Gender Euphoria is Real

 

Image from Simona Todarova
on UnSplash. 

Looking back at yesterday’s interaction with the woman who referred to me as “she” when talking to her husband, I knew that gender euphoria was real.

When I talked to her, I was rewarded with being the total feminine package with no doubts including impostor syndrome to ruin the experience. In the past, I would have waited for something to come up to tip off I was transgender. Yesterday, as I said, nothing like that ever entered the conversation. Maybe it was because I got the ball rolling when I sat down beside her in the waiting room. Smiled and said hello. It is difficult for me to do with strangers because I am so shy. I guess finally I am getting the confidence to step out of my shell and do better socially. It helped too, because it turned out we had the same last name and originally came from the same hometown which helped us find something to talk about to pass the time.

All in all, it made for a very pleasant waiting experience as almost all of the people sit and glare at each other. It also made up for the essentially genderless experience I had at the coffee shop when the interaction did not seem to go either way with the young girl who was waiting on me. I was friendly and she was friendly and we both went on our way. If I had my choice, I would have preferred that the barista in the coffee shop would have referred to me as “she” also, but at least she did not use the dreaded “he” pronoun when referring to me. Or even worse, “sir.”  Which would have ruined my morning for sure.

The nice thing about gender euphoria is that it lasts for a long time, and I feel all the work I put into being a transgender woman was worth it. It seemed, despite my best efforts, someone in public would break my feminine façade and call me by a male pronoun. Which brings up the worst thing about euphoria which is so fragile and can be broken in a moment. Then it takes weeks to build up again.

It took me years to realize the power of confidence in my transfeminine life. Sometimes, I felt as if I could rule the room in my high heels, and other times, I just wanted to be left alone and disappear. Probably the same as any other ciswoman felt. In fact, I could see it in the women I studied. Some walked into a room with all the confidence in the world, while others seemed to be so timid. Of course, I did my best to copy the assertive women who I secretly envied because their gender euphoria was so real.

For the longest time, before my ankles gave up, all I wore was high heels because I thought the shoes gave the woman a sense of power with women and men. I knew men were conditioned to look when they heard the click -click of heels coming towards them on a hard floor. Women, on the other hand were forced to respect the woman wearing the highest heels if they liked it or not. Euphoria or envy runs deep with ciswomen it seems. Sometimes it provides a major point of competition between women if they are competing for men, or just appearance.

I am spoiled to have two powerful gender allies around me almost all of the time. My wife Liz and daughter are always quick to provide the correct pronouns for me when a stranger struggles. That way, when the stranger struggles to find the correct pronouns, they always have a reminder, and I leave with my gender euphoria intact.

One way or another, gender euphoria is as real and powerful as dysphoria and often provides transgender women and trans men with a brief flicker of hope when our closet needs a light to keep going in a world which is increasingly hostile to us.

Hopefully, that is you and even if you experience negativity in the world while you are on your gender path. That light ahead is a green light and you can keep going. Always remember, a transgender journey if a marathon, not a race. You don’t always know what is around the next corner but gender euphoria can help you get there.

 

 

 

Choice? What Choice

 

JJ Hart on Mt. Washington

What angers me more than anything else is when some hater or gender bigot says we transgender women or trans men ever had a choice about who we were destined to become in life.

In my case, at least, deep down I always knew I had something wrong with me. Even if I could not quite put my finger on what the problem might be. It was not until I got the first glimpse of myself in the mirror in pretty girls’ clothes did, I know for sure what my issues were. Then, the issue became what I was going to do about it. At that point, I had no choice but to continue doing was I was doing. Cross-dressing in front of the mirror. Being the pretty girl in my mind was just too much to pass up as I worked continuously towards improving my makeup skills and to do what I could to acquire more articles of women’s clothing which actually fit my fast growing, testosterone poisoned frame. I was the last person to see the results of puberty as a positive development.

As I learned in my latest LGBTQ support group meeting yesterday at the Veteran’s Administration, the legislative bigots have effectively blocked the use of puberty blockers for all young Ohioans. One of the lesbian mothers in the group was seeking blockers from her doctor because her young daughter had started puberty at the age of ten and she wanted it to be put off for a couple of years. The group member was told no, they could not do that in Ohio anymore. Yet another win for the Republican majority in the house legislature who felt they could overrule a parent’s choices.

Back when I was young, no one knew what puberty blockers were anyhow and we all went into our tweener years with no choice at all to how our bodies were going to turn out. The only positive I saw from the changes I was going through that I had no choice over were the extra muscle and size I was adding which helped me to keep the bullies away.

When I began to go out in the world as a novice transgender woman, I began to discover I did have other choices when it came to becoming what it meant to be myself. It all started with what I would wear fashion-wise to fit in with all the ciswomen around me and then expanded to how I would interact one on one with the world. It was all so new and exciting that the world was a wonderful blur at that time in my life. I could pick and choose if I wanted to go casual in my jeans and sweaters or professional in my pants suit and heels when I went out. Depending on where I was going of course. All my choices gave me feminine privilege choices I had so envied for so long. The only problem came when I needed to go back to my old boring male world. I was depressed for days.

The most important thing to note is, all along I never did want to go back to my exclusively male life where all I did was work, drink and watch sports. I had the unique choice to attempt to carve out a female life, and it felt as if I was taking the right path in life to do it. But if someone was holding a gun to my head and telling me I had no choice but to give up the new life I was leading, I would have said go ahead and shoot me. That is an example of how powerful the true lack of choice about my gender was with me.

Unless you have had the transgender experiences I have had, I don’t really expect many other people to understand. But I do expect them not to try to take away my right to live my life the way I want. I used to think that was part of being an American was all about until the transgender community was barraged last year alone with over one-thousand anti trans bills across the country. Through it all, many of those seeking to wipe us outthink we had a choice to uproot our lives and change completely. No more spouses, family friends and employment we were used to, because we had a choice. We did not want to change our lives so completely, we needed to.

As I look back at over fifty years of upheaval in my life due to transgender issues, it is obvious to me that I never had a choice. Regardless of what the bigots said, and they should not be able to use the choice word against me in potential anti-transgender laws everywhere.

