Swimming Upstream as a Trans Woman

 

JJ Hart. Pride image.
Ohio River in background.

I was very stubborn as I hung on to my male persona as long as I could. In the meantime, the struggle between my two genders was monumental.

Since I started life as a biological male, he sprinted off to an unfair advantage over my feminine self. Mainly because, like it or not, being male brought with it a series of benefits I would come to call male privilege. Even though it was hard to do, each time I was moderately successful as a boy I was rewarded. Even though, deep down, I did not want to be because I knew someday, I might have to give up all that hard earned male baggage to lead the life I always dreamed of, as a  transgender woman. Full time without any restrictions.

Along with being stubborn concerning my chances of ever living my transfeminine dreams, I was also very naïve when it came to having a grand plan on how it would ever happen. When I looked at the stream that crossed my gender path, at times it would become a river that was hard to cross to get to the feminine side I wanted to be on. There were times too, when I miscalculated the depth of the water upstream, I would have to face to get to the other side.

As the water subsided, and I could try to get out of my home mirror and into the world, I ran into new situations which would define parts of my life, and I would not know it yet. Such as the Halloween parties I went to as a woman and were immediately shunned by my male friends who were there also. Little did I know that later in life when I began to explore the world as a transgender woman, men shunning me would be a common theme. Ironically, at the same time, I was learning the opposite would happen with women. Particularly lesbian women. For the first time, the stream was busy pushing me in a way I never thought possible. It happened one of the nights I was a guest at the LGBTQIA+ diverse Columbus, Ohio parties I always went to.  That night a lesbian I had never seen before showed up with a friend and the attraction between us was real. We ended leaving and going to a big lesbian venue to see what was going on and we spent the rest of the evening getting to know each other, but I was still married at the time, and nothing ever came of seeing the first lesbian who was interested in me.

All I knew at the time was I was treading water as fast as I could just to stay afloat in the dual gender world, I was trying to live in. One big life jacket which was thrown at me was the attention I was receiving from gay and straight ciswomen. It meant I would never have to approach the potentially unpleasant situation of exploring my sexuality and I never had to go past the point of kissing men at all since most of them did not want to approach me. At any rate, I always thought I was never attractive enough for them, but when I reached an island as I was swimming upstream, I had the chance to pause and realize I did not need a man’s validation to make me a complete transgender person anyhow. There were plenty of fish in my sea and I needed destiny to lead me to one. Which it did with Liz who I later married and have been with well over a dozen years now.

Another thing my stream taught me was to never feel totally comfortable and rest much at all because something would come along and knock me back into the deep water. The problem was I was still catching up on the life that ciswomen grew up living, and it was very complex. I knew it would be, but sometimes I was just caught off guard and think did that really happen.

On the other hand, when I finally was able to relax with all that I had accomplished in my gender workbook, I was so much happier in life. I finally began to realize that I was never a man at all, just a woman trying to live her life from a totally different perspective than most anyone else. Then, it made sense to me why my life was always such a struggle because I had two powerful influences battling each other. The most powerful one had to finally win out, and my inner femininity won out.

If I had it all to do over again, I would have to tell myself to follow my instincts and stay out of the water before swimming upstream became exhausting and I almost went under for good.

I know I have many readers on different parts of their gender journeys looking for any guidance possible. All I can say is that at some point you need to be honest with yourself and decide to take the most natural path you can take. Maybe you can cross-dress enough to keep one foot in the stream and one foot out and that is OK too. I just could not do it that way, but that does not make it right or wrong for you.

For the most part, I still think society is still set up for men to succeed but that is changing. And, when you are a trans person continuing up your gender path, just consider the world is still in flux and the future is feminine no matter long the old white male dinosaurs hang on. Regardless, either way you must make your own way in your own gender stream, and you will have to expect at some point to swim against the current. It is just the nature of the beast we transgender women and transgender men must face in life.

Just be very careful and follow your true gender core and you can make it.

 

 

 

 

 

You Never Know until You Try

 

Image from Leo Visions
on UnSplash.

You never know until you try was drilled into me as a kid by my WWII generation parents whenever I was facing a potential difficult situation. Little did they know, their insistence on me trying to do the improbable would come back to haunt them in a very different way. Back in those days (in the 1950’s) gender issues were referred to as mental illness and any reference to their eldest son being mentally ill would have been frowned on, so I was stuck wondering if I was really a boy who wanted to be a girl.

The only thing I knew to do was to keep cross-dressing in front of the family’s full length hallway mirror. Imagining I was one of the pretty girls I desperately wanted to be. At the time, I had no idea my gender issues would last the better part of fifty years and take up huge portions of my life. Not that I could have done anything about it if I had tried which I did a number of times when I purged nearly all my feminine belongings swearing never to pick them up again. I was stuck being a male and somehow, I needed to make the best of it. Like so many people I knew with gender issues, purging never worked. The pressure built until I could take it no longer and again, I was accumulating women’s clothes again and wearing them.

At the least I tried to go back to mentally being male full-time and failed miserably at it. All I knew was when I was not thinking about getting out of my dark, lonely gender closet, I was not happy at all and when I at least tried to be me in the mirror it took the pressure off. Even if it was only for a while. At the same time, I was acutely aware that I was doing the best I could to see if I could improve my appearance as a pretty girl. How I never got caught doing all of this, I will never know, and I even resorted to taking plastic bags of clothes and makeup into the neighboring woods so I could escape the prying eyes of my slightly younger brother and family.

