Violating Gender Boundaries

 

JJ Hart. Pushing my gender\
boundaries. 

Very early in life I learned that violating gender boundaries could result in severe trouble.

It was obvious to me that the male dominated family I was born into would ever accept a son who wanted to be a daughter. So, I had no choice but to turn inward with my developing feminine senses in the male world I was trying to be a part of. I was born way too early to take advantage of the forthcoming online information world with the advent of computers and social media. Again, I was trapped into trying to cross-dress my feelings away anytime I had the chance.

The other main problem I had was that the gender boundaries were so rigid and demanding I could not see any way out of my dark, lonely gender closet. I lived in a rural area with mostly boys and no girls to have a point of reference from. I only remember one occasion when the only girl in the neighborhood was persuaded by a couple of the boys to show her naked genitals to the group, and I was not excited but embarrassed for her at the time. Just another example of how my sexuality was developing away from the “normal” male’s. I had no need to see her private parts and wondered why I was so different. Little did I know, it was just the beginning of challenging my gender boundaries during my life.

As far as the rest of my life went, I wasn’t much of a challenger of anything. It wasn’t until I reached my college years and was drafted into the military during the Vietnam War, did I begin to challenge the system. At the same time, I was starting to challenge the war and the politics around it, I was pushing my cross-dressing boundaries by starting to leave my house more dressed as the person I wanted to see if I could become. I even made what turned out to be a huge mistake by coming out to my fiancé as a transvestite or cross-dresser back in those days. I say huge mistake because she wanted me to tell the draft board I was gay to stay out of the military service. Even then, I knew a lot about myself and did not have to push my gender boundaries so far to lie and tell someone I was gay. As a side note, then and now I did not have anything against the gay community, but I just knew there was a real difference between them and me.

Of course, the military stopped any gender challenging I was thinking of doing dead in its tracks for nearly three years of my young life. The only challenge I could do was mental in nature as I imagined how life could be better for me as a transfeminine person when I was discharged from the Army. Even then, I was restricted in my gender thinking to the reality in life. What I almost did was send a letter (remember them?) to my future first wife explaining it maybe a transwoman picking her up at the airport when she arrived for the first time. She was in the Army too and was discharged about nine months after I was.

Little did I know, if I had decided to test my gender boundaries then it may have been one of the better times to do it because I did not have the chance to build up all the troublesome male baggage I would acquire later in life. On the plus side, I had a very new car that I had shipped home from Germany, my stereo equipment and a sizeable bank account to start a new life with. On the negative side, I thought I had a good chance of losing my family, friends and job if I started all over as a woman.

Long story short, I did not have the courage to push my gender boundaries any further than they were at the time. Except for a few Halloween adventures, and the occasional night out, my life as a trans woman was mundane. It was not until I could not take it any longer the annual yearly adventures at Halloween, did I start to really push my luck by going out more often. My early explorations were rough to say the least until I settled down and learn how to blend in with the ciswomen who I found really ran the world I wanted to be a part of.

As the world let me in as a transgender woman and/or I finally learned the truth of who I was, I kicked and pushed until my gender boundaries came down. It was like the steep slope I write about as I slid down trying my best to hold on to what was left of my old male life but failing miserably. As I continued to gain my new feminine ground behind the gender curtain, which was hidden from me for so long, I had pushed by gender boundary so far, I was too far gone. I was no longer afraid of the fall and knew I was too far gone to ever go back to being my old male self.

From then on, gender boundaries did not mean much to me except from my former history as a man, I could see both sides of the border from where I lived as a trans woman. Leaving the man’s club scared almost all of the cismen away but attracted as many of the ciswomen that I needed to set up a new boundary. The new boundary was one which validated myself as a woman for the first time in my life and it seemed I was learning daily how to adjust to my new situation.

From that point forward, I changed my legal name and became extra serious about my physical and mental well being by being approved for HRT or gender affirming hormones. It just seemed by that time, I was just doing what came natural in solidifying my new gender boundaries. Sure, they were all big moves in my life, but good ones that I had always dreamed of making.

As always. Thanks to all of you who read along with my lifetime worth of experiences. Your responses and comments make it so worthwhile for me!

 

 

 

 

Living the Dream

 

Image from Randy Tarampi
on UnSplash.

I discovered before I could live a dream of living as my own unique sense of womanhood, I needed to discover exactly what that meant.