Choice is one of the issues all trans women and trans men share. We all have the powerful drive to succeed, and it will never go away no matter how hard the haters try. We have always been part of the fabric of the world and always will be. The difficult part is that we follow our paths to stay on the course until we get a resolution we can live with.

In the meantime, survival is not a bad way to go until you can not take it anymore, then depending on where you live, a cautious peak into the world might get you by until you can do more. Sometimes, you can check with nearby LGBTQ organizations for resources near you. Many of which are on-line to help you find an outlet to talk with others with similar gender interests.

Even though you never had the choice to live your life the way you wanted to, where there is a will, there is a way to live out your gender choices on your terms. You just have to find it to begin to truly live out your own choices which you never really had.

 

 

Innocent until Proven Guilty

 

JJ Hart

In many ways, this post is an extension of yesterday’s article. It involves the constant gender dance my second wife of twenty-five years and I had through in our marriage until she passed away.

Most of the problems occurred when I could not face the truth about myself. I was much more than a casual cross-dresser and just having the occasional chance to dress in front of the mirror in my feminine clothes was just not enough to satisfy my dreams of becoming a full-fledged transgender woman someday.  That was when I entered the most shameful time of my life when I like to say, I started to cheat on my wife with another woman who happened to be me.

As with most cheating episodes, mine became very complex. First, I started innocently enough with me taking short trips out of the house by walking around our neighborhood. When I got away with that, I started driving around as a trans woman to nearby cities where no one would know me. It was when I began to gather the courage to get out of my car and start exploring clothing stores, malls and book store to name a few. Before I knew it, I was hooked and I was having lunch on my own, just to see how successful I would be as a novice trans woman. Amazingly, I found the world was mostly nice to me and I kept experimenting. Which put me directly in the crosshairs of what I pledged to my wife. That I would never go out in public as a woman. She even went as far as letting me have the money to rent a motel room where I could dress and go out.

I even abused that privilege and still left the house on a regular basis. The problem that I had was removing all the traces of makeup that I was wearing when my wife was gone and I had to pass her strict inspection when she got home. Before long, regardless of how hard I tried to remove all my makeup, I was guilty until proven innocent. My wife knew I had been out, no matter how much I lied and tried to talk my way out of it.

Once I started seriously down my gender path to trans womanhood, I can confess I was never quite innocent. I would look for any opportunity to get out and about and improve my worth in the world as a woman. To be sure, I was not proud of what I was doing, but the whole process felt so natural that I just had to keep going and challenge myself to see what was around the next corner of my life. Even though the whole lifestyle change I was going through was so scary, it was also exciting and natural. As if something deep down inside of me knew I was on the right path.

As I always say, all of the lying and sneaking around took a tremendous toll on my mental health. All of my insecurities came to light when my normally honest life was torn apart by lying so much to my wife. I guess you could say too, for a while I was lying to the world about who I was too when I first started to go out in the world. I was guilty with strangers who did not know they were interacting with who I really was, not some sort of drag act. In fact, it took me several meetings with the same people to overcome that major obstacle in my life. The last thing I wanted back in those days was to be connected with any of the negative talk show press the cross-dresser transgender community was getting. Or even worse when we were being compared to someone who was up to no good by disguising themselves as a woman to commit a crime.  As a group back then, we were guilty until proven innocent.

I was fortunate in that I managed to purge my feminine self about six months before my wife died, so at least, I could do the right thing and honor my promise to her for a short time. For a number of reasons, it was the longest six months of my life.  It turned out when she passed, I would never have to consider purging again. Except when I made the major decision to finally give away all my male clothes for the last time. The best and most complete purge I ever made.

As I reached that point in my life, I vowed that honesty would always be the best policy and I would always be innocent until proven guilty. It turned out my inner hidden female had always thought the same thing and when she had the chance to see the light of day, she made a honest attempt to do the best she could to take the ball and run with it. When that corner had been turned, it was like I had been freed from a giant weight on my shoulders. I could breathe again and be fully proud of who I had become, a whole transfeminine person.

I can’t say it enough, the days and years of lying and deception on my part was totally my doing because I did not have the courage to face who I really was. I have no excuse for my cowardice except for my male self just did not want to give up what he worked so hard to obtain.

Certainly, I would not wish any of the gender turmoil I went through on my worst enemy and if the politicians who keep passing the anti-transgender bills across the country had to walk a mile in our shoes, they may have a whole different understanding of what we transgender women and trans men face on a daily basis. Then we would be judged to be innocent until proven guilty, which we rarely are.

 

 

The Dream was Never Out of Sight

 

Image from Egor
Vikrev on UnSplash

On occasion, I write about my ultimate dream of someday living as a fulltime transgender woman. As is the case with any dream, making it a reality is often very difficult, and it forever remains a dream. The main problem I had was having the confidence to move ahead on my seemingly endless gender path. Somedays, it was like I was walking on air in my high heels and others, it was like I was walking through quicksand. I would be confidently clicking away in my heels until I hit an unseen crack in the sidewalk and almost broke my ankle, which was a prime example of my life at the time.

Even on the days when I was doing my best impression of a linebacker in heels, I tried to keep my head up and look to the future. Hoping for a better day when I could do a better job of presenting in the world as my dream woman. Growing up in my male life, I was accused continually by my parents of never finishing a task. It turned out, working towards my dream of crossing the gender border was the first real project I never quit on. Take my use of makeup for example, I would not rest and kept experimenting until I got it right. I became so good that my second wife would break down and ask me for advice on how to do her makeup. I don’t think she ever knew most of my makeup knowledge came from the night I gathered the courage to take off my wig and makeup and have a true professional redo my face and more importantly explain to me what he was doing as he did it.

Those were my shallow days of thinking being a transgender woman just meant looking like one. As I was told many times by my second wife, I made a terrible woman because I had not paid my dues to achieve my own womanhood. The whole process set my dreams way behind because there was little to no way of me sliding behind the gender curtain to gain the right to play in the girls’ sandbox. How could I ever achieve my dream, if no one would let me in was the frustrating question which I had over and over again. In the meantime, I was stuck cross-dressing in front of the mirror and keeping my dreams alive and knowing deep down someday I would achieve my own unique transfeminine womanhood.

