Strong Women Role Models

Hand Beaded Transgender Hair
Barret from Liz T Designs on
Etsy 

 I am speculating most transgender women or even trans men have experienced at least one or more strong women in their lives.

For any number of reasons, women have been forced to be strong and carry the load for weak men. For many, their first entrance into true womanhood comes with having children. With current economic conditions the way they are, the days of the old fifties version of Mom staying home to raise the kids and take care of the house is long gone. To barely make it financially, both partners have to work.

Problems then arise when the man still wants to follow the old outdated male standards of doing very little around the house to help out. 

By now, you may be asking what does this have anything to do with being a transgender woman. With me, at least, it means a lot. My Mom worked out a deal with my Dad in the sixties. If she went back to work as a school teacher and used her college degree, my Dad would help her out with hiring a part-time housekeeper. Even with the help, Mom had a lot to do with two sons in a very male orientated family. Even though I admired my Dad for being a self made man coming out of the Great Depression and WWII, I had more on hands experience with my Mom who was very headstrong. Who knows, maybe that influence with her had more to do with me being transgender than anything else. Later I was to learn my gender issues ran deeper than one person outside of myself.

Even so, I still searched for the perfect woman to model myself after. I wanted to appear as the confident women in the world I saw moving around in their lives. The older I became, the more I learned the perfect woman did not exist and many women were hurting themselves attempting the be a successful person in the world as well as on the home front. Not to mention, the overwhelming problem of appearance. Until recent times, aging has not been kind to most women who among other things suffer from extended menopause. 

All of these factors contribute to why I have such a high opinion of strong women and how I think the world is changing quickly as many more young women seize the new opportunities in the world around them while young men play video games. 

With all the changes, it is important to figure out how a transgender woman can fit in at all. Certainly, we have to be a better woman to do it at all. Which means understanding all the layers of a woman's life. That is once of the reasons some women resist letting trans women play in the girls sandbox at all. As my second wife always told me in no uncertain terms, I needed to earn my way in. Maybe that is why I never considered her a strong woman role model for me at all. My Mom on the other hand, was a strong role model for me. From how she applied her makeup to how she battled me for my future, I appreciated all she did for me. Including of course, birthing me. She remained my role model even though she rejected me when I came out as a transvestite to her. She immediately said she would pay for a psychiatrist which I rejected. Since I didn't have a mental health problem because of my gender issues. 

We never mentioned my desire to change my gender the rest of her life but even so I decided to adopt her first name as my legal middle name when I transitioned and legally changed my name. It was the biggest honor I could think of for all the things she did for me. The most relevant thing she did for me was to show me what a strong woman was and how to be one. A trait I would really need as I followed all the ups and downs of following a new gender path.

It is ironic to me, the strongest women I know like Liz or Kim have very little idea of how much they have helped me along and the most frustrating part is I don't think I can ever repay what they have done for me. 

Who knows? You might be an offspring of the very few strong women like my daughter. She had to became an ally for her trans child and was then able to take advantage of helping her child at an early age. Maybe your Mom realized your authentic gender self and became an ally rather than the cruel opposite.  If you didn't, you were forced to do what the rest of us did. Study strong women close up and do your best to join their ranks. I was fortunate enough to be able to work professionally along side several strong women who I learned from. The women seemed to combine strength and humility seamlessly to forge a successful business career. 

There are so many variations on how to become a successful strong trans woman it is difficult to mention them all. We all need to the do the best we can to force our way into a world where sometimes we are not wanted.

Sizing Up the Crowd

 

Image from Uwe Conrad 
on UnSplash

One of the earliest lessons I learned when I first began to attempt to present as a realistic woman in the world was how I was always on stage. It presented a problem since I had always been very shy around people.

It didn't matter because both men and primarily women sometimes went out of their way to size me up. Plus, while I am on the subject, I was very insecure about my size as a novice cross dresser or highly questioning transgender woman. Initially I made the mistake of walking slightly hunched over to hide the fact I was nearly six foot tall. Then I realized there were plenty of other cisgender women around me and I could stand up tall and project confidence to the world. I learned the hard way that people were similar to sharks and could sense another person's insecurities so I needed to do better in all aspects of my presentation as a trans woman. 

