Tiny Ripples of Gender Hope

Image from Rosie Kerr on UnSplash.

During the overwhelming sense of darkness I felt when I began to come out of my gender shell, were moments of gender hope and euphoria. More than anything else, they kept me moving slowly towards living my ultimate dream. All I could think of was the possibility of living as a woman later in life.

Having to run and hide my small “collection” of feminine clothes and makeup every time I tried to get in front of the mirror and cross dress did not help. I resented the fact I could not be free to do what I wanted, no matter how radical it was…like being a girl. I could not imagine the pain and suffering I would have if I was caught. What saved me was the vision of a pretty young girl which came peeking on through when I was able to be alone and try on my precious clothes. Even though I was depressed I had to go back to being a boy, the brief moment of femininity carried me through the dark days and gave me a ripple of hope.

Fast forward through the difficult days of puberty and adolescence everyone goes through, I needed to deal with my gender dysphoria also. There were so many dark days when I just went through the motions of life that I did not know what was going to become of me. When I did, I desperately needed to find refuge behind my dresses and makeup to give me hope. Perhaps the only good thing which was happening was that I was slowly perfecting my use of makeup. When all my friends were showing off their painted model cars, I was stuck not being able to show off my new eye makeup. I had to internalize my feelings of hope and euphoria when I saw my new pretty eyes. Sadly, I needed to become good at removing all traces of the makeup so my brother and parents would not notice.

I guess you could say I was in the dark through my college years and beyond until I began to be able to enter the world for the first time as a novice cross dresser or transgender woman. These were the days of attending transvestite mixers and small parties in nearby Columbus, Ohio. Being around like minded people who were searching for their gender answers almost made my search seem normal for the first time in my life. I was so protected from the world in the pre-internet days that I thought I was the only one like me stuck in their own personal hell. I was experiencing ripples of hope for the first time in my life on a scale I could appreciate. I even upped my appearance game when I went to Columbus from trashy woman to hopefully a passable ciswoman. One of my favorite outfits to wear was what I called my knit black out. I paired a loose fitting black wide knit top with a black leotard, shorts, tights with a pair of black flats and my red wig and was ready to go. After makeup of course.

For me, the whole outfit helped me to tone down and refine my look and it worked so well that I had my first ever encounter with a lesbian from the party when we left and went to a big lesbian venue for a break. I learned many valuable lessons that night which provided me with ripples of hope for the future. Mainly, if I could not be as feminine or beautiful as the transsexuals who were there, I still could be attractive myself to have a good time and most importantly, learn to be just me. Developing the future, me gave me real hope for the future as I learned it would be possible to achieve my transgender dreams if I worked hard enough. I had to learn the new transfeminine me meant so much more than the ripples of hope I had gained in the past went way past how I looked and into how I acted.

Suddenly, acceptance became my main goal, as my interior feminine self-stepped forward in my life. I knew who I wanted to be but still was not quite sure how to get there. For example, I knew for sure I did not want to be like the “Trans Nazi’s” as we called them or the bitchy trans women who thought they were better than anyone else simply because of their appearance or the number of gender surgeries they had undertaken. I suppose I should owe them a debt of gratitude for showing me what not to do to be a gracious, friendly transgender woman.

All of this came together for me when I began HRT or gender affirming hormones when I was sixty. I had spent enough life in the dark to appreciate the light and grasp a ripple of hope when I saw it. The hormonal medications proved to be a natural success when I began taking them. My body seemed to be saying again what took you so long. But on many levels I don’t think even I understood the basic limits I went through back in those days to salvage my life through the brief ripple of hope I received way back in the days when I lived for the mirror.

More importantly, I found myself in a situation where I could pay forward my experiences to helpfully help others. Especially those of you who are struggling to find answers on how to escape your dark gender closets and find your own ripple of hope. 

The Rise of Transfeminine Privilege

 

JJ Hart (Middle) wife Liz (Left)
daughter (Right)

When I began to seriously leave my closet and mirror and attempt to join the world as my true self, I quickly lost all my male privileges and gained very few feminine ones. In fact, early on, the only privilege I felt was having doors opened for me by the men around me.

On the other hand, the most extensive male privileges I lost were my intelligence and my personal security. When I was around men, I learned to keep my mouth shut until I was spoken to, which was not very often because I think most all men knew I was transgender and wanted no part of me. And as far as personal security went, I needed to learn what ciswomen know from an early age to keep themselves out of possible bodily danger by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

All along, during this time, I was wondering when and if the gender teeter-totter I was on would balance itself out and I would see the positives of what I was doing. It took a combination of things happening before I ever did. One was seasonal around Christmas, and the other one was when I decided to give up on men all-together and concentrate on knowing other women. A preferred topic in my mind, since I did not have to consider changing the focus of my sexuality, which had always leaned exclusively towards women. But I digress, the meaning of Christmas and what it meant to me as a transgender woman, is the real reason for this post.

To begin with, Christmas was always a major holiday for me and my second wife especially. Finding an exceptional, unexpected, rare gift was always the priority for me and even my brother’s family. The difference became to me was when I decided the Christmas shopping, I had been doing as a man would be much better accomplished as a woman. If I was able to pull it off, I could accomplish so much more during the Christmas rush I was in the middle of.

First of all, I needed to up my crossdressing game to give me the best possible chance to succeed in my shopping conquests. I went through my closet and pulled out my fancy, sleek, black pants’ suit for trips to upscale malls and my leggings, boots and sweaters when I combed through the huge local antique malls for just the right gift for my wife. I knew if I was to succeed, I had to be better than the average Ciswoman so I would not be potentially embarrassed. Also, the right makeup and hair was a priority because of all the up close and personal time I would be spending in the public’s eye. Through it all, I wondered where the magical feminine privilege would kick in for me.