The main problem I had was gaining the confidence I needed to keep my dream alive because deep down I had doubts about whether I could ever make it. Because at the time, all I had were the annual Halloween parties I went to. Even the parties were a struggle on occasion as I needed to figure out my “costume.” I went from thinking that sexy was the way to go, all the way to trying to fool the other attendees into thinking I was a ciswoman who just got off of work. By the time several Halloweens had rolled by, I had achieved my dream of being mistaken for a woman but then was faced with the dreaded what then? Looking ahead at waiting another year for a costume party was unbearable and damaged my dreams of trans womanhood. I knew from my party results I was becoming tantalizing closer to my dreams but getting there still seemed like they were miles away.

As I finally began to leave my mirror and gender closet and explore the world, I began to understand what my wife was trying to tell me. I was a terrible woman out of ignorance as I tried to mold an entirely new person. All I had to work with was my appearance which was just skin deep when I needed to communicate with mainly ciswomen in their world for the first time. For my “sandbox” I chose the bar scene which I was used to and provided me with many unique situations. Many of which I don’t recommend. Along the way, I found myself as a single woman in a bar attracting unwanted attention until I built a group of friends to mingle with. Fortunately, the vast majority of those people who wanted to interact with me were women, so I did not have to worry about a bunch of drunk toxic men.

As I survived this stage of my life successfully, it was time to seriously consider where I would go next. Would I stay where I was at, afraid to go any farther, or would I be brave and take the next step which would be HRT or gender affirming hormones. Following much thought, I decided to seek the HRT path by going to a doctor. By doing so, I discovered what a huge portion of my life I was missing. My body took to the hormones so naturally that I felt I should have been on them my whole life. Just another indication to me of how close my gender dream had always been. I just needed to reach out and grab it.

Perhaps, you may have a similar dream for your life. Mine turned out to be a single-minded pursuit of me wanting to cast aside being a man and start being a woman. Regardless, the way I did it could be different from yours. I chose a “stairstep” method of my male to female femininization process. What I mean is, every time I was successful at one level of my transition, I needed to choose another gender project. If I wasn’t shopping for that new favorite outfit, I needed to figure out where I was going to wear it, is an example.

When I finally made it to the point of being able to live my dream, I certainly had paid my dues and had a lot of help from friends to therapy. They all helped to lift me from being a so-called terrible woman into a well rounded trans woman living her dream which was never far out of sight.

 

Honesty was Always the Best Policy

 

Image from Jon Tyson on 
UnSplash. 

Very early on in my life, I thought my default mechanism to anyone challenging my masculinity would be to lie about it. Fortunately, I did not have to take that route often because of all the elaborate ways I utilized to hide my feminine desires. Examples were the times I was competing in sports or working on cars. People close to me just assumed I was a “normal” male.

It wasn’t until much later in life when I began to get serious about dating women, did honesty become a real priority when it came to explaining my life. My first experience with telling a woman I was serious about, has been relayed several times here as recently as in the last several days. She is the one I coerced into dressing me head to toe as a woman which was the first time a ciswoman had attempted to do it for me. The whole plan turned out to be a disaster because of so many things. As I have mentioned before, I just wasn’t that impressed with the outcome she presented to me as she applied my makeup and the long blond wig I so desperately wanted. By then, I had spent years doing my own makeup and I thought I did a better job.

Little did I know that disappointment would only be the beginning of many with her. Being honest in our relationship early on led to an engagement but then a total break up because of a date I had with Uncle Sam and the Vietnam War. Rather than support me as I served, my then fiancé insisted I tell the draft board and the world I was gay to try to not get drafted which would have been a total lie. I knew I was a cross dresser but also had a pretty good idea I was not gay. Instead of wrecking my personal life as I knew it, we broke the engagement and went on our not so merry ways. I knew where I was headed, the US Army for three years. It was not the most pleasant time I ever spent in my life, but at least I was honest with myself.

Time went by in the Army until I found myself in a place to exercise some of my cross-dressing desires by going to a hospital Halloween party I was invited to by friends. By doing so, I through caution to the wind and decided to go all out dressed as a woman. I only had about eight months or so to go in the Army, so I was willing to risk getting in trouble to satisfy my need to cross-dress after such a long time of being denied.

All three of my closest friends that I socialized with all the time were at the party too, and as luck would have it, several weeks later, the subject of our “costumes” came up after a long night of enjoying very good German beer. When my turn came to talk about how I had went to all the effort to femininize myself for one night (including shaving my legs), I finally just was honest with my friends and told them I was a transvestite and the Halloween party was far from being just a one night deal of seeing what it would be like to dress as a woman. It was the first time I had ever admitted to anyone that I had a fondness for being a woman, so it was quite the liberating experience.

It was also a far-reaching experience because included in my group of friends was a woman who I got to know quite well. So, well in fact that later on we went on to be married and she became the mother of my only daughter who I cherish to this day and is one of my biggest supporters. Obviously, from day one in our relationship, she was aware of my feminine desires and accepted them.

Much of the same happened with my second wife, who was much more strong willed than wife number one. Even so, I felt honesty was the best policy and I nervously told her again I was a transvestite or cross-dresser before we were married. Ironically, the problem came with me not cheating on her with myself. What I was increasingly doing was doing exactly what I had sworn not to do. Leave the house dressed as a woman. By doing so, I broke one of the main bonds of our marriage which was not lying to her about what I was doing all the time.

Needless to say, like any other ciswoman, my second wife had keen instincts of what I was doing and was constantly on the outlook for things like extra forgotten makeup on my face when I was out and about as a novice trans woman. Since I prided myself in the rest of my life on my honesty, the constant lying I was doing to the woman I loved broke my heart. Especially when I could not stop doing it.

My heart was further shattered when she passed away quite unexpectedly from a massive heart attack and I was on my own after twenty-five years of marriage. The only redeeming thing I did was completely purge my feminine side for six months before she died. Even to the point of growing a beard. It was the only thing I could do to try to redeem myself.

