A Day at the Coffee Shop

 

Transgender Outreach Image
University of Cincinnati. JJ Hart

My first meeting with the Pulitzer prize winning television journalist lasted nearly two hours and went well I think. 

Of course with the new current state of affairs we are dealing with in the transgender world, I was a little nervous. Ironically, my nerves were settled a bit when another customer stepped forward and purchased my coffee. While I am positive he was not overwhelmed by my beauty, perhaps in his own way he was supporting the transgender community. Regardless the journalist arrived and we began the interview, nerves and all.

Looking back at the time we spent, it is rather difficult to sort out all the details. In no real specific order we began discussing my work with the Cincinnati's Alzheimer's diversity council and how I became involved. It turned out the network I developed with the statewide (Ohio) article I did for the "Buckeye Flame" issue which was read by the journalist and he wanted to know more. That is where the meeting today came in.

Along the way, we covered almost all my life and how I arrived at the place I am today and of course what the election meant to me. I did mention I was surprised a television station would want to do an interview with a transgender woman after all we had just gone through. Essentially, he responded he liked doing stories outside of the ordinary and we started to go through my life I quickly centered the conversation on the fact I had led a fairly normal life for someone of my generation. I grew up playing football, graduated with two degrees and had served my time in the military with the American Forces Radio and Television Service. 

All of the time I served in all the different capacities of my life have led me to believe I am not much different than any other transgender person. As our lives pass us by we acquire family, friends and occupations we need to get and then need to get rid of as we change. The point I was trying to get across was we trans folk are really not that much different than anybody else and certainly not the monsters the election set us up to be.

We ended the interview with another appointment for him to join me for an upcoming walk when I sometimes come up with ideas to write about daily. 

It was an exciting day and I am looking forward to more outreach if I can do some good.   

Cutting Through the Noise

 

The further I went along my transgender path, the more noise I encountered. 

When it was just me and my mirror, the noise was often very restricted and low. Even still, the message was creeping in , I  was dealing with  more than met the eye in the mirror when it came to me looking like a girl. However, what I was hearing stayed close to the same until I began to go out in public. When I did, the noise began to increase dramatically. Often, not in a good way. 

The reason was, during the times when I was failing at presenting any semblance  of a feminine person, the noise was deafening. It was telling me to stop my impossible dream of transgender womanhood and take the easy retreat back to an old male life I never really wanted but had succeeded in anyhow. I was used to all the male privileges I had gained. Long term, fortunately for me, I cut through the negative noise and continued along my gender path. To do so I needed to be patient and learn all the feminine lessons when they were presented to me.

The longer I tried to experience the world as a transgender woman, the more I wanted to do more. Which meant more noise I needed to cut through. Such as the guy who tried to attack me sexually at a mixer I went to one night in Columbus, Ohio. I was saved from a very bad experience by my second wife. She made me pay by mentioning how I was dressed invited the interaction I had. Mega noise in the house began after the incident.

There were other examples I have written about and some I haven't as I traversed the path to my dreams. Too many nights going out just to be alone when I was already too lonely to start with. On those nights I muted the noise mainly with extra alcohol which proved to be a temporary fix to my problems. Little did I know, the worst of the noise was yet to come. When I actually had to communicate in the world with other women I needed to be part of my noise solution and not be part of the problem. In other words, I was becoming a skilled listener so I could cut the noise of the world back and enter women only spaces. It was never easy but I earned the right to be there.

Often today with all the vile and harmful politics which have been laid upon the transgender women and trans men of the world, the noise has become more unbearable than ever before. It takes a better person than me to ignore all of it. Especially when I have the future of a transgender grandchild to worry about. All I can do is continue my written outreach as I attempt to prove to the world transgender women and trans men are just the same as the rest of the world trying to get by. We are not the monsters the politicians make us out to be. 

There is a light at the end of the tunnel for me and my outreach issues. Yesterday I was contacted by a reporter from one of the Cincinnati televisions concerning the possibility of doing an interview. So we will see what happens. 

Whatever happens, I will write about later and hopefully todays election will be a positive force for the future and not a step backwards. 

When We were Against the Law

 

Phil Donohue on left with singer (male) 
Grae Phillips.

I am old enough to remember the days in Dayton, Ohio when transvestites and or cross dressing men were loaded into police vehicles and arrested. 

Since I was just discovering my attraction to feminine clothes, of course the whole process scared me. I did not want the police to come in and arrest me. Then, the Stonewall Riots happened in New York City in 1969 and all of a sudden there was a glimmer of hope for me again. The outside world was changing, or so I thought as I watched and learned from my home in faraway Ohio. I was in my second year of college and the world was changing for me also. As the world on occasion seemed to tip in our favor when movies such as "Tootsie" were released in 1982. 

Then there were the flood of talk shows from "Phil Donohue" to" Jerry Springer" who focused on the the so called married cross dresser and wives. Many were trash and did the transgender or cross dressing community any good.  Donohue ran from 1970 until 1996. Sadly we were left with being items of ridicule on "Springer. " We were not against the law but close. 

Now of  course we face the most difficult times a transgender woman can face. If the orange menace and his cronies find their way into power, we in the entire LGBTQ community face a real threat to our very existence. I live in Ohio and the anti-transgender political ads against Democratic Senator Brown have been ridiculous. In fact they out and out lie. What amazes me most is when I encounter a pro-tRumpt transgender person. I have had them tell me they believe him when he says he had nothing to do with Project 2025 and they are safe with him in office.

I stand with all women and support their right to control their own body. I also stand with the candidate which does not threaten our future existence as transgender women and trans men. I think you know who I am referring to. 