The first major time it did was when I was shopping for a matching oak bookcase for my wife’s roll-top desk. One night, I found one which worked beautifully in an oak furniture store in nearby Columbus, Ohio. It just so happened I was returning from a shopping trip to a local Columbus upscale mall when I stopped into the store on the way home. After I found the bookcase I wanted, my old male self-wondered how in the world would I get it in my truck/SUV. Would anyone come to the aid of a tall blond in a black pants suit and heels? After I paid, I found out they would because for the first time in my life I was able to sit back and watch two young men load the bookcase carefully into my vehicle and finished their job off with a nice thank you mam. Because I had finally discovered a dose of feminine privilege, the half hour trip home went quickly, and I wanted to do more shopping, but I was out of time and money.

Sadly, once I returned home and had safely unloaded my prize gift, it was time to return to the place I did not want to be…my old male self. On the plus side though, the whole experience taught me (and provided the confidence) to move forward to my dream life of being a fulltime transgender woman and would not have to return home every night in a hurry to switch back into a gender I wanted nothing to do with. My feminine privilege was being established in the newfound senses I was feeling. Especially when I was doing something for others, such as buying gifts.

The experience made all the learning and trial and error experiences I went through during my male to female femininization process deeply worthwhile. There were other Christmas stories to share as I will do later. Such as when my wife decided we would have a special gift giving time for my feminine self.

 

 

 

 

A Trans Girl's First Christmas

 

Clifton Mills, Clifton, Ohio. 

The newly fallen snow around here in southern Ohio has brought back my Christmas spirit and memories of my earliest days of coming out of my gender shell and exploring the world.

Years ago, my second wife and I used to make a regular trip to a wonderful Christmas light display at a place called Clifton Mills, which was/is a restored grist mill approximately twenty miles from where we lived. Even though I did enjoy going with my wife, in the back of my head, I always wondered what it would be like to experience the evening as a woman. Finally, when my wife began to work retail in the book business and had to work many nights, I got the chance to live my dream.

Before I did, I needed to figure out what I was going to wear for my special evening. I knew the weather would be rather crisp and cool, and I even had the chance of snow flurries if I was able to pick the right night when I was off work and she was working. I started my wardrobe with a warm fuzzy oversized sweater I loved and paired it with a pair of fleece leggings which would be warm enough to keep me warm as I wandered around enjoying all the lights and displays. Back in those days I had access to my own finances and was able to come up with enough money to buy me a pair of low-heeled snow boots which would help me navigate the long distances I would have to walk safely and comfortably as I walked through the village to get to the mill itself.

Once I figured out what I was going to wear, I had to make time to apply just the right amount of makeup to blend in with the other women in the crowd. I applied my makeup, got dressed and finished off my outfit with my shoulder length wavy blond wig. As I left the garage and slipped past my neighbors, it was dark, which helped me and my anticipation of what was coming up heightened. Would my expectations of spending my first evening out as a transgender woman at Christmas fulfil my dreams?

The twenty-mile drive seemed to take forever but I finally arrived, found a parking spot in the village, adjusted my makeup and hair and left the relative safety of the car. As I walked, I passed several people who did not give me a second look, so I started to calm down and enjoy myself and breathe in the night air as a free person. I even became so comfortable I stopped in one place for a hot chocolate and another for a hot spiced cider in the mill itself. The reaction to me at the hot chocolate stand was as warm and friendly as the drink itself which helped me to build confidence but the reaction from the younger girl where I bought the cider was as cold as the evening, so I did not wait around to buy anything else.

I found the only real problem I had was the lack of time I had to enjoy myself because I needed to be home and return into a boring man before my wife made it back. The end result was I completely enjoyed the experience of being a trans girl at Christmas and wanted more. The evening proved to me I could present well enough to enjoy myself and the only disappointment came when it was all over. My solution was, I needed to come up with other Christmas related transgender woman activities to test my abilities to present well in the midst of ciswomen doing the same thing. As Christmas approaches, I will share other experiences I had with you which turned out to be fun and eventful

The bottom line was, I found my confidence in my womanhood I never knew I had and at the same time bought gifts for others that meant something. A win-win situation for me and the evening I enjoyed the Christmas lights at the mill somehow were brighter and more festive than ever before as I was able to see them through my feminine eyes. Maybe a precursor to when I started HRT or gender affirming hormones which really opened my world to a whole new set of sensory perceptions.

If I had realized what my body was telling me earlier and reacted, maybe I could have saved myself and others around me a lot of turmoil and problems.

 

 

Down but not Out

 

Hair by JJ Hart, Beret hand beaded
by Liz T Designs on Etsy.

One point I always worry about making is how many times I was not successful when I was trying to survive in the world as a novice cross dresser or transgender woman. Or how many times, I walked completely out of my way to escape groups of teenaged girls coming towards me. Perhaps, similar to many of you, I was out and out laughed at by girls seeking their own sense of femininity.

Too many times, that I would like to remember, I needed to rush home with tears in my eyes to go back to the drawing board and reassess what I was doing because obviously, something was wrong. After years of failure, I finally found the person I needed to blame, my old male self and his ego. He was the one who kept urging me on to dress trashy in a failed attempt to show off my own femininity primarily to other men. It turned out I learned I was trying to impress the wrong gender; I should have been trying to impress the ciswomen I encountered. Blending in with them became my primary goal so I could be successful.

Many times, blending myself into a completely new and terrifying world became very difficult due to the layered life women live in. Every time I thought I had turned the corner in my gender life, something would come up and slow my progress down. Again, I was frustrated many times and ended up with me being down and out again in my transgender thinking. Through it all, I needed to keep my head up and be aware of any possibilities I may run into. Or, I should say opportunities to improve.

Out of all the opportunities I faced, I like to point out that communication was the hardest problem I faced once I finally got my appearance situation taken care of. To do it, I needed to solidify who my feminine person was. No more changing wigs and names every other time I went out. I had to settle on what wig and name I would use every time I went out because I was so recognizable. The pressure was on to make sure I was doing all I could to make a good first impression as a transgender woman. I needed to make sure I was properly social without coming off as being bitchy. When in fact, I was just shy with all strangers.