Ironically, her death forced open the biggest door to my honesty there was, being honest with myself. When I looked deep, I found that all along I had been just wasting my time trying to be a man with all the privilege that came with it. I had learned to play the male game effectively but did not want any thing to do with my gender prizes after I won them. Being honest with myself for a change was the best feeling of all except I did feel guilty about all the stress and tension I had put others through because of my inner weakness. Total honesty certainly would have been the best policy in my life.

 

 

 

 

Everything was OK Until it Wasn't

 

JJ Hart. Frozen in Florida

So many times, when I was caught between my genders, I learned everything was Ok, until it wasn’t.

A prime example would be when I was coming home from a night in the gay venues I was frequenting and my car decided not to start when I was twenty miles away from home. Then I needed to figure out how to get the car home before my wife came home and took off all my make-up acting like nothing had happened. What I did was call a towing company and get the car towed back home as I sat in the cab with the driver, trying my best to present as a blond woman just trying to get her car home. Somehow, I did make it that night and learned to never take that car again when I went out on such a pressure packed adventure.

Sadly, I needed to learn the hard way as I followed my gender path through many blind curves and major potholes. I would usually start out with a final look in the mirror thinking I made an attractive woman from the testosterone poisoned male I had to work from. Confidently, I moved ahead to whichever venues I decided to go to that night. And the stakes were raised significantly when I decided to leave the relative safety of the gay venues behind and attempt to see how I could do in the straight world of big sports bars. It turned out, if everything was going to be OK, I would find out quickly.

Normally I found everything was going to be OK, except on the nights I encountered problems using the women’s restroom and I ended up having the police called on me. That turned out to be more embarrassing than anything else because the cops had better things to do as I was just sent on my way. A more embarrassing night came along much later when a group of drunk guys decided it would be fun to play “Dude Looks Like a Lady” about five times in a row on the juke box. Which ended me getting asked to leave by the manager, even though I was a regular. Well, liked by the staff, who actually tracked me down at a close venue not long after and asked to come back. Telling me, the manager who told me to leave got fired. I was flattered and accepted my welcome back because everything I thought was OK, actually was.

Other times, I was not as fortunate as I began to learn the basics of being allowed to play in the girls’ sandbox. Learning the time-honored tradition of passive aggressive behavior which ciswomen practice so well, proved to be a challenge. I was used to taking another man at face value most of the time until he proved himself unworthy which did work with women. I learned a smile could be hiding something much more sinister. Resulting in claw marks down my back. Once I did, again everything really did turn out to be OK and stayed that way for the most part.

In no way, do I want anyone to think this gender male to female feminization project was a quick one. There were so many nights when I hurried home to return to my old unwanted male self that I wondered what I was doing. I was risking so much on what often seemed to be an empty dream of someday being able to live as a fulltime transgender woman. What kept me going was the deep feeling I had that when I was my feminine self, I felt so natural and I felt as if I somehow was home. And someday, all the setbacks I had would just disappear and everything would truly be OK.

Through the magic of gender affirming hormones (HRT), and strong ciswomen role models, I was able to weather the transition storm I was going through. I knew everything was going to really be OK when I found I could validate myself in the world as a trans woman without the validation of a man, or anyone else. The whole process was so much more complex rather than just looking like a woman. I needed to be my own woman, on my own terms so I could exist on the path I had always been on. Even though sometimes I did not realize it myself. Those were the days of feeling like a failure when a group of teenagers laughed at me for how I looked. Rather than staying and trying to do better, I had to run home crying and go back to my cross-dressing drawing board. Seeking the idea that everything was going to be OK, even though it was not at the time.

As I said, what kept me going was a small spark of feminine energy deep down inside me. Knowing for sure, being the woman I dreamed of being was going to be an incredibly complex gender journey to make. Just lacking the communication skills, I needed to survive in the world as I went one on one with other women made my life a scary one. Since I was shy to begin with, I needed to start from scratch in a new world and work hard to gain an equal footing as a novice trans woman trying to make it alone in the world until I was able to make new friends.

The new friends I made helped me to cushion when I got into situations when everything was OK until it wasn’t. During those times, I could fall back into the group and learn from what was going on. Every learning experience became so important because I could make sure to never try that again. Even what was left of my stubborn male self-learned the misconceptions he had about how women truly lived and did he really want to let go of his life for good.

When he did, I found that everything was going to be OK and it always was.

A Little Success Goes a long Way

 

Hair by JJ Hart. Bead Work
by Liz T Designs

In the life of a novice transgender woman or man, a little success can go a long way. Mainly because very few of us are blessed with the natural gender characteristics of the gender we feel is truly us to get us started.

At that point, we must feel our way along. Sometimes submitting ourselves to abuse from the public as we go forth in the world for the first time. In my case, I make no secret of the many times I headed back home in tears after being laughed at to my face in public. Somehow, through it all, I was able to catch and enjoy brief moments of gender euphoria to keep me going to a distant dream of possibly living a life as a full-time transgender woman. Of course, I did not have any idea that I actually could do it.

I was fortunate that practice made perfect (or close to it) as I was able to improve my makeup and clothing skills to where I could survive in public when I left my mirror. Which I discovered was one of my biggest problems because it had the tendency to lie to me when it came to my overall appearance as a woman. Too many times, I went out thinking I looked great and then had the world slap me down in laughter because of the mirror. Plus, my male ego was giving me the wrong impression of how to look as I attempted the sexy look when I was in my thirties not in my teens. There could be no shortcuts in being able to present myself well as a trans woman, I would have to concentrate harder on my makeup and wardrobe than anything I ever tried before. Just because I was trying to dress sexy and show too much skin would not work in the real world if I was to blend in with the other ciswomen around me.

Finally, success did come to me as I haunted the thrift stores in my area for just the right fashion to attempt to flatter my testosterone poisoned body. It turned out I could not attempt to test my success until I left the gay venues I was going to and tried to go straight with my public excursions. The gays did not care how I looked and just viewed me as a drag queen any how so I was wasting my time until I discovered how I could make it or not in the big sports bars I was used to going to as a man. When I followed my three-step method of acceptance, I had no problems being accepted. My three steps were to put my fear behind me and smile, never cause any trouble and tip well earned me the right that every regular had. Especially the one I cherished more than anything else, the right to use the women’s restroom.

