Being Accommodating...Not Intimidating

 

Image from Billie
on UnSplash.

Being accommodating versus intimidating was very difficult for me as I transitioned from male to female.

It was all part of learning a new feminine world and escaping the male bonds I had suffered so long from. What happened was, I was thrust into a male dominated world in which if I was ever going to survive, I would have to play the intimidation game of life. That way, I could stand a very good chance of keeping the bullies away as I matured. It did not hurt that I developed into a larger slightly above average sized male person (which I hated) but again when I added sports into my life’s mix kept the doubters away from my masculinity. In fact, I needed to play that intimidation card well into life and used it before I transitioned into a transfeminine world. Intimidation became easy to use for me, and I counted it as one of my male privileges even though I stopped short of ever being a toxic male because I respected all women so much. But it worked well with the male kitchen crews I needed to manage in the busy restaurants where I worked.

The problems began with my basic personality outlook I had been forced to live so well when I began to try to join a world which was largely controlled by ciswomen, not cismen as I always thought was the case. Women just found unique ways always to work around males and their drama. And here I was in the middle of a new world just trying to find my way successfully.

I felt it most intensely when I was forced into communicating one on one in the world with other women. I found I was unprepared and initially just tried to keep my mouth shut, which turned out to be exactly the wrong move to make. Here I was trying to make new friends in a feminine world without talking? How was that going to work. It did work. In exactly the way I did not want it to. If I did not express who I was, the other woman I was trying to communicate with just assumed I was being standoffish or in some way stuck up which was the last thing I wanted to do. So, I immediately trashed my male scowl and quiet behavior as a form of intimidation to keep people away and went to a more open form of interaction with the public which invited people in. In many ways, it was one of the most intense and scariest things I ever went through in my life. I was in uncharted territory for sure and even resorted to feminine vocal lessons to help my progress.

And then there was the experience I had with a small girl who startled me in a clothing store I was in. She ran around a rack of clothes and almost hit me and went running back to her mom saying something about a “Big mean woman.” Immediately I was relieved that she got the woman part right but right then and there decided to do more about the old male intimidation factor I was obviously still carrying with me. In no way did I want to go around scaring little kids.

Life went on, and so did I as I started to feel more secure in my new role behind the gender curtain. I learned that many ciswomen were just curious about who I really was in a world in those days dominated by day-time sensational talk shows such as Phil Donahue and Jerry Springer. Here I was. The real deal cross-dresser or transgender woman right in front of them to talk to and know that I was just a normal person like them after all. It all happened because I had the courage to let them into my world and turn my old male intimidation ideas off for good.

Perhaps the most intense topic in the intimidation versus accommodation discussion came from my initial introductions to the women’s restroom. It was the exact opposite from the men in many ways except the obvious. In the men’s room, you were expected to never make contact or acknowledge another man while in the women’s room just the opposite was true when a polite smile or greeting was the proper way to acknowledge another woman. It took me a little bit of time to get used to the change, but I did it quickly because I wanted to earn my women’s room privileges desperately. For obvious reasons, I was drinking a lot of beer.

I see intimidation versus accommodation as just another step in acclimating yourself into the feminine world. But you have to do it right to be accepted. You must be yourself behind the gender curtain you choose without becoming a doormat. As an outsider to transgender men everywhere, my thoughts are it probably is more difficult to assume an intimidation role in a male world. On the other hand, accommodation in the female world I was in was always an easier path for me to take. I just had to understand and react to anyone who was setting up to take advantage of me. I came away with plenty of claw marks up and down my back from unfortunate experiences I had in a new (to me) passive aggressive ciswoman world. I learned often that a smile meant nothing in most situations when another woman was just sizing me up.

In the end, the whole experience just boiled down to very important experiences I needed to learn to finally make it out of my closet and into the world as a transgender person that other people would like to know and often my smile was the beginning of that process instead of my stay away old male scowl. The fun part often was seeing the results from the amount of learning I needed to do in my stubborn head to make it happen.

As always, thank you very much for joining me along my gender path and I hope you gained something from my mistakes. Any comments are always appreciated!