At this time, at least, I was not getting laughed at. I was learning what I needed to do not to be down and out as a transgender woman. Plus, I was still amazed how many other women wanted to communicate with me and understand what I was doing in their world. At that time, it was so important to me not to make a fool of myself and go back to my gender drawing board again. In my case, practice did make perfect, and I was finding myself less and less in potentially embarrassing situations. The problem was (if I had one) was keeping myself engaged at all times in my old male life. In fact, I was always flipping the script when I featured my female life over my old dominating male life. I needed to really concentrate what was left of my male life to make sure I preserved what I worked so hard to build up.

Looking back, I don’t suppose I was ever completely down and out as a transgender or transfeminine person. Even though everything I faced was not a positive situation, deep down I realized I was in a total learning situation, and I could (or should) work my way through it. Sure, I was blindsided in numerous situations, and I needed to rise above my limitations but somehow, I made it.

Every now and then I find myself in a position to give out advice. This time, I am challenging you to challenge yourself if you are actively seeking to change your gender life from male to female, or female to male. It will never be easy as you are attempting one of the most challenging experiences a human can undertake. But your positives will outnumber your negatives if you learn from your opportunities to improve.

Finally, you can get to the point where your old unwanted gender will not pull you down and you will not be down and out as a trans person. When you begin to trust yourself and build your confidence, you will be able to enjoy your new life for a change. You will be an up-and-coming person in a brave new world. Then maybe you to can be down but not out.

 

 

Tired of Looking Over my Shoulder

 

Christopher Morley
1974 movie
Freebie and the Bean.

In a continuation of yesterday’s post in many ways, today’s post is about how I grew weary of looking over my shoulder as a transgender woman.

Looking back, all I can remember from the earliest days I had cross-dressing in front of the mirror were the all too brief moments of gender euphoria I experienced and the all too numerous times I spent looking over my shoulder to see if anyone was going to catch me. Then life as I knew it would be ruined. To stop this from happening, I became very good at hiding my clothes and makeup away from the prying eyes of my slightly younger brother and the rest of my family. I even resorted to hiding a small amount of clothes, makeup and a mirror in a trash bag in a hollowed-out tree in the woods next to our house in the country. Even with all of this hiding, I still found myself spending a lot of time looking over my shoulder.

Somehow, I thought when I grew older, I would conquer all my gender issues, and they would magically disappear, but they just grew with me. The better I became applying makeup and selecting feminine clothes, the more I wanted to do. Like a dog chasing its tail, the more success I had led me to want to do more in the public’s eye. Sadly, as I grew into my high school and precollege years, I was still stuck in the same old routine of dressing at home, hiding from my family and looking over my shoulder. The only relief I remember was the night friends and I went to a high school carnival and one of the male students was parading around dressed as a pretty girl. I was fascinated but again was looking over my shoulder to make sure none of my friends noticed how interested I was.

Which was exactly how I felt when I saw the movie “Freebie and the Bean” in 1974. I did not know it or had never heard of actor “Christopher Morley” who was an accomplished female impersonator. He had a part in the movie which I found amazing because he was so believable as a woman. As with the student cross dressed as a pretty girl, when I saw Morley, I needed to look over my shoulder at my friends to see if they noticed my newfound interest in the film we were watching. I guess I was pretty good at hiding my interest because nobody ever said anything about it.

Moving forward, there were the early cross-dressing days when I was still trying to perfect my everyday presentation as a transgender woman. I constantly worried about someone sneaking up behind me and pulling off my ill-fitting wig. What would I do then? Put it back on or just pick the wig up and run out the door. Fortunately, I never had to find out when I figured it was my inner female paranoia talking to me that I was not looking good enough to pass her standards yet.

By this time, looking over my shoulder became a habit. There was a time when my second wife and I moved to a small town in southern Ohio to run a new restaurant there. In order to suppress all my cross-dressing desires, I started to do the grocery shopping as a woman then go ahead and do a little lite shopping for myself. One day when I was blissfully doing my thing as a transfeminine person, I unexpectedly ran straight into my wife’s boss doing his errands. As bad luck would have it, my wife and I were invited that weekend to a small party at her boss’s house and I needed to really look over my shoulder when I heard him mention to my wife about the “big woman” he had seen in a store. Rightfully so, I was always guilty until proven innocent with my wife and she turned directly to stare the look of death at me. It took me weeks of denial to finally live it down.

Denial, lying and other mistruths became a way of life for me with my wife before she passed away after twenty-five years of marriage. The only thing I am proud of is that I did manage a full out purge six months before she died. To prevent any backsliding, I even grew a beard. Needless to say, I was miserable during this time but nothing like I was going to live through later.

After all the tragedy I went through during this time, I finally had enough of looking over my shoulder for decades and decided to follow my instincts and come out to the world as a transgender woman. Not spending all that time and effort was completely refreshing and allowed me to totally concentrate on my new life as a trans woman.

 

A Thing of Beauty?

 

My Trans Friend Racquel.

During my male to female gender transition years, I always stressed to the max about my appearance as a transgender woman or cross dresser.

Every now and then, I go back into my very early blog posts to see what I was fixated on and quickly noticed I was all about how I looked. In those days, I thought being a woman was all about looks and beauty and I wanted to overcome my testosterone poisoned body to achieve what I could.

The big test of my so-called beauty pageant was when I began to free myself from the mirror and break out of my closet into the world. By doing so, I found I had a lot of work to do if I was able to make it in the world as a transfeminine person at all. My first big test was too present well enough that the teen girls would not notice me and send me home in tears. During that time, my makeup had to be just perfect, and I did not want to ruin my mascara and carefully applied eyeliner by crying. Even when my makeup and hair was done just right, I struggled to think I was anything close to being beautiful. I just wanted to be presentable and live my new experience as a transgender woman.

It wasn’t until my second wife began to call me the “Pretty, pretty princess” when we fought about my cross-dressing desires, did I begin to think about what she was really saying. Since she was an attractive but a no-nonsense makeup woman, and she was my idol in so many ways, I tried to tone down my makeup the best I could to please her. On occasion, she would even go out with me as my feminine self, so I wanted to do the best I could to not embarrass her or myself with how I looked. Of course, the problem continued to be I could not get away with wearing no makeup like she did which led to more fighting.