With my success came responsibility. I needed to be on the alert for other strangers who wanted to talk to me. Especially ciswomen who were curious about why I wanted in their world. Success in my communication skills led me to learn more about living behind the scenes as a ciswoman than I ever though I could. My primary example I always use is how women use the power of nonverbal and passive aggressive communication to get by in the world. Especially when it comes with dealing with men. It was very difficult for me to learn the basics women use to live but as I did, a whole exciting new world opened to me. Perhaps the best part of it all was that it felt so natural, so I knew I was on the right gender path in my life for the first time.

My success then began to go a long way when I discovered a small circle of women friends I could socialize with on a regular basis. I was always a social person anyway, so the fit seemed fun and natural to me as I gained the confidence I never had before when I was a solitary, lonely cross-dresser. And the best part was, I was having the opportunity to learn from the other women around me about knowing how it really was to interact with the world as a transgender woman rather than how I always dreamed it would be. Needless to say, I learned a lot.

I looked at my whole experience as paying dues as I went from being laughed at in public all the way to having my own set of ciswomen friends to socialize with and even marrying one later in life. Ironically, it was my wife Liz who convinced me once and for all to put my male self behind me, give away all my male clothes and start gender affirming hormones. Which I had always considered the next logical step in my male to female gender transition. It turned out, hormones would be the great “aha” moment in my life as the femininization process took hold. It was as if I should have always been on the hormones because the process felt so natural. The changes went way past the external softening of the skin, breast and hair changes all the way to all the internal changes such as emotions and more.

For me, success took a long time coming, and early failures at passing in public made me very timid. Once I made it through all of that, success came more naturally to me. All the way from just leaving the house cross dressed to HRT, my life became a blur of changes. Sure, the battles I needed to fight came at me fast and furious because I was so embedded in the male culture but I was able to fight my way through them and be successful as I discovered a little success went a long way and kept me going along my gender path towards a life I had only dreamed of.

Time Flies When you are a Crossdresser

Image from UnSplash. 

Since now I have been blessed with making it to the age of seventy-six, I spend a lot of time wondering what I did with my life.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I spent much of my time running from myself by changing jobs and moving my family. At the same time, I was doing all of that, I was busy cross-dressing to keep my fragile mental health together. I started the same way most of you with gender issues did by trying on my mom’s clothes and moving on from there. The urge was so strong that I even went out and got a newspaper delivery route (back when newspapers were relevant) so I could make extra money to buy my own makeup, panty hose as well as other feminine items I could afford. Before I knew it, I was becoming fairly proficient at applying my own makeup. So good that the first time I talked a ciswoman into making me over into a woman, I thought I had done a better job with my makeup.

Those were during my college days which were split in two by my military duty during the Vietnam War and all cross-dressing activities were brought to a complete halt. When you are younger, years are more precious and the time away from my makeup, dresses, and wigs seemed impossible to face. Somehow, I made it through and even discovered the magic of attending a Halloween party dressed as a woman while I was in the Army. The good news is I did it but the bad news was the time was very limited, and I had a lot to go over in my mind including Halloween was then another year away. What would I do in the meantime to help solve my cross-dressing dilemma.

What I tried to do first was to drink my gender problems away, which only partially worked because when I sobered up, my issues were still with me and sometimes potentially worse when one night in the Army I told three close friends I was actually a transvestite and like to wear women’s clothes. Not just at Halloween. I was lucky, the word about my gender issues never got out to my higher ups and I went on to serve out my time with a honorable discharge.

When I rejoined civilian life, I had the chance to seriously consider making the gender jump from a male life to a female one. Following serious consideration, I felt the leap would just be too far to make, so I reluctantly chose to stay on the cross-dressing path I was on. To do just enough in front of the mirror to maintain my sanity.

Nothing changed until I began to leave my mirror behind and experience life in the public eye as a novice cross-dresser. Or so I thought. All was good, until the night something clicked in my mind when I was getting ready to go out to the straight venues I was visiting when I left the gay spots behind. As I examined myself in the mirror, I stopped and said what I was doing.  I suddenly felt empty and needed more and then concluded I had taken just dressing as a woman as far as I could. I needed to experience the next step which was actually interacting one on one with other women as an equal. Even though the idea scared me to death, I needed to hitch up my big girl panties and transition again into a full-fledged transgender woman. The venue I chose was TGIF Fridays I was familiar with as a man and I knew if I could make it past the hostess stand with no extra attention, I had a good chance of finding a seat at the bar with the other women who were just getting off work at the nearby mall. Amazingly, my plan worked to perfection, and I made it to the bar and claimed my seat. The bartender waited on me without showing any signs of gender disgust and I even ordered a second drink to celebrate my successful major transition in life. From serious cross-dresser to novice transgender woman. Even saying the word felt good to me.

By the time, time was flying by as I was trying desperately to build a new transfeminine life while at the same time maintaining a long-term marriage and successful job. I found I was not too successful as a juggler because the same time I was feeling good and natural as a trans woman my male life would sneak back it and ruin it for me. Eventually, it all became too much for me to handle mentally, and a suicide attempt followed.

Maybe I spent too much time in my life obsessing over my feminine appearance which I attribute into being a very serious cross-dresser. Certainly, all the successful public appearances I made as a woman were not helping me with my ultimate goal of living my dream. In the long-term, I never bargained on going through two major male to female femininizations to even come close to discovering if I could find my true life and live it as a successful trans woman. Maybe I was too shy or scared to go too fast. One way or another, it is too late now to cry over torn panty hose. Life gives us only one chance to get it right.

Wherever you maybe in your gender transitory journey, I hope you can steer clear of the major roadblocks’ politicians are attempting to out in our way as transgender people. May your path be as smooth as possible as your own time flies by as a cross-dresser or transgender woman.

  

No One Way is the Correct Way

 

JJ Hart, Trans Ohio 
Conference. 

Yesterday, I referred again to my initial explorations in my mom’s clothes as the way I started my gender journey, and you may have done it too. Or some of you may have had a sister or two to borrow clothes from or even better get dressed up as a girl for Halloween in your past.

