In the Snake Pit

 

Image from Jeff Turnale
on UnSplash.

Before I made my male to female transition, I always assumed men were the fiercer competitors, mainly because of work and sports.

Once I made it behind the gender curtain to play fulltime in the girl’s sandbox, I found that my idea of gender competition was not true at all Ciswomen compete every bit as hard as men just in different ways and about different things. A well-worn example could be that women compete in the visibility arena all the time, and that may be true to an extent as ciswomen lay down certain fashion perimeters women have to live by to not cause undue attention. Such as wearing skirts and dresses too short or having non-age-appropriate hair (which I have) for my advanced age. At my age, I have decided to keep my hair the way it is because number one, I like it, and number two, I don’t really care what other ciswomen think of me.

Over the years, I have discovered that ciswomen compete as much as men for the chance to be attractive and attract male attention. In fact, I have a couple of examples where I was caught on the wrong side of female wrath. One of which occurred one night when my wife Liz and I were out in a LGBTQ friendly venue in downtown Cincinnati. During our visit, I needed to use the women’s room which happened to be downstairs in the ancient building the venue was located in. When I made it to the room, I found it to be a crowded two stall affair with several other women already there. As I went in one woman in particular glared at me as I made my way to the only open stall which was left. I excused myself as I went around her and took care of business, feeling better about myself.

As I came out of the stall and headed for the sink to wash up, I needed to almost move the woman who glared at me. She took her time moving and I noticed she ended up slouching below the electric hand blower/dryer on the wall, and I saw my chance for revenge. After washing up and checking my makeup and hair, I took my time moving to the hand dryer and casually turned it on which ruined the woman’s hair completely. After my payback, I gave her a little smile and left to tell Liz what had happened.

The next example I have of an irate ciswoman, took me totally by surprise in a venue in Dayton, Ohio where I was a regular. That night, my friends were not with me, so I was by myself when a couple sat down beside me. Before long, the woman started up a conversation the usual way, complementing me on something I was wearing. We struck up a little conversation about life without much input from the man she was with. I could not tell if they were married or not. Anyway, before long she excused herself to go to the woman’s room leaving just the man and I together and he started a conversation with me by the time she returned. For some reason, she must have been extremely jealous and thought I was competing for her man because the smile went away and the claws came out. To make a long story short both the man and I had claw marks up and down our backs before they quickly finished their drinks and left. I learned the hard way to make sure I never got between a ciswoman and her man.

The most profound level women compete on is with their passive aggressive behavior. They can be competing just as hard as men, just with a smile on their face. It is a learned attitude most ciswomen learn from their youth because of not being able to physically compete with men. Although I think some of that attitude is changing in some cultures where I see many girls fighting among themselves these days. But for the purpose of most all transgender women, our view of the feminine world does not change as we do when we go from aggressive male worlds to passive aggressive female worlds.

Outside of confronting two women in a rest stop woman’s room a couple years ago in Alabama, I don’t think I have ever found myself in a feminine snake pit ever. The two women I encountered were studying me way too closely and talking aggressively between themselves after they saw me, so I washed up and quickly headed for the exit before I had any other problems.

My best advice is to look ahead at your surroundings to not get caught in a feminine snake pit. My worst-case scenario happened when I had to go one on one with a woman in a bathroom in a venue where I had never been questioned before. She was screaming at me that I was a pervert. When I finally could get a word in, I asked her by chance what she did for a living and I saw my chance for revenge creep in. She said she was a hairdresser, so I asked her for a card so I could report her to the very powerful local LGBTQ establishment in Dayton. With that she stormed out and left me alone.

Even though being in the snake pit with other women was no fun, I looked at the entire experience as a rite of passage into the girl’s sandbox. If I could not survive the pit, how could I ever survive my chance to play behind the gender curtain. All my years as a man had taught me to beware of where the frontal attacks were coming from, and if I was ever going to make it as a transgender woman, I had to expect not everyone would accept me and be ready for it. I just never realized how close together the snake pit and the sandbox were going to be.

