Up the Down Gender Slide

 

Image from Abbs Johnson
on UnSplash.

Maybe you remember Ralphie (In a Christmas Story movie) who desperately wanted a BB Gun for Christmas and froze up when he was in a department store telling Santa what he wanted for the big day. What happened was Ralphie got kicked down the slide when Santa told him he was getting a football. Finally, Ralphie struggled his way back up the downslide and told Santa he really wanted a BB Gun and was then told he would shoot his eye out.

This scene paralleled my life in several ways. The main one was, I never asked for a BB Gun but got one anyway and secondly, I never asked Santa for the baby doll I really wanted. In many ways, the whole idea of struggling up the down slide when I considered my gender became routine. Instead of shooting my eye with a BB Gun, I became more concerned with hurting my eyes with my mascara stick. Plus, when I tried to hide my cross-dressing activities from my second wife, I tried to be more effective in removing all of my eye makeup so my wife couldn’t tell. It was a challenge to say the least. But not the biggest challenge of all.

First, I needed to break all the male tendencies I had built up over the years. How did I present as a trans woman, all the way to how did I move and communicate. I knew ciswomen operated on a different wavelength than men but how different I never planned on. For example, the amount of nonverbal communication between women surprised me. I quickly learned to watch for the visual cues I picked up when I was in a potentially dangerous situation, I was not aware of.

Ironically, the more I struggled to go up the down slide, the more slippery it became. I had to become more mentally tough as a transfeminine person to even survive in a potentially hostile world. It meant going back to the drawing board when I was pushed down the up-gender slide even more. By mentally tough I mean with my resources, facial feminization would not be possible and there was nothing I could ever do about the testosterone poisoned thick male body, I would have to work with what I had. That damn slide was not going to get to me. What I did do though, was put myself on a highly effective diet which ended up in me losing approximately fifty pounds as well as beginning to take better care of my skin after I shaved every day. By doing better skin care, I was able to use less makeup and look more natural.

With these changes, I was able to actually start climbing up my gender slide, so that someday maybe I could get the baby doll I wanted to have instead of a BB Gun. Mentally, at least.

Other changes I had to make as I climbed to the top of my gender slide was conquering my fear of heights. There came times when I thought I was moving too fast, and I was in danger of losing all my hard-earned male privileges such as family, marriage, jobs and friends. I did not want to beat myself and my male self-had me looking over my shoulder. Then I resolved to never stop working towards my goal of transgender womanhood and moving on to a totally different goal of being able to interact more effectively with the ciswomen I met. I always called it playing in the girls’ sandbox.

Maybe it was my gender paranoia weighing in on me, but I kept seeing potential problems coming at me when I was out of the mirror and into the world. Some turned out to be real, but most were not. I found I did not meet as many gender bigots or anti-transgender ciswomen TERFs as I thought I would. Men were for the most part always standoffish and ciswomen just were not for whatever reason. Maybe, in their own ways, they had climbed their own gender slides and understood what I was going through and did not mind sharing with me.

If you are starting your own gender slide, or even reaching the top, just remember the trip will never be easy. But to coin a saying, if it was easy, would have it been worth it. I know for me; it was the toughest trip of my life. Plus, you are human and will make a mistake on occasion. Especially, when you are not allowed behind the gender curtain to learn the basics cisgender women were raised with. At that point in time, it is up to you to climb your slide and thrive. Not just survive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kicking and Screaming.

 

My trans friend Racquel
with her fur-baby.

Sometimes I am asked why I waited so long to finally make the serious transition into a transfeminine world at the age of sixty.

The partial answer is I did not want to face up to my truth of who I really was. Instead, I internalized my gender desires as long as I could. Another reason was, I had a powerful male self who did not want to give up all the white male privileges he had fought to gain. Every bit of ground he lost to his transgender sister was hard earned. Plus, he had a powerful ally with him in my second wife who wanted no part of me to progress any further than the cross-dressing stage I was in when I met her.

My excuse is for not transitioning sooner goes past just ignoring the obvious. I just did not factor in the other major changes I would have to go through just to see if my dream of living as a trans woman was even feasible. Maybe I could never make it at all was a fatal flaw in my thinking because I needed the inner confidence to live. At that point, I opened my gender closet door and began to look around and my male self was dragged kicking and screaming into the world. Early on he was being laughed at in drag when he went out which hurt his male ego. Until he summoned up enough skill to stop the abuse.

All of this led up to finally realizing (for whatever reason) I was more than a cross-dresser. I was a transgender woman. It all led up to the scary, magical night when I decided to change my mind set when I went out for a drink in a venue, I had frequented many times as my male self and had always wondered what it would feel like to do it as a woman. As I said, I was scared to death, and sat in my car for what seemed like forever adjusting and readjusting my hair and makeup before I went in. I knew from previous visits, when the nearby mall closed, the bar would fill up with single professional women who just socialized with each other. As I steadied myself to go in, my male side was still screaming no as my feminine side was excited to finally get a chance to live. That night, for the first time, she had won the battle because I had a great time and even stayed for an extra drink just because I could.

Little did my feminine side know, winning one big gender battle would only make the war seem further away. Following the evening out, she wanted more which caused severe problems with my marriage and life. Deep down, I wanted to experience the thrill of feeling natural in my skin for the first time, and when I could not do it, I became depressed and downright mean to the world around me. Internalizing my gender issues became less and less of a way to run my life. As a result, I started to sneak out from the house any spare moment I had to attempt to reinvent myself as a transgender woman.

I learned I could and began to slowly carve out a new life for myself with people who knew nothing of my past male self who was still strongly resisting every move I was trying to make out of my closet. Sure, I had my ups and downs with what I was doing but my overall trajectory was up, and I was proud of myself. I had come so far from the early days I had admiring myself in the mirror. Even the kicking and screaming from my male self was beginning to fade. But I found not to be too confident because I still had a long way to go on my gender journey to be a full-time transgender woman. Since my trans woman friend Racquel always told me, I passed out of sheer will power, I always had to work harder to make it in the world. I would forever have a testosterone poisoned body my male self-had left me to work around since I did not have the finances or will power for expensive facial femininization surgeries like Racquel did.

So, I did the best I could and managed to build a small tight knit group of women friends who accepted me while at the same time instructed me on the finesse points of being a woman. All of it brought the final curtain down on the kicking and screaming of my male self. I just wish he had not been such a formidable opponent. On the other hand, his interaction kept the bullies away from me for the most part and allowed me to get through the military in one piece, so all was not bad.

The end result was, he never felt as if he was the most natural person for me to be. That distinction always went to my feminine side who never gave up winning my own gender war. She ended up just ignoring all the kicking and screaming until it finally went away and the lack of extra noise in my life was a welcome change.