Many years later, after she passed away, I began to build my own feminine self from what I had learned about beauty and how it related to other ciswomen around me. The first thing I did was becoming a better student of women than I had ever been before. I needed to remove the male blinders I still had to get a realistic view of the world I so desperately wanted to enter and be a part of. I discovered I paid an inordinate amount of time admiring the beautiful ciswomen I saw and not notice the vast majority of women who were doing the best they could with the physical attributes they had to work with. An example was, I was always worried about my height as a trans woman until I began to notice plenty of other tall successful women in the world I was in.

I became less of the “princess” and more of the trans feminine person who was just trying to blend in an survive. It was about this time when Racquel, a trans woman friend of mine told me I passed out of sheer will-power. My willpower took me into a world of lesbian women when hers took a different path into facial operations and men. I guess, in our own ways we were successful transitioning into the world at large with her as a tall, slim beauty and me on a completely different level socializing at lesbian mixers with my friends. By doing so, I learned valuable lifetime lessons on how to live my life without the validation of men at all. If they liked me fine, and if they didn’t (which most did not) that was fine too. Afterall, I was not the ideal girl to being brought home to see the family for the holidays.

Years later, after I met my wife Liz and we became serious, it was difficult enough for me to meet her family for the holidays. Her dad was an extremely right-wing gun rights supporter, and her brother never talked so I did not know what they thought about me. I will never know, since dad passed away years ago and her brother lives south of Cincinnati in Louisville, Kentucky. All I know is, I was extremely ill at ease during holidays with the family.

Now, all I know is that I present well as being old with non-age-appropriate long hair. I can’t do anything about my age and love my hair, so it is not going anywhere. Perhaps I am making up for all the years I had to have my hair cut short in my youth and military days.

As with all other ciswomen, over the years, I have learned to work with what I have been given physically. I was extremely fortunate to have found people who accepted me for who I am as I presented as myself out of sheer willpower.

 

Up the Down Gender Slide

 

Image from Abbs Johnson
on UnSplash.

Maybe you remember Ralphie (In a Christmas Story movie) who desperately wanted a BB Gun for Christmas and froze up when he was in a department store telling Santa what he wanted for the big day. What happened was Ralphie got kicked down the slide when Santa told him he was getting a football. Finally, Ralphie struggled his way back up the downslide and told Santa he really wanted a BB Gun and was then told he would shoot his eye out.

This scene paralleled my life in several ways. The main one was, I never asked for a BB Gun but got one anyway and secondly, I never asked Santa for the baby doll I really wanted. In many ways, the whole idea of struggling up the down slide when I considered my gender became routine. Instead of shooting my eye with a BB Gun, I became more concerned with hurting my eyes with my mascara stick. Plus, when I tried to hide my cross-dressing activities from my second wife, I tried to be more effective in removing all of my eye makeup so my wife couldn’t tell. It was a challenge to say the least. But not the biggest challenge of all.

First, I needed to break all the male tendencies I had built up over the years. How did I present as a trans woman, all the way to how did I move and communicate. I knew ciswomen operated on a different wavelength than men but how different I never planned on. For example, the amount of nonverbal communication between women surprised me. I quickly learned to watch for the visual cues I picked up when I was in a potentially dangerous situation, I was not aware of.

Ironically, the more I struggled to go up the down slide, the more slippery it became. I had to become more mentally tough as a transfeminine person to even survive in a potentially hostile world. It meant going back to the drawing board when I was pushed down the up-gender slide even more. By mentally tough I mean with my resources, facial feminization would not be possible and there was nothing I could ever do about the testosterone poisoned thick male body, I would have to work with what I had. That damn slide was not going to get to me. What I did do though, was put myself on a highly effective diet which ended up in me losing approximately fifty pounds as well as beginning to take better care of my skin after I shaved every day. By doing better skin care, I was able to use less makeup and look more natural.

With these changes, I was able to actually start climbing up my gender slide, so that someday maybe I could get the baby doll I wanted to have instead of a BB Gun. Mentally, at least.

Other changes I had to make as I climbed to the top of my gender slide was conquering my fear of heights. There came times when I thought I was moving too fast, and I was in danger of losing all my hard-earned male privileges such as family, marriage, jobs and friends. I did not want to beat myself and my male self-had me looking over my shoulder. Then I resolved to never stop working towards my goal of transgender womanhood and moving on to a totally different goal of being able to interact more effectively with the ciswomen I met. I always called it playing in the girls’ sandbox.

Maybe it was my gender paranoia weighing in on me, but I kept seeing potential problems coming at me when I was out of the mirror and into the world. Some turned out to be real, but most were not. I found I did not meet as many gender bigots or anti-transgender ciswomen TERFs as I thought I would. Men were for the most part always standoffish and ciswomen just were not for whatever reason. Maybe, in their own ways, they had climbed their own gender slides and understood what I was going through and did not mind sharing with me.

If you are starting your own gender slide, or even reaching the top, just remember the trip will never be easy. But to coin a saying, if it was easy, would have it been worth it. I know for me; it was the toughest trip of my life. Plus, you are human and will make a mistake on occasion. Especially, when you are not allowed behind the gender curtain to learn the basics cisgender women were raised with. At that point in time, it is up to you to climb your slide and thrive. Not just survive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Halloween and Me

Image from Nice M
Nsshti on UnSplash.

Even though it has been years since I have been to a Halloween party at all, it still fills a special place in my heart.

The main reason it will is because it was the first time in my life that I was able to really explore if I could possibly make it to my dream of ever living like a woman on my own terms. In the recent past, I have written about the very first parties I went to dressed as a slutty, trashy woman, attempting in my own backwards way to be sexy. Also, when I started to go to Halloween dressed as me, I was doing it around people who knew me as a man, so I needed to put up with the idea in their mind that I was some sort of a jokester. When of course I was dead serious. One memorable evening took me to the freshly restored Ohio Theatre in downtown Columbus, Ohio for a midnight Halloween showing of the original “Dracula” movie, complete with background music from the original theatre organ. I went with my first wife who already knew I was a cross dresser and two other friends. I ended up having a fabulous time in my heels, hose and minidress surrounded by many other attendees in costume. The only problem I had was walking as long as I did in my heels. I was still too new to the cross-dressing style game to think ahead about my footwear if I needed to walk very far.

