Mother's Day and the Battle for Gender Supremacy

 

Image from Daiga Elaby
on UnSplash.

Before I get started on today’s post, I would like to mention Mother’s Day, and all it means to me. First of all, it gives me the chance to remember all the problems my mom went through to have me. Such as, going through three still born babies before my parents kept trying and had me. Without their determination, I would not be here today. Which is the main reason why I adopted my mom’s first name as my legal name when I changed it years ago.

Plus, even though my mom and I were much alike and fought quite a bit through my youth, I managed to use her as a roll model as I slowly grew into the daughter, she never accepted having. I view her now as a one of kind woman who presented herself to me as an unknowing roll model. Happy Mother’s Day to all of you reading today who may be ciswomen and birthed your own children! We all know how important you are to the world. If your mom is still around, do your best to try to bridge the gender gap. Although I was never able to do it with mine before she passed away years ago.

Now, on to the post for today which has to do with my remaining male gender and how he got in the way of my transfeminine progress in life. I already mentioned the fights I had with my mom as she taught me to fight like she did. Bring anything you could think of to make sure you have at least a decent chance of winning the battle you were in. I think she indirectly taught me valuable lessons about fighting as a girl because I had to resort to being mental and not physical with my fighting.

As it turned out, just the aspect of having fights with other males never materialized much with me as I was growing up. I tried to hide behind liking sports and cars to hide my true love of fashion and makeup to keep the bullies away and for the most part it worked. It also worked when I failed at trying something such as sports, getting beat, and having the chance to run home and soothe my feelings behind one of my favorite dresses and makeup.

This plan was all well and good when I was just dealing with just minor athletic events and became much more serious when it came to activities such as work and life in general. I quickly learned that if I was to be successful, I could not just take my feelings home and cross-dress, I needed to stay there and fight. I needed to push hard to keep my transgender issues at bay and take care of myself. Even though in the background, my feminine self was always waiting to get out and thrive in the world. Sort of like that app on your computer which is always running in the background. Because every situation I faced, I secretly wondered how I would face it as a trans woman. At that point, I needed to face the real possibility that I would just have to experiment with new situations in life from the view that ciswomen do.

That was when I got out of the gay venues I was going to and back into the straight venues I had grown used to going to as a man. Of course, I found the entire process to be extremely terrifying yet natural as I settled down into my new world. A world where I did not have to worry about what my feminine instincts were telling me as I was actively acting upon them. I was free and gender for once was not getting in my way. All I had to worry about was my fear of discovery disrupting my new life.

To my surprise, most of the world around me did not seem to care there was a novice trans woman around them. No one screamed “Hey! That’s a man” when I entered the room and at the worse all I received in response was a few stares. Mostly from women. When I did, I always made sure to stand up straight and try to make eye contact if a could as if to say what is wrong with you? There is nothing wrong with me. As we all know, humans are like sharks in the water who are attracted to blood. When I showed the hard-earned confidence, I gained to project my authentic feminine self, the sharks left me alone. I can’t emphasize enough though the bumps and bruises I took to my ego to find the much-needed confidence to get by.

I did get by and stopped most all my gender battles which helped me to end all the self-destructive behavior I had carried around with me for decades. It certainly took a while for all the emotional scarring to go away and for me to clean up my act. As I always say, it was like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders when I finally gave in to the transfeminine person I always was meant to be. And I was allowed to continue to fill out my gender workbook as I was socialized in the world of ciswomen by the small group of women friends, I had built around me. I was able to learn a little or a lot from all of them except for one. Which was my biggest issue…

In other words, the biggest boulder on my path to move was getting my male gender out of the way. He was stubborn and hung on to his male privileges as long as he could. All to no avail. I finally had to give up on trying to use all my old male strength to help me and resorted to a more feminine approach of slowly chipping away at portions of the rock. Success led to more success and before I knew it, I had a new exciting path to my future open for me ahead. It was bright, exciting and I never wanted to even think about going back.

 

 

 

 

Graduation Season

 

Image from Logan Isbell
on UnSplash.

It is graduation season around me, and it brought up all sorts of memories of my own graduations. Many far from the usual school graduations everyone thinks about when we think about moving on with life. Plus, it goes much further than just thinking about the pretty new fashions women get to wear on their celebration days. If they choose to do it.

When I look all the way back to my high school graduation days, I always tie it with the prom season which was very close to it. My senior year was actually my second prom, but nothing really changed. I was still very envious of my date’s beautiful prom dress and corsage (which I had to buy her) to add insult to injury. No matter how hard I tried, I wanted the high heeled shoe to be on my foot and not hers and I would be taken out for the evening. Graduation was not as bad as prom because every graduate had to wear the same black gowns, hiding their new fashions until they went to an after-graduation party. But, even so, I still had misgivings about what I was facing following my graduation. As I faced hurdles such as surviving college and the military service which sometime made my gender issues pale in comparison.

Even though I realized a college graduation was in my future too, I did not think of all the other times I would have to graduate in life to survive. Examples included the times in the Army when I needed to graduate basic training all the way to making my way through the “Defense Information School” in Indianapolis. Time was flying by as I transitioned from the college world to the Army and back again three years later when I pursued my second college degree. Aside from brief moments of regression and purging, my desire to be a transfeminine person never went away and was in fact getting stronger. Little did I know I was facing more graduations confined only to how I viewed myself as a person.

Backtracking a bit and going back to my very first time I saw myself in girl’s clothes and makeup in front of a mirror. I realized I had graduated from being a so called “normal” boy forever. Plus, there would be several future gender graduations when I transitioned from being a cross-dresser to a transgender woman and when I began to take HRT or gender affirming hormones under a doctor’s care and took another major step towards my dream of being a fulltime trans woman.