I know nothing I can say can influence your vote. In fact, you may have already done it. I just hope enough see through the barrage of lies and vote in our first woman president.  

Picking your Poison

 

Dinner with my wife Liz
on left. JJ Hart on right.

Before we get started on this post, let me repeat again and again a transgender woman's or trans man's path to living an authentic life is NOT a choice.

Somehow for reasons we are never aware of, we are born into it. At that point we are forced to pick our gender poison when we decide to follow our instincts and transition or decide to stay in our closets for whatever reason. 

Most of the reasons on either side are compelling and not wrong. Reasons include major implications include facing problems with employment, family and friends. When faced with any or all of these challenges make a closet a more comfortable place to be. Or is it? Do the problems ever go away? The answer of course is no and picking your poison becomes a bigger problem. In my case, I became increasingly caught between my own personal gender rock and the hard place. 

On one hand, I appreciated the unwanted but over appreciated male privileges I had earned the hard way. But, on the other hand, I increasingly felt natural and excited by the new feminine spirit I was feeling. The main problem I had was knowing deep down I could never go back to my male life but could not face my own truth and the process then began my poison. The longer I progressed on my gender path, the stronger my poison became and the only anti-venom I knew was to keep exploring the world as a transgender woman. I became so engrossed in my search on occasion I forgot my old male self altogether. In a short period of time I was facing cruel and unusual punishment. Mainly because I needed to internalize all my poison and the process was lonely and unfruitful. What about key questions such as my sexuality? What would my future life look like. 

All too soon, I knew my poison was also my strength. I just knew I had to stay on the path I was on to finally achieve my gender freedom. I was fortunate, I escaped my closet and was able to achieve my ultimate goal of earning my transgender womanhood. The entire process was not without stress and failure along the way. It was like I was living the ultimate trans woman's days out. I needed better times in my life just to survive in the world. Often I just was confused in how I was going to spit out my poison and achieve my dreams. As I said, I was on a lonely path and needed any light I could focus on to help find my way along. It was like I was carrying the darkness of my closet with me. 

As I was planning to go away and throw (or donate) my male clothes out, I needed to make sure I was picking the right poison when I found a trans woman's life was not all sweetness and light. Entering a woman's world meant I needed to be better than the average other woman just to survive. On the other hand, I found all the life I had lived on both sides of the binary gender border gave me more experience in the world as a whole which helped me to survive. 

In my world picking my poison and being able to escape my dark closet was the only way to go. Being a guy was always difficult for me and learning how to live as my authentic self was even more difficult but was so much more natural and enjoyable. 

Set Her Free

Image from JJ Hart

Throughout my long life, which included fifty years of being a cross dresser, I could feel the stress and tension of not freeing my inner girl.

It all started innocently enough with trips in front of our family mirror in clothes I had borrowed from my Mom. Of course that all ended when I outgrew her sizes and I needed to strike out on my own to find fashion which fit. With my meager allowance and money I made from delivering newspapers to the neighborhood, I managed to get by and buy a few items to add to my wardrobe which then I needed to carefully hide away from my family.  Somehow I survived and my life as a male set in, no matter how much I did not want it to. 

The gender stress and tension continued over the years and even became worse with every success I had when I tried to set my inner self free. It finally became evident my entire gender life was backwards, I was not a man cross dressing as a woman, I was a woman cross dressing as a man and it was no wonder I was feeling the confusion and pain. I would not have wished the mental anguish I felt on my worst enemy. I found being transgender was far from being a choice and somehow I needed to set her free.

The problem was, I needed to face the same set of hurdles transgender women and trans men face. Such as family or spouses, friends and occupations. The longer you go in life, the more gender baggage you acquire, the more you have to get rid of. Or figure out how much you can keep. My prime example always is how I was able to maintain my love of sports when I fully transitioned into transgender womanhood. I had help when I learned the women around me loved sports as much as I did and I felt right at home. It was easier to set my woman free. 

Finally, I arrived at the point where I could take it no longer. I ended up living more time as a trans woman than I did as my old male self. So much so, I was feeling totally out of place in a male world as a guy and would have rather attacked it as a woman. Plus I still had the age old problems of doing my best appearance wise as a feminine person. I began by losing nearly fifty pounds and taking better care of my skin on a daily basis and worked my way forward from there. Through days of trial and error, I was able to arrive at a point where I could provide a reasonable attempt at presenting as myself on a regular basis. The key was to settle in to what myself should look like which meant stopping doing things such as switching wigs on a regular basis. Finding who I was proved to be the key to setting myself free.

Once I did manage to set my dominant self free, she did all the rest. I learned to keep my old male self out of the way and let her go. Among other things, she picked my friends and lover and opened the door to a life I never thought possible.

It was like she was saying I told you so and should have done it sooner. 

Turning Your Gender Corner

 

Image from the JJ Hart Archives.

As I made my way towards coming out of my closet and living as a transgender woman, I found I had many corners to navigate.

At first the corners were easy to take on but then became progressively more difficult as I moved closer to my impossible dream of escaping my male life. Through out the fifty years I lived as a serious cross dresser, it seemed I spent too much time researching to see if a life as my authentic femininized self was even possible. What was I going to do about a disapproving group of family, friends and bosses. All corners I needed to see around and judge what was next. 

At times, a few of the corners were more frustrating than others. My primary example always is when I spent years thinking my appearance as a woman (trans or not) was the all important driving factor in how I lived. There was so much more to being a woman than just how I looked. Appearance did open or close many doors but it was only the start. Also, as the internet began to have an impact in my life, I started to research more and more about what the new transgender term was all about and how did it define me. Initially, I thought it did because when I went to transgender - cross dresser mixers I did not mix well with the transvestites and leaned towards the transsexuals in the groups. I was somewhere in between and it was evident to me I had many more corners to turn before I discovered where I wanted to be.