As the years and Halloween’s moved by, my whole focus began to shift about my potential “costume” I was planning on wearing. I began to move away from the trashy costumes I wore in the past, and into “costume” ideas another ciswoman would wear. At the same time, I stopped going to parties with my friends and began going to big clubs where I could see if I could blend in. It all was working out well until one night I was stopped by a guy wearing a full mask telling me he knew who I was. I was in shock and asked him how he knew, and he told me I looked like my mom. It turned out he grew up with me down the road and knew both of my parents. I was relieved as I was proud of my “French Girl Costume.” Which meant I was dressed all in black. Including a new pair of black tights, flats, blond hair and a black beret I purchased for a dollar at a thrift store. Other than being rudely recognized, I had another great time, and the evening ended too soon.

A few of my final Halloween parties I went to proved to me that I could possibly make it in the world as a transfeminine person. One was by pure accident and one I had planned ahead for. The pure accidental party was the one I recently wrote about which happened when I lived in the New York City metro area. Out of nowhere, I was invited by one of my female managers to a Halloween party her and her friends were going to at a nearby tavern, to her house. I don’t know why, but I decided to back slide in my “costume” idea and go to the party dressed a little on the slutty side. Mini skirt, heels, blond wig and all. It turned out all of her friends who were going were approximately as tall as I was and were all dressed to thrill also. What a surprise I had when I found I could blend in with all of them. The only problem I had was my second wife not approving of my “costume” even though she did not want to go. Life around the house was a bit frosty for a while.

The last major Halloween party I went to was a planned affair. I was invited to a party at a vintage restored Victorian mansion, along with a news girl who I worked with at the local radio station.  I was married to my first wife then and she did not care who I went with, so I planned to go as a professional woman just getting off of work. Just to see if I could. I did with a couple a write about often who thought I was a woman and were so entranced with me, they invited me to another party they were going to. I did not go but stayed and had a great time at a fabulous party.

Sadly, all my fun went away when I fully transitioned into being a transgender woman. Instead of putting on some sort of “costume” and going out into the world, I was just being me, and an exciting part of my life was behind me. Forever to be remembered fondly in my mind.

 

 

 

  

The Yin and Yang of Gender

 

Yin and Yang from Gabriel Vasiliu 
on UnSplash. 

You might ask why I would write a post explaining why I was in such a hurry to transition into my womanhood when it took me nearly fifty years to come out of my gender shell. I finally discovered I was in a classic war between my yin and yang personalities.

Today, I am writing to explain the two forces I faced as I decided when and how to transition. My own personal yin and yang of gender. I guess it doesn’t matter which of the two forces I had to deal with, or if my yin side was feminine and my yang side was masculine because both were prominent parts of my life. Yang flourished because he had to early in my life and yin did the same when she finally had a chance to live and exist. I found this description from “Wikipedia” which backs up my theory:

“In Chinese creation theory, the universe develops out of a primary chaos of primordial qi or material energy, organized into the cycles of yin and yang, force and motion leading to form and matter. "Yin" is retractive, passive, contractive and receptive in nature in a contrasting relationship to "yang" that is repelling, active, expansive and repulsive.” It described me completely.

Yin and yang caught me chasing my tail as I would run back to the mirror as quickly as I could to put on a dress, make-up, and convince myself how pretty I was. It was yang’s primary form of escaping any potentially troublesome situations. As I always explain, coming to terms with all of this caused great torment, and now I wished I had someone to at least discuss it with except the one good therapist I was fortunate to be placed with at the Veterans’ Administration in Dayton, Ohio. She was understanding and even had a basic understanding of the LGBTQ community, so I did not have to educate her at all. However, we did not ever get into the clash of my yin and yang genders. On the plus side of our therapy, she never tried to equate any of my bi-polar depression issues with my need to express my yin side of myself.

Ironically, I think my yang side was very active and expansive in pushing my yin into the world. He provided the life lessons I needed to get out and push my gender envelope by learning new things. Without him, the initial exploratory trips to the regular venues I established myself in as a novice transgender woman would have never happened. So many nights I sat in my car for what seemed like forever before I summoned my courage to go inside.

On the other hand, it was yang who did his best to ensure his male world would never be taken away and he made a strong, experienced adversary. The problem became was how I was ever going to join my yin and yang together and form hopefully a good transfeminine person. The answer was I never had to really give up all the life which yang brought to the table. It turned out, I still was able to follow my love of sports, all the way to keeping my sexuality when lesbians took over my life. Altogether the entire process of joining my yin and yang proved to be easier than I thought. I just needed the courage to do it.

It would be too easy to say all transgender women and transgender men suffer from yin and yang gender problems, but the idea may go along way towards explaining what we feel to an outsider. It is far out of my pay grade to predict what anyone may do when confronted with such complex gender problems a trans person has. In fact, when I go back to “Wikipedia”, it even mentions gender in this form:

“When pertaining to human gender, yin is associated to more rounded feminine characteristics and Yang as sharp and masculine traits”.

I don’t know about you, but the whole definition works for me, and I wonder why it has taken me so long to stumble upon it in my research. In some ways, yin and yang reinforces my idea that transgender people deserve a special place in the world. Not one of scorn and discrimination. Maybe the average person just needs to know more about us on a regular basis and not what they hear from politicians. But they can’t even govern well enough to keep our government open, so I can’t see much chance of that anytime soon.

Growing Like a Weed

 

Image from Marya Volk 
on UnSplash.

I was devastated when I outgrew all my mom’s clothes and I had no sister’s closets to raid for clothes. Where would I ever be able to find the feminine accessories, I needed to cross dress in front of the mirror. So, I had to rely on a little luck and a whole lot of creativity to get by. For example, I found a discarded cute stretch mini skirt just outside of the girl’s locker room at school which fit me, and I had it for years. The rest of my “collection” came from being able to do work around the house, and a rural newspaper route I had delivering papers. My parents loved the fact that I was so industrious without ever knowing the real reason why.