My point is that initially we follow very similar paths on our gender journeys without ever meeting up until later in life. Possibly at one of the cross dresser-transgender mixers which used to occur and still do in places such as Provincetown and Harrisburg Pennsylvania who host major events so you can experience living as your feminine self for an extended period of time. Plus, if you live near a city/metro area of any size, often there are LGBTQ groups who host support groups for novice cross dressers to attend which helps them understand a little more what they are up against with their gender issues. For example, Cincinnati, where I live has several gender support groups which cater to different ages in the community.

No matter how you reach out to seek relief from your closet, no one way is the right way to do it. For example, I would not recommend how I came out into the world as a transfeminine person to anyone. I took too many chances in sketchy gay venues as well as drinking way too much. I was caught in a situation where alcohol gave me too much courage while at the same time convinced me how good I looked. Both of which nearly got me into serious trouble a couple of times when I pushed the envelope too far by trying to go to redneck leaning venues. I was fortunate that I did not get physically harmed but I did not.

It was about that time when I began to notice how much more attention, I was getting from ciswomen than men. I think for the most part, the women were curious about what I was doing in their world, and I was harmless dressed the way I was. Slowly, I began to think I was on the right path after all when I started to enjoy myself.

For the longest time, I thought my next move into the lesbian culture was relatively rare when it came to the transgender community until I received another comment from “Bobbie W.” It turned out she was influenced by two lesbians when she was exploring the world too. Sadly, the difference in our paths came when her two friends moved away after school and Bobbie lost her contacts in the lesbian world. On the other hand, my difference was I never lost contact with their world and learned so much about the woman I could become. I became so serious with one of the lesbians I met, that I moved in with her and we got married. We have been together for over a decade now.

Another point I want to make with being accepted by the lesbian culture is you have to try to enter their world with a thick skin and prepare yourself for rejection. You also have to understand the layers of difference in their culture from “butches” to “femmes” and everything in between. Also be aware there are “Gold Star” lesbians who are completely against everything male versus the rest of the culture who had made it with a man in their past and had a very bad experience. One of my friends was a “Gold Star” and always held me at arm’s length while the others, including my wife Liz had children through previous soured relationships.

Maybe also, you think that since you went to all this trouble to be a transgender woman, why waste it on another woman and you want a man. Since I have had very little experience with men over the years, I am a bad one to ask. For the most part, men have steered clear of me, and I have steered clear of them. I did have a couple of dates years ago during my coming out years, but nothing ever came of them, and they were one night experience dates in very public venues where I felt safe. Other than a very rare circumstance, I have never met a trans woman who had a long-term relationship with a man, and I often wondered how scary it would be if he brought his trans girlfriend home to meet mom and the family for the holidays. Although I did it with Liz’s highly conservative dad and brother. (I was terrified).

These days, the possibility of establishing a long-term relationship exists on a broader spectrum than ever before. I know a couple of transgender women who met during their gender realignment surgeries five years ago and just celebrated their fifth anniversary, so anything is possible. Just because your path does not align with the other gender conflicted people around you, it does not make it right. As I said, the spectrum has grown bigger over the years with the advent of the internet influence and social media groups. Although I read recently the tide is starting to turn back to personal contacts and away from online dating which I was lucky with. After sorting through tons of trash and rejection my wife Liz contacted me and we have been together ever since.

Since we are all humans, we share in the vast spectrum of life we are living. Perhaps since we are transgender women and trans men, we have a broader spectrum to live with. These days we still have to deal with the unreasoning anti-LGBTQ political ads which are starting to appear. I saw one just this morning from Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie who was campaigning for a right-wing candidate when he said the candidate was not for transgender they and them but for us. I need to get prepared for the worst that is yet to come.

Try not to let it all drive you tightly back into your closet and keep in mind no way is the right way when you decide to come out and look around.

 

Setting New Traditions

 

JJ Hart bottom row, left. 
Girls Night Out Birthday Party. 

Establishing new traditions or routines can be difficult when you decide to finally live as the gender you were always meant to be.

In my case, the biggest moment of change was when my regular invitation to the family’s Thanksgiving feast was rejected by my brother and sister-in-law who did not have enough backbone to stand up to her rightwing Baptist family. The excuse I was given was, what would the kids think. I was fortunate that my dramatic change was by my daughter and my future wife Liz. Both of them invited me into their family gatherings with open arms and I ended up having an even better time than I would have had with my brother.

Other traditions I was invited into were girls’ nights out for various special occasions such as birthday parties. I cherished the chances I had to go behind the gender curtain and see how ciswomen interact with each other when there are no men around. Sure, I was terrified to go at first but quickly calmed down and warmed up to the experience when almost all of the women there treated me as an equal. Surprisingly to me, I ran into no problems except for one woman who acted as if she was mad at the world anyway. Plus, my most important lessons were if you take men out of the picture, women are looser acting around themselves and the only real difference in the conversation is the lack of sports and job talk. The bulk of the conversation was built around family and spouses.

I took these new learning experiences with me and ran with them into my everyday life’s interactions with other women. I subtracted any talk of employment and my major interests (sports) unless I was asked about something specific. Which surprisingly I was not and my private life which I had not merged at that time, stayed mine. No one pried, and I did not offer. Which worked well for me.

As I slowly began to build on the experiences I mentioned, life became more fluid and natural to me, and I knew I was on the right path. I felt better after spending a night with the ciswomen than I ever did when I was busy posturing with other men. It just took me time to establish new traditions, and I came to expect the occasional invitation to join other women in their celebrations. I became my own woman, just from a different background than the rest of the group. As I learned so much, most of the women never knew how much they benefitted me by just allowing me into their lives. Including the lesbian experiences, I had which went such a long way towards shaping my future.

From the earliest days of going to diverse mixers in Columbus, Ohio and ending up leaving with a lesbian I talked to, all the way to attending lesbian mixers with Kim and Nikki in Dayton, Ohio years later, I again was able to learn so much about the sort of woman I wanted to be. As many of the transgender women around me were stressing about finding a man, I learned I did not need a man’s validation to be me. It really helped me to not needing to change my sexuality while I was building new traditions in my life. I had always appreciated the company of women around me and nothing changed.