One of the key insights I learned quickly was quite naturally, the world I was trying to enter was run by women. So I needed to figure out how to effectively play in their sandbox. On the other hand, men were out since they had a tendency to ignore me anyhow. If a man did pay attention to me, he would normally treat me as a lesser individual. When men paused to size me up, my reaction was to quickly keep moving. I did have a few very rare interactions with men but didn't feel particularly secure with the experiences. 

Women were a different story. When I started my male to female gender transition I received more attention from women than I ever had as a man. As I soaked in the attention, I thought most of the women were just curious of why I was in their world and became amused when I needed to encounter the everyday issues they did in a feminine world. Such as personal security, hot flashes etc.. They would  simply smile and say welcome to their world. Little did they know how badly I wanted to be in their world. Being included in a group of women helped me not to be singled out for attention. When the group I was in was sized up, I was simply part of the group and not an individual. 

The group of women I was a part of just happened to be lesbians so I faced a unique situation when it came to what sort of crowd was sizing me up. On several occasions we would attend lesbian mixers, so blending in met a nice pair of jeans, top and in season boots in the winter. In terms of the society I was trying to fit in with was I attempting to present as an attractive lipstick lesbian. I was successful on occasion attracting super butch lesbians and in fact, one of my first dinner dates I had with a man was  a trans man. We stayed in touch and often he made fun of me for being scared to death on our date. Which I was!

Scared or not, over time I became experienced in sizing up the crowd and bracing myself for the impact I would make. Somedays I receive little or no response to my public appearances. When nobody seems to notice me I know I sized up the crowd and won my gender struggle. Other times, when the room I am in goes silent and I am stared at, I know I wasn't so successful. At this point in my life, I am used to all sorts of reactions, so I can move on quite easily. 

Even still, I am aware of the public crowds I face and do my best to size them up and react appropriately. No longer am I so shy.

At the Crossroads

Image from the
Jessie Hart Archives

As I continued along my gender path to living as a fulltime transgender woman, I arrived at several crossroads. 

The first of which was finally deciding I was transgender at all. For years I considered myself nothing more than a very serious cross dresser. Perhaps the biggest positive aspect of staying a cross dresser was my wife knew of my gender pastime before we were married. She even grudgingly bought me gifts such as woman's clothes. In fact, we had a separate gift exchange at Christmas every year especially for my feminine self. 

On the other hand, my wife was totally against any idea of me being trans, saying she didn't want to live with another woman. I had no comeback for that argument since she did marry my male self. Still it did not stop me from exploring ever further the feminine world I thought I wanted to live in. As I did my explorations, the process felt so natural I just had to keep going. At the crossroads I decided I was indeed transgender and I was pursuing a lifestyle not just participating in a hobby. From the point forward my life changed and I had many new decisions to make.

Decisions such as how would I even structure a totally new life in a woman's world. Along the way, I learned the possibility of living as a trans woman meant so much more than just doing my best to present well in the world and blend in with the public. What would I do about the three "F's" as I called them, or family. friends and finances. At the time, I didn't have the answers to many of the questions so I kept searching. Of the three challenges, I decided to come out to my family first and see how it went. When I did, I received a fifty-fifty split in return. By this time in my life, my close/blood family had been reduced to two people. My daughter and my slightly younger brother. As it turned out, my daughter was very supportive and my brother was just the opposite. I tell the story often how I gained a family with my daughter's in laws and lost my brother's family at nearly the same time. Sadly, it all happened over a decade ago and things have never changed.

The next step I needed to consider at my crossroads was what would I do about what friends I had left from my old male life. Again, sadly, I had very few close male friends and had lost most all of them to death in a very short period of time. So I had very few friends to tell. No worries since I had never been able to make since seemingly I kept pushing people away my entire life because of my gender issues. I thought the fewer friends I would have to tell, the better off I would be. 

On I went at my crossroad when I came to the third "F" which was finances. I obsessed on what I would be able to do to support myself. I had built myself into a successful well paying job which I knew would be impossible to transition genders on while I worked it. What did work in my favor was my age. I was close enough to to retirement age to consider taking an early retirement. Which meant all I had to do was work a couple more years and then not have to worry about transitioning on the job. 