I knew very early on it was much more than just applying makeup and parading around in one of mom’s dresses. It went much deeper than that. I wanted to be a girl as badly as anything I had ever wanted in my life.

The problem was that I was stuck in an information “never-never” land with no internet or social media of any sort to provide key information on what it really meant to have issues with your gender and not just throw you aside with some sort of a mental illness diagnosis. I did know enough about myself to know I was not mentally ill for wanting to be everything feminine. So, I did the only thing I knew how, day dream my life away envying the ciswomen around me.

As I grew into myself, I learned more about my dream and the overall demands it would make upon my life. Even though I tried not too, I still added extra male baggage such as a child, marriage and a better career to my life. I always thought I would be better off lonely with just having myself to depend on if I ever had to get rid of it all in my male world and start all over again as a transgender woman. Another problem was that I was tantalizing close to encountering other gender conflicted people who were actively following their dreams, so I knew it was possible.

For example, I just missed crossing paths in my broadcasting career with other trans women who were actively following their dream. One at a small radio station I worked at in my hometown and another I ran into at a AFTN Thailand radio/tv reunion in New Orleans. Sadly, the trans woman was so shy and backwards, I could not even get her attention to say hello.

Everything changed when I came home to nearby Columbus, Ohio and was invited to very diverse small parties on a regular basis. Everyone was there, including several trans women who were headed for gender realignment surgeries that I was able to interact with and learn from. How much exactly did my dream entail? Going all the way like they did, or not was my major point of wanting to know about them. The one thing I did find out was that they had taken the time and effort to set themselves up for success in the new lives they were undertaking. One trans woman was a firefighter getting ready to retire and had a good pension and insurance coming to cover her surgery and another was a very successful electrical engineer who was extraordinarily beautiful and knew she would not have any problems continuing to work after the surgeries.

I was in neither of their classes in appearance, insurance coverage or job security to even compare myself to them, but still my dream of ever living as a transfeminine person would not go away.

Somehow, I needed to carve out my own individual gender path to success if I was ever going to make it. Finally, I learned the powerful message to just be myself and most of the rest of my problems in my male to female femininization would fade into the background. No, I was not extra attractive such as thedestiny transitioning transgender women that I knew but I realized that many of the ciswomen that I knew weren’t either. It was very shallow of me to think that all that went into to being a quality person as a woman was just appearance, so I grew past it. My focus shifted into having more confidence in myself as a good person that a stranger would like and away from just how I looked. When I did, my dream began to become a better focus. Maybe I could do it after all.

Of course, my major focus was what was I going to do with all the unwanted male baggage (and some of the wanted too) that I was planning on taking along on to my new life. At that point in time, my second wife was still alive, and she had made it a point to tell me she would never want to live with another woman, so I had to figure out what I was going to do about that major problem. Then I also had the usual conflicts we all face such as what we are going to do about employment and would any of our friends accept us.

For me, destiny came along and in one fall swoop showed me the way to living my dream. My wife passed away. Leaving me alone to consider my future about the time what was left of my close male friends died too. It turned out destiny was giving me a clean life slate to work from when I began to start all over. In addition, I was old enough to retire and work a little on the side to make ends meet and the Veterans Administration health care system which I was already a part of decided to approve gender related care or HRT for qualified veterans which I was. Destiny could not have shown me a better path to my dream than if I had planned it that way. I needed to pay my dues and work through many dark, lonely days to get to the light, but it was worth it when I did.

Finally, my dream became a focus for me when I met my future wife Liz and other ciswomen who let me into their world. I was able again to focus my dream on reality and make sure it was not a nightmare. Perhaps the best part of the entire trip up my gender path was the likelihood that I would ever make it. To say the least, my going forward was a shaky proposition to start with and all too often, my mental gender darkness threatened to catch up to me and my dream.

Thank goodness it never did, and my transgender dream became a reality.

Reality for me is also to have you join in with my thoughts. Thanks so much for doing so!

 

 

 

 

When There is No One to Believe in You

 

JJ Hart

Sadly, transgender women and transgender men spend much of their lives being lonely with no one left to believe in them.

When it happens, the dark lonely closet you have been dealing with becomes even more restrictive and uncertain. With me, the only thing that kept me focused on my gender path was a little voice which kept telling me that against all odds, I was doing the right thing.