By the time I had gone through all these graduations, even I would have thought I would have grown tired of the process. But I did not. I started to crave the next step in my occupation and my life as a transgender woman. Which put me on a collision course for my future. It came down to which one I would save after the major gender collision in my life. Following years and years of success, one would just have to go. Just trying to look ahead up my winding gender path became a major problem as increasingly carving out a life as a novice transfeminine person on my own terms became a priority over every thing else, I loved in my life.

At this point, my graduations began to slow down and became smaller in nature. Every time I was successful at trying to be the person I always wanted to be, I celebrated my own mini gender victory and resolved to do better on my path. No longer did I have to be envious of the ciswomen around me, since I was allowed to be behind the gender curtain. Which was another graduation for me, as I loved it. It was a major reward for all the work I put into filling out my gender workbook. As a matter of fact, it was the best graduation I had ever had in my life.  If I wanted to, I could wear the pretty dress all the other women around me were wearing.

Until then, I think I was taking all the graduations and transitions I was taking for granted. I was not raised to think anything I did was good enough, so being pleased with my progress towards my dream and being happy about it was a first for me. Ironically, I even was able to use the same restroom in the dinner club I took my second prom date to years later when it became a gay venue. It was as close as I could ever come to reliving the inadequacies I felt so long ago as I looked at myself in the women’s restroom mirror.

Humans are blessed to be able to graduate to many different levels as they transition through life. It is sad because of whatever reason, some people (men and women) are never socialized to make it to a point when they can claim the status of being a man or a woman. They are doomed to never making it past the stage of being male or female and never took the opportunity to graduate to the next level of life. They are the ones who are jealous of and hate transgender women and transgender men for reasons they do not even understand. Often, they are stuck in the past and never have the chance to escape.

If you are busy trying to figure out your next stop on your gender journey, I hope you can take the next careful step and graduate to the level you want to be. In the end, graduation is much more than having a framed certificate for your wall and who would consider having a framed certificate saying you made it to your own form of womanhood above your desk anyhow. Wouldn’t that be something?

Your destination should be your own sense of satisfaction or even happiness because you undertook one of the most difficult journeys a human can take. Congratulations!

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                       

 

Life is Too Short to be Ordinary.

 

Image from Frolicsome Fairy
on UnSplash.

I saw this quote on a television show I watch regularly and it resonated as a transgender woman with me. Here is the quote: “Life is too short to be ordinary.”  I immediately thought that a trans woman’s or trans man’s life is anything but ordinary in the world we live in today.

I also thought of a few of the final battles I had with myself before I finally gave in to my feminine desires at the age of sixty and decided to try to enter the transfeminine world permanently. It was never a move I took lightly, which was probably one of the reasons it took me so long to make my final choice to join the girls’ club and leave the good old boys’ club behind.

What I attempted to do was weigh all the good and bad I had accomplished in my long life and use it to make my decision. To be fair, I did have many male experiences which I felt I needed to take into consideration as positives I would have to leave behind if I proceeded with my male to female feminization efforts. The end result was I found that I did not live an ordinary life for several reasons, and one of them was because I spent so much time on the gender path I obsessed about. The others involved just the ordinary life’s challenges that everyone goes through such as maintaining a family, a marriage and trying to be successful in a profession you can tolerate. I kept coming back to my gender issues which set me apart from the great majority of the world, in a good way.

Along the way, I had come to appreciate the difference between the two main binary genders by actually having the chance to live them. It occurred to me that I was having a chance very few humans have the chance to do and I should make the best of it and keep going. At the time, I was spending approximately half of my time in the world as a transgender woman anyhow, so the jump to going fulltime was becoming less and less intimidating to me.

One of the main final factors I needed to consider was how natural I felt living in each gender I was trying to maintain. After hours of thought and contemplation, I came to the realization I had never felt natural as a man. I had to struggle to make any long-lasting friends and it seemed all my accomplishments were for my public persona only. As I always say, I was never a man cross-dressing as a woman. I was a woman cross dressing as a man. From that, I realized I had always felt more comfortable as a feminine person and time was running short for me to grasp the opportunity to change for good. I was sixty at the time and it did not take a genius to realize I had lived more years than I still had to go on this earth.

Finally, it struck my stubborn head that I had been blessed to live everything but an ordinary life and I should follow my natural inclination to stay in a feminine mode. When I did, it was as if I was allowed to take a ton of rocks from my shoulders. As I assumed the life I always should have lived, I began the finishing touches of my new existence by being approved for HRT or gender affirming hormones by a doctor I read about in a local LGBTQ newspaper I saw. My body’s reaction was simple and to the point and I could hear it saying what took you so long as the changes from the hormones were so natural and immediate. In fact, the changes came so fast that I needed to move up my timeline for when I would transition completely away from my old male self.

It does not seem possible that all those gender changes were over fifteen years ago now and my world changed as positively as I ever hoped that it would. The path I took was completely personal and had its share of stop signs and blind curves but somehow, I made it. Probably because my inner self felt it was the only way to go. If working from a male background to being a transfeminine person was the way my path took me, I would gladly go along for the ride. The ride turned out to be uniquely interesting along with being extremely scary when I gave up and lost all my male privilege before I learned the essence of having female privileges.

I was fortunate that I was blessed with a healthy long life. Long enough to see the circle come around from gender darkness to light. So, you could say, my life was long enough to make it interesting and look around all those steep walls and blind curves to see what was on the other side waiting for me.

If the world would let it be, gender is just a human need on a spectrum like so many others and trans people are just trying to live their lives like so many others. And I know gender is much more than a black and white reality to all of us. You can view yourself anywhere from a weekend cross-dresser all the way to a post-op woman and all should be accepted under our complex umbrella of people. It’s just another way we are far from ordinary and difficult for the average person to understand. It is also difficult to explain to a loved one when we do not fully understand what is going on ourselves, which often takes a long time to happen.