As I continued my ascent towards unwanted puberty and testosterone poisoning, sadly I continued to grow like a weed, making it less probable I could find any clothes to fit me. Somehow, I did by being very creative with my meager funds and having the courage to sneak out of my grandma’s house to secretly go shopping for clothes and makeup. As I always point out, we lived out of town, and the only way I had to get around was by my bike, unless I spent the night at grandma’s. Who lived close to downtown where we lived. I survived the clerks in the stores I went to and slowly became better at what I bought.

Through it all, I thought I would outgrow this portion of my life when all I wanted was to be a girl. Like a weed, it kept on growing in me and refused to go away. I went through the usual phases of gender dysphoria many of us go through. The heights of euphoria when I crossed dressed, and the lows when I was not able to. The pressure on me continued to build up until I took chances and dressed in a locked room with my brother around. Certainly, if I was discovered, my parents would have treated me with enough weed killer at a psychiatrist appointment to do me in. My parents’ eldest son wanting to be a girl would not have been tolerated.

Either I was better in hiding my cross dressing from them, or they chose to ignore it, because nothing was ever said to me, and I dodged any trips to therapy where they knew nothing about gender dysphoria and would refer to me as being mentally ill.

The older I became, the more my weed sprouted and refused to go away. In fact, when the internet era began and we bought our first computer, it gave me the chance to research what sort of a weed I had. Very quickly I learned my early ideas were correct and I was much more than a weekend cross dresser who was more or less wanting to look like a ciswoman as some sort of a hobby. In fact, I was transgender which was a new term back in those days. For the first time in my life, I found a label which fit me. I was not a cross dresser at all, nor was I a fully-fledged transsexual who wanted to run off and have genital realignment surgery. Through the computer I was even able to meet others similar to me for the first time in my life.

At that point, I began to realize my weed was not a weed at all, it was turning out to be more of a late blooming flower which had to be explored and nurtured. As  I began to explore the new feminine world I was in, I discovered how complex ciswomen had it in their lives and what affected them. I can use my second wife as an example of how badly a woman could feel when her husband wants to run off and be a woman. Often without having the knowledge to do it. I felt sorry for my wife, and we fought often, but there was nothing I could do about my new flower in my life. It was not out of control as much as it was me and I refused to confront it. Long story short, she did not live long enough to experience the transfeminine person I had become and that was a shame because like it or not, she had a lot to do with the new feminine me.

Now I feel sorry for all those toxic men and ciswomen who can not seem to find their way out of their weed patch. Growing a beautiful new flower is the only way to go as you live your life as a transgender woman. Now I know why my old male self never liked flowers.

 

 

Not a Fetish...A Lifestyle

 

Image from UnSplash. 

I am still always amazed when a bigot or uneducated person thinks a transgender woman dresses as a woman as some sort of a fetish.

In my case, I realized the feminine clothes and makeup I was wearing were secondary to the real reason I was doing it. I wanted to be a woman, or as close as I could come to being one because I knew there were certain things I could never do such as give birth. As I progressed through the years, however, I found I could find my own path to womanhood and follow it. I would have no part of thinking I was involved in a fetish at all. I was different. Little did I know how different I would turn out to be.

Initially, I judged a ciswoman’s life from what I observed, since I was not allowed into experience more. When all you have is a one-sided view, all you get is a shallow result. All I could see was the pretty clothes, shoes and hair that the women around me had. Why did I have to be stuck in my same old shirt and tie when my cousins at Christmas got to wear their new velvet dresses, shiny black shoes, and creamy tights. I was always so disappointed when we left for the trip home, and I dreamed of the day I could be a woman.

For many reasons, I took my time getting to my dream world. It was almost fifty years later when my wife Liz and I took in a Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Christmas concert, and I was the one who needed to come up with the most beautiful semi-formal gown I could to blend in with the other ciswomen and enjoy the evening, I did as I thrift shopped diligently until I came up with an attractive, sparkly gown in my size. Happily, I brought it home and it worked well as I blended right in. Without a fetish in sight.

The only time I had to deal with being a fetish object was when I first came out into the public out of my closet and tried online dating. At first, all was pretty quiet on the dating front until I began to try the “man seeking man” sites. Since I never kept my transgender status a secret, I began to be flooded with men who wanted to wear my used panties or just meet up in a motel room some place. I even had a couple of men who wanted me to dress them up as a woman. Naturally, I turned down all those requests and was stood up often when I required meeting a man in a public location of my choice. Even though I was intensely lonely, I knew I was more than a fetish object and had to be safe in the new world I was in.

The longer I followed this route, the more I knew I was headed towards a complete gender lifestyle change. My dream was more than a dream and it could be a reality if I tried hard enough to reach it. But first I needed to change who I was trying to reach in the world. When I started out, I thought men would be my focus. All the way to having one woman friend tell me to get a banana and practice. (I will let your imagination do the rest.) As I progressed though, I discovered the opposite was true, in order to make it in life, I needed to first be accepted in the world of ciswomen. Who made it a practice of looking me over from head to toe when I went out in the world. They taught me how to be better, because I was certainly not a fetish object to them. I was locked into a scary, exciting new transfeminine lifestyle.

When I became a regular in certain venues, it helped me jump the gap I was experiencing when someone just saw me for the first time and thought I was a man in a dress. When they saw me for the second time or more, they began to realize I was a lifestyle, no matter what I used to be. The world opened for me, as well as the ciswomen around me who taught me I did not need validation from a man to feel good about myself.

As day-to-day transgender women, we do face the improbable battle with trans porn in the world. Men think we are all like women they see in videos, and magazines. When the men find out we are not the fetish objects of their desire, some react violently. Trans women have enough threats to face without the extra problems of trans porn.

As soon as the government leaves us alone and realizes we are just living our lives, not as fetish objects, the world will be a better place to live. Our transgender reality is what we are fighting for.