If you are considering, or are building new ones, as you know it is a major deal and one that can take a while. My advice is fairly simple, pursue as many avenues as you can and be prepared for the occasional rejection you may receive. Especially from men who may perceive you only as some sort of fetish object. And of course, be safe and meet strangers in public places initially.

Sooner rather than later before you know it your new traditions will become established and second nature to you. That is when the woman who has always been a part of you can emerge and live the life she always imagined. Jumping the gender border may be something you were always destined to do but never dreamed you would have the chance to do it like I did. I needed to wait for decades as I experimented with my gender but finally the doors opened wide for me to find myself in a do or die situation. Either try a male to female transition which was always a female-to-female transition in my world or forget it and move on with my life at the advanced age of sixty. It would have been easier just to do what I always had done and live a life with one foot in each of the binary genders.

I took the hard way out and decided to pursue the next step in my transition (it was a big one) and seek a doctor’s approval to begin gender affirming hormones or HRT. It was a huge step for me and one I did not take lightly. My body took to the new hormones like why did I take so long to do it? It fit right in with the rest of my life of waiting too long to do what was right. Establishing new traditions in a life I always should have known was just the beginning.

 

 

 

 

Gender Lost and Found

Image from Jon Tyson on UnSplash.

I spent most of my life in the gender lost and found department.

It all started when I discovered my fascination with my mom’s clothes and was lost when I outgrew all of her wardrobe. I was fortunate when I found a elastic, stretch mini skirt in a box outside the girls’ locker room one day and managed to hide it away in my gym bag and take it home for myself. What was lost was now found.

Along the way, I ended up wishing my overall gender dysphoria could be solved as easily as finding a skirt I could squeeze into and wear. It was only the beginning of a lifelong search to finally face up to who I really was. Until I faced up to the fact that I was never male at all, I was lost in a life I did not want.

Slowly but surely, I began to find my way out of my dilemma. But before I did, I needed to gather all the courage I could to leave my mirror and experience the world, as terrifying as it was as a transfeminine person. It was only then could I see the possibilities of what my future might hold if I actually followed my dreams and was able to live a life on my terms as a transgender woman. Along the way, I found out more about myself than I lost as explored the world. Surely, initially (as I always point out) I was treated rudely in a world which was different back in those days. The world was more likely to find humor in my efforts to be feminine than today when more and more people are just mean. To a point where they will share their unwanted bigoted feelings with you. Every time I was laughed at as a novice cross dresser, I resolved to head home to the safety of my mirror and attempt to fix the problems which were holding me back.

What I found was, I was not trying hard enough to blend in with the ciswomen around me. I needed to lose my male ego which was telling me to run from the criticism I was receiving and for the first time, pay attention to what the world was trying to tell me. Get out of the teen girl fashions I was trying to be seen in and start trying to determine my strengths and go from there.

The more I learned about presentation as a trans woman, the easier my life became as I began to test the boundaries of what I could do. For the most part, I was successful in building the basics of a new feminine life other than the times when I tried to go too far into venues I should have never considered trying. Ironically, one of the biggest set of venues I needed to lose were the gay bars I was going to. Even though, for the most part I found I could express myself there, my growth as a person was slowed dramatically. I tired of being rejected as just another drag queen and wanted to find something more. Losing the gay bars except on certain occasions was the best move I made except when I found acceptance in a small lesbian tavern I went to regularly along with the bigger sports bars, I found that I could be a regular in also.

As I expanded my feminine horizons, I lost more and more of my male self who had always wondered what it would be like to go to his favorite venues as a woman. I found I was right and enjoyed myself even more as a transgender woman. Especially when I went there enough to be recognized as a person, not some sort of a man in a dress. My golden rules of being accepted almost always worked for me as there were three. Number one, be friendly and not be a bitch. Number two never cause any trouble, and number three always tip well.

The only problems I found were when I needed to separate who I was in the real world when I needed to go back to being a man and existing in my working world, I increasingly wanted nothing of. It was a fast-moving pressure packed macho world which I could never see myself doing a male to female transition in, so I was lost in limbo much of the time. It was the only major problem I found I could do nothing about and had to give up a well-paying job when I retired to a fulltime transgender woman’s world. At least, I found my knowledge of competition carried me over quite well into the women’s world I was in. Of course, I needed to lose all my male privileges’ I had gained over the years and start all over again and often I learned the hard way that women compete just as hard as men. Just in different arenas.

Once I learned the new rules, I was learning quickly and even enjoying my feminine world even more than I thought I would. Probably because I was dealing from a position of gender strength because of all the time I had spent in a male world. Many times, I found I knew what potential problem would be coming at me before it even appeared. One of the gifts of being a transgender person.

Of course, now I feel that I have found much more than I had ever lost. I look back at my all too lengthy male life as the chance I had to learn the basic building blocks of life which I would need later to succeed at being a woman. From there I needed to take all the benefits I found as a new feminine person and use them wisely. To squander all that I had learned would have been a tragedy as I wasted all my time in the gender lost and found.

 

 

 

  

Who Won the War

 

I call this a fake image of me.
Pre Hormonal padding and hair.

Relax, this post is not another of my political rants!

As my life enters its senior stages, I have the luxury of looking back and wondering what the hell happened. Or, who won the gender battles and who ultimately won the war.

Even though the cards were stacked against her to start (and continued for years), my feminine side managed to hold her own enough to survive. Which was amazing when I looked at the beginnings of our life and what she had to put up with. To start with, I was born into a very male dominated family with a highly competitive nature to contend with, so I always had to be ready for a battle of some sort. For the longest time, I would have to accept defeat at the hands of my brother who was always the better athlete and I would quickly run and hide behind my dresses and makeup. When I did, my feelings were soothed and I was ready to try to compete and win.

One way or another, I found the only winning I was doing was when I was a girl in front of the mirror. The mirror kept telling me I was pretty, and that kept me going. I was far from winning any gender war within myself, but I was managing to tread water and stay afloat…barely because I had no where else to turn. My desire to be a girl was shutting me off from the world. What happened then was, I grew tired of just presenting in front of the mirror and wanted to test how well I did in front of the world. The whole scenario forced me into major battles once again.

