You're so Vain

 

Image from Ava Sol
on UnSplash

Expressing yourself to the world as a transgender woman carries with it a certain amount of vanity.

Until you begin to relax in your new feminine world, I think you need to obsess over every detail of your exterior appearance. Since we all have such a vast amount of catching up to do to compete with other ciswomen in the world, details matter. Perhaps one of the first lessons you learn is how competitive the world is when you are a trans woman. Ciswomen are every bit as competitive as men but in certain areas not readily visible to the male gender.

For example, the major question comes to mind that do women dress for men or for each other. Sadly, we never had the input of mothers, sisters or girlfriends saying, “are you wearing that?” I know if I had that sort of input, it would have saved me a lot of embarrassment when I first began to go out into the public’s eye. It was a resounding yes for me when I learned who women really dress for…themselves. My problem was, my male self-kept getting in the way and had me dressing like a trashy teen girl. All poorly concealed in a testosterone poisoned male body. It was no wonder I was creating negative attention and getting laughed at. When all I was doing was trying to present myself well the best way I knew how.

After I began to learn and change my thought patterns concerning fashion and makeup, I began to have success in the world. So much so, that on occasion (when I was so vain and did everything right) I received a compliment or two from a cisgender woman. One thing was for sure; it takes a woman to know the work it takes to perfect a public image with makeup and fashion. Plus, I needed to be better than the average woman because I was working at the whole image after I started as a man.

It turned out, having to be better in the world worked well with my increasing source of transfeminine vanity. All I thought of was how much better I could look if I tried just the right foundation and mascara, as I haunted the many thrift stores, I went to looking for just the right piece of clothing to add to my wardrobe of feminine clothes. My personal newfound male to female femininization vanity was in full force as I was having fun. In reality, I saw nothing wrong with being vain in how I appeared as my authentic self, until I clashed with my second wife.

She rarely wore makeup or dresses at all and did not like the way I presented myself at all. On the rare occasions we went out together as women, I tried to tone down the amount of makeup I was wearing along with putting on my most conservative clothes. All because I wanted her approval, which I never got. If I wore any less makeup, I might as well say to hell with it and go out with her as my old male self. I was stuck between the rock and the hard place as far as my feminine vanity was concerned.

As I progressed with my makeup and fashion experience, I understood how much work I would have to put out to achieve the transgender goals I wanted. I knew I would never be able to transform my old male self into the prettiest girl in the room but on the other hand I could present well enough to get by. Everything that I was doing at that point just became a blur of change. Especially when I was approved for gender affirming hormones or HRT. As my skin softened, hair and breasts grew, it all was a welcome addition to all the work I had done all those years to just survive in the world. As I wrote yesterday, just not having to wear a wig anymore was a huge deal for me since I had no male pattern baldness to contend with. All of a sudden, I needed to contend with a new form of vanity when I went to beauty parlors to have my hair done just a certain way.

During all the years it took me to fully come out into the world as a trans woman. I learned the true meaning of competing with ciswomen in the appearance arena. Once I did. I needed to move ahead to the larger context of being allowed to exist in women only spaces by the alpha-female gatekeepers. In many ways, my second wife was an alpha female who never let me in, so I wonder what would have happened if she had lived long enough to see/know the person I am today. One thing is for sure; I am no longer the “pretty, pretty princess” she used to call me because I have paid my dues as a transgender woman.

All I know is I did go through my periods of extreme selfishness and vanity to arrive where I am today and I don’t know if there is any other way to go down the path, I ended up taking. Changing a gender is such an intense way to live, especially when you started with so much success as a male that it took me a massive effort to change. Not to say, all of the effort was not enjoyable but at least, it was interesting and challenging to see behind the gender curtain.

For many of us stuck in our own form of gender dysphoria, vanity is just one aspect of our larger need to survive.

 

 

 

Letting Things Happen versus Making things Happen as a Trans Woman

Image from Mahdi Chaghari
on UnSplash.