Looking back, during that time in my life, I was gender fluid but had no way to express it. 

As I did begin to aggressively pursue my gender path, I needed to put all the labels behind me and try to determine if my dreams were indeed reachable. Right or wrong, I began to slip out of the house when my wife was at work to live an entire whole new existence as a woman. To do so, there were many blind corners I needed to face, Perhaps the biggest one was when other women wanted to strike up a conversation with me. I found they would start innocently enough with a small compliment on a facet of my wardrobe such as ear-rings and move on from there. Fortunately, most of the conversations were innocent enough as most of the women just were curious about what I was doing in their world. After the first shock of having to communicate in a brand new world, I actually turned the corner and began to appreciate the attention I was getting. I never had that amount of attention from women in my male life. The roles were reversed because I was receiving little to no attention from any of the men I met.  

Even though sometimes we follow similar paths as transgender women and trans men, the gender curves and corners are vastly different. We all have spouses or girlfriends who provide various levels of support or push-back. Often the push-back leads to mental health stress all the way to suicide attempts. 

Through therapy, often turning the gender corners you face may be easier. I know in my case, a mixture of going out on my own to start a new life along with therapy to do away with the old one worked for me. 

Now, at my age of seventy-five, I have come to realize the gender corners I will have to face will always be there as I face the possibility of advanced elderly assisted living. It all seems just a part of the problems we face as transgender women and trans men. 

Transgender Instincts

Image from Atich Bana 
on Unspalsh. 

 First, I need to apologize for missing a post yesterday. I went to my primary provider at the local Veterans Administration clinic for my semi-annual checkup. While  I was there, I was able to receive my flu and Covid vaccines at the same time I was having my blood labs completed. By the time I had stopped and picked up lunch on the way home, I was pretty much ready for a nap and just laid down. By the time I woke up, I had ran out of time to do a post at all.

The visit itself was very mundane and I did not receive any negative responses at all and was never called "Sir." So I chalked it up to a win. In the past I wasn't so lucky and thought about reporting a couple people there for their transphobic behavior. For whatever reason, things have changed for the better. 

Now, onto instincts we have to develop as transgender women or trans men in order to survive in an often hostile world. Especially true for trans women. It seems we have to be on point at all times with our appearance just to get by and appearance is only the beginning. We need to move smoothly like a woman and learn to communicate one on one with mainly the other women we meet. I know I was petrified when I first was trying out the world as a transgender woman. Then, on a totally heightened level were the aspects of conquering and feeling comfortable in women's only spaces such as rest rooms. Which always is a topic for another blog post. Except when it came to the times when I was stuck in line at a restroom  and needed to make polite conversation with other women. 

These days, having your instincts about you as a woman, trans or not, is more important than ever before.  Depending on where you live, outspoken gender bigots have made our business their business. Plus as we transition into the feminine gender world, we need to be careful when it comes to our personal safety. In particular ignoring dark, deserted places such as sidewalks and parking lots. In particular, all things cis-women learn from a young age. Of course, I needed to find out the hard way about my own safety issues and was lucky I did not find myself in more serious harm than I did.

Sometimes, I feel interacting with the world as a transgender woman has meant developing a sixth sense. For me, my hearing improved as I strained to hear what someone else may be saying about me behind my back. From then on it is my decision on what do next. Recently, I have decided to stare the person down and even challenge them. I have spent too many years living to do anything else. 

Our instincts are powerful basics in our lives and changing genders brings a huge challenge. We have to start all over and learn our lives again. Being transgender women or trans men just brings a bigger challenge. On the other hand, learning to play in the other genders sandbox presents a unique challenge in life which very few humans will ever realize. 

Hopefully, we all can make the best of it and go though a safe and stable gender transition. 

Connecting the Gender Dots

 

JJ Hart, from
the archives.

Many outside of the LGBTQ community, or more precisely the transgender community, think connecting the dots between male and female is as simple as putting on a dress and makeup.

One of the problems is, in order to  walk a mile in our transgender shoes, you have to learn to tie the laces first. Very few people have the patience or understanding to do it. The complexity of gender scares most people off. They think gender is cut and dried but is the opposite. 

Even those in the community have a difficult time connecting the dots and don't realize that even if we have similarities as trans women or trans men, we have just as many differences. Obstacles such as male lives, spouses and sexuality face us as the next dot to connect becomes bigger and bigger or worse yet out of reach.

During my male to female transition, many times, connecting the dots seemed downright impossible and I would never be able to move ahead in my life. My primary problem was my spouse and my male  self were standing directly in my path to gender realization and they would not move or give up their spot in my life. What I did in the meantime, was fall back into a more realistic journey to the next gender dot. An example would be when I began to get out of the non challenging mall shopping experiences and into actual interaction with the public as a transgender woman. 

Many times, the dots would totally fool me when I totally had a mis-conception of what a woman's life would be like. For some reason, I did not think I would be the one whose personal security would be challenged or my intelligence would be diminished when I jumped the gender border into trans womanhood. I was wrong in my judgement and needed to rapidly rethink my path to another dot. Of course I always knew women's lives were much more complex than men's but I did not really know until I succeeded in connecting my dots. 

The frustrating part of my whole experience was two-fold. The first part was I needed to accomplish it on my own with no help and the second part was everytime I thought I had accomplished something, immediately it seemed I needed to accomplish another milestone or dot on my gender journey. It was not until I was accepted in a small tight knit group of women friends did I really begin to make progress in the world. I learned through them, I could validate myself in the world as a trans woman without the help of much of the public, including men. Connecting these dots made my life fun again and so liberating. 