Rest assured that even if your life may be different and/or difficult at times, I will be far from ordinary.

Thank you all for your comments, claps and new subscriptions! Without all of you, none of what I try to pass along would be worth it.

 

 

 

My Life's Passion

JJ Hart on vacation
last winter. 

Without a doubt, the one passion which has consumed my life the most has been my desire to be a woman.

I continually write about my youth as a confused boy wondering if I was the only boy in the world who wanted to be a girl. My desires extended all the way to what I wanted for Christmas (the doll baby I never got) all the way to when I lied about what I wanted to be when I grew up. Rather than rock the boat I always said some sort of a male profession such as a doctor or a lawyer rather than what I really wanted to be, a woman.

All I could do was take refuge in my mirror which told me I made a pretty girl out of the boy I was at the time. It became a passion for me to use as much of my free time as possible to cross-dress. At the same time, I became really good at acting like a boy by playing sports and having an interest in cars. I was so good, it kept the bullies away until male puberty invaded my body. Outside of hating the changes puberty was making to my body, I remember being intensely aware of my new masculinity and what to do with it. Even walking like a man was a chore for me to learn to do. I was so afraid of walking like a “sissy” and be made fun of by the bullies that I feared what to do. Little did I know that later in life my passion would be to unlearn all that I needed to learn at the time about being masculine.

As much as I tried and as tormented, I because of my gender passions, I could not seem to lose my desire to be feminine over my hated male image. At the time, I was in the midst of what I call the information “dark ages” before the internet and any social media input. Even the word transvestite was new to me as I struggled to find my footing in life. In other words, my gender closet was very dark and lonely, with little opportunity to have any future at all in my passion to understand and be feminine.

I stayed that way until I grew older and my passion included receiving my cherished issues of “Transvestia” magazine and I could read the “wisdom” of “Virginia Prince” whenever I could get my hands on another issue. For a while I thought it was working until I began to read about the social mixers certain chapters had to meet and greet other cross-dressers or transsexuals as they were known back in those days. Amazingly, one of the chapters in my native Ohio held mixers on a fairly regular basis that I could attend. I thought for sure, meeting others with similar gender issues could help me but I was wrong. Their passions exposed the many layers of where I could fit in (or not) with the remainder of the cross-dressing community and at the least, I hoped I could come away from the social by making a friend or two.

The only thing that really came out of the mixers was the knowledge that another chapter was coming close to establishing their own socials in Columbus, Ohio which was vastly closer for me to attend. Maybe I was too standoffish or even shy to make what I would call friends, but I continued to keep going any way and even was rewarded with invitations to smaller more diverse parties in Columbus which did not have to supposedly adhere to all of “Virginia Prince’s” archaic rules such as admitting heterosexual members only. As I said, the parties I went to were very diverse from lesbians to cross dresser admirers all the way to transgender women getting ready for gender realignment surgeries. The learning process I went through every time I went fueled my passion to learn more about my place in this new exciting world, I was becoming a part of. I could not wait to be invited to the next party.

I felt so secure from my party experiences, that I decided to do more exploring in my own in public. That is when I began to seek out the straight venues I used to go to as a man when I always wondered what it would be like to experience them as a woman. My passion for my new life exploded when I discovered I could be accepted which kept me out of the gay venues which I did not feel comfortable in at all. I was able to go out to be alone and mostly socialize by myself for the most part as I worked hard on my passion to fill out my gender workbook which was seriously lagging behind my fast-paced life as a novice transgender woman.

By this time, I had decided I had made the right decision to follow my feminine passion and try to survive in a world run by ciswomen. My path felt natural and I was rapidly coming close to the time when I was going to push all my male privileges I had earned to the middle of the table and bet my life on the transfeminine path I was on. I could not believe that my entire life’s dream/goal was suddenly within my grasp. If only I had the courage to finally follow through on my passion.

I did follow through and with the help of my future wife Liz, I went on HRT, threw out or gave away all my male clothes and never looked back on my male life except to decide which baggage to bring with me. I even went as far as taking female vocal lessons to try to teach me all important feminine communication skills which I desperately needed. It all turned out to be a labor of love as I listened and learned from the world around me.

The boy so long ago in the mirror finally had his deep-seated passions rewarded.

 

 

 

  

I Got Scammed

 

Image from Markus Winkler
on UnSplash.

Years ago, I discovered I was scammed when I attempted to climb my gender path towards my dream goal of living completely as a transgender woman.

My first mistake was believing what I saw in the mirror when I was cross-dressed as a girl was a true indication of what I really looked like. The mirror was more than capable of lying to me by telling me I looked attractive, when I really looked like a circus clown in drag. It wasn’t until I began to go out in public as a feminine person, did I find out the brutal truth of how far I still had to go to present well as a novice cross dresser in public. Rather than create attention to the way I looked, I needed to blend in with the average ciswomen around me and just get by.  I was scamming myself to think otherwise.

Sadly. The scamming continued unabated until I woke up to the true world around me. My life was restricted by outdated thoughts I carried through from my still very active male self who thought dressing sexily was the way to go. The only good thing that happened during this part of my life was that I went through my cross-dresser “adolescence” fairly quickly and began to attempt to dress my testosterone poisoned body the best I could to hide my flaws. I was aided by fashion styles back then which favored miniskirts, bare legs, opaque stockings with oversized sweaters. I was even able to continue a version of the fashion basics when I changed into a bohemian style denim mini along with a flowing loose top to hide my oversize male torso. For once, fashion trends were playing in the right direction for me and my scamming decreased from my male self and the public.