 

 

 

Be Safe rather than Sorry

 

Toxic male from UnSplash

Before I begin this post, I have a disclaimer. I did not follow what I preached many times when I opened my dark gender closet door and ventured out into the public. I broke many unwritten rules I knew were true.

I will say, the times when I came out were much different than today. Not so much kinder and gentler to transgender women and trans men. Mainly, what I am referring to is the person at the top ruining the nation we have, and I don’t have to mention who he is. Basically, he is the top toxic male who empowers all the other toxic males who potentially can give us trouble. There is a real difference in just being laughed at all the way to being physically attacked.

In my case, as I always mention, my initial problem was drawing attention to myself rather than learning how to blend in with other women. I was fortunate I grew out of that phase quickly before I got into trouble other than just being laughed at.

Another of the main issues I encountered was how I was presenting myself once I was fairly confident, I could get by. What I mean was I was going out primarily as a single woman. Which is primarily something ciswomen just don’t do. They believe there is strength in numbers I just did not have. To make up for it, I tried to make sure I did not sit down next to a man if I could help it, and if there just happened to be a vacant seat, I tried to mark it is as mine. What I tried to do was use my cell phone as my major prop. Especially if it was during the warm weather months when I could not throw my jacket over the seat next to me and reserve it. Often, I would act like I was texting a potential friend on the phone who was going to join me. Anything to throw a toxic male off my path.

 I learned quickly when I discovered how much nonverbal communication went on between women that men knew nothing about. One night I had a prime example when a toxic man tried to strike up a conversation with me at one of the places, I was a regular at. When he did, I received a nonverbal warning from one of the bartenders I knew about him, so I rapidly left the venue before anything happened.

All of those methods I used helped me to survive in a new exciting world as I left the gay venues behind me and started to learn what the real world was all about. All very important points if I was ever going to make it to my dream of living as a transgender woman. My learning experiences turned out to be tremendous.

As I said, times have changed today and so much more is at stake for all of us. Whereas a couple years ago, a stranger would be less likely to say anything to you. These days, all of that has changed. There is more pressure on all of us to put our best foot forward as transfeminine people. I always mention the weight I lost when I first came out. Which helped me to buy more stylish clothes and obviously look better. At the same time, I began a very serious skin program which started every day after I shaved. I was doing as much as I could to improve my overall feminine self. All of it gave me confidence to move forward, which I needed badly.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention the loss of your male personal security when you enter a new feminine world. Don’t take chances with your security by doing the things cisgender women already know. To the best of their ability, they try not to park in dark unmarked areas unless they have strength in numbers. As I read, in some areas, women even have to guard their drinks from toxic men trying to drug them. Can you imagine that? Well, you have to when you go through a male to female transition.

This entire post urges you to be on your game when you come out. Among other things, be careful how you carry your purse in crowded areas. It all adds a level of acceptance as a trans woman which goes far past your basic appearance which of course is important too.

In todays’ world, it is important to know your circumstances at all times, not unlike a cisgender woman who learned what to do around toxic males. Look at it this way, you will be a more complete woman ready to earn your place in today’s world.

 

 

No Way to Solve a Problem

 

Image from Babi on UnSplash.

When I discovered my true gender issues that were disrupting my life, I needed to try to solve the problems they created.

In order to do it, I set out on a lifetime journey of discovery. Like most of you, I began my explorations in my mom’s clothes and even tried my hand with her makeup samples. My mirror often lied to me and told me I presented as a pretty girl. Of course, in my pre-teen years before testosterone began to change me, I had an easier time of looking the best I could as a young girl.

When testosterone came along with puberty my problems became real. At the same time, I was becoming better at hiding my collection of feminine clothes I found and was able to buy from my meager allowance. I became very resourceful when it came to my cross-dressing desires, as I even resorted to a cheap Halloween costume wig to get me by for years until I could finally afford to buy one.

As I chased my feminine tail from one close call to another with my family, I wondered why I was cursed with the gender problems I had. In addition, I felt as if I was the only one who had them. I was trapped in a male dominated family who would never understand a boy who deeply wanted to be a girl. My only choice was to keep trying the best I could to solve my problem.

It took me years to realize my so-called problem was more of an opportunity than anything else. But first of all, I needed to face my problem woman to man. No more of my second wife telling me to be man enough to be a woman. It turned out, I was man enough to be a transgender woman, but it was going to be a real battle. By this time in my life, I had accumulated quite a bit of male privilege I knew I had to lose in order to be successful. Basically, for a while, my female self’s main strengths where she felt so alive and natural when given a chance to shine.

As she took advantage of her time in the public’s eye, almost all of my problems seemed to melt away, and I began to feel having the opportunity to experience both binary genders up close and personal in my life was not a problem at all. I just made it one due to my inability to deal with it. I just had too many gender obstacles to overcome. I had accumulated too much male baggage I doubted I would ever be able to live without. It turned out, I could live without most of them, and surprisingly, I could bring some of the baggage along. My prime example was my lifetime love of sports, which I found a group of cisgender women who were as serious about sports as I was, so I was able to fit right in and even have fun.

The new and improved me proved I had lived most of my life as a man as a lie. All the time I spent worrying about wearing dresses and makeup was a waste of time. I had my whole life backwards. My wife was right; I was not man enough to be a woman for the longest time. Once I was though, I never looked back. I can’t say I was prepared for all the changes I was about to make; I was excited about the opportunity I was given to make them. Which most people never get.

It was certainly never a way to solve a problem; I learned the hard way.

 

Change was Coming

 

JJ Hart

As I grew into myself, I learned the truth. Change was coming if I liked it or not.

Change was one of the reasons I loved the fall season so much. As the weather cooled off and football came on, I could go through my feminine wardrobe and see what I could keep and what had to be discarded. Plus, I can’t forget Halloween which of course is the cross dressers’ national holiday in October.