I can not begin to completely describe my experience connecting my own dots because they could be so much different than yours. The one thing we may have in common is, in order to have success in the world, you have to summon the courage to put yourself out there. Of course the problem these days is the concern for your personal safety. You have to be very careful, be aware of your surroundings as any other woman would and connect your dots the right way.       

 

Options or Paradise

 

Liz on Left, out to eat! 

During our gender transitions, many times we have the choice of options or paradise. 

Often, options come about as not being a choice. Examples include all the days we had to rush around and hide our feminizations from our family and friends. We had no option but to hide our truths. For some if us also, our cross dressing options never became any better when we had to pursue stints in the military. Certainly, the military provided every roadblock in the world for pursuing any route to paradise for gender conflicted individuals. 

As a whole, back then, paradise was very difficult to achieve. In fact I can now refer rare paradise as gender euphoria. For many years and even decades my gender balance never changed. I was still sneaking around risking life as I knew it to momentarily express my true inner gender. Fortunately, I had the time to work on perfecting my femininized presentation. When I finally was able to pursue paradise by going out in public, I was closer than before to achieving success. In fact, once I learned to blend in with  other women in the world, I was more likely to find a fleeting sense of paradise. 

Usually, my paradise did not last long because I needed to quickly return to my male world which I was increasingly feeling uncomfortable in. I was desperately seeking other options to find more gender euphoria other than the annual Halloween parties I was going to as a woman. The parties and the transvestite/ transsexual mixers I started to go to helped me to understand the gap I was facing when I considered the ultimate outcome of where I wanted to go with my life. Instead of just embracing the usual male attributes in life, I needed to include the very real possibility I would have the option to live life out as a transgender woman. The reason I thought this way was I encountered paradise when I was experiencing the world as my true authentic self. I felt so natural and wondered why I had waited so long to do it.

What if I had experienced paradise a decade earlier than I did when I went to a TGIF restaurant and bar determined to mix with other single women. Maybe I was just waiting for the world to catch up to me but more than likely the opposite was happening. I had the options to catch up to the world and I took the chance. By the time I ventured out into the world, I had certainly paid my dues and was  ready to reap the benefits. 

Still I was frustrated when the benefits of my new life were just out of reach. Such as the times when I was so comfortable in my new feminine world I actually forgot where I was and caught myself slipping back into a male mode. I still did not have the full closure from my old male self I so desperately needed. I kept running into unexpected roadblocks and stop signs on my gender path such as a spouse's death which changed my ideas of where I was headed but not for long. Soon with fewer and fewer options to consider as well as a solid new life I was building, paradise was closer than ever before. 

As transgender women or trans men, we often experience periods of options or paradise as we follow our difficult, unique gender paths which separate us from other humans. The whole journey hopefully makes paradise worth it.  

Bonding with Yourself

 

Club Diversity Image. Columbus, Ohio

As strange as it may seem, it took me many years for me to fully bond with myself as a transgender woman.

For years I wondered if I was a woman or a man. Everyday was like groundhog day when I woke up in the morning. Some mornings I felt more like a girl and others as a boy before the reality of my existence set in. No matter how gender fluid I felt that day, I needed to be ready to compete in my unwanted male world. I wish I could say the competition just made me stronger as a male but it never did. Most of the time, the competition just made me want to head home and cross dress as a girl. Plus, I was put into an even deeper frustration place when my brother was home and I didn't have any privacy to try on my feminine wardrobe. 

Bonding was difficult when I was not allowed into the feminine world at all and was destined not to until much later in life. In the meantime, I struggled from one gender struggle to another, All the time, hiding my authentic self from everyone in the world. I suffered so much, I needed all the help I could get to maintain my life as a man and still have any sense of stable mental health. Especially when I was diagnosed with having Bi-polar depression. If you are not familiar, I suffered from terrible highs and lows. When I was up I could do anything. Including transform myself into an attractive woman and when I was down, all I wanted to do was lay in bed and sleep and try to drown out my gender issues with alcohol. Finally I was diagnosed by a therapist and was prescribed medications to help me out.

As we all know, the medication has not yet been invented to relieve the pain and tension of having gender dysphoria. Even now I suffer from dysphoria when I wake up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror. After all these years, I have learned to take the good along with the bad and take the middle road. It has been a good coping mechanism for me. Along with those mechanisms, I learned other ways to structure my life so I could finally bond with my myself. When I did, I found I was a stronger human because I had the chance to experience life from both sides of the binary gender spectrum. Since it is the rare individual who can claim to be all male or all female in the gender spectrum, I was able to find my special place where I could exist in society. The question always was, was society ready for me or any other transgender woman or trans man.

I quickly discovered most of the world did not care if I was trans or not. They had lives to live and were busy doing it. On the rare occasions I did encounter a negative transphobe, my strong personal bonds gave me the confidence to survive. 

Again, bonding my unwanted male self with my stronger, more natural female self took me years to complete. Mainly because I did not have the courage to admit who I was to my true self. Once I did close the gap, my long awaited bond was complete and I could move on in life as a total person as a transgender woman but never forgetting the man who helped get me here. A topic for another blog post. 

Sink or Swim

Image from Trans Wellness Event. 
Jessie Hart Archives. 

Many times when I first entered the world as a new cross dresser or femininized male, I wondered if I was going to sink or swim.  

Leaving the mirror (who never lied to me) was difficult because the public didn't lie either and let me know if I blended in with other women or looked like a clown. Of course when I was stared at or laughed at I sank to depths of depression as I thought I was in too deep and would never make it to my transgender dreams. 

