Being Accommodating...Not Intimidating

 

Image from Billie
on UnSplash.

Being accommodating versus intimidating was very difficult for me as I transitioned from male to female.

It was all part of learning a new feminine world and escaping the male bonds I had suffered so long from. What happened was, I was thrust into a male dominated world in which if I was ever going to survive, I would have to play the intimidation game of life. That way, I could stand a very good chance of keeping the bullies away as I matured. It did not hurt that I developed into a larger slightly above average sized male person (which I hated) but again when I added sports into my life’s mix kept the doubters away from my masculinity. In fact, I needed to play that intimidation card well into life and used it before I transitioned into a transfeminine world. Intimidation became easy to use for me, and I counted it as one of my male privileges even though I stopped short of ever being a toxic male because I respected all women so much. But it worked well with the male kitchen crews I needed to manage in the busy restaurants where I worked.

The problems began with my basic personality outlook I had been forced to live so well when I began to try to join a world which was largely controlled by ciswomen, not cismen as I always thought was the case. Women just found unique ways always to work around males and their drama. And here I was in the middle of a new world just trying to find my way successfully.

I felt it most intensely when I was forced into communicating one on one in the world with other women. I found I was unprepared and initially just tried to keep my mouth shut, which turned out to be exactly the wrong move to make. Here I was trying to make new friends in a feminine world without talking? How was that going to work. It did work. In exactly the way I did not want it to. If I did not express who I was, the other woman I was trying to communicate with just assumed I was being standoffish or in some way stuck up which was the last thing I wanted to do. So, I immediately trashed my male scowl and quiet behavior as a form of intimidation to keep people away and went to a more open form of interaction with the public which invited people in. In many ways, it was one of the most intense and scariest things I ever went through in my life. I was in uncharted territory for sure and even resorted to feminine vocal lessons to help my progress.

And then there was the experience I had with a small girl who startled me in a clothing store I was in. She ran around a rack of clothes and almost hit me and went running back to her mom saying something about a “Big mean woman.” Immediately I was relieved that she got the woman part right but right then and there decided to do more about the old male intimidation factor I was obviously still carrying with me. In no way did I want to go around scaring little kids.

Life went on, and so did I as I started to feel more secure in my new role behind the gender curtain. I learned that many ciswomen were just curious about who I really was in a world in those days dominated by day-time sensational talk shows such as Phil Donahue and Jerry Springer. Here I was. The real deal cross-dresser or transgender woman right in front of them to talk to and know that I was just a normal person like them after all. It all happened because I had the courage to let them into my world and turn my old male intimidation ideas off for good.

Perhaps the most intense topic in the intimidation versus accommodation discussion came from my initial introductions to the women’s restroom. It was the exact opposite from the men in many ways except the obvious. In the men’s room, you were expected to never make contact or acknowledge another man while in the women’s room just the opposite was true when a polite smile or greeting was the proper way to acknowledge another woman. It took me a little bit of time to get used to the change, but I did it quickly because I wanted to earn my women’s room privileges desperately. For obvious reasons, I was drinking a lot of beer.

I see intimidation versus accommodation as just another step in acclimating yourself into the feminine world. But you have to do it right to be accepted. You must be yourself behind the gender curtain you choose without becoming a doormat. As an outsider to transgender men everywhere, my thoughts are it probably is more difficult to assume an intimidation role in a male world. On the other hand, accommodation in the female world I was in was always an easier path for me to take. I just had to understand and react to anyone who was setting up to take advantage of me. I came away with plenty of claw marks up and down my back from unfortunate experiences I had in a new (to me) passive aggressive ciswoman world. I learned often that a smile meant nothing in most situations when another woman was just sizing me up.

In the end, the whole experience just boiled down to very important experiences I needed to learn to finally make it out of my closet and into the world as a transgender person that other people would like to know and often my smile was the beginning of that process instead of my stay away old male scowl. The fun part often was seeing the results from the amount of learning I needed to do in my stubborn head to make it happen.

As always, thank you very much for joining me along my gender path and I hope you gained something from my mistakes. Any comments are always appreciated!

 

 

 

 

Keeping My Mouth Shut

 

Image from P.A.U.L.A.
on UnSplash.