 

 

 

Nothing Easy but the Hard Times

 

Image from Anthony Tran
on UnSplash.

Finishing up yesterday’s post about having a medical appointment with one of my medicine providers Regina, my worst fears materialized. After years and years of seeing Regina, she is retiring and I am being shuttled to another provider at the Veterans’ Administration here in Cincinnati, Ohio. Now I have only one more time to see her before a significant part of my life begins to shift.

I think my shift will continue when I see my endocrinologist on May 7^th. She is the only remaining tie to my old providers in Dayton, Ohio VA where I used to live and this visit is ultra important because I will have to ask to have my Estradiol patches prescription renewed. As I said yesterday, I am thinking about changing from the hormonal patches to self-injections which is not a big problem with me, but will it be with the “new” VA I am beginning to experience. If I am told I must get a new endo doc in Cincinnati, what will I have to go through to get my HRT, or will I have problems, is my paranoia. Time flies when you are worrying and before I know it, the time for the appointment will be here. I guess I was born to worry, and nothing is easy but the hard times.

I guess worrying fits right in with being transgender. Early in life, all I did was worry about getting caught when I cross-dressed in front of the mirror. I had plenty of hard times as I worried about my slightly younger brother discovering my feminine secret and telling my parents who would have promptly sent me off to a psychiatrist who knew absolutely nothing about gender dysphoria back in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s. At that time, I was mistaken that several of my main worries would take care of themselves as I became older. One of course was me wanting to be a woman, and the second one was what was I going to do about the military and the Vietnam War. To make matters worse, I was worried about them on several different levels. One of which being I could just relax and both the war and my urge to be feminine would just disappear.

Needless to say, both of them never went away. The war went on and on for years, and my desire to be a woman just intensified as I had more public experience when I gathered the courage to leave the mirror and go out into the world. Which I was starting to do before I entered the military, which in many ways just made matters worse. Certainly, I felt nothing was easy but the hard times as I tried alcohol for the first time to dull my pain. It was the beginning of a long one-sided love affair with alcohol I had which fortunately I won before it was too late. I took me much longer to realize my desire to be a full-time transgender woman was not ever going to go away and I would have to do something about the hard times I was experiencing by acting.

Acting meant I would have to put my male side behind me for good and plan for a radically different feminine future. That is when I truly found nothing ever would be easy in life but the hard times. So, for the first time in my life, if I ever wanted to achieve my dream, the path was clearly there to do it. Like a runway for jumbo jets lit up at night. All I had to do was learn how to land the jet.

At that point, I was rather confident that I could do it. Afterall, I had spent all those years cross-dressing and perfecting my feminine presentation, so what could go wrong. It turned out plenty. As I was completely lacking in rounding myself out as a transgender woman capable of holding her own in a world full of competitive ciswomen. I discovered I was completely not ready to communicate in a world where I needed to be better than the next woman to be accepted at all. Just presenting better as a trans woman was just the beginning I found, and I started to worry all over again.

This time, all my worries turned to action as my new life became a blur as I started to carve out a new, more complete path to my transfeminine dream. I could not believe it was me becoming a regular in venues I used to go to as a man and had wondered how it would be to visit them as a woman. I used to blame my second wife for holding me back, but learned it was all my fault, and I was just being a victim.

I think being transgender automatically brings a lot of worry with it. We are subject to violence, job and medical discrimination among many other negatives. When you add all of those to already problematic everyday lives, that everyone has, it is no wonder transgender suicide rates are so high. Which proves my point that nothing is easy but the hard times when you are trans. Reality comes when the attraction to all the pretty clothes begins to fade and the daily life of a woman sets in. A woman’s life is a many layered existence and one you have to accept when you transition.

By accepting the challenge, you made yourself, you have decided to set out and build your new life from scratch. There will be many times when you think you have bit more than you can choose, but after you have been successful, you can feel the pride and for once knowing that the hard times were ever easy but somehow you made it through to living your dream of living and thriving in a feminine world. You should be proud of your accomplishment.