Maybe, like some of you, I had the same misgivings of what I was doing as I cross-dressed as a girl. Was I going through a phase, a fetish or was something wrong with me mentally all entered my mind one time or another. I did know, I had very few male friends and for some reason felt uncertain around the ones I did meet. Which only added to my loneliness and made me withdraw further within myself. It was very difficult for me to believe anything about myself during this portion of my life. But I thought I had no choice but to struggle on.

It was not until much later that I found that I did not have to struggle as much as I was doing as ironically, both sides of my dual gendered personality were coming out of their shells slowly at the same time. After military service in the Army, I learned to not be afraid of other competition from men, while at the same time I was learning how to exist in a ciswoman’s world I had always dreamed of. Life as I knew it was becoming unbelievably complex as I tried to balance two genders mentally and physically.  Every day, I needed to concentrate on who I was going to be when I faced the public. Ironically, I needed more room in my closet to make room for marriages, kids and employment.

Even when all of this was going on, I still felt lonely and wondered what I was doing wrong with my life. The problem was I was living backwards, which I would not understand until much later in my life sadly. The basics did not come to me that I was not a man trying to be a woman but was a woman trying not to be a man. It all comes under the old saying “If I had known then, what I know now, what a better life I would have had.” But the fact remained I was still living a very shallow life as a novice transgender woman and had so much to learn before I could claim my own version of womanhood.

For the longest time, I just took for granted I would just be lonely as a part of life I would have to get used to. Especially after my second wife of twenty-five years unexpectedly passed away from a massive heart attack. Even though she did not accept me as a trans woman, somehow, we still did stay together until the end. At least, I loved her deeply and was never lonely with her, or so I thought.

I found you do not miss what you had until it is gone, and death is the ultimate version of being gone and starting all over for me at the age of fifty-five was not going to be easy. Even though the relationships I had built up as a man were very few, what I had were all starting to die also. Any relationships with ciswomen as a man that I had were few and far between because I was not sure which direction I would go with my gender. I did not want to start another relationship with a woman just to end it by telling her she was actually living with another woman. As the gays would say, I was keeping my true self on the “downlow” the best that I could.

What happened next was that I was increasingly having a difficult time staying on the “downlow” because of all the explorations I was doing in the straight world I was trying to re-enter. This time as a transfeminine person. I was slowly building social relationships in the world with ciswomen who suddenly showed an interest in me. The problem I had was I was still not on HRT yet and was still in my mind too fake to pursue a relationship with a woman when after I stripped down to my basics, I was still a man without my fake hair, breasts and hips. Even with all the social stimulus I was receiving in my new world, I was still frustrated and feeling alone in my life.

I finally realized that I was the only one holding myself back from learning if I could be approved for gender affirming hormones or HRT.  I made the medical appointment from a doctor’s ad I had seen in a local LGBTQ publication and before I knew it, I was deemed healthy enough to be approved. It was a major step in my life and one I did not take lightly. The first night I took the minimum dosage of estradiol and spiro pills I was prescribed, I saved the special occasion for when my future wife Liz could join me in a venue in Dayton, Ohio.

Very soon, my HRT dosage was increased, and I ended up calling them my “magic pills” before I was switched to patches which would be easier on my system. Thanks to Liz and a few other ciswomen friends, I was able to think about forming deeper relationships with women again. My body had morphed into a curious gender blend of breasts, hips, soft skin with a non-performing male piece of equipment which did not seem to matter to the ciswomen around me who were not as insecure with their sexuality as most of the cismen that I knew.

Most importantly, I gained the confidence to believe in myself, which led me to not suffer the extreme loneliness I had felt during many parts of my life. It was like I was on a wheel, and my life had had the time and good fortune to come around again.

Hey all!!!! Thanks for reading.  Your input makes it all worthwhile to me.

 

 

 

How Much Courage did it Take You?

 

Image from Jon Tyson
on UnSplash.

Often, I hear the words courage or bravery kicked around when it came to mentioning someone coming out of their closet into the real world.

In my case, I would have to replace either of the words with just being afraid of what would happen if I did not pursue my gender dreams of living as a transgender woman. Mainly because I was so self-destructive when it came to causing self-harm to my unwanted male self. I drove too fast and recklessly, drank way too much and even tried to actively kill myself once because of my gender dysphoria.

Especially after I had the rare chance to talk to my friends who survived brutal combat in the Vietnam War, I reserved the terms brave and courage for them. Because in many ways, I was just doing what came naturally when I cross-dressed in front of the mirror at home. It turned out staying in my own little feminine world was very easy until I began to want to see if I could stretch my luck and actually leave the house looking as close as I thought I could to a pretty girl. The only reality I did know was I was scared to death.

