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| Image from UnSplash. |
No matter how you cut it, our gender is a tale of contrasts.
From the earliest age, we are forced into rigid gender
roles, who for most people, work out quite nicely because they never question
their assigned roles. Then there are those of us who just as early in life begin to question our placement
on the gender spectrum. In my case, I knew something was wrong, I just could
not figure out what. Then, as I became older, I made the discovery every
morning when I had to determine what gender I had to be for the day. A jarring
discovery to be sure.
Naturally, since I was born male, I needed to own up to the
fact I had to do my best to face the world each day as a guy until I could slip
behind my own gender curtain and put on women’s clothes and makeup. Early on,
as I lived my limited feminine life in the mirror, I thought appearance was my
number one goal towards living my gender dreams. It was not until much later in
life did, I began to understand how wrong I was. There were many more contrasts
between men and women that I ever dared to think about. Mainly because I was viewing
how women live only through rose colored glasses as I thought they had easier
lives than men.
It wasn’t until I began to pay my gender dues as a transfeminine
person, did I begin to see the reality of what I was looking at if I decided to
transition. As I was making my way into what I call the girl’s sandbox, I was
getting tested regularly to see if I belonged. On some days I was successful
and happy and on others, I was getting beat up (or clawed) and needed to
retreat before I came back for more. One thing was for sure, all of this
testing from other women was doing me good, because I never quit trying.
The main thing I did learn was one that I vaguely knew,
women had their own world away from men and had their own alpha’s who ran the
show. Once I was accepted by them, the rest of my life as a transgender woman
was so much easier. But, on the other hand, the testing process was so much
harder because the alphas were so much more wary of me wanting to be in their
world. My second wife was an alpha and she made sure I worked long and hard to
even try to earn a spot in the sandbox. An example was one of the many times
she told me there was so much more to being a woman than just looking like
one and it took me years to understand what she meant.
Perhaps the second most difficult part of being accepted in
the feminine world was being able to communicate with other women. Out were the
days of trying to bluster my way through a conversation and in were the days
when I needed to look another woman in the eye and appear to be less
threatening. While at the same time having eyes on my back for a passive
aggressive attack. I learned the hard away on that to never trust a smiling
face completely.
As I learned to communicate with other women, my life in
public became so much easier and I could begin to relax more as I was beginning
to put my entire feminine picture into focus. I could forget about completely focusing
on my looks and movement and could concentrate on being social with the world.
Which was important to me since I had always been a socially active person. Plus,
as I always mention, men were never much of a factor to me since most of them
ran and hid from me completely. Which was OK since I did not really know how to
handle them as a transgender woman either.
My life of contrasts was coming to an end when I entered the
final chapter with gender affirming hormones or HRT. The hormones were magical
when they started their changes on me. I think most people consider external
changes such as skin, breasts and hair to be important, and they are but to me,
internal changes were more important. In a remarkable short span of time, I
became more emotional as my world softened. Making me into a complete person.
I am biased, but I think my tale of contrasts made me into a
better human being as I could understand both binary genders better. Since I
had lived in both. Plus, after having the chance to live as both, I made the right
choice to live as a transgender woman, even though at times, it was an
intensely lonely and difficult journey. Which could be another blog post.