 

 

 

Buckle Up for the Ride

Image from Inis Piazzi on
UnSplash.

I am biased I know but I think negotiating a full-fledged trip through the gender frontier from one side to the other side is one of the most difficult things a human can do.

Unless you are blessed with an overabundance of feminine qualities and characteristics, you very much start out from point zero with your femininization project and it shows. I am an example as I thought I looked good with my tight clothes and makeup which would have looked good on a clown in drag in the circus. In all fairness, it took me awhile to catch up because my gender workbook was blank and I had no one to help me fill it out. No overly concerned mom to tell me what not to do with makeup and no peer group of girls to coach me along. It was all me, and it showed. Except in the mirror which kept on lying to me by telling me I was a pretty girl.

It wasn’t until I began going out into the world did, I find out how wrong the mirror was. Numerous times, just after the mirror told me I looked great, I was bounced by an unforgiving public back to the safety of my closet. Through it all, some people were so cruel with their comments, they sent me home in tears. It was during those dark days when I really had to buckle up and decide what I was doing was right. Somehow, deep down inside, I knew I was right and I needed to figure out what exactly I was doing wrong when I cross -dressed and went out.

What happened was, I had the where with all to look around at all the ciswomen around me and notice what they were doing. By doing so, I noticed a few of the women were as big as I was, so size was not the issue which was dooming me to being laughed at. It was how I moved and how I interacted with the world which mattered. Plus, it helped that my makeup skills had begun to dramatically improve. I quit feeling sorry for myself and started to fill out my own gender workbook without being a victim. Because I was stuck with a testosterone poisoned body and somehow, I needed to work my way around it.

I started by going on a diet which I lost fifty pounds on and started to take better care of my skin after I shaved, so I used less makeup and found less was actually more. At the same time, I began to haunt the local thrift stores for just the right piece of clothing which I could buy which flattered my new slimmer figure. I still had my male torso with the broad shoulders, and I had to dress my way around them. I discovered new favorite outfits with loose flowing tops combined with denim skirts that worked really well for me.

Little did I know, all this progress I was making was placing me on a one-way track towards an on-coming train. And that train was how I was going to communicate with the world which suddenly accepted me? I was extremely shy and had a difficult time communicating with the world anyhow and now I had to add on a new totally foreign language to deal with, the language of ciswomen. Initially, I was too petrified to say anything but then slowly gained the confidence to shyly join in conversations. It was so new and difficult that I needed to really buckle up to do it. I found if I did not, I would destroy everything I sat out to do by appearing mean or worse yet, bitchy. The last thing I wanted.

Once I buckled down and put my fear of communication behind me, my world opened wide with new vistas of gender enjoyment. It turned out that what I said was more important than how I said it and with that knowledge, life became easier as a transgender woman in the world for the first time.

No matter where you are in your gender journey, look ahead and not behind you. Sure, you can learn from the past, but it should not dominate you and stop you from proceeding along your way. Keep in mind, you are on a very difficult journey with major life risks at hand such as spouses, family, friends and jobs. Also beware of the trap I fell into when my second wife accepted me as a cross dresser but then completely rejected me as a transgender woman. She was correct in thinking there were vast differences between the two. Just putting on a dress and makeup just did not solve any of my gender problems anymore. I increasingly wanted more of life in the feminine world and was buckling up to get it by wanting to be approved for gender affirming hormones or HRT. I was eventually approved for the dramatic changes the hormones made but sadly my wife passed away before she could experience any of the changes with me.

In my long life, it has been a rarity for me to experience firsthand any trans woman or trans man who has had a smooth, uneventful journey.  So, if you are just considering starting, or just beginning your gender path, it is best to prepare for a bumpy ride, so buckle up tight for the trip. Undoubtedly, it will provide you with setbacks and surprises you never expected. Like I always say, the gender trip is like a rollercoaster at a big amusement park, it is worth the price of admission if you let it be. As I said, just be sure to buckle up for the ride of your life. It is one most humans never get to take.