Perhaps you have heard a football coach talk about slowing the game down and simplifying it for his players. Of course, I had to equate it with being a transgender woman or trans man when I heard it.

I began to think of all the stressful days I spent in front of the mirror as my perception of a pretty girl, then taking my image public and into the world. For years it never occurred to me that I was trying too hard. I was attempting to micro-manage myself to ensure every little aspect of my feminine image was correct. Here is an example of what I was doing wrong. On any given day, my makeup and fashion were on point, and I was confident about my presentation. Then as I was out trying it all in the public’s eye, I would either catch myself walking hunched over like a linebacker or worse yet, trip over my own heels and almost fall. It took me quite a while to realize what I was doing wrong and try to change it.

For me, relaxation and confidence were the key to real gender change. I was letting it happen rather than making it happen. I discovered it was so much more pleasurable for me when it happened that way. After that I could take my game to a different level such as communicating one on one with the world for once as my authentic feminine self. A key point I had to do if I was ever going to make it to my dream of a male to female femininization project.

I also established bucket lists of things I wanted to do as a transgender woman and was able to accomplish most of them except a couple of ill-thought-out visits to women’s rooms when I had the police called on me. Letting it happen surely did not work for me then, but I recovered and gained my restroom privileges in other venues I went to. Fortunately, the police had better things to do than mess with me and I went on my way without further problems. That was years ago and I haven't had any problems since. That was a good thing because the restroom privilege was something that I needed more than wanted.

I cannot stress enough about how much I had to learn during this period of my life when I was making a serious push towards transitioning from a serious cross dresser all the way to a transgender woman. When in reality, it was mostly a mental transition, it was still a very important one to make. I have a difficult time explaining it but all of a sudden, something clicked in my mind, and I knew another change was needed. I was so more than a man wanting to look like a woman.  I wanted to be a woman and feel like one as close as I could. That was when I successfully set out to socialize with cisgender women just to see if I could. I conquered my fear and found out I could add another layer of just letting it happen versus making it happen.

By this time, my muscle memory had improved so much as a trans woman that it became natural to me. So much so in fact that I had to be careful I was not too effeminate when it came to me working my male job and living with my wife. It finally became too much for me to juggle, and I needed to put it down before it was too late and I became more self-destructive than I already was. What I did was, attempt to do more things as a transfeminine person and do as less as humanly possible as my male self. It is one of the reasons I took so long to transition, because of the need to work around a disapproving wife and male self which was desperately hanging on.

You regulars know this part of my story when my wife tragically passed away. Which left only my weakened male self to resist any efforts at total domination from my inner female who had waited so long for her chance to live and write her own gender workbook. Little did I know she kept her own workbook up to date and was ready to go. If and when she had a chance to use it. Perhaps, your inner female is keeping a gender workbook also and you will not have as far to go to catch up when you get the chance to live your life.

I discovered too that letting it happen versus making it happen was mostly common sense. Even though the two main binary genders do things differently, they often operate in parallel universes which are the same and seem to be doing more so in the younger generations. I first learned up close and personal during my first girl’s nights out I went to. I was worried about what I needed to do to be able to interact with the group but then found they had just flipped the script from jobs and sports to family and friends with the women. Quickly I relaxed and started to let my inner girl flow, and I was fine with most of all the other participants except for one who I perceived as being a miserable person anyway. Who was unlikeable to me, and I left her alone.

I chuckle to myself when I think of how my football coach’s words would come back to help me in such a different way later in life. I guess it proves that you just cannot count on anything staying the same when it comes to gender. Perhaps that is a clue why the population at large knows nothing about us and we live parallel lives from both of them. Whatever it is, if you are in your path of gender discovery, you will certainly feel the change from making it happen to letting it happen.

 

                                                                                                                                          . 

Gender is a Basic Human Instinct

 

JJ Hart, Birthday Dinner.