At that point, I shifted my emphasis on where I was going when I was learning the world for the first time.  Initially I chose more malls and safe places such as coffee shops and bookstores until I got bored and chose other venues to go to at night when I began to sneak out of the house when my wife was working. At first, I was satisfied with going to a few male gay venues in downtown Dayton, Ohio. Even though I did not like the overall atmosphere of the places, I kept going because I thought they were safe. That was until I was stopped on a sidewalk outside one night by two men looking for a handout and I was lucky I still had a five-dollar bill to give them, so they left me unharmed. I learned a valuable lesson that all ciswomen knew which was to always be careful of your surroundings and I never went back there again unless I had friends with me.

I also felt I was scamming myself and wasting my hard-earned money by going to gay venues at all. Lesbian bars for the most part were fun for me for a number of reasons. Including the attention, I would receive on occasion from a few of the other patrons. Male gay bars however just treated me like any other drag queen which I hated. I even had a hard time being served which drove me away. It was then; I decided to stop being scammed and take my business to straight sports bars where I knew I could enjoy the atmosphere if only I could be accepted.

I was surprised how quickly I was accepted at venues I used to frequent as a man, and I felt comfortable in. The difference in venues was in the straight sports bars, other women wanted to actually talk to me. Which opened up a whole new world of possibly being scammed by ciswomen and their passive aggressive behaviors. I don’t want to recall how many times I went home with claw marks on my back after I assumed another woman’s smile actually meant she was being friendly with me. That scam became old quickly and I learned to be careful in the world in a whole different way.

The biggest scam of all came when I learned I was not a man cross-dressing as a woman, I was a woman cross-dressing as a man to get by in a life she never wanted. If I had only learned that earlier in life how much easier I could have made it on myself. No such luck, as I was destined to be scammed by a world and my male self into thinking I was doing the right thing by fighting hard to keep my manhood. These days, I am older and wiser when it comes to scamming myself and have accepted the transgender truth, I always denied myself.

As I wrote in a recent post, I would not recommend the path I took towards achieving my dream because the world has changed since I did it. Harsh anti-transgender politicians have made it harder to come out in the world as well as making it harder for some of us to exist at all. (Like in my native Ohio). Hopefully though, the younger generations seem to be resistant and blind to the bigotry of their elders and there is hope for the future. That was, none of us will have to worry as much about scamming ourselves or each other about who we truly are. Just people who have been around forever and are trying to live a basic, honest life.

One way or another, the path we have chosen as transgender women and transgender men is much more difficult than the average person next door. And I can add scammers along with stop signs, blind curves and steep hills on our route to finally discover who we are with the opportunity to live it. It just makes it worse when we learn the person who was our main scammer was ourselves.

As always, thanks for joining me in my journey. Any comments, claps or subscriptions are always welcome!

 

What Kind of Man was I?

 

Image from Christian Lue
on UnSplash.

I had a good question on one of the blogging platforms I write for the other day. The person asked a simple but relevant question about what kind of a man I was before I went down the strenuous male to female femininization I chose for my life.

Here is how I replied: Thanks for the question. In my former male life, I did the best I could to be successful and hide my true self from the world. Early on, I played football and worked on cars to essentially build a wall to keep the teenaged bullies away. From there, I went off to college and earned my first degree, a bachelor’s in history before I was swept off into the Army during the Vietnam years.

After the Army which I was honorably discharged from after three years away from being able to express my feminine self, I ended up jumping back into my cross-dressing ways and eventually getting married for the first time and fathering a daughter. Once again, I was doing my best to do the all the right things to make the world think I was a “normal” male which of course I always struggled with.

From there, I jumped out of the radio business and into the tavern venue world when a friend of mine and I bought a small neighborhood bar where we lived. My dad described it best by saying it had two doors, so the flies did not have to stop when they went through the bar. He always had away with words. At any rate, the bar did not make it long, but my ownership of the building did. Initially I did not want the responsibility of property ownership but was talked into it by my dad. I think at the time, I did not want the extra pressure of owning anything I would have to get rid of as extra baggage if I decided to make the jump from one gender border to another.

I stayed in my male mode and managed to turn the failed bar into a successful pizzeria until I was drinking too much and lost it too. I was trying to over medicate myself as I ran from my depression and anxiety issues, along with the major problem I had which was of course I wanted to be a woman more than anything else. During this time also, I managed to sneak in another degree, an associates in business, from a local college to take advantage of my veterans’ benefits.

By this time, you can see the theme of my life was not a good one. Anything successful I did, I managed to destroy because of my gender issues. I even lost our house I bought off the GI bill.

Ironically, my life began to turn around when I met the first of the two most influential women in my life. The woman I met worked at a radio station I worked for after I was discharged from the Army and was trying to run the pizzeria successfully. I was literally swept off my feet and ended up divorcing my first wife and marrying the second woman. By the way, both women knew of my cross-dressing desires before we were married. It turned out I was man enough to stay married to her for twenty-five years before she suddenly passed away, wrecking my life for several years before I could rebuild it.

During the twenty-five years I went through with my second wife, I began to really learn I was not the man I used to be as I felt myself transitioning again from cross-dresser to transgender woman. In the meantime, I had thrown my old baggage caution to the side and had built a successful career for myself in the restaurant industry. By the time she passed on, I had built was too much spousal support, family, friends and jobs to casually risk it all and transition. Although it was always my dream to do so. Being the man I was meant I would have to give up the positions I held with civic organizations in town too. I felt flattered to be a part but at the same time never felt really at home there.

After I had given up any hope of ever finding anyone else to be with the rest of my life, I met my future wife Liz, and she was instrumental in pushing me into pursuing HRT by telling me she had never seen any male in me to start with. Her gentle push was all I needed to give away all my male clothes and stop the charade I was living life as a man.

