A Toxic Male?

Image from Jurien Huggins
on UnSplash.

As I transitioned from a male to a feminine life, I often looked back at my life as a guy to determine if indeed I was a toxic male in any way. 

Of course I immediately mentally recoiled when I thought I could be toxic towards women in any way. After all I had spent a considerable amount of time worshipping the women around me, wondering how it would be to experience just for an instance being a girl. How come I couldn't wear the pretty clothes and be the gender who was so admired by the other. The problem with me was, I went way past just admiring a girl sexually, all the way to wanting to be a girl physically.  

Did any of it make me a toxic male? No, I don't think it did. In fact, I think the opposite happened as I put women up on some sort of an impossible pedestal. By doing so, and adding the fact I was extremely shy, I never had much of a chance to interact with girls or women growing up at all. From my perspective, the feminine grass always looked so much greener. 

Since I was forced into the male camp, I needed to learn to exist and had to put up with sexist comments directed towards women from many of the guys I grew up with all the way to adult hood. Mixed in too were the bullies I needed to somehow co-exist with. I learned to bluster my way around the bullies without jeopardizing my inner transgender self to ridicule or worse. In order to do so, I participated in as many of the male activities of the day as I could such as sports and cars. It worked and I was left alone for the most part and I even dated a few girls along the way. Since it is prom season around here, I am always reminded of the two proms I went to in high school. Even though I was the perfect gentleman at the proms, I wonder if my dates thought perhaps I was a little too timid and took it personally. I will never know because one of my dates and first serious girlfriend before college later in life committed suicide years later when her husband left her. What a shame. 

As I started college and started to date more regularly, I really began to see the results of toxic males around me. Especially in the fraternity setting I was briefly in. Certain fraternities were expected to co-mingle and party with certain women and sororities only where I went to college. I found out very quickly I did not fit in with the frats social system. Which was a forerunner to me not fitting in with the strict layers I encountered at the first cross dresser - transvestite mixers I went to. I felt so out of place and the only toxic people I saw were the "A" listers who were doing their best mean girls high school impressions. Maybe their male toxicity was bleeding through. 

I completely learned how not to be a toxic male when I settled into a career in the restaurant business. Along the way, as I progressed into higher management positions, I needed to coexist increasingly with women. Both crew members and managers. I learned quickly female crew members had the tendency to build cliques (not teams like the men) to be successful and the women managers I knew had to be tough but fair to survive. I on the other hand needed to be on their side when it came to battling any toxic males at all. Looking back, I think male toxicity was the prime reason for letting someone go. Which included sexual harassment which is a topic for another blog post.

My only regret was I wasn't a more vocal advocate for women my entire life as a man. I could have certainly spoken up when another guy joked about a woman. My only excuse is I was so intent on hiding my interior feminine self, I was afraid to do more. Transgender women and trans men speak of the importance of allies speaking up for us. I feel the same way about standing up for women before I transitioned. 

Watching the Wrong Movie

 

Image from Mason Kimbarosky 
on Unsplash

Recently it occurred to me the biggest problem I had in life was, I was watching the wrong movie. 

The movie I was born into was simply the wrong one and I ended up not being able to escape from the theatre for too many years. It took me way too long to finally decide I was transgender and get on with it. The problems were not unique to me and ran deep within the transvestite or transsexual community. I wanted to be a pretty cheerleader instead of a football player, I wanted to wear the beautiful gown and be courted at prom. The list went on and on along with the wrong movie. Also, I spent hours daydreaming of how it would be to be a girl/woman along with hoping I would wakeup and be able to live my dream. 

As with all movies, the one I was living in had it's ups and downs. Even though I didn't want to experience a male existence at all, I was forced to and managed to find pockets of satisfaction when I was successful. The greatest one was when my daughter was born. The rest of the time, I was mainly locked in the wrong theater and forced to be part of the unwanted movie. It turned out during most of this time, I was working behind the scenes for when the movie ended and I could escape. During this time I managed to break out of my gender closet and begin to explore the world as my feminine self. The times I was successful at watching a new movie just helped me to wanting to see more of it.

The new movie was so interesting when I saw more I just knew I had been forced into the wrong theatre my entire life. The new movie featured the women I wanted so badly to become, if I could fit in and be accepted in the show. Many aspects were correctly pre-identified by me from my years of closely observing women. Such as, women were the high maintenance gender and nearly always on stage if they liked it or not. I needed to become used to the more or less constant attention from both genders. The part I could never pre-learn was how it would be like to really live my dream of being a fulltime transgender woman. The communication aspects alone of being in a new movie were scary to say the least. Not only did I feel I had to be equal to the cis-women around me, I had to be better to be allowed to continuing to watch the movie.

As we all know, movies change and have plot twists in the middle and being up to date on what I was watching became very important to me. Was I dressing to blend, how was my voice were all part of key elements I needed to face daily and not get rejected from the new movie I loved so much. As the movie unfolded it was clear I always should have had a ticket. Sadly, I did but I took so long to use it.

Another key to knowing I was finally watching the right movie was I never lost interest and haven't to this day. I love the new transgender movie I am in and try to live it to the fullest.

Prom Time

I have written before here in Cyrsti's Condo about my three very accepting grand children.  I am so proud of the diversity and acceptance my daughter has instilled in them.

For years my grand daughter has presented as androgynous. However, she took it to a very gender fluid height for this years' senior prom. Her high school, obviously accepts diversity too!

Check out her picture! To my knowledge she hasn't mentioned any preferred pronouns as of yet.

Wow! I'm so proud!!!

Prom Daze

I wrote a post here in Cyrsti's Condo perhaps two years ago revisiting my prom experiences and got blitzed by a couple readers.  Their problems seemed to be wrapped around the fact I went to Prom at all and was sort of bragging about it. For them to even think that represents a real failure on my part of communicating my thoughts.  To you international visitors, "Prom" is a spring ritual rite of teen passage-often involving more angst, expense and even pain than anything else.  In other words it's a formal dance, dinner etc.

I went to my junior and senior proms.  Interestingly, it's held against me now, by some who want to attach some sort of former male privilege to going.  I thought just the opposite was true.  As the guy, I had to find a date, not be the one in the pretty dress, and finance most of the evening.  Some "privilege", right?  I know now of course, the view from the girls side of the fence wasn't quite that green either.  She had to wait to get asked, obsess over finding the right dress and hope the clumsy boy (me) didn't gouge her trying to pin the corsage on or ruin her new shoes stepping on them while we danced.  Oh yes, I experienced another male privilege when I got cornered by my senior date's Dad, and told what not to do with his daughter.

Sadly, at least in my generation, the whole affair was set up for failure and we never knew it.  The popular kids socialized and won Queen and King contests, while the rest of us struggled along just by being there, or not going at all.  Today there is hope as more and more schools are being forced to open up their prom events to transgender, gay or lesbian students.  As with so many other things, the younger generation is doing a better job than we did, which is wonderful!

Oh yes, there are two side notes to my senior prom.  One is tragic because years later my date committed suicide following her second divorce.  Among other things, she was worried about her declining looks -she was a beautiful 40 something woman when she did it. Maybe her Dad should have spent more time building her esteem and not harassing me (No grudge though!). The other is fun in that the supper club we had dinner in that night years later became a gay venue.  I couldn't wait to go there and use the same bathroom the girls used that night - and I did and didn't pee down my leg!

So there you go kids, I hope maybe this time I was able to do do a better job of communicating what prom meant to me.

It's Prom Time!

Enjoy this seasonal post from a self professed Teen Drag Queen on the Cyrsti's Condo big screen. I love how things have changed since my prom days...before electric lights!