What ended up happening was, I painted myself into a corner I couldn't get out of. The pressure grew so intense as I tried to live both as my old male self and my new feminine self. It literally tried to kill me before I said enough was enough. One night as I sat alone and pondered what I was going to do, I finally decided to do the right thing and give up totally my old male self and live as a transgender woman. 

From that point forward, I felt as if a giant weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. I had made the correct turn at the gender crossroads and was able to move on with a new life. I waited for the paint to dry in my life and gently learn to live as my authentic self.   

The Best Part of Me

Image from the Jessie Hart
Archives

 For the longest time I resisted the idea there were two of me. A male and a female side. 

The further I went in completing a MtF gender transition, the more obvious it became I did indeed have two sides to my being. I had a male side I needed to desperately protect to even exist in the world as I knew it and a feminine side. I worked hard to cover any signs I was feminine at all and for the most part all my efforts were successful. Through my love of attempting to play sports and work on fast cars, I was able to hide.

One way or another hiding became impossible as I gained confidence in trying to head out of my dark lonely gender closet and explore the world. The whole process was very scary yet exciting and my feminine self turned out to be exceedingly patient and giving with the process. She stood by as I grew through my teenaged cross dressing years and managed to arrive at a place where I could at least blend in with the public the best I could. 

Then, she stood by me in my communication years when I took on the world one on one as a transgender woman. Looking back she most likely knew the truth. If she bided her time, she would win eventually and being able to fully take over my life. Taking all of that into consideration I found as she was taking over, she had always been the best part of me. My parents had always tried to raise me with a strong moral compass and when I was able to come out and live an authentic feminine life, all my truth could be out for the public to see. Naturally when I did finally come out, I felt so much better about my life.

The deeper I began to live as a transgender woman, the more I found the less I needed to do. What I mean is, my feminine side had been waiting so long for a chance to fully live, she was happy to take over and show me the way. She happily took to the guidance and knowledge she learned as she went all the way from "girl's nights outs" to lesbian mixers with friends. It was quite the process. Through it all she found she could be the best person possible since she had learned from both sides of the main gender binary spectrum. It wasn't as if the male person was bad, the female person could be better. Plus, as I always point out, my feminine side very much benefitted from positive cis-woman friends who showed her the way.

Maybe it is an unfair comparison because my feminine side had such a longer time to grow and observe what my male side was doing wrong. But on the other hand, she had to go through the frustration of waiting to come out. By doing so, she had to face a dual edged sword. She benefitted from the male mistakes I made but then had a chance to be the best part of me when the wait was finally over and she could live our truth as a transgender woman.

Jumping Trans Barriers

Image from Shalomi Platzman 
on UnSplash 

 First of all, I never have participated in any sort of track and field events at all. So jumping anything, especially at my age is impossible. In my life, however, I have faced many invisible barriers when it came to being a transgender woman. 

The first barriers were self imposed as were many later in life. The main self imposed barrier I faced was my struggle to free myself from my mirrors who were the only way for me to reinforce my femininity. Sadly, the mirrors had a way of lying to me. No matter how I really looked, the mirror told me I was attractive. When I started to explore the world as my true gender self, I was greeted with many rude awakenings on my true appearance. Trashy, even clownish came to mind when I went out in the world. Fortunately, the negative feedback I received helped me to resolve to do better with my appearance. Slowly but surely I was able to build a small wardrobe of feminine clothes which helped to flatter what I possessed in the body department and led me to jump the barrier of being able to present properly. 

Along the way too, I developed more ways to see if I could truly overcome the barriers I was facing. One of the biggest ways I found was to go to Halloween parties in a "costume" as a woman. By doing this, I achieved a level of understanding of how I presented. Over several years of trying, I was able to make it to a level of being passable as a "professional" woman just getting off of work and attending the party. From there I was able to build a fragile confidence I could survive in the real world if I ever could pursue my dream of living fulltime as a transgender woman. Then, my fragile confidence would help me to jump more of my barriers. 

Also, there were the barriers which were all fake. I found out many existed only in my mind and I was making my own life so much more difficult. I likened it to running an obstacle course in the Army when you had to make split second decisions on real or fake targets. False obstacles included me judging the acceptance or non acceptance from strangers. Those were the times I thought I had acceptance only to have a passive aggressive person stab me in the back. It was all the more difficult because I wanted so badly to be accepted in the world as a  woman when in reality all I should have been looking for was to be accepted as me. Again confidence and a new circle of women friends helped me to get over this major barrier. 