Little by little, my fear began to subside, and I wanted to expand my explorations to bigger and better venues such as the malls which were just beginning to come into their own back in those days. Still. I didn’t think I was brave enough to do it. Or was I just being stupid by risking losing everything that I worked so hard to build up in my male life. My ego dictated that I did not dwell on the stupid aspect of trying to femininize my testosterone poisoned body. I just wanted to blend in with the rest of the ciswomen I envied so much. As much as I was being abused by certain segments of the public, I began to use another term to describe myself and that was stubborn. In fact, I think that would be a great title to a new PBS show (Public Broadcasting System) called the “Stubborn Cross-dresser.”

As I continued on my gender path towards finally being allowed to join the girls’ club, my stubbornness in trying new things was both a blessing and a curse. A prime example was when I was trying to hang on to my teen fashion sense way too long. It was a curse, and my blessing came along when I became stubborn enough to keep going back to my cross-dressing drawing board until I fixed the problem and became able to blend in better with the women, I wanted to notice me. After the death of my second wife of twenty-five years, I was desperately lonely and did not want to attempt to build another life as a man when the possibility of building one as a trans woman was right in front of me. If I was brave enough to take advantage of a life I had only dreamed of. Was I going to take the easy way out and try to be a man again or build upon what I had learned as a novice transgender woman became my major question to answer.

Finally, I needed to “man-up” and be a woman as my second wife used to tell me and when I had the courage to do it, I felt a deep happiness in life I never had before. In fact the feminine privilege I found to be the most pleasant was the fact that I was allowed the opportunity to be happy. For the first time in my life, I was able to align my sun, moon, and stars so I did not have to fight a gender battle on two fronts which kept me unhappy and on edge. I positively loved my new life along with my first chance ever to just be happy with what I had.

If you are one of the many gender conflicted individuals trying to decide if and when you will make the ultimate choice to go for the gender border as a trans woman or trans man, my only advice must be, look deeply inside yourself for your answer. Your answer is there If you are stubborn enough to find it. Life is like an old merry-go-round and often it is difficult to slow it down to see the real world spinning in front of you. And if destiny puts you on the right path to do it, you can discover a group of well-meaning friends (ciswomen or men for you trans men) who can help you along. Making you a better person than you ever thought you could be. I would never have thought that the gender dysphoria that I felt would end up causing me so many problems in my life.

Before your life ends and you move on to whatever other place of existence you believe in, you have the basic right to be happy. You can deal in semantics and call your gender journey as being brave or having courage all you want but the end result is you being the natural person who you always should have been.

Somehow, we have been chosen to lead a different life’s journey than most of the others in the human race. Call us brave or courageous if you want but as a tribe, we are doing what we were always been destined to do. It is just too bad we are met with such resistance by haters in the world. As well as the gatekeepers who want to keep us away from our chosen genders. When I speak about gatekeepers, immediately radical feminist TERFs come to mind who have no business in ours.

Best wishes on your successful gender journey and summoning enough courage (if you want to call it that) to get out into the world and live your best life.

Thanks again to all of you who join me in my experiences, and I hope we can all learn from them. I apologize to all of you who have commented. I am a little behind getting back to you because of technical problems.

 

 

 

 

 

Why Me???

Image from Barbara Burgess
on UnSplash. 

I have often thought during my life as I was becoming aware of who I really was as a transgender woman, why me?

Those were the days of thinking I was the only male in the world who wanted to be female, and if I was, what was I ever going to do about it. Very early on before I had the necessities to start exploring the world on my own, I needed to rely on just the occasional cross-dressing experience in front of the family’s hallway mirror. It was very difficult to do because I needed to work around a very curious brother and family.

Most certainly, for years, I played the victim as I felt sorry for myself and my gender issues. It wasn’t until I began to leave my dark, restrictive gender closet did I begin to see that I was not so much of a victim after all. Overcoming my gender dysphoria would make me a unique human being with my insight into both genders. But only if I first paid my extensive dues to get there.