I discovered sometimes the hard way when I was out in the world, I could not turn back and needed to stick it out, even when the going got tough. It included the times that got so bad when I was laughed at. Then, something deep inside of me kept saying move on because times would get better. Similar to when I learned to swim at an early age, I gained confidence in the water and I began to swim onwards and learned women's fashion, hair and makeup which came closer to flattering me. 

Often my biggest problem was myself. My old male ego was telling me I needed to try to look a certain way when the opposite was true. I needed to blend in with other women in the venues I was going to which was especially important when I made it out of the gay venues I was going to and into the world I was used to as a man. Perhaps I was mistaken for a drag queen in the gay bars because I was dressing as one. Slowly but surely I started to be accepted as a transgender woman in the preferred venues I went out to and I began to swim with the big girls. By doing so I accepted the extra challenge of communicating with them. Far beyond just appearing as one of them.

As I always say, women lead a much more layered lives than men and here I was right in the middle of them trying to swim with the current. Which at times was difficult to do. I had so much to learn in a very short period of time. In order to not sink in the situation I was in  It took me tons of lonely soul searching to figure out if I was moving my life in the right direction and was losing all my white male privileges worth it. Of course you know I knew it was and I kept swimming towards my dream of living as a transgender woman. 

I was lucky when women along the way threw me life jackets to keep me afloat in my time of need. Their efforts just helped me to decide somehow I wanted to be more like them. If I survived my male to female gender transition, maybe then I could pay it forward and help other novice transgender women. Which is the primary reason I write. Most certainly I am biased but I think crossing the gender frontier is one of the most difficult tasks a human can undertake, so any assistance is good assistance Especially when we are swimming against the tide of society. 

Hopefully, if you are becoming tired or confused during your gender swim, I can throw you my version of a life jacket or boat. You can beat society's system and succeed if you are careful and keep trying. I sank so low once I tried severe self harm (suicide) to myself and was lucky I made it to the surface and survived. I bring it up simply as an example for those who think being transgender is some sort of a choice. It's what happens when trans women or men are round pegs being forced into square holes and never given the chance to sink or swim.

There are many ways to find your way to womanhood as a transgender woman, you just need to be patient until you find your path.

Transgender Control

Image from Charles 
Deluvio on UnSplash

Many times, resistance to transgender  women  or trans men comes from people who just want to control us.

Since so many people don't understand trans people, control for them seems to be the easiest way out to deal with us. On the other hand, I dealt with being ignored by men when I first came out in the public's eye. Most of it probably came from the presentation issues I dealt with. Examples included the times I started to talk to men concerning topics I knew quite a bit about and was roundly ignored. However there was the occasional man who tried to dominate the conversation with me. 

Seeing as how I had lived in the male world all those years, I should have known it was coming. Even other men tried their best to control me over the years. With a few of them, like drill sergeants when I was in the Army. What I did was internalize my thoughts and outwardly listened to them. So I learned to get by in the world. Even when I was wondering how I would exist in the world as a transgender woman.

I was lucky I had good role models around me from the women I knew. My Mom started it all off because she existed quite well in the male dominated world she existed in. Then, much later in life, I worked in a profession where again I saw how the strong women around me survived well in life. Very few people controlled them. As their boss, I learned to work with them, not control them. In my dealings with men as a trans woman, all I wanted was the same. A man who would work with me not cut me off in mid sentence when we talked. In all fairness to the men I met before I began to be involved with my group of lesbians, I did meet a couple guys I felt I could be interested in.

My problem was I refused to be treated as a fetish item and required a man to meet me in a public place before we did anything else. Which stopped all of the crazies I met on line. For just a moment at least, I wanted my own transgender control. As my transition progressed, I found control was harder and harder to maintain, especially when I became quite fond of several women around me who accepted me for who I was. Control from a feminine viewpoint was quite different from all I had learned as a guy growing up. Primarily because there was more give and take.

Of course I embraced all the changes and willingly gave up several keys to my life. The biggest one came when I packed up my belongings, along with my cat and dog and moved in with my current wife (and longtime companion) Liz. Now it has been over twelve years ago and after quite a bit of give and take, our relationship thrives. 

All in all, learning control as a transgender woman  is a difficult process. Primarily because of the major differences in the binary genders. In order to survive in our male life, many of us had to learn to control the situation when it came to dealing with spouses, family and employment. While I can safely say I never really controlled my second wife who was a very strong woman, on occasion I tried because I was the man and it was what men do. Above all it taught me, it was NOT what men should do. Especially when I faced it as a trans woman. 

Again, thanks to the feminine role models I grew up with, I blossomed into a proud out transgender woman I am today. They all showed me the way and my inner female finished the deal. 

A Transgender Marathon

Archive Image

 I'm sure you have heard the saying it's a marathon, not a sprint. This is especially true for transgender women and trans men.

Yesterday, I read a social media post from a first time transgender woman going out in public for the first time. In the post, she was bemoaning the fact after applying her makeup and seeing pictures, she did not look as good as she thought she did. My heart went out to her and I mentioned I went down the same path. Learning the art of makeup is just the first part of a transgender marathon into understanding yourself. 

Others who read the post chimed in with similar thoughts and even expanded it into impostor syndrome as a future possible reaction the person might have to face. 

Looking back, I could remember vividly how badly I felt when I first started my visits out of the house and into the public's eye. Back then, pictures were difficult to come by and were mainly only accessible by the old "photo kiosks" and drug stores. Only one time get I get brave enough to take a roll of film to one of the kiosks to see how I looked on film. I was shocked, and not in a good way, I obviously looked like a cross dresser and a bad one at that. The worst part was, the person who developed and gave me my pictures knew me and even worse yet, his Dad worked with my Dad. My marathon was almost over before it started. If I liked it or not. 