My mentality of never knowing you could do something until you try really came to the forefront when I was drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War. Instead of taking the two-year plan with a ticket to Southeast Asia, I took a chance and signed up to try to get a job I wanted in the American Forces Radio and Television Service. With a lot of luck and the help of a congressman whose radio station I worked for, against all odds, I got one of the sixty job slots in the Army for AFRTS. It turned out the whole process turned my life around and taught me that anything could be possible. If you went out of your way to try. Probably the most valuable lesson that I could have ever learned as I looked ahead at my path to becoming a successful transfeminine person. If it had worked for me once, why couldn’t it do it again.

As I set out to leave my gender closet behind and improve my life, I know I took on a journey I would not readily recommend to others. When I started to leave the mirror and join the world as a trans woman, I used a tool that I had already used effectively as a man in my previous life. It was alcohol, and I knew I could use it to build up much needed courage to be in the world as a transgender woman and not get myself into more trouble as I was presenting as a single woman in an establishment which served alcohol. Gay, straight or lesbian, it did not matter. I found I could get by if I stayed out of the redneck leaning venues. I was also well schooled in the artform of driving while buzzed from all my days in the Army when I did all the driving. More than anything else, this was back in the days before the major crackdowns on drunken drivers, so I was safer, and in NO WAY do I recommend what I did.

Also, what I think is tougher these days than when I was intensely lonely and looking for companionship is the world of on-line dating. When I was seeking a date, I played both sides of the gender coin, because I was in the unique position of being a transgender woman who favored lesbians. Looking back, I think I got the most attention from men seeking men dating sites. But just knowing that the amount of trash I would receive was at its best humorous and at its worst, a disaster because I refused to meet anyone in a public place which was not of my choosing. I was stood up more times than I would care to count or remember because my life was destined to change forever when I met my future wife Liz on a woman seeking woman dating site.

Liz responded to my picture saying I had sad eyes which was entirely possible at that time of my life. Amazingly, she lived relatively close to me in a town (Cincinnati) that I had always admired. From there, I began to become involved in her friend’s girl’s nights out and I was able to do more to learn what was behind the gender curtain than I had ever thought possible. The entire on-line dating world for me proved again you never know what you are going to get until you try.

These days again it is more problematic to find someone online with all the scammers out there, but destiny can never find you if you never venture out of your dark lonely closet and light up your path to a brighter future.

I wonder what my deceased parents would think now of what they taught me so long ago.

 

 

 

Transgender Law

No it's not a new television show (unfortunately). My friend Bobbie was kind enough to send along this information from a police publication called "Dealing with Transgender Subjects". Here is an excerpt:

"Officers must often protect and serve members of special groups. Providing this service can bring challenges that demand agency guidance or targeted training. One such group that has rarely been seen or contacted by officers in the past has become empowered to step out and live openly in their communities. They are the transgender individuals. On every continent there is at least one culture that gives social recognition to individuals who don't fit the gender binary of male or female. Only until recently has medicine made it possible to match the individual to their appearance with surgical procedures. Our Western societies have forced these individuals underground (into "the closet") to survive by avoiding ridicule and persecution. Being transgender has nothing to do with who you are attracted to for sex; it is not attached to sexual attraction identifiers such as being gay, lesbian, or bi-sexual. You can be transgender and also be gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, straight, or none of the above. Being trans is about your gender identity; it's who you feel and know you are. Our society develops a spectrum of gender possibilities from ultra-masculine to ultra-feminine and every variation in-between."

Obviously it's refreshing to see law enforcement taking a look at the transgender community for what it really is. The huge majority of all of us are not sex workers or some sort of criminal up to no good. Which used to be the norm in how we were presented. Over the years I have been fortunate enough to be treated with respect in my dealings with law enforcement. Perhaps more information such as this will continue that trend for the entire transgender community.

Read more here.

"The "B" Word

No, not that "B" word- the bully word.
I can't say enough negative about bullying and in fact haven't written much about it's tragic effects here in Cyrsti's Condo much at all.
The reason (or excuse) is I really did not know where to start.
I do think we transgender individuals sometimes think we have the market cornered and certainly it seems that way in our world.
Ironically, one of the woman in the group I went out with last night told me the saddest story of her youth as a very obese kid.  Without going too deep into it, she said the torture such as bubble gum in the hair became so bad she nearly couldn't stand it...and ballooned to over 400 pounds as a young adult.
The good news is she survived the experience, had surgery and literally has lost hundreds of pounds.
Other's of course haven't- inside the transgender, gay or straight world.
Amanda Todd is one of those:
She was a Vancouver-area teenager who posted a story to YouTube last month about being cyber-bullied, then was found dead  in Coquitlam, Canada. Authorities believe she committed suicide.
 The sad part is that a petition has to be started on  Causes  to try to do something.

Then, there is the story of Denver Transsexual TV Host Eden Lane.

In high school, Lane wore androgynous clothing while trying to simply move through the world like any other kid. Until the day some boys were gathered in the back of the science lab talking about which girls they found attractive. The new boy at school named Eden. When the other boys told him she wasn't exactly a girl, the humiliated boy lit her hair on fire with a Bunsen burner.

Read more of her success story here

I was admittedly luckier than most. My physical stature and interest in sports kept me in a safer nondescript .middle point. I wasn't part of the popular crowd but I wasn't bullied nor thank god did I bully. Seemingly today, more and more folks in our society need to be haters and feed on the different or the weak. I (of course) have a few thoughts on why-but in reality who cares what I think. It's what I do that's important and that is exactly why I'm passing along the Causes link to you.
Look,  I know I could pass along sad story after sad story to you.
On the other hand, you survivors need to make sure the world knows more of your successes. Recently again I had someone try to hang the courageous tag on me.
In reality you bullying survivors deserve the credit for being courageous and brave more than I ever will!