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| Image from Kyle on UnSplash. |
After all these years of pursuing a male to female gender transition, I view the process as evolution.
I am biased, but I think I have been fortunate to have lived
through all the ups and downs of gender dysphoria to be able to have an up
close and personal look at how both of the two main binary genders live. Similar
to being able to actually live on the economies of Thailand and Germany when I
was in the Army during the Vietnam War. By living on the economy, I mean I received
off base housing and food pay from the Army, so I went on base only to work.
Seeing how other societies work did wonders for my young self.
It took much longer to do the same thing when it came to my
gender issues. I knew they were always there from a very young age, but I had
no help to discover what my issues really were. I needed to live my life as a
transgender woman to learn what I needed to do to achieve my childhood dream of
living as a woman. No being a doctor or lawyer for me, I wanted to be a woman.
At the time, I was naïve and thought all I needed to do was work on my
appearance in the mirror and I could reach my dreams.
As my gender evolved, I needed to evolve as a person with
it. What kind of a woman would I become became a major issue. I could be a
standoffish bitchy woman, or a worldly feminine being who enjoyed being herself
in the world. Ironically, my male self-helped me to arrive where I wanted to
be. He had over the years provided me with ciswoman role models to look up to
and try to evolve into overtime. When you added a potent mix of male and female
into my personality, I ended up with the perfect mix. Even though I was
appearing more and more as a female, my old male self-provided me with a firm
base to evolve.
One aspect I do not want to underplay is how long it took me
to do all of this. As I evolved, I began to make mental mini bucket lists of
things I wanted to do in my exciting yet terrifying transfeminine world. The
only problem I had with making bucket lists was I was spending too much time in
my male life daydreaming of the next time I could be feminine. All too often, my
gender lines blurred, and I needed to make sure I kept my male and female lives
separate. It was intensely difficult for me to do as I was increasingly
discovering I wanted and could pursue a life as a transgender woman I always
had wanted to do and still was unable to do because of the male life I had
worked so hard to build. The pressure just kept on building as I continued to
try new things as my feminine self. I was in an intensely lonely world at the
time as I left my closet.
I evolved to a point where I was able to create an entirely
new person from the two, I had left behind. I transitioned again from being a basic
weekend cross dresser into an accomplished transgender woman who could blend in
with the world at large. Suddenly, I went from being shy and backwards to being
confident and aware of my surroundings. Which I found I needed to stay safe in
my new world. It was then I found many women were curious and friendly towards
me while nearly all the men ignored me. Which I had no problem with as I had evolved
past caring what they thought. They had
kicked me out of the men’s club.
As I look back at this time of my life, it seems to be a
blur of activity. Since I had changed my
gender outlook in the middle of my life, I was learning from watching my new
women friend’s what life was all about. Primarily, since most of them were
lesbians, I found I did not need the validation from men to feel good about
myself as I fit in with them. Evolution felt so good, I wanted more out of my new
life. Again, I was fortunate when my wife Liz approached me online and we
struck up a love affair which lasts till this day. I never thought I would ever
find someone to love me as a sixty-year-old transgender woman at all, but I
did.
My final evolution turned out to be wonderful, and I
understand now why all the gender bigots hate us so much. We transgender women
and trans men have had the chance to do what they never have had the chance to
do. Experience both sides of the binary gender experience. The haters will just
have to work their way through it. We have evolved and they have not.