I guess you could say that although I tried hard to be a successful man, I kept trying to destroy any success I had. It took a series of good women to show me the way to where I should have been all along, living my dream of being a transfeminine person fulltime.

My first wife went with the flow and did not seem to care what I did, my second wife approved of my cross-dressing but totally disapproved of HRT and any idea I was transgender, and my third wife totally helped me along. Out of the manhood I never wanted. The only woman left to mention was my internal one who (not so patiently) had to wait for her turn to do more than survive as she needed to thrive for a change.

I hope this answers the question of what kind of man I was before a jumped out of the man’s club and into the girl’s sandbox. I led a complex life of failure and success as a man but never felt as if I was doing the right thing. I was fortunate when good people came along to save me from my self-destructive self. Without them, I doubt if I could have ever made it to the place, I am today.

Thanks for the question! I appreciate any response I get from all of you plus any claps and subscriptions you send my way.

 

 

 

 

 

Your Gender Path maybe Different Than Mine

Image from Erik Mclean
on UnSplash. 

 

Even though many of us share similar paths to our dreams of becoming successful transgender women or transgender men, often our paths diverge and we end up going different directions.

Most of us start out on our own without the help
of an understanding sister or mother and must fill out our gender workbooks as we go along. There is no one to tell us what to wear or how to act in our younger years as a cross-dresser. We just know we have conflicting ideas on what we are doing. On one hand, we cannot wait to put on the pretty dresses we found that still fit us, but on the other hand, we felt guilty doing it. It was somehow taking away what was left of our fragile masculinity.

At that point, most of us were willing to sacrifice that masculinity for the intensely intoxicating appeal of looking at ourselves as pretty girls, especially before puberty got ahold of us and testosterone poisoning set in. We all know what happened then, our bodies grew angles instead of the curves we admired on the girls around us and life would never be the same again. From that point forward, many of our paths seem to diverge. Over the years, I have heard from several readers who put down their urges to be feminine with no problems until much later in life. While others followed a more focused stairstep path which meant meeting and learning from other cross-dressers or transgender women searching for their true meaning to life. I know when I first discovered there were others like me who shared gender issues and I could go meet them; there were many layers of people who attended the socials. Anyone from cigar smoking men in dresses still going overboard to preserve their masculinity to completely femininized transsexual women whose next stop was gender surgeries.

It was then that I began to see and appreciate the different layers of the gender community I was seeing in person for the first time. I could almost compare it to the amazing number of cosmetics I saw the first time I went shopping with my own money to buy my own. The entire idea of going to a mixer of my peers did not work for me at all. I became more confused about where I fit in on the gender spectrum than when I started. I knew I was much more than a part-time cross-dresser but was not committed enough to consider complicated and expensive gender realignment surgeries which were still fairly rare back in those days. The direction I decided to take was one of experimentation which I found set me apart from many of the other gender conflicted individuals I had met.

I certainly would not recommend the direction I took because it involved a certain amount of risk and way too much alcohol in the mostly gay venues I initially was going to. What happened was, I used the fake courage of the alcohol to allow me to take ill advised chances in places I should not have been as a single woman. Especially a transgender one. I was fortunate when I escaped unharmed in a couple of situations I should have never found myself in as I was dressed way to provocatively for where I was going and one time in particular found myself having to be bailed out by my second wife who had warned me ahead of time about my mini-dress being way to short. I attracted the unwanted attention of a cross-dresser admirer who was huge and had me trapped in a small hallway with nowhere to go when my wife grew curious and came in time to rescue me. Believe me, it took me a long time to live that incident down with her.

Even when I became a regular in the big public straight sports bars I was going to, I would not recommend my methods of establishing a path to gender freedom as a trans woman. Being a single woman in a public place can sometimes be dangerous to the point where you don’t see many ciswomen do it. They always bring a friend or two for safety which it took me awhile to finally come to the point where I could do it too. My only recommendation is to act like you have a friend coming to join you by acting as if you are talking to them on a cell phone, or “save” a seat next to you with your coat if it is wintertime. Better yet, you can solve the problem completely by sitting at a dining room table, but what fun is that?

Another way to attempt to find companionship is through the use of social media. I tried that too and had to sort through a tremendous amount of trash before I hit the jackpot with the person who turned out to be my third wife Liz. Unbelievably, she contacted me on a social media site which I was listing under woman seeking woman. Better yet, it turned out we were within driving distance of each other and began to correspond until I became brave enough to talk to her on the phone. I was so ashamed of my voice to do it. I finally jumped off the deep end and had success as we started to date. That was over twelve years ago and we married and are going strong I am happy to say.

I see and hear from so many transgender curious people who are on the gender edge in their life with no evident way out. My only recommendation is that at some point you need to take chances if you ever want answers in your life. The only certainty is if you do nothing, nothing will happen. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that you do have to be careful though with all the scammers out there these days and all the negative people you may encounter if you decide to go public. With the political arena and anti-transgender laws which are being passed in many states such as my native Ohio.

No path is right and who is to say, your path is not right for you even if you decide to stay in your closet which is safe and not risk giving up things such as spouse, family, friends and employment. Maybe you can experiment too as you discover which path is right for you. As I said, be careful of the stop signs and bumps ahead.

 

 

I Had to do Something Right

 

Image from Mark Farias on Unsplash 

In my dark days of confusing cross-dressing, I vaguely knew I was doing something right. Or at least I thought so because I could not wait to try it again.

Looking back, it was the brief moments of gender euphoria which clouded all my doubts about my gender and kept me going. Even through the nights when I was the laughingstock of teen girls in malls, a little voice kept telling me to keep going and eventually I would improve my overall feminine presentation so that I would blend in and not get noticed. Along the way, I even needed to lower the expectations I was putting on myself to keep going. I was never going to be the most attractive woman in the room, but at least I could still be like most ciswomen I saw and live a decent life. Even though I started to feel this way, I never gave up the idea I could do better with my makeup, fashion and hair so I could survive. Simply because I was enjoying the experience so much.

