the same time I sort-of came out to myself, returning to the "shameful" behavior of my youth.

I could write a booklet on "How Not to Be a Happily Married Trans Woman." I was a husband who was this such a girl, then that such a girl, and many such iterations in-between. Consequently, my wife has had to make her own transitions throughout this whole process - to the point where she has given up having a husband at all, but she still has "such a girl."

Thanks for the comment! 

With my deceased wife, I became a woman she didn't like so well. She was a very natural woman, she rarely wore makeup and dresses. All of a sudden she had to put up with me being the "Pretty. pretty Princess." Back in those days, I was really into being a beginning fashionista...everything she wasn't. Plus, as she wasn't shy about telling me, I really knew nothing about being a woman. Of course with my male ego, I didn't believe her and was destined to never really understand until years later after her passing. I had to live full-time in a feminine world to understand. 

Finally, I came to understand I wasn't kidding myself all those years. I really was such a girl. Unfortunately when I interacted with my late wife, neither one of us knew the real me.  

Introspection

With the advance of the Corona Virus 19, most of us have had been forced to stay home. With the extra time alone many of us have had the chance to reflect on our lives.

Reflection is tough on many people, including me. A totally quiet room is often my worst enemy and I even sleep all night with the television on. (Thanks Liz! who is my partner and only mildly protests.)

It could be much worse. I think back to the days when I was first exploring the feminine world and was out and about as much as I could to do it. The very essence of my being revolved around how and if I could make my way in the world as a woman. The very places I went to do it...restaurants and taverns are all currently closed around in my section of the world because of the virus. In so many ways, my femininity was based on what others thought of me. Looking back on that time of my life, I know I would have been strongly affected by the experience. Not to mention being mostly unemployed because I was a restaurant manager.

Timing is everything though. After all these years, I don't need to put on all the feminine finery to feel like a girl. In fact, I am a fairly "plain Jane" type woman. I guess my feelings go back to my very early days as a cross dresser when the clothes lost their appeal. What replaced the "urges" was an over powering desire to be a girl, not just look like one.

These days, I am so fortunate to have a solid base of gender support around me. Family and friends who look past my transgender lifestyle and instead see the true me. The true me is a happier more satisfied person than many of my family knew before. I have found through much trial and error happiness may still be impossible to find for a person such as me but joy isn't.

Since we are all stuck in this current crisis together, please do your best to keep yourself safe. I know many of you may look at this as a form of being forced back into your closet. Also, I have a dear friend who is really upset her genital realignment surgery has been postponed from March 31st. My thoughts go out to her.

Reach inside yourself and find your inner woman and use the time to cherish her. Hopefully, all of this will be over before we know it and your woman will flourish again.