As I wrote before, yesterday was one of those busy days when everything seemed to come together to get things done.

The day began innocently enough when I went with my wife Liz to two of her doctor’s appointments. I have long since stopped being anxious about going to a medical waiting room because everyone is so wrapped up in their own problems or their cell phones to notice a stray transgender woman just going about her business.

For the day, I decided to get brave and poke the bear so to speak by wearing a T -shirt I received when I was a board member of the Dayton, Ohio Rainbow Elder Care Alliance a few years ago. The shirt proudly displays a pride symbol on the front and has a “Support LGBTQ Elders” on the back, so I was prepared if I triggered any negative feedback from a stray gender bigot or TERF. Ironically, it did not matter because the waiting room was empty the entire time I was waiting for Liz to get done. In some senses, I was disappointed that I did not get a chance to show off my shirt to anyone, so I took it off when I returned home and saved it for today’s birthday lunch for my daughter and son-in-law who are coming down from Dayton for her party.

We are celebrating a little early because she is leaving for Maine to climb a mountain there on her actual birthday. She is the mother of a transgender child so I thought my LGBTQ shirt would be appropriate.

The real fun started yesterday when I went to my Veterans Administration weekly virtual LGBTQ support group meeting. That is where I could not keep my mouth shut and brought politics into the group as a new member made a snide comment when I mentioned I was getting access to a brand-new VA satellite clinic made possible under the Biden Administration. Everyone else cringed as I simply said Biden was a real improvement over the Russian asset, we have now. I was ready when the new person who identifies as a trans woman then said she never votes anyhow and I was going to say then you are part of the transgender community’s political problems. But I saw the look of panic on the moderator’s face, so I stopped. Because I care about not breaking the group’s rules and getting asked to leave.

My mouth is one thing I inherited from my mother and passed on to my daughter who is a strong ally of the transgender community. Her reaction when I came out to her was anger because why she was the last to know and kept in the dark by her mom and stepmom. She calmed down when I told her that mom and stepmom only knew me as a cross dresser and fought all the way any idea, I was a transfeminine person. One way or another, it was a great relief to get the coming out process to her out of the way and even a bigger relief to know she completely accepted me. In fact, for my birthday that year she treated me to a visit to her beauty parlor/spa for a color and cut on my hair which suddenly was getting long enough to style professionally. I don’t know if I was more scared or excited the first time I went, but I made it and loved my hair. I knew them why so many ciswomen consider a regular visit to the salon a must in life. After I was done, I thought I could probably miss a day of my Estradiol pills because of all the Estrogen in the air in the salon. I loved it.

My main problem when I first began to communicate with women on a regular was keeping my mouth shut too much. So much so that I thought I might be coming off as unfriendly or worse yet as some sort of a bitch when in fact, I was just too shy to speak. I had not practiced my feminine voice enough to have any confidence on how I sounded when I needed to switch from my old unwanted male voice into a new vocal pattern which fit the new feminine me. I even went as far as having feminine vocal lessons which taught me how to speak in a more pleasant manner and get my point across, often in a passive aggressive manner. I certainly did not achieve miraculous results from my vocal work but did enough to express the true me.

In many ways, keeping my mouth shut became impossible when ciswomen in particular began to ask for my opinion about men as they recognized the unique position, I held living on both sides of the gender border. As inherently shy as I was, it was a good way to practice my new vocal pattern to fit how I appeared to the public.

These days it is particularly difficult for me to keep my mouth shut when it comes to politicians taking away our rights as transgender women and transgender men. In my native Ohio, the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles announced they would no longer give trans people new driver’s licenses under their preferred gender and only issue one with a corrected birth certificate which is extremely difficult to do here in Ohio. I did not find any information on what they might do about renewals as my license is good for another year and a half. Here in Ohio also, having a current picture identification allows us to vote unless it is changed too by the Crook in Washington.

On a sad note, I just learned yesterday that I had lost two transgender woman acquaintances to death. One was an icon here in Cincinnati who I believed passed from Parkinsons and the other was down in Tennessee and died from unknown circumstances. Hopefully, they are both resting in peace now.