As it turned out, I moved back into the mirror and did my best to remove the negative self image I still had from the ill advised pictures. It actually took me years to try to attempt more pictures as my marathon moved on. As with anything else, the more you work on something, the better you become. Also technology was on my side with better cameras, which offered more than the very expensive Polaroids giving instant pictorial feedback. I was fascinated with my first cell phone which took pictures and better yet I had my first computer that I used to upload cross dressed pictures of myself. By doing so, I attracted attention, flattering to begin with in chatrooms until my wife caught on. She learned the computer skills faster than I did, so I needed to try to catch up as fast as possible. 

My marathon marched on, I gained more and more confidence until I reached increasing problems with my gender dysphoria. It seemed, no matter how much effort I put into my feminine appearance and deportment, the more I felt like a guy in a dress. To survive, I finally had to come to a basic conclusion. I was not as good looking as a woman I thought I was, or as bad. There was always the middle point I needed to shoot for. Finally, I knew who I was and I had the confidence to move on from new problems such as impostor syndrome. 

Again, I needed to come to a middle point where I could survive as a person. While I could never reclaim a girl's childhood experiences, or the problems associated with having periods or pregnancies, I had to go through my own set of experiences which presented their own problems. For example, I needed to try to escape my own gender demons which everyone in life seems to have, male or female, trans or not. I finally had to end the part of my marathon I agonized over for so long and claim my own brand of womanhood. Somehow I always found a way to survive and found a path. I was able to chase it and find success...in my own way. Which turned out was all I could do.

Going all the way back to the person who was just starting their public journey as a transgender person, try to make your marathon as easy as you can, Roll with the punches and move along as quickly as you can but always remembering the entire process is a marathon, not a sprint and sometimes, you are your own worst enemy. 

A Spectator in my Own Life

 

Ohio River Image from
the Archives.

Many times during my life, I felt as if I was just a spectator in my own life, not an active participant.

Included were the times I fell in love with myself over the new feminine self in the mirror at home. The whole experience for years  was similar to the impossible dream I could never achieve.  The older I became, changes began to take place in how I viewed myself. Perhaps, some of the biggest ones came about when I began to meet other diverse people in the cross dresser or transgender community. At the time, I barely knew a transgender or transsexual person even existed and here I was actually meeting real life people I could learn from. I especially wanted to see and understand how two women I knew were going to go through the entire surgical gender surgeries to complete their gender journeys. I wondered if I could ever make the ultimate sacrifice to change my body or, did I even need to. It was until much later in life when I fully learned gender was between my ears and not my legs and living like a woman was good enough for me.

As I was initially out in the public's eye trying to survive as a novice trans woman, often I felt as is I was a spectator in my own life. The pretty girl in the mirror just couldn't be me but she was and what would happen next. What happened was, I immediately wanted to do more in my new exciting femininized life. In order to do so, I needed to begin to communicate with the world if I wanted to go any further. At that point I thought my spectator issues would go away but it did not.

The prime example with me being a spectator happened on the night I went to a sports/restaurant venue to see if I could blend in successfully with other single professional women. Despite being scared to death, I managed to survive even though I still felt like a spectator in my own life. Who was this person?  By this time, I was wondering if my spectatorship would ever go away and I could lead a so called "normal" life as a transgender woman. 

The answer came from repetition.  The more I was out in the world, the more I felt as if I belonged and my authentic self took charge. I no longer felt as if I was a spectator looking in on my own life. I suppose much of my change had to do with the balance of living over half a century trying to exist in a male world, with much a smaller percentage of time learning to exist in a world often not accepting to transgender women. Through trial and error, I was able to see what was working and set out to fix it. I am very stubborn and the same effort I put into my transition often slowed my progress down when I hit a rough patch. Such as how I was dressing. I needed to adjust my fashion away from what my old male self liked into what my feminine self thought was proper and then I started to blend and succeed in the world. At the same time, I felt less and less as a spectator and more and more as a participant.

Being a participant was impactful and fun and made me feel as if I had a real say in my everyday life into my future for the first time ever. It seemed living a life as a transgender woman was within my grasp and I started to understand what my acquaintances so long ago felt, except for the major gender surgeries of course. 

Then there was the major waste of time I needed to face in my life. I always say, if I could have just a small amount of time back when I was day dreaming of being a girl or woman, where would have my life taken me. If I had not been a spectator and took control could I made a bigger success of my male life, or would something else have happened to keep me on the same path I was on. Ironically, age brings on many questions and very few answers except for at the least, I ended up trying to change for the better. 

Maybe we all are spectators in our own lives and never realize it until it is too late. It seems transgender women and trans men just have better seats on occasion  Especially all the times we had to tear down our old life and rebuild anew. .

  

Workplace Issues

Image from Gabrielle Henderson 
on UnSplash.

Sadly, many transgender women and trans men still get discriminated against when they seek out employment.  Or worse yet are terminated from a job they already had. 

In the past, I have mentioned a local acquaintance I know who was terminated from her job because she was transgender. What made matters worse, she has a family she supports. All her former company cared about was she was a distraction and needed to go. To make ends meet as she looked for her first job as her authentic feminine self, she needed to finally take on various delivery jobs. 

Sadly, she decided she did not want to or could not go down the often bewildering legal route it would take her to fight for her job. Often, the path a trans or LGBTQ person needs to take is more difficult than just walking away from the the job altogether.

