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| Image from the Jessie Hart Archives. |
Many times during my life, my relationship with women or even girls went from being envious all the way to being out and out jealous. Christmas was a prime example when I had to sit back and watch my girl cousins in their pretty new dresses and outfits while I was stuck in my boring shirt and tie feeling something like a stuffed sausage. Not to mention the gifts they received versus my unwanted boy toys. The best I could hope for was to receive a small amount of cash for a gift which I could use to sneak out and buy me makeup or other feminine items.
When I was younger, I always held out the hope my life would change for the better but it never did around women until much later.
In middle school when the puberty hormones began to kick in for both genders, my feelings of jealousy began to increase also. Here I was developing unwanted angles to my body as well as extra facial hair while the girls around me were gaining curves was sometimes unbearable. Testosterone poisoning was ruining my life and every night I would go to sleep wishing I could wake up with all the attributes the girls around me had. Of course that never happened and life went on the best as possible.
On top of all my other gender envy, the Vietnam War began to be a very real risk for me. Spending time in the military away from my all too brief cross dressing time in front of the mirror was a reality I never wanted to face, until I did. In addition, how fair was it, the women around me never had to face such a bump in the road? I kept thinking why me until I was drafted and went ahead and served my time in the military the same as my Dad before me and as my friends around me. Tragically, I knew a few friends who only returned in boxes. Proving death was a very real threat.
Even though I was still very jealous of the women around me, I attempted to channel my envy in a positive manner. I say try because I know now looking back how I failed. There were so many times, I didn't bother to notice or take the effort to mention how attractive my wife looked. All the time I knew how insecure she was and I should have stepped up to help her, more than I ever did. Looking back, I was too jealous of her because she was living the life I wanted to live. Then she was gone (passed away) and I never had the chance to recoup my losses.
In place of my jealousy issues, I tried my best to learn more and more about a woman's real life and why I never should have been as envious or jealous as I became. I never took a moment to stop and realize the other gender grass wasn't always as green as I thought it was. As I pursued a life as a transgender woman on gender affirming hormones, I discovered a new world beyond one with all the white male privileges I took for granted. Such as just having a portion of my daily respect automatically given to me because of my gender. The main privileges were job advancement and personal security.
Cis-women on the other hand have to go through the intense hormonal changes their body goes through to prepare them for possible motherhood. Periods and later on, menopause are just a few of the problems women have to face more dramatically than men. I always thought too, it would have been better to have been the gender which was the prettier one as well as the pursued one as men always needed to be the one to ask someone out. I so badly wanted to be the one who was invited which was partially because I was always so shy around women or girls.
Fortunately I don't think my jealousy issues ever reached a toxic level. More or less I just retreated into my gender shell and hoped for a better day to come. Which it did when at the age of sixty I finally came out full time as a transgender woman. After a lifetime of studying women, I think I took the shorter path to my gender freedom, while at the same time putting all of my gender envy behind me. In many ways each of the binary genders has their own weights to bear as they go through life.
The best we can hope for is, the process makes us stronger.