 

 

 

 

Imagination or Knowledge

 

JJ Hart. 

In the very beginning of my transgender journey, I often wondered if it was all just part of my very active imagination. Perhaps it was all part of me secretly hoping all of my gender issues would magically go away.

Of course, my gender dysphoria never went away until much later in life when I faced up to it and all I was doing as I viewed myself in the mirror cross-dressed as a girl, was slowly instill the knowledge my trans desires were not going anywhere. In fact, back in those days, the transgender term had not even been invented to use at all. I was living in the pre-internet “dark ages” of information. All I had was the well-worn issue of “Transvestia” from Virginia Prince to connect me at all to the world of people who had the same gender issues as I did. Closets were impossibly dark and lonely back then.

It took the knowledge of my situation to finally break into the light and see the world as a small part of who I really was. I finally used my issue of “Transvestia” to locate nearby mixers which were headlined for heterosexual transvestites only. If that was true or not, I found a diverse mixture of people attending which ranged from beginning cross-dressers all the way to impossibly feminine transsexual women heading for gender surgeries. The frustrating part for me was that even with the choice of individuals I felt close to, I could not find a group to hang out with. I was frustrated that I had come this far to still feel this completely different. The light was there, but it was very dim due to my complete misunderstanding of who I really was.

The one fact I was waking up to was that none of what I was feeling was my imagination. My gender issues ran very deep and would be very difficult to solve. As I always point out, since I was so busy being an active man at the time, the conflict was real. Once I realized what I was really battling. On the plus side, about this time, the internet became part of my life, and I was able to see and even reach out to others like me. It was all well and good until my second wife, who was more computer savvy than me, caught on to what I was doing and tried to stop me. After I used my imagination to find ways around her, I was still able to build knowledge of what it would look like if I was actually able to enter the world as a transgender woman.

Once I began to really explore the world as a novice transfeminine person, I really had to use my imagination to succeed in getting out every spare moment I had from work. I would purposely schedule myself off from my work on the days I knew my wife was going to be working late just so I had free time for exploration, is a prime example. In that case, imagination became knowledge as I actually began to explore what I needed to explore behind the gender curtain. Even to the point of making new friends who had no knowledge at all of my previous male life which I was trying hard to do away with.

More importantly, as I sat myself up for success in venues I really wanted to be in as a woman, imagination further faded as knowledge sat in as I was able to fill out my gender notebook. No more gay venues for me where I was treated as a drag queen and even ignored when I tried to order a drink, all the way to be treated as a regular where I wanted to be was the knowledge that I needed to succeed further.

During this time also, I spent a lot of time soul searching about if I was doing the right thing about attempting to femininize myself even more with my new lifestyle and going even further my seeing it I could be approved for HRT. Mainly because I felt so natural as my feminine self among ciswomen, I thought I would take the path of least resistance and continue building knowledge of taking the gender leap I was considering. In essence, I was taking all the imagination that the young girl in front of the mirror away and replacing it with the knowledge of what I could expect living as a fulltime transgender woman. I needed all the knowledge I could get because the risks in jumping the gender border were so great. It all meant saying goodbye to all the male privileges I had worked so hard to build up. Not to mention the extra pressure of the possibility of giving up spouse, family, friends and employment as I knew it. I needed to be prepared to burn it all and start over.

What I ended up doing was, hedging my bets a little by making new friends in a new feminine life which I hoped would soften the fall if I decided to jump off the cliff and never go back to my male self. At this point, I always mention all the women who helped me along but somehow, I miss the most important one, my inner female who came through in a big way when she was allowed to run my life for a change. Once I gave her the platform to flourish, there was no imagination of the path she was going to take.  She took the highroad without all the evilness you see in some fulltime transgender women. She just wanted to enjoy her life and be an active part of the world and the LGBTQ community. And she wanted to help others by writing about her experiences.

Which brings me full circle to where I am today. No imagination, just the knowledge of experience to get me by in the world.

 

 

 

Gender Lost and Found

Image from Jon Tyson on UnSplash.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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