Recently, I was approached by Hailey from a law firm which specializes in handling LGBTQ cases. She also passed along a web site which gives guidelines in what to do if you are being discriminated against at your job. The website is very detailed and I had to read about three quarters of the way through it to arrive at what I was looking for. Very relevant information can be found in the section "How to respond to LGBTQ Discrimination in the workplace." Plus a section on how to report workplace discrimination is very good also.. I know each state has different rules and regulations regarding discrimination and I thought this resource could be a benefit to those who need it. 

Here is your link: https://employeejustice.com/lgbtq-discrimination-in-the-workplace/

Thanks Hailey and I have good news to report from my friend who was fired. She finally found an entry level job and has been promoted twice! Good transgender help is sometimes easy to find. 

Last Chance

The Ohio State Student Union
with Brutus Buckeye

In  a recent post, I discussed the problem of waiting through years of cross dressing before I could finally transition into fulltime transgender womanhood. 

Then when I came out, I faced certain people who somehow didn't think I was deserving of the transgender title because I took so long to do it. Of course in my usual way, I thought to hell with them, we all are different in how we are able to transition. In most cases, the younger trans people who were saying all of this, had no knowledge of the conditions we faced in our younger days before the internet and social media. Our closets were potentially darker and more lonely than the days after the internet. 

Enough complaining, reality set in for me as did my age. All of a sudden, all those years I spent supposedly preparing myself to come out of my closet had taken me to the age of sixty and I was facing a now or never proposition as far as undertaking my final transition. In addition, I had never worked on anything as hard as I had to cross the gender border to see if the feminine side was indeed greener. Slowly but surely, I found the grass was greener and I was much happier there. Once I did, my age became a major consideration. Being sixty meant I had more life behind me than ahead, so I had to act. Being the original great procrastinator I was, I needed to change that aspect of my life  and do something about my overwhelming gender issues. 

It all happened one night when I was sitting alone in one of my favorite venues pondering my future when a clear thought came to me. The thought was so simple, I wondered why I did not think of it before. Enough of my drama queen existence.  It was time for my male self to go completely away and I could live in the greener feminine grass for the rest of my life. Plus, the doors of destiny were opening for me so I could. First of all, I was single and did not have an unapproving spouse to worry about. Secondly, I felt I was ready appearance wise to present well enough in public to get by. And finally, my Veterans health care system was starting to approve basic care for trans veterans so I could take advantage of low cost gender affirming hormones which I had long dreamed of taking. As you can tell, I had no real reason not to change my life. I was even old enough to consider early retirement so I didn't have to worry about coming out on a job.

Once I decided my course was clear, now it was a now or never moment I had to act on it. In my mind, I had connected all the male to female gender transition dots I could, so it was time to quit running from my truth and start a new life. As the hormones feminized my body inside and out, I found I had made the right decision. It was my last chance to live my dream and I better take it. I guess I was fortunate in that my choice was crystal clear. I had been transgender all my life and at the least I had lived long enough to live a life immersed in both binary genders. It certainly was not the easiest way to live and I would not wish it on anybody but at the least, my life was never boring. 

Boring or not, I needed to play all the cards I had and take the last chance I had to live my dream. Thanks to a small circle of women friends, who helped me more than they ever knew, my last chance gender gamble was a good one and I made it a success.    

It's All a Big Transformation

Image from Ross Findom on UnSplash

Before we get started, I need to take a moment to remember the surviving military members of the D-Day invasion. It is important to remember how we arrived at the point of having to fight such a monumental war at all and hopefully learning our lesson to never do it again. My Dad fought in WWII but was not in Europe for D-Day. 

Now, on to the post: Anyway you look at it, life is nothing but a big transformation. We are born into a certain gender (right or wrong) and have our opportunities to grow into men or women. Not just males and females because it is a socialization process. Sadly for transgender women or trans men, we go through extra transformations in our life. Mainly because we need to escape from the initial gender declaration we were straddled with when we were born. Being forced into square gender holes when we were born as round pegs is cruel and unusual punishment. 

Over time, if we are lucky, we are able to climb out of our gender closets and thrive in the world but to get there, often it takes several separate transformations to arrive at our goals. For example, the first transformation I went through was when I was able to look at myself in my Mom's clothes in the hallway mirror. From there, I went even further by raiding her makeup and basically looking like a clown before I improved. At the time, I compared my expertise to painting a model car which were so popular at the time. It took awhile but I did get better with both at the same time. With no guidance from anyone, I needed to start from scratch.

Along the way, somehow I did manage to catch up partially with other girls of my age who I was watching closely. Another problem I had was having any income at all to purchase any feminine items of my own because I was rapidly out growing all my Mom's clothes so I took on a news-paper route to augment my meager allowance and buy a few items. In order to do so, I needed to visit my Grandma who lived very close to the downtown area which back in those days was a thriving business district. I snuck out, spent my money while being scared to death I would run into my Dad who worked nearby. Then sneak all my purchases back home and into my regular hiding places. By doing so, I was helping my transformation along.

The older I got, the larger my transformative steps became. Starting with going to Halloween parties dressed as a woman and then sneaking out of the house cross dressed, I knew each time I was successful, I could not go back to my unwanted, boring male life. Yet I needed to because I was still the round peg struggling to get out of her square hole and enjoy an authentic life as a novice transgender woman. Most importantly, it was looking as if I could defy all odds and do it. All because of the evenings I went out as a trans woman to be alone and ended up socializing with the world. Granted, it was a huge transformation to climb out of the male life I was in and make it into the dream world of women I always wanted to be part of but I made it.

