Transgender Habitation

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 Every so often I receive a comment to a post so profound I just have to share it. This is one of those comments from "Mdanastrauss" concerning the "Transgender Trial by Fire" post which should be repeated:

"The goal of attaining womanhood is not solely or even for the most part about clothing or mannerisms. It is about how you feel about your inner self and how we are mirrored by others as women. This can take years to fully inhabit your womanhood and can be just as daunting."

To take you back, the post partially dealt with the process of coming out in the world as a transgender woman. Or a person needs to walk a mile (or so) in those high heeled shoes before deciding they want to make such a bold move. As the quote said, transitioning to your authentic self  is so much more than walking in heels or finding that perfect dress. 

I can not repeat enough how females are not born women. The same as trans women they are socialized into it, as are men also. In my case, everytime I thought I was successful in my goal of being a quality presentable trans woman who could take care of herself, another wall became a priority to climb. One of the walls I had to climb was learning how to judge a room as a trans woman. Yesterday for example when I went with my wife Liz to her doctor's appointment, I was invited to go back with her to an in-take room staffed by women only. When I first got there I felt I needed to look each one of them in the eye and see if there was any negative reaction to me.  Once I was satisfied there wasn't, I could concentrate on what they were telling Liz. 

Then there was Thanksgiving last year when my first wife got me aside and told me I was really progressing in my transition. I totally appreciated her compliment since she knew me from my earliest cross dressing days as a self professed transvestite. Then there were the wonderful days when the hormone replacement therapy began to show results. Surely I thought, growing my own hair, breasts along with the softening of my skin would further all my feminine goals. Of course the answer to that was no it didn't help achieve my goals of living full time as a transgender woman. Hormones didn't help at all with learning to communicate with either gender as a woman. Nobody really warned me, nor did I give it much thought what would happen to me when I lost all my male privilege's. The only one privilege I had any idea about losing was the one pertaining to my personal safety. In my cross dressing days I encountered several occurrences when my well being was in question and I was lucky to escape unscathed.

I also have known several other transgender women and men over a period of time to the point when I could see firsthand how they developed the confidence following making the plunge to live as their authentic selves. Referring back to the comment, it took years to fully habitate their transgender selves. 

Life Long Experience or Bad Ass Transgender

I have seen recently several profiles of new followers (thank you) who refer to themselves as "bad-ass" old ladies. At the time I felt Wow! it must be nice to think of yourself in those words. One thing is for sure, it takes the amount of life experience to make such a claim. 

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Certainly, many cis-women have the multi layered experiences to make the "bad-ass" claim.  It has always been my thought that to become women, girls have to go through quite the process. Just one example would be the child birthing experience. Of course most girls have to deal with the fact they shoulder most of the burden when it comes to becoming pregnant. It's still too easy for an underaged boy to trot off into the sunset when there is an unwanted child to deal with. 

Then women through out their lives have to deal with being perceived as being second class citizens in the worlds of being paid less and overall treatment at the hands of men. It wasn't so long ago women finally earned the right to vote and much later to even apply for and receive their own credit card. Bad ass women remember all of that. So where does it leave transgender women? Our life long experience should lead us to a position where we deserve to be bad ass women also. I vividly remember the early days of my gender transition into a feminine world when I rudely was rejected by men. In any and all conversations. Through it all it was evident when I reached a certain level of the presentation I was seeking, I lost huge amounts of my former hard earned male privilege. Primarily I lost my intelligence as well as my personal safety. Ironically, I knew it was coming and didn't miss any of it. What I gained was worth it because it all felt so natural.

None of this of course happened over night. There were so many nights out with my friends engaging the public when I was able to learn what I would need to know later in life to survive. I needed to survive my basic battles just to use the women's restroom as one of my prime examples. Those alone should make huge contributions to my claim of being a "bad ass" old lady. Except I am not. Over the years remembering how testosterone made me feel as well as the new feelings of estrogen in my body mellowed me right out. When someone mis-genders these days, even though it hurts me deeply, I try to take the upper path and educate them to their gender mistake. 

Life long experiences as a transgender woman have made me a better person. Not so much more of a bad ass. Who else is able to cross the gender frontier and live to write about it. Plus, to be bitter at all would negate a life long experience of learning. I do respect those who describe themselves as "bad ass old ladies" and prefer to make them my friend rather than an enemy.  One never knows what is going to happen next. 

Selling Transgender Lemonade

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You have probably have heard of the saying "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade". Many times it seems we transgender women and trans men have had more than our fair share of lemons. A frequent example I use is when during my earliest days of life I woke up in the morning wondering if I was still a boy and why did I have to be. Similar to so many of you , I wasn't given any other choice but to try to carve out an existence in a gender I didn't feel comfortable in. Be-grudgingly I took the gender lemons I was dealt and learned the hard way how to make lemonade. 

The hard way, I learned to exist. I learned to play sports to keep the bullies away and add to my masculine act. I acquired and tried to work on a few muscle cars such as the now classic Pontiac GTO. I did my best also to date a few girls who I had more of a secret interest in being them rather than having any sexual interest, Even with that, I managed to perform well enough as a man to father my daughter later in life. As was to be proven later, she was the ultimate in making a tasty drink from the lemons I was given.

All in all, I can not stress enough how difficult we trans folk lives can be. Crossing the gender frontier can be brutal as we chance losing our lives as we knew them. Family and friends can and do reject us as our new authentic selves and we can even lose our jobs and livelihoods. It is all a very difficult journey which can lead to a very sour drink or lemonade. 

It is also very easy to feel so sorry for ourselves to even give up on life or even de-transition our gender. Lemons can be brutal to deal with, especially for those who weren't so called 'naturals" in the transition process. Testosterone poisoning is very difficult to overcome. Both externally and internally. It is tough to finally align our internal gender to match our external selves which the world sees. In my case it took doses of feminine hormone replacement therapy to finally help me to present more authentically as a woman in the world. As my skin softened, my hair and breasts grew, it became easier to have the confidence to go forth in the world. My number of lemons grew as I entered the never-never land of gender androgyny. My second puberty as I entered my version of womanhood even involved the uneasy introduction of sore breasts, hot flashes and even hips. 

In many ways, we transgender women and trans men even are able to sell the lemonade they have created. Unless you have transitioned very well and were blessed with a small body, at some point in time you most likely will be in the position to be the first trans person another person has ever encountered. It's a difficult position when you are seemingly clearing the way for another person similar to you gender wise who will come after you. You could say if your lemonade was good, the public will have a tendency to have a favorable response to the transgender community as a whole.

The fact remains that fair or not we all have been given our fair share of lemons in life. It's up to all of us to sell a good and refreshing transgender lemonade.