Back to a brighter side, it is time to get ready to meet daughter and son-in-law for a Mexican lunch at our favorite restaurant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Being Better as a Trans Woman

 

Image from Donald Gianetti
on UnSplash.

Often you must be better than the world to prove yourself as a transgender woman or transgender man.

An easy example would be we have to be better with our appearance. Because of the current lack of concern over appearance with many ciswomen and cismen, it’s an anything goes fashion world when women are wearing their pajamas and slippers to shop at a big box store, I won’t mention. Because we trans persons have so far to come in the appearance department, we cannot set our appearance bar that low or even want to.

Another problem with appearance is that we have had so few natural advantages to help us along when we first take the tentative steps out of our gender closets. In the case of transgender women, very few have the advantage of escaping the ravages of puberty which gives us angles, broad shoulders and deep voices. So, unlike the curves and softness we see in the women around us and envy so much. To get by in the world as a cross-dresser, we must strive to cover our natural flaws and act like we are not doing it.

The good thing is that ciswomen provide us with a big range of fashion to work from. Some wear dresses, some wear pants, some go without makeup and others don’t as life goes by. All you have to do is grab a spot you feel comfortable in and try to maintain it in a world of curious ciswomen who want to know more about you. You notice I said try to maintain it because early on, finding the best fashion and learning hair and makeup are major challenges we face. As our old bodies do not want to cooperate with the new path you have set them on.

Since I have always felt more comfortable in pants, leggings or well fitted jeans as a trans woman, I often took in criticism from other novice cross-dressers when I went to mixers in pants. Per norm, I did not care what they said about wearing pants as a man all the time so why I would do it as a woman because I was noticing how stylish some women look in their pants. I even had a glamorous silky black low-cut pants suit I wore to prove them wrong. Plus. most importantly what I wore was none of their business if I was aiming to be as good as the world of ciswomen in public at large who were increasingly wearing pants in their wardrobes. Not a bunch of cross-dressers at a social/mixer.

The more I was out in the world and interacting with the public, I discovered that appearance was just a small part of being better than the next person. Following some rough early experiments with my presentation as a transfeminine person, I settled into noticing who was noticing me. I learned men rejected me almost completely (which was fine by me) and women on the other hand wholeheartedly accepted the new me who wanted so badly to be in their world. The percentage of gender acceptance I received totally surprised me and I had to up my game to get better when I faced the public with so much more at stake.

Suddenly, women wanted to talk to me, and I was initially surprised and had to talk back. Then as now, I am very self-conscious about my voice, and it took me what seemed like an eternity to understand my communication skills centered more around what I was saying more than how I was saying it. In fact, I needed feminine vocal lessons to learn more about how women speak to each other. Primarily when men were not around. I also leaned the power of passive aggressive speech behavior in cis women and how it could apply to me when a potentially smiling face did not equal a supportive woman who could just as easy stab you in the back. After I tended to more than a few claw marks down my back, I adjusted to the new world I was in and survived by being better than them.

All these steps led me to pursuing an expanded transgender bucket list of potential things I wanted to do as a trans woman. To learn if I would want to do them on a permanent basis. As my checklist grew, my confidence did too and I discovered how natural I felt in the new exciting yet scary world I was in stripped of all my old male privilege such as dealing with my own personal security. With the menacing male scowl being gone, I had to rely of my new feminine senses to get me by and to stay out of potentially dangerous situations. It was all a major lesson of being better in the world out of a sense of pure survival as a new transgender woman.

At that point, destiny set in for me and set my life upside down as nearly all the loved ones I new and respected passed away. Leaving me all alone. To survive, I had to quickly quit being a victim and decide which direction my life would take. I took the feminine path, was approved for HRT or gender affirming hormones and prepared myself for a bumpy path ahead. At the age of sixty, I needed all the wisdom I had learned from a predominately male life and apply it all to a new female existence and exceed my own expectations.

By taking chances in the world, I had lucked into finding supportive ciswomen friends into my new life and I give them all the credit for the ease that it happened. And it made all the prep work I had done in my life worthwhile. Even still, I found I had to be better than the average woman to find my way and stick to it so I would not slide back to my old male ways.

Before I go, I would like to thank “Grace” for inviting me to write for her group “Empowered Trans Woman” on Medium. I really appreciate it