Perhaps the biggest transformation came when I began gender affirming hormones. In addition to feminizing my body, I also feminized the world as I saw it. Finally I didn't have to play the old macho male game and was able to cry when I needed to. Surprisingly to me, my body even became more sensitive to changes in temperature and smell as my world softened.

I look at myself as being so fortunate in that I lived long enough to sense and go through several big transformations in my life. All the way from being able to father a child I love to living a fulltime life as a transgender woman with a woman I love, in many ways I feel I have received more than I deserved.  

A Zig-Zag Trans Life

Party night at Club Diversity
Columbus, Ohio.

 Maybe I should have called this post I should have zigged when I should have zagged. Or vice-versa.

In many ways, I see all sorts of transgender women or trans men in the same situation. I started at a very young age when I would zig away from my younger brother when we were home alone and I was able to get away from him when I cross dressed by locking myself in the bathroom. Fortunately, I never needed to zag because somehow, he never caught me and told my unapproving parents.

Somehow I thought when I got older, my life would improve. The first thing I learned was my urge to be or at least cross dress as a girl my age would not magically disappear. In fact, it became stronger when I learned it was not just a phase and I began to understand my gender dysphoria better. At that point, I really had to start zigging and zagging just to maintain my fragile mental health. When I was old enough, I even began taking myself to therapists to seek out help. My only main success which came out of it was when I was diagnosed with a bi-polar depressive disorder. It had nothing to do with my gender issues at all. As far as zigging or zagging, I was able temporarily save my marriage and received my money's worth when my gender therapist told me the truth. She could do nothing about me wanting to be a woman. Overall, my desires should not be a problem and I should face my truth. Of course, I wasn't smart enough to follow her advice and resumed all the zigging and zagging. 

It took me years and years to grow up and away from my male self and settle into a life as my authentic feminine or transgender self. By this time, I was growing so tired of all the zigging and zagging I was going through. Even though the whole process was an exciting time of my gender life, I was still becoming fatigued by my life the way it was. Ironically, when I was, I settled into a long term set of appointments with a very understanding therapist. She talked me off the ledge several times and along the way helped me secure gender affirming hormones and the paper work I needed to change all the legal gender markers I could. All of a sudden, I was able to visualize myself living my dream as a full fledged transgender woman. With my daughter's help, we were even able to come up with a new legal name which would reflect my family history and would be easy for my grandkids to use.

Finally all my exhaustion came to an end and I was able to live how I pleased. All the zigging and zagging had worked. All the times I hurried to hide myself away from friends and family, were put behind me. Through it all I learned one difficult lesson. If you can somehow believe in yourself, you can live your best life. Even though you may (like me) take years and years to evolve into your authentic self, the trip is usually never boring as you lead a zig-zag trans life. Overall, it takes a ton of effort to weave your gender issues into a life of family, spouses, jobs and friends. You learn to be forever vigilant in protecting yourself and end up internalizing way too much of your life. It seems the entire process is just ingrained as part of a transgender life as breath itself. We just have to finally zig to get around it. Then zag to adopt your new life as a trans woman.

Opening Transgender Doors

Image from Nathan Wright 
on UnSplash

What is the old saying, "When one door closes, another one opens." I think the saying is especially appropriate for transgender women or trans men.

Along the way, I have documented several substantial times when I slammed doors during my past and opened new doors. 

Probably the first time I closed a door was when I was going out with a certain set of party friends who ranged from cross dressers to transsexuals who were planning their genital realignment surgeries. I wasn't very interested so much in the cross dressers but on the other hand, I was very interested in the women who were going "all the way." I wondered if I could ever slam the door on the male life I had fought to live and open a new door into a feminine world. 

Luckily I was able to see different sides of the gender coin so to speak. One friend in particular was a firefighter in Columbus, Ohio who was gorgeous and near retirement. So she had the financial risk of a gender transition covered as did the other main transsexual woman I knew at the time. She also was gorgeous and had a very secure job as an electrical engineer. She was so good at living a woman's life, she regularly went on snow skiing trips, spending whole weeks as her authentic self. So, as you can tell, I had lofty role models to try to live up to. I knew they would be difficult to match up to as far as appearance and income plus neither one had a spouse to deal with. I loved my spouse very much and wasn't sure I was able to close the door on my relationship with her. 

Even still, I continued to observe and learn as well as set out to open my own transgender doors. It just took me longer than others to find a path of my own. I know all too many of our gender journey's are similar yet so far apart. It is difficult to leave the first door in our closet and find the other doors in the darkness. Once I was able to find the light and it wasn't the train at the end of the tunnel, I was able to progress quite nicely but not without trepidations. Of course I still had to deal with the usual problems transgender women and men have to deal with when they transition and close the big door. Sometimes closing the door is the easy part compared to opening the doors to different living situations with family, friends and finances. 

I think too many potential transgender folk believe the transition itself will cause the life problems to go away and they haven't thought enough about the all the situations they would have to face now when spouses and/or families want to leave them behind. Not to mention the prospect of losing long term employment and friends. All of the process led to opening very heavy doors and not having much of an idea what the future held. 

I was fortunate when I finally had the courage to open my final transgender doors and face the world. As I did, I could look back at all the times I was petrified to try a new life as a transgender woman. Every time I was so scared it seemed I made it OK which felt so natural and gave me confidence to move forward and look for new challenges. I don't think I ever forgot the two early gender role models I had in Columbus, Ohio so many years before but similar to my male life, I was able to carve out my new life as a fulltime transgender woman so different from theirs.

Even still, I have my doors to open as I face a challenging future with end of life issues. I am still paranoid concerning facing the problems associated with nursing care or assisted living. It will be quite the journey as I face the final door we all have to open and see what is on the other side.

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.