Later on in my life, doing something right extended to my interaction with the world as a novice transgender woman. I was surprised when I attracted more attention from ciswomen than men and just thought they were curious about me and were welcoming me into their worlds, while men were just the opposite. Most resented the fact I was leaving all of the male privilege behind (along with the good old boys’ club) and moving to the other side of the gender border. I did not care because my need for companionship was being satisfied and I had always gotten along with women easier than men most of my life. Increasingly I found I never wanted to go back to the male life I was attached to by a spouse, family, friends and jobs. It seemed the longer I waited, the more male baggage I was building up when I really did not want to.

The next problem I ran into was the impostor syndrome I was feeling. Specifically on the girls’ nights outs I was invited to. It never failed that right in the middle of me enjoying the evening, I had suspicions sneaking up on me that I did not belong there at all. I was an impostor in a scene made up of women who had worked their entire life to get there. It took me awhile to come to the conclusion that I had worked my entire life also to make it to my own version of womanhood, and I deserved as much as the next woman to be attending. Fortunately, I received very little negative feedback from other women attending the get-together, so I did not have to face my impostor syndrome at all. I was doing something right for a change to even be invited to such special women only events.

I was able to take my experiences with girls’ nights out to my everyday life primarily because it built my confidence as a transfeminine person so much. With my newfound feelings, I worked even harder on my makeup, fashion and hair to appear more feminine than ever before. Primarily, I learned the power of contouring and colors on my face from professional makeup artists I met at the cross dresser-transgender social mixers I went to. One in particular, took the time to explain what he was doing in terms I could understand and repeat on my own. It was a powerful experience when I had to set my makeup ego aside and learn better results from a professional. From that point on I worked on taking weight off, so I had a better opportunity to find and buy more fashions that flattered my male figure at the many thrifts stores I frequented. When I arrived at that point, the problem then became getting out of the mirror and started putting my new improved feminine self into motion in the world. It proved to be the most difficult part of me doing something right.

Suddenly I had to consider how I was moving as I tried to mimic the unique way ciswomen move and put all my male linebacker moves behind me along with the scowl on my face I was used to wearing as my male defense mechanism. And the most difficult issue of all was learning to communicate one on one as a woman. I knew with certainty I would have issues with my communication, but not to the point that I did. I even went to the extent of taking vocal classes to improve my feminine basics and be able to talk easier in the world with women and men. It just made sense to do if I was continuing to do something right.

It turned out, the more I did right and received positive feedback, the more I wanted to do to refine my feminine approach as a transgender woman. Because I always had the belief, I needed to be better than the average ciswoman to just survive behind the gender curtain. When I was just trying to do something right, on occasion I paused to reflect on how far I had come along my gender path to arrive where I was. I did remember that scared little boy dressed in his mom’s clothes in front of the family’s hallway mirror, wondering what was next. For the most part, back in those days, there was very little to let the young boy know he was doing anything right.

Somehow, I survived all the negative feedback and impostor syndrome problems and continued forward to a better world. One I wanted to be in and dreamed of my entire life. As I love to say, as with any woman, I needed to socialize myself into the world. Being born female does not automatically make you a woman, you must learn to be one. The same was true for me. I just took a radically different path to earn my womanhood. I needed to do many things right to arrive at my dream.

 

 

 

 

New Therapy Visit

 

JJ Hart with "Brutus" Buckeye
at Columbus, Ohio. 

As promised in a recent post, I am passing along the results of my new psychiatrist visit this morning.

First of all, I needed to run the waiting room gauntlet after I got checked in. The woman checking me in was very nice and I had no problems with my pronouns which was different from the past. After that, I needed to walk past the rest of the waiting room men waiting for their appointments. When I did, I received the usual number of stares and glares I normally get, so I was not upset over anything new.

Very quickly, my new therapist came out to greet me. I was relieved when he turned out to be a younger man as I have found to be more accepting of gender situations such as transgender women and trans men.

As we started to go through my past, I was surprised at all the information the Veteran’s Administration mental health system acquired on me during my previous appointment. All I needed to do was fill in the many blanks he asked me. Immediately, I tested him by telling him my former fulltime psychiatrist separated my transgender issues with my struggles with depression and anxiety. He agreed with me that the issues I have are separate and should be treated separately. Furthermore, coming out in the world and expressing myself as a transgender woman fulltime had helped me express that side of my personality, the help never resolved my other issues.

Other issues we covered in-depth were my suicide and self-harm attempts. It was decided my medications were working and we should stay on the course for the most part. Those were the difficult issues we talked about and others we finished up with included my childhood and military service.

This appointment marked the next to the last move from all my care from the Dayton, Ohio VA hospital to the Cincinnati VA. All I have left to do is my endocrinology doctor services from Dayton to Cincinnati which could be the most difficult move of all. My next appointment is coming up early in May and I need a refill on my Estradiol prescription. With the current situation in Washington, I do have a constant paranoia that my HRT hormones can be cut off at anytime by the VA under direct supervision of the orange war criminal. I think what I am going to do now is go ahead and get my refill then try to transfer my needs down here and close out my need to deal with Dayton at all. As a point of reference, Dayton VA is in close proximity to where I used to live before I moved the nearly one hundred miles to move in with my wife Liz.

From there, my appointment was over and my next visit was up as a virtual appointment in three months. I finished the early morning off by stopping at our favorite coffee shop, drive through and picking up coffee and a breakfast sandwich. I am happy to say the shop’s LGBTQ flag is still up on the wall and the young man at the window probably was gay and very friendly to me. All the better for me and the perfect ending to a great morning.