Another point I needed to consider was my choice to pursue hormone replacement therapy or HRT. In many ways, my choice was the point of no return on my journey. Once I sought out a doctor to administer the new medications (and was accepted) the changes began nearly immediately and helped me to conquer more completely the external appearance barrier. As I changed, I learned also how much the hormones would effect my overall being for the better. 

Now, at my age, I am tired of jumping  trans barriers but now have to face the number of new anti-transgender laws in the legislature. In fact, Ohio where I live is trying currently to pass a restrictive rest room bill in the state. All in all, I have resolved myself to doing the best I can and trying to always be sure I am voting for politicians who support me.  It's the least I can do.

Why Now? A Transgender Dilemma

Image from Karla Herandez on 
UnSplash

Every once in a while I see a transgender sister in my age bracket being hassled for starting to transition later in life. 

Since I didn't begin a very serious gender transition until I was in my early sixties, I feel their pain when someone mentions they aren't trans enough. For some reason, the person applying the pressure to be transgender enough doesn't realize why the transitioning person felt the need to wait before seriously going down their gender path. There are many reasons. Primarily, life gets in the way. Examples are many and simple such as families which come along as well as friends and employment. 

I was guilty of considering all of those as I put off finally transitioning. Plus, it was true on occasion, I did enjoy the benefits of attaining a certain level of success in my largely unwanted male world. By male standards I was bringing home a better than average income while I became fairly proficient at managing larger groups of people in stressful situations. I was able to use my spendable income to treat myself and my second wife to dining out as well as attending large select sporting events we both liked. Even though I was treading water as a male, nearly always something was always missing. I wondered how everything I did would feel if I did it as a woman. 

Another point I need to make in why I waited so long to finally complete my gender transition was along the way, I was experimenting with how I was doing as a woman. I attempt to explain away the years I was trying to see if I could make it as a transgender woman as the years I was a very serious cross dresser or transvestite. During my fifty year journey to my gender truth, I could say also the world caught up with me. When I started and for years after, there was no internet or social media to connect others to me with similar gender pursuits. From there I learned nearly anything could be possible if I worked hard enough to do it. I just had to figure it out.

Perhaps along the way, I was a slow learner as I refused to look my truths in the face and see feminine. Gender dysphoria was a huge problem too. Some days I did see feminine when I looked in the mirror and some days male. Which in many ways continues to this day. I was furthered confused by the public I dealt with in those days who referred to me in the feminine sense when they weren't even thinking. What was I to make of that? What I did make of that was they were seeing past my male exterior into who I truly was. 

The simplest answer to all the doubters of my "trans-ness" is get over yourself. Without a doubt I have been a transgender woman my entire life. My dilemma was trying to learn how to express it. 

   

Transgender Confidence

Image from Brett Jordan 
on Unsplash

I have always thought confidence was the most important accessory a transgender woman can have. More important than the most attractive dress or the prettiest most flattering wig. Of course your dress and wig work together in so many ways to provide an external image which matches your inner feminine self. Plus, confidence often proves to be so difficult to come by as well as equally difficult to maintain. It takes only a swift moment of being mis-gendered along with being recognized as a man in a dress to wreck your confidence. I know, because it all has happened to me too many times to count. I had spent literally weeks in gender heaven without even the smallest pushback to my new coming out presence in the world. 

Finally I learned my rejections were a moment in time and I went back to the drawing board and moved on. I kept my changes to a minimum and tried to analyze every small nuance of the feminine gender I was trying to assume. I knew deep down, I was a woman but somehow, someway I needed to cross the gender frontier and arrive at my destination. I can't began to tell you how many times confidence was fleeting due to a particularly brutal evening when I was out in public. I was fortunate though in that even though I was having bad times, there was enough gender euphoria slipping through to keep me moving towards my goal. Plus, even coming up with a goal was difficult because everytime I accomplished one goal, to keep moving, I needed to set another. There was also the problem of the ultimate goal of going all the way and living as a woman.