Sadly, as the leaves began to change and fall from the trees, the whole time was bittersweet for me. The worst fall I could remember was when I was on a six-month delay to join the Army and I was working at a small radio station in Bowling Green, Ohio. If you are not familiar with that part of northwest Ohio, it is very flat to the point that any hills are manmade. One night, I was just driving around feeling sorry for myself as I looked ahead to Army basic training and I was so sad as the leaves blew in front of me. If I could have cried, I would have, but tears were nearly impossible for me in my male pre-HRT days. Similar to everything else in those days, I internalized my feelings and tried to move on as deep down I knew change had to happen.

During that time, I almost outed myself to my roommates in the apartment I was staying in until I left for basic. On one trip home, I brought back one of my favorite outfits along with a wig and makeup to Bowling Green. One day when I left, I assumed I had hidden my belongings well enough to not be discovered but I was wrong, and one night when I was preparing to surprise a male visitor to the apartment, after I went to work of shaving my legs and face, I checked for my clothes, and they were gone. I certainly thought, for a while change was coming then it was not. No one said a word to me and very soon, I was off to play soldier anyway so nothing else mattered.

Back in those Vietnam War days, basic training was an intense team building experience when a few drill sergeants needed to try to get a bunch of raw recruits ready for possible combat. During this time, the only way I could keep my girl self-alive was to bury her deeply in my subconscious mind, So, when we were on long forced marches around Ft. Knox, I made sure I thought about the well-being of my girl and the changes we would go through after my military service was finished.

Looking back at the three years I served; the time now seems like a blur and when I was discharged, I came really close to making a big change then by picking my future wife up at the airport cross dressed as my transfeminine self. I even went as far as hinting as such when I wrote her a letter. (Remember those?) Again, my male self-won out and I decided not to, and my big change had to go back to coming again. I did not have the courage yet to face my gender truth and took the easy way out and went back to accepting all the male privileges I had earned.

It was not until I became a parent and had reached my thirties did change to me become a real priority. I will always remember my thirtieth birthday being my hardest because I still hadn’t decided what I was going to do with my life. Sure, I had employment and financial issues to be aware of but again the underlying big elephant in the room was what changes would have to happen with my gender. I knew it was never going to be easy to present well as a woman, and I needed to work extra hard to earn whatever passing grades I could achieve in the public’s eye. Once I made the mental changes to proceed, much of my work became cosmetic in nature.

I was able to move the elephant aside and set about learning what it would take me to really live life as a transgender woman and not just be the “Pretty, pretty princess” my second wife called me. As change set in, I learned very few trans women or women at all live the life of a princess and I had a lot of work to do to put my male life behind me.

The last major change I put myself through was the hormonal one when I started gender affirming hormones. The HRT allowed me to sync up my external and internal selves and live a more productive life as a transfeminine person.

Dressing for Success

 

Image from Mohammad Nadir
on Unsplash. 

During my earliest days when I was forced into being a boy, anytime something negative or even challenging happened to me, I would run home and seek solace in my soft and colorful feminine clothes.

Soon I called the cross dressing I was doing, dressing for success. Mainly because I felt better as I did it. The sad part was, very soon the feelings of gender euphoria went away, and I was back in my unwanted male world where I was expected to succeed. During that time in my life, I was able to barely keep my head above water and still slowly improve my feminine basics in such things as the makeup arts. I guess all those hours of watching my mom apply her “face” as she called it, came back to help me. This was the 1950’s when women took their appearance much more seriously than today. All women were expected to dress for success.

As I barely stayed afloat with my cross-dressing challenges, it soon became more evident to me that there was much more going on with me than met the eye in the mirror as I tried to appreciate myself. It was about that time, when the internet showed up, and I was able to research terms such as gender dysphoria and transgender. Suddenly, I discovered who I might be and certainly found I was not all alone. It all started to make sense why my urge to cross dress never really seemed to go away. It was always with me in the back of my mind.

Soon, as I joined the world as a novice transgender woman, dressing for success largely depended on if I could go out into the world and blend in. I began the easy way by trying my hand with shopping mall clerks who for the most part were only nice to me for the money I needed to spend so I could be more fashionable and feminine. From there, I branched out to challenge myself by stopping to eat lunch and face servers one on one to see how I did. I did well, and very rarely did I have to run home and wonder what I did wrong and go back to my gender drawing board. I did not realize it but what I was doing was replacing my mirror time with time in front of the public. A very valuable learning experience as I discovered venues such as coffee shops, bookstores and even antique malls where I could shop and relax.

Each experience helped me to learn more about myself as a transfeminine person and then dress for success from it. To quit being so flamboyant with my wardrobe and wigs became my new goal as I was settling into my new life. People began to know me quicker, so I needed to be better in my approach to dressing for success. I learned I did not have to lose any of the enjoyment I experienced as a trans woman; I just needed to follow the lead of the cisgender women around me. I did not necessarily have to dress down for the grocery store and up when I mixed with the professional women out for a drink, but it helped me to feel better and relax. Plus, heels and hose would have certainly not worked when my lesbian friends, and I got together.

At times I even took my dressing for success to the extremes to be able to judge what the public was thinking of me. I used to wear my best sunglasses so that strangers could not see my eyes and tell I was looking at them, but were they looking at me? And one of my favorite “props” to use when I went out to be alone was my cell phone which I always had handy when I turned out to be the only woman at the bar. That way, I was trying to show anyone else I had someone else on the way, and I was saving their seat.

To be sure, dressing for success as a transgender woman was always a more complex process than doing it as a man. From undergarments to accessories such as jewelry, wigs and purses, women naturally lead a more layered life which can be reflected in the way they dress. I certainly had many more compliments on my outfits as a woman than I ever did as a man. Primarily, it was because it was something men never do and often, many cisgender women used compliments as simple conversation starters when they were curious about me.

As with all cisgender women, dressing for success is something transgender women must learn. The problem being we come from such a vastly different background to do it. Almost none of trans women had the benefit of peer pressure and a mom to guide us through the initial makeup process. Our workbooks were blank when we started our gender journeys. Playing catchup was not a fun game to play for me as I found making up my face was different than painting model cars. Most certainly, dressing for success was a lifelong experience for me.