One of the most basics of human instincts is gender. It comes with us at birth and is then (right or wrong) reinforced by our families. External factors kick in to put us in a tight gender box and keep us there. How we are treated as boys and girls, goes a long way in how our future is shaped. In my mind boys were always told to get out there and conquer the world while girls were coddled in a pretty world. It took me decades of interactions with ciswomen to learn that was not true. In their own ways, women face the same competitive challenges as men, just coming from different angles or perspectives. I told one of the experiences I had yesterday when I waded into the ciswomen’s world for the first time and discovered how brutal passive aggressive behavior could be.  

Examples include boys competing more physically with each other while girls learn to compete just as hard but in a more passive nature. One way or another, gender as an instinct is ingrained into us quite early in life and is difficult to change. One of the reasons transgender women and trans men are so misunderstood in the world today. Not to mention the fact that we are very rare, and very few people have ever met a transgender person. I know my parents from the “greatest generation” were not great enough with me to understand how their first-born son wanted to be their daughter. Taking a page from the great Christmas movie “A Christmas Story”, I never wanted the BB Gun that “Ralphie” wanted in the movie, but I got one anyhow. Instead of the baby doll I really wanted. All my gender instincts were kicking in although I was not sure I knew exactly what was going on, I knew something was definitely wrong.

It was not until I began exploring the public as a novice cross dresser or transgender woman, did I start to understand what was going on with my own gender instincts. Facing up to the fact I never belonged in the male world as an active participant at all never came easy for me. Mainly because I had worked so hard to survive in a gender I did not want to be. To make matters worse, I was becoming more of a success in the male world. Even though I was so self-destructive I kept tearing down all the successes I kept building up as soon as I achieved them.

In my case, I think the war I waged with my internal gender instincts was much worse than the battles I faced for acceptance as a transfeminine person in the public’s eye. Even though they were major hurdles, obstacles such as confidence and impostor syndrome were holding me back. It seemed no matter how successful I was in my new world, I still felt like an impostor or outsider looking in. It took me quite a while to overcome my doubts and feel like I had as much right as the next woman to be in the space I was in. Over and over, I felt I was growing up into the woman I was always destined to be. It was just taking me longer to do it because of many external factors such as a whole train load of male baggage I had managed to accumulate in my life.

Along the way too, I was becoming a keen observer of the public’s gender instincts. Primarily ciswomen who for some reason had no problem with me as men nearly completely left me alone. By doing so, I was able to read other women like I had never been able to do before. Slowly but surely, my life began to turn full circle. Instead of going out to be alone, I was going out to socialize with other women who were mainly lesbians. They taught me a whole different set of gender instincts, mainly revolving on where I stood with the other half of the population, men. While other transgender women I knew were struggling to be validated by a man, I was flourishing when I was validated by women. It obviously is not a world which worked for everyone, but it worked for me.

With all the help I was receiving, I made it to a point where I did not consider myself trans when I was out in the world. I was just me, and I had all the confidence to go with it. It took me over a half a century to completely figure out my gender instincts, but I did it with some powerful help such as HRT or gender affirming hormones. The meds I was approved for helped me to understand what ciswomen go through in their lives such as hot flashes and other effects of female puberty. When I tried to talk about it to my women friends all they did was laugh and say welcome to their world. What I could not say was how happy I was to be there.

Cracking the code of human gender instincts is very difficult to do because it is so deeply ingrained in all of us and in many ways, it is a selfish thing to do. It takes a special person to understand when you have to immerse yourself in the other binary gender to just survive in life. If you are blessed to have found such a person, be sure to cherish and hang on to them because they are so rare.

In the meantime, keep your head on a swivel and be on the outlook for ways to improve your gender instincts. It is a difficult process and never one to be taken lightly. For me, at least it was a lifetime journey to finally discover something I already knew I refused to accept. I had my gender identity totally backwards and ended up paying the price for years. Just because I was afraid to face myself.

 

 

Pose

 The television drama "Pose" has been around for awhile now. In fact it just premiered it's third season.