We all know humans are apex predators and not unlike sharks can sniff out blood in the water. So more than a few humans can sense something could be wrong when you try to change something as huge as your gender. Unless you have the supreme confidence to know deep down you are right in what you are doing, you could be in trouble. For me, often the supreme confidence came from feeling natural as my feminine self. So much more than just thinking I was acting as my authentic self because I wasn't acting at all. 

Where ever you are in your transgender journey, woman or man, I hope you have been able to develop the confidence you need to survive. As far as trans women go, the effects of testosterone poisoning is so difficult to overcome. On the other hand, once you have gone so far across the gender frontier, going back is often impossible to do. Inspiring more confidence and gender euphoria as you go.     

Trans Dar?

Photo Courtesy Jessie Hart

 Trans Dar to me means recognizing another transgender woman. All of it seems so simple but it is not. 

First, you have to decide if your transgender instincts are correct. An example occurred when I was arriving I saw another woman who arrived just ahead of me for our recent transgender - cross dresser group dinner. She was well dressed in a summer dress with low high heels. More than likely, if I had just been coming to the venue on a regular night, I may have not given her a second glance. But she was by herself and she set off my Trans Dar. She beat me to the table and later I found she was a self professed cross dresser. 

Approaching another transgender person for me has never happened. Back when we used to shop regularly at a couple grocery stores I used to see on occasion a couple of women I perceived to be transgender. The most I did do was try to get a closer look to see if I could be correct if she was another transgender woman. On occasion I wished I had the courage to speak to them but I didn't. The main reason was I was afraid I could be wrong. How rude would it be for me to try to strike up a conversation with a stranger for no specific reason. 

Another reason for not approaching another transgender woman is many don't want to be read as trans and approached. Normally anymore I am in my own little world and would be really surprised if I was ever approached. Also I would have to examine what I was doing wrong with my presentation as a feminine person to blend in with the public. Which is something I didn't always do.'

I am sure when I went to many venues such as grocery stores or big box stores, I was the one who didn't blend in my tight short skirt with heels and hose. I was the one who went to a mall in a tennis outfit I put together. Which did get quite a bit of attention from the old men who were exercising in the mall. It all led to a heightened sense of Trans Dar whenever I saw an overdressed woman in a store where nearly all women dressed very casual.  

Whatever the case, Trans Dar is a difficult topic which does it part to keep our transgender community apart. I go back to the example of the cross dresser I met for the first time the other night. If it wasn't for the dinner, I would have never had the chance to meet her. 

To start with, we transgender tribe members are an exceedingly rare part of society and need all the companionship we can get. Sadly Trans Dar is not the way to do it. 

What is Normal?

 

Photo Courtesy Jessie Hart

I love this question because the easy answer is nothing is normal. The more that transphobes and other haters like to say about it, the more they prove themselves wrong. Just because they think they are in the majority of hetero-straight humans, doesn't make it normal. 

On the other hand, during my life, I disliked being called "normal". If I was normal as compared to the rest of society I would have never succeeded in being accepted into the American Forces Radio and Television service when I was in the Army. Other lesser examples were how my daughter came along against the odds as well as various college changes kept me out of the military draft as long as I did. 

For the longest time in my life, I did my best to be a normal guy. In middle school and high school I did play sports, worked on cars and begrudgingly dated girls. In other words, I did what was expected by my family and society. Of course the entire process brought extreme confusion and often pain. My parents always were fond of telling me not to be into what other people said. But of course, all of that  ended when I wanted to be a girl. Then, normal, took a whole other turn in my life.

For the longest time I considered myself less than normal when I was dealing with the everyday public. I used it as an excuse to explain my cross dressing "habit" to myself. Somehow since I felt I had a different "hobby" I was less than normal. 

Once I started to increasingly explore the feminine world as a transgender woman, all of my thought patterns started to change. Slowly but surely I began to realize I truly wasn't normal. I had been doing my best to live a lie and exist in the male world. The more I transitioned into my authentic self the more natural I felt. Often how I was feeling was the only thing which kept me going during the dark hours I went through as I learned to play in the girls' sandbox. Even though it is painful to remember and write about, the tears were real and came too often. 

The more I learned the more normal I felt. I can only assume it is because I am finally living my own feminine reality. As I face the world now, I have found my own normal 

I am now living a better life because of it. After all, normal is fairly simple. It is what you make of  it.