Think of it this way, make your buckle part of your fashion accessory and everyone can admire it.

 

 

No Matter Where you Go...There you Are

 

JJ Hart, Cincinnati Pride, 
Three years ago.

I always thought no matter where you go, there you are was meant to be a humorous statement, until I lived it during searching for my transgender roots.

Often, I have written about the time and effort I put into moving myself and my family as I switched jobs flutily trying to find my dream of having a feminine future. Sadly, it seemed, after a short time, I was back to where I started. Spinning my tires and getting nowhere. That person I was looking at in the mirror just would not change. When that happened, I would start taking bigger and bigger chances with my future probably hoping someone else would discover my deep dark gender secret. No one except my second wife ever did to any extent, so I was forced again to face my gender dysphoria on my own.

The problem was I was not ready to face my truth as one therapist told me that I was the only one who could make the final call on my gender needs. Would I be a man or a woman was a dauting idea for me, and for the longest time, ran from my decision.

What I tried to do was research how it would be to be a woman in the world I was in. Again, hoping I would receive a magical answer on which way I should go. As close as I came was the days which I was able to pass as a presentable ciswoman. I started doing things such as specific duties such as going to the grocery store, for example, where I was able to literally melt a teen grocery bagger in my big fluffy sweater and mini skirt which was the fashion of the day. It was eye opening because it was the first time I had ever had that sort of a reaction from a male at all. Ironically, all it did was make me feel good about my feminine self for a short time as I prepared to enter the world. No matter where I went, there I was.

Where I was, was a spot where I needed to face reality. Was I going to listen to my wife and never go out explore the world as a woman or stay at home and pass the time drinking and dreaming of the next time, I had the courage to go out. Every time the call to go out came up I had to answer to save what was left of my mental health, and I hit the road doing slutty things such as flashing semi-trucks in my miniskirts. Somehow, I was under the mistaken impression it all gave me validation as a woman. It did not and I outgrew the temptation quickly and went back to doing weekly chores such as trips to the grocery stores.

It wasn’t until much later in my life when I started to truly understand where I should be in the world. I left the gay venues I was frequenting and started exclusively going to the lesbian and straight bars all together to see if I could make it in a world that I enjoyed. In those cases where I went, there I was and I liked it. The world was a blur of excitement and trepidation as I tried more and more venues to see if I would be accepted, and I found in some I was.

Before I knew it, and had the where with all to acknowledge it, I was moving from the transgender woman image I had of myself. I was slowly becoming the best version of me, and one I had dreamed of my entire life. Being just me meant that for once, no matter where I went, there you are meant something basic to me. Getting there was never easy and I took a lot of chances, but I made it through many storms and high winds to make it. Looking back, I don’t know how I did.

Being just me brought me deep satisfaction and allowed me to allow myself to let my feminine side rule my world. There was nothing I could do about always being a transfeminine person, but being a quality version of me was going to be a work in progress as I meshed all my virtues together. The problem then became recognizing exactly what my virtues were and what I could take from living on both sides of the main gender binaries, male and female. I needed to look at the process as a blessing that few humans get to go through rather than a curse that most haters and bigots said it was.

When I took my life firmly in control and was able to surround myself with strong allies, finding out where I was stepped out of the mist and into the sunlight. In the bright light, I found I could be a nice quality person that people responded to as me, not because I was transgender.

At that point, no matter where you go, there you are became very real to me because I had landed squarely where I wanted to be. Sure, I took a long winding path to get here, but now I am finally proud to say I am just me. Certainly, I would not recommend all the running and drinking I did to anyone else but hopefully you can find your own path which brings you to the stage of just being you. And sometimes, all the things we do to survive our gender issues make for a more interesting life than most people have. At least it worked for me as I made my way through the no matter where you go, there you are phase of my life. Which turned out to be most of it. Hopefully you don’t have to take fifty years like I did to have the courage to do what is right for you.

 

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.