Just a short post to check in on my progress with my VA mental health care which has overall been a very positive experience over the years. When I started many years ago, I had to educate everyone about what a transgender woman was all about. These days, they know and I don’t have to.

Fortunately, I did not have to explain myself this morning and I look forward to my next appointment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Gender Woes were Always Pending

 

Image by Samual Regan Asante
on Unsplash. 

From the earliest days of my life, my gender always seemed to be “pending” as the bank likes to call my most recent on-line deposit.

In my cross-dressing days, when I could afford it, I jumped daily into different wigs, clothes and makeup styles. I was desperate to find the next best thing which would help my feminine presentation along and I was always waiting for the public to acknowledge me. Positive or not, I was always pending their approval in my life.

Along the way, I did get better with my looks and became better at blending in with the ciswomen in the society around me. But I never lost my desire for approval. It became key to my survival as a novice transgender woman, long before I discovered there would be so much more if I ever wanted to slip behind the gender curtain and live my dream life. By then, I was lapsing back into my brainwashed family idea that nothing was ever good enough which carried over to my male to female femininization activities. My confidence was so low, and fragile that the smallest negative comment would send me back to my cross-dressing drawing board as I wondered if I would ever make it.

At that time, I survived in my world by listening to a little voice in my head which was telling me all this turmoil was pending if I just stayed on my path. To do so meant negotiating many blind curves, bumps, and stop signs along the way. Before I knew it, my path was littered with failed fashion choices, wigs and drag style makeup. I needed to choose wisely what I would need to keep before I attempted to move on.

One of the most dramatic pending issues I had was when I made the jump from gay to straight venues. When I did it, I had no idea if I could, so I had to gather the confidence to do it. I needed to be better at blending my style so I would fit in but not too flamboyant to attract unneeded attention as a single woman by herself in a bar. I became very good at using my cell phone as a prop to act like I was saving a seat in the venue for a friend. Among other things I was doing to present and blend in as a transgender woman. I was not concerned so much about being read as trans but was concerned about not being a distraction. Even though I became successful and was able to become a regular at a couple venues, my relaxation was always pending as I needed to stay on guard for any crazy reactions to my being there at all.

The whole process helped me to heighten my senses to where ciswomen normally operate on a daily basis. Since I was primarily dealing women in my new life, it was key that I was able to read my gender cues correctly because the cues were coming from a different angle than they ever were when I was a man. Women primarily were curious what I was doing in their world and was I projecting an honest view of myself. When I passed their tests, I was allowed in to play in their sandbox. There was room for me after all and my dreams of living in a feminine world suddenly became so much more feasible. Something which was always pending before I was able to get out into the world and experiment as a transfeminine person.

The problem became; I was forced to remain pending in my life at a time of extreme gender discovery from me. As the world of ciswomen were exploring me, I was exploring them and learning tons of information on what I would have to do if I ever chose the final male to female transition. In other words, I was able to turn their curiosity around to satisfy my own.

Finally, I arrived at the point of no return when I had done enough experimentation as a novice trans woman to know where I wanted to go to live my dream and I knew I could if I played my cards right. I knew in many ways, this final transition I was planning on making would be the most difficult to do. I would have to try to wrap my male life up the best I could. Which involved deciding what baggage I wanted to bring with me following nearly a half of century of living.  As far as family went, I was down to only two who were still living and I knew I really wanted my daughter to accept me, which she did and my brother who I figured would be a problem and he was. He rejected me and we ended up going our own separate ways over a decade ago.

I knew too, I would have to find another way to financially support myself because my employers never would. For once, age came to my rescue as I was close to being able to take an early social security retirement and augment it by selling the numerous amounts of collectables my second wife and I had collected over the years. With the two sources of income, I calculated I could not have to work another job as I transitioned.

With those two major potential problems behind me, I had very little pending to stop me from moving ahead to the hormonal world of HRT which proved to be immensely satisfying and something I should have done years before. Rather than making the process another pending idea I wanted to try.

By now, you probably know the rest of the story. I am seventy-six and the remainder of my life is shorter than what I have previously lived. Even though I am immobile, I am fortunate to still get around and have someone who loves me. I just hope good health is not pending and I can live peacefully with myself. Which at times during my life has been an issue, including my mental health. I am meeting with my new therapist this week and will have more to share later.

 

Facing my Deepest Fears

 

Image from Tonik on Unsplash. 

Over the decades I have found that my gender desires have produced the biggest fears and anxiety I have ever felt.

Prime examples came from the times I was first testing the world as a transgender woman. The number of occasions I needed to sit in my car making endless tries at adjusting my hair and makeup until I felt everything was right to attempt going into whatever venue I was going to. You would think from the number of times I had to face my fears; I would have at least become used to it. But I never did. In fact, I developed my own form of trans PTSD from the number of times I was rudely rejected by the public. I could not get it out of my mind that if I was laughed at once, I could be laughed at again. Which I discovered just was not true after I learned to dress for the public of ciswomen around me.

Finally, a little confidence began to creep in, and I did better for the most part, but it seemed the fear of being myself just would not go away. Maybe I can blame my old male self who in his own way was as strong willed as my feminine self and did not want to give up all the male privilege he worked so hard to earn. His reluctance to give up pointed to a deeper problem I had. The fear of facing myself. At the same time, my dreams of even trying to become a fulltime transgender woman in the world seemed to be a far-off dream.

What I decided to do then, even though I still was experiencing deep fears about my future, was experiment by going out into the world a little at a time. I started in what I perceived as safer spaces such as shopping malls and gay venues. If and when I was successful (or grew tired of) in those places, I would try more challenging places. Lessons I learned included money overcame gender problems in the malls and I was just considered another drag queen in the gay bars and made to feel completely out of place. I discovered to enjoy myself more I would need to try to frequent the same sports bar venues I went to as a man. Where I could drink draft beer and watch my favorite team on the big screen televisions. Sure, I was scared to do it as I knew how single women were viewed in sports bars, but I had to try.