Here is a look at the show from Google :

"Set in the 1980s, `Pose' is a dance musical that explores the juxtaposition of several segments of life and society in New York: the ball culture world, the rise of the luxury Trump-era universe, and the downtown social and literary scene. Blanca forms a `house', a self-selected family that provides

 support to LGBTQ youth who have been rejected by their birth families. Damon is a dancer who joins Blanca's house. Together, they compete in the balls -- where house members challenge each other in various categories and are judged on their outfits, attitude, or dance skills -- against Blanca's former house mother, Elektra. Pray Tell is Godfather to the children who compete in the balls. Angel is a streetwalker who develops feelings for a new client, Stan, who has a loving wife, Patty. James Van Der Beek co-stars as Stan's boss, "

Of interest to us is the fact the show is produced by transgender icon "Janet Mock" (above right) and features several transgender actors. 

I watched it for the first time recently and was fascinated. Even by the reproductions of the New York drag balls. I have never been to anything close to a drag ball but have been to several fairly good sized parties which featured many drag queens. I remember the energy was palpable. 

One of my favorite characters is played by Indya Moore (right) who identifies as transgender and non binary. Preferred pronouns are "she/her" and "they/them". 

The show is on Sunday nights at 10pm EDT around here and airs on the "FX" network. I'm sure it's available on a streaming service too.

Out and Proud

Perhaps you have heard (no pun intended)  musician Ezra Furman has announced she is a transgender woman and Mom.

More from "Page Six":

“I wanted to share with everyone that I am a trans woman, and also that I am a mom and have been for a while now (like 2+ years),” she wrote. “About being a trans woman: for my own reasons I have been hesitant to use these words, especially the ‘woman’ word. I have often described myself as non-binary, which maybe is still true (I’m just gonna sit with that question for the moment).”

Furman, 34, explained that coming to terms with her identity was “complex” but added it’s “complex to be any sort of woman.”

Rose Montoya

 Rosalynne Montoya — who goes by Rose — is an Arizona-based, Hispanic, bisexual, non-binary transgender woman. 

Have You Seen "Big Sky?"

 From NBC:

"As a rising nonbinary and transgender actor, Jesse James Keitel was hesitant to audition for the role of Jerrie on ABC’s “Big Sky.”

Keitel, who uses she/her and they/them pronouns, felt there was something “murky” about the inconsistent character breakdown that cast doubt on the show’s ability to properly represent a transgender character. After landing the role, Keitel — the first nonbinary series regular on primetime television — was able to sit down with the writers and producers to craft the character into something that was much more representative of the contemporary queer experience.

On the new procedural drama from creator and executive producer David E. Kelley — about two private detectives (Kylie Bunbury, Ryan Phillippe) and an ex-cop (Katheryn Winnick) who team up to solve a kidnapping case in Montana — Keitel portrays Jerrie Kennedy, a transfeminine, nonbinary musician and sex worker abducted at a rest stop by truck driver Ronald Pergman (Brian Geraghty) for a potential sex trafficking ring. Keitel said they have been able to bring their own lived experiences to Jerrie throughout the season to rebuild the character’s appearance from the ground up."

There is more here as well as a picture below.

Big Sky

 This fall, most of the major network television shows have delayed filming schedules. One of the few who didn't was the "Big Sky" new release on ABC. Locally here it's on Tuesday nights. 

Of significance, the show features Jesse James Keitel (below),  who is making LGBTQ history as the first non binary regular actor in a lead role on prime-time television.

Previously, Keitel appeared in Alex Strangelove, Younger, and the Student Academy Award-winning film Miller & Son. Big Sky, created by David E. Kelley (Big Little Lies), centers on the hunt for an abductor of women in Montana. Jerrie, a transfeminine nonbinary artist and sex worker, is one of his targets.

Keitel, who uses they/them and she/her pronouns, said they hoped the story may “change some hearts and minds” among conservative viewers regarding nonbinary and transgender people. Television is “the most powerful medium we have right now,” Keitel said. “It’s accessible to so many people, people who normally wouldn’t get to experience a person like this.”