This time, I found amazingly I could compete in the world as a transgender woman and I did not have to accept defeat every time I went out in public. Maybe I was finding my home gender after all. I think at this time too, I was battle hardened from all the defeats I had sustained in my male life, and it was easier for me to continue to move forward.

As life started to change, I wanted to explore the consequences of what I was doing more and more. Then my battles became more serious and far reaching which led my male self and my second wife to panic. They suddenly realized I was becoming a more accomplished trans woman and could possibly make it after all to my dream of living a full-time life as a transfeminine person. For her part, my wife kept telling me I made a terrible woman, which I learned later was true. Simply because I had not spent enough time behind the gender curtain to claim my womanhood, yet, but I was coming alarmingly close enough to find out what she was talking about to set her alarms off. And my male self, not to be outdone was doing his part too by relaying all the new jobs and moves he was making into a personal success story.

Between the two of them, they made formidable gender foes, and I needed to become better at exploring who I really was. Whenever I could get off work, I attended cross dresser-transgender mixers, both large and small to determine if I could do what I saw other successful people living on the gender frontier. By doing so I could see my major battle lines being drawn up ahead, and I was like a runaway train headed for them. Major decisions were coming up in my life if I like them or not because I had spent too much time and effort in my explorations to turn tail and run again. I had nowhere to go this time because I had blocked all my exits. All my skirts, dresses, heels and makeup were ready for action.

By this time, my male self was in pure panic mode knowing that his ace card of military service had backfired on him. He thought somehow an ultra-macho experience that Army infantry basic training would make me more of a man when in fact, the whole experience made me a stronger person and believer in myself. When push came to shove and the times were darkest, I could make a decision and live with it. Even if was the decision that would effectively be his final battle and win the war for his feminine counterpart.

Also, I was coming up with a clearer idea of why I had struggled with who I truly was for all those years. I had blindly followed the idea that I was a man cross dressing as a parttime woman when, in fact, I was a woman cross dressing as a parttime man who happened to be married to a strong ciswoman. Plus, he was the primary wage earner in the family. Covering all those gender tracks was exceedingly difficult and put a tremendous strain on his mental health but he kept on fighting the gender battles against all odds. Out of some misguided idea that he had to. It was such a relief when he surrendered and gave up the remainder of his clothes to a local thrift store. The only thing he saved was his Army uniform which had taught me so much about life and winning,

When he realized he had lost, there was no time for wild celebrations. Only time for serious contemplation of what was next and how my victorious trans woman would react. It turned out, she took her win quietly and set out to build a life she always knew was possible. A life which was enhanced even further when she was approved for therapy and HRT through the Veterans Administration. Finally, she had the help she needed to match her internal needs with her external appearance. Which is the subject for another blog post altogether.

Regardless, victory was sweet as my old male self-faded into the past. She lost many battles, but ultimately won the war.

 

Practice, Practice, Practice

 

Image from Mor Shani
on UnSplash. 

Sometimes I wonder if some people don’t take the time to understand how much practice I needed to do as I became my authentic self. I guess I could say I went through nearly a half century of work to become who I dreamed of being. It was far from easy.

Starting at the beginning, I never had much to work with as far as being an effeminate boy. Not to mention, I was born into a very male dominated family. Very early I learned I was going to have to work hard to not look like a clown in drag when I tried my best to look like a pretty girl in front of the family mirror. I always equated putting on makeup with painting the plastic model cars I had. Which I was always very bad at doing.  

It did not help when I earned my own meager amount of money working around the house or delivering newspapers in the neighborhood. Then I used the money to try to shop for makeup. I still remember to this day, the first time I was confronted by the sheer number of various makeup brands and variations to try. I finally selected several products out of desperation and hoped for the best as I was trying not to use my mom’s makeup anymore. Now, I don’t remember how successful I was, but I kept on trying to practice on my face until I got it right. Or so I thought. It wasn’t until years later that I visited a true professional makeup artist that I discovered I was not working on the true potential of my makeup to its maximum effectiveness. I was merely making the same basic mistakes over and over again.

I was fortunate to have the makeup artist who was able to explain to me in terms of understanding what he was doing, so I could repeat the process later. Practice for once made perfect. I was able to paint my model cars in a way that my friends admired them. But this time, I was actively admired at the crossdresser-transgender social mixer I was at, and this time when I tried to hang out with the “A” listers (as I called the beautiful, more advanced crowd of attendees) I was accepted. The best part of the whole evening was I then had a basis of where I needed to be as far as being an accomplished cross dresser but on the other hand, I was presented with a deeper set of questions about what I was going to do about my male life as I knew it.

What I decided I had to do was take my transfeminine show on the road so to speak and see if it would play at all in the public’s eye. Away from all the safety of mixers and gay or lesbian mixers. That is when the real practice set in. I needed to stop all of the hard-earned male muscle memory I had learned and start to learn the best that I could the graceful, fluid moves of a cisgender woman. Naturally, the whole process was difficult to do. Especially when I was switching back and forth between the two main binary genders almost daily. Constantly, I needed to remind myself of who and where I was so I would not end up at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Through it all, when I thought I was being successful in going down my transgender path, roadblocks always emerged which sent me back to my drawing board and started setting up more practice. Those were the days of taking every spare moment I had to sneak out of the house and begin to carve out a new life for myself as a trans woman. Once I made it successfully out of the gay venues I was going to and into a few of the big sports bars I was used to going to as a guy, I started to relax and enjoy my new exciting life even more.

No matter how much I try to gloss over this part of my life, the fact still remained I was essentially cheating on my wife when I went out as myself. Deception was never my strong suit, and I was never proud when I needed to lie about what I was doing. By this time, I had reached the point of no return but still was afraid to face it. I hid it by staying in the so-called practice mode I was in. If I could have just one more experience being a transfeminine person, it would make it so much easier when I decided to permanently put my old unwanted male self behind me for good.

Finally, I quit kidding myself, and I was doing so much than practicing over and over again to live a transgender life. I had always dreamed of doing it, so it was time to do something about it and live it. Who knows, maybe all that practice at living a feminine life saved me in the end as I finally learned to move and communicate my way around in a ciswoman’s world.