Desire overcame fear and I was successful as long as I followed my three basics of smiling, never causing problems, and tipping well. Before I knew it, I was a regular and gained the backing of the bartenders who even saw to it that I had restroom privileges. Before  I knew it, I had built a small circle of lesbian friends who shared my love of sports, as well as another transwoman. Loneliness became a thing of the past for me, and my fear of being seen as a woman was going away too.

Just when my trans confidence was at an all time high, obstacles such as drunk guys would come along and ruin my evening. The night I remember the most was when a bunch of drunks noticed my trans friend and I at the bar and started playing “Dude Looks Like a Lady” time and time again until the manager asked us to leave. We did, temporarily, because a month later when I was in a nearby competing venue, I was surprised to see one of the bartenders who was there when I was asked to leave approaching me. I was astounded to learn the manager who had kicked me out had been fired for drug use and I was invited to come back. So much for the drunks who had played that song over and over and I had put my fears to rest. To this day though, when I hear that song, I cringe.

Sadly, even though I have been in the public’s eye as a transgender woman, I still look over my shoulder when I do things like use the restroom. Fortunately, I have Liz to help me out when I have to go and mainly these days, I don’t present as trans as much as I do as old and partially immobile. I am happy these days when I can find a restroom with a handicapped stall to take my fears away.

My deepest fears now revolve around the number of ridiculous restrictive anti-transgender bills currently in the Ohio legislature. One bill would make it illegal for anyone to wear makeup different than their birth gender. Which I guess would mean the orange felon or his sidekick Vance would be arrested if they come to Ohio. I am lucky that age and years of HRT have softened my facial lines to a point of where I don’t wear much makeup at all but what about the younger transgender population. Hopefully, none of this will actually happen or the courts will strike it down.

These days, I have managed at least to calm down my fears of what will happen to me if I have to go into assisted living or if I develop dementia like my dad had. I finally came to the conclusion not to worry about something I have no control over.

I don’t know why I waited so long to be paranoid over what has made my life worth living over the years and decades. I used to be a go with the flow type of person and if I got myself into some sort of a mess, I could get myself out of it. Probably now it is because I have to depend on my wife Liz for so much. Fortunately, most of my deepest fears came from pursuing my gender truth and when I came out to myself, I proved that I was the most important person of all to be truthful with. It was not until then did my life began to change for the better and I could live without all the fear I was experiencing.

 

 

 

 

Easter Envy

 

Image from Annie Spratt
on UnSplash. 

Once again, it is Easter and time for some ciswomen to model their new colorful, feminine dresses and accessories to the world.

Like most of you, I remember the envy I felt when once again I needed to be forced into a restrictive suit and tie for one of the rare occasions we went to church. Why couldn’t I be one of the girls in their Easter finery. All the envy in the world I felt did me no good as off to church we went. My parents thought I just did not want to go to church (which I didn’t) but did not realize the real reason. I was just jealous of the girls.

Back in those days, I had very little inkling of how my desire to look like the other girls ran much deeper than I ever thought it would. I was scratching the surface of where I would end up in life as a fulltime transgender woman. I thought it was an innocent hobby that perhaps some day I would grow out of when the opposite happened. I grew into it. If I had any idea of all the growing pains I would feel over the years as I grew into my true self, I don’t know if I would ever undertake the gender path I did.

The truth of the matter is that I did not think I had any choice. I was born into an unforgiving male world that I was expected to excel at. I knew too that if my cross-dressing or gender secret was uncovered, I would be sent to a psychiatrist and told I was mentally ill. I did not know exactly what was going on with me, but I knew I was not mentally ill for just wanting to be feminine. On the other hand, I knew my WWII/Depression era parents would have any idea of what was going on with their eldest son to take any creative measures to help. The first measure would be acceptance. In my wildest dreams, did I ever think they would buy me a pretty new dress for Easter and do away with my suit and tie forever. My parents were simply not built that way so that they could step out of their rigid parenting box to help me. I was stuck in a male world until I could figure a way out on my own.

Over the years, regardless of setbacks such as military service, I was fairly successful in my male life. Which ironically made it harder for me to give it all up and cross the gender border when the time came. One thing I never lost was the envy I felt for all ciswomen who inherited from birth what I wanted so bad. I kept remembering the girls and women in their Easter dresses, even though I rarely wore a dress as I attempted to blend into the world as a woman. It seemed fashion had gone away from the frilly feminine basics once I arrived at the point where I could take advantage of the new world I was in. For years what I did take advantage of was the fashion trend where I could wear oversized sweaters with miniskirts, flats and opaque tights. Sadly, fashion moved on, and I needed to also if I was still going to blend in with the world as a transgender woman. Not only did I have to try to equal the cis women I was around, I needed to be better. So, I went with denim mini’s with long flowing tops to attempt to hide my oversized male torso.

Even with all the effort I was putting in, it never seemed to be enough to compensate myself for not being the pretty girl in her new dress at Easter. Ironically, then I found out from my wife Liz how she was a tomboy and did not like all the frilly Easter fashion she had to wear and was always under inspection from her mom on getting her new white tights dirty. I learned the view of the other gender side was not always the better one. It left the door open for a greater understanding of what females go through to be socialized into women and why some never make it.

This Easter, if you are religious, I hope you have the opportunity to celebrate the true message of the day and you don’t get hung up on what the ciswomen and girls around you are wearing. Although, I don’t see many women getting all dressed up for any reason anymore. Maybe if I attended any sort of church services at all, I would.

At any rate, celebrate Easter in your world the best you can!