As most of you know, the dues transgender women and transgender men pay to challenge and win the battle to change genders is extensive and often dearly expensive as we have to give up spouses, family, friends and jobs. Just for what some see as a selfish pursuit of personal pleasure. If they ever knew the truth, most certainly they would not feel that way as they never had to feel the anguish, we feel about hurting others. During the depth of my struggle, I was down mentally and lonely as I felt why was this all happening to me. It led me to feel selfish and there was nothing I could do about it. I was even jealous of the other cismen around me who could follow their so-called “normal” lives without worrying about something as major as wanting to be a woman.

As I continued to learn what it would take to lead a transfeminine life, the more I respected what I had discovered and wanted to learn more. That was the time I began to see the light of my victim tunnel was not the train but was sunlight which would lead me into a new day. Away from many of the old fears and paranoias about going along my continuing male to female femininization path I was traveling. Slowly I discovered there could be much more to my gender journey than just doing my best to blend in with the ciswomen in the world around me. I still did not know why me, but at least I was not a victim any longer and I just might be on to something much bigger if I could escape all my self-destructive behavior I was engaging in.

I learned the hard way from pure social experimentations that I was on the right path and to keep going. Maybe by doing so, I could climb the gender ladder up to the level of where some of my transgender mentors were. If they could make it, why couldn’t I. It wasn’t why me anymore, it was becoming why not.

I was more certain in my gender choices when questions surrounding things like my sexuality came about. Because I was immediately embraced by so many ciswomen so quickly, I never had to worry about the occasional man that came along and mainly viewed me as a fetish object The last thing I needed was having to deal with the drama of a toxic cisman. So, I never did as I was able to discover my validation as a transgender woman through other strong women. Why me became suddenly very real as I kept going out night after night with the group of mainly lesbian women who accepted me. They taught me more than they ever knew about what it was like to survive in a world where men were basically an afterthought.

In their own way, my lesbian friends helped me to be prouder of the trans person I had become. My why me became why not as I grew increasingly confident in my own skin as a transgender woman. To coin a classic song, I could see the world from both sides now and be part of a special group of humans that could. Which is why I think so many transphobes and TERF feminist gatekeepers fear us and try to keep us out of women only spaces. Like them we gained our womanhood, just from a different and unique vantage point and we are not men trying to slip in. Especially since we work so hard to get away from the male culture.

Long ago, I was able to put my why me victim mentality about being transgender behind me and get on with my life. It marked the turning point when I could be accepted into the only club I ever dreamed of being in…the girls ‘club and I never have regretted doing it. Following several not so good decisions in my life, I finally made the right one and put the necessary work in to earn the title of proud transgender woman.

Today I will put my public gender persona to the test again as I go with my wife Liz to two of her doctor’s appointments. It is usually the easiest test of all because all the people I run into are mostly concerned about themselves. Plus, these days, I normally mentally have gone back to thinking my newer transgender self has been me all along. No more victim mentality. I always point out I did not have much to work with when I started my journey except a deep will to do it. I also wonder, if I knew all the bumps and bruises, I would have along the way, would I ever attempt the trip across the gender border. It took me taking the chances to get out into the public to make it at all, and if I did not, I probably would have been in my closet crying, why me.

For the first time in my life, all I knew was I needed to get out of my closet and fight for the life I really wanted.

 

 

Staying in the Present as a Trans Woman

JJ Hart at Trans Ohio.

Staying in the present has always been a difficult task for me. Perhaps it all started when I was a very young gender distracted person and could not seem to stop daydreaming about being a pretty girl. The daydreams were nearly always a great escape from my everyday boring male world where I was always competing for the same rights to be recognized at all.

Overtime, I was rarely successful as a boy and just put in the amount of effort to get by. The only thing I was moderately successful on was hustling on my newspaper route and doing extra chores around the house to make extra money. Which in turn, I used to buy my own feminine articles such as makeup, and pantyhose for when I was able to shave my legs. Overall, my plan worked and eventually I was able to build up my own collection of cross-dressing essentials. As I discovered I could get away with shopping at a couple of small local department stores for everything I needed to shatter my dream of doing it and stepping into my own form of reality.

The older I got, the more I did not grow out of my cross-dressing gender desires. In fact, I grew into them when the world became more and more accessible to me. I was building an increasing sense of confidence in my new self and going out briefly into the world as a novice when the Vietnam War and the persistent military draft caught up with me. For the first time in my life, I could not daydream of something as major as a war going away. It was as real as my draft card. Which I resented having because none of the ciswomen around me needed one. Why should I be forced into an unfair war when they were not was what fueled my resentment. A resentment which just made me feel worse as I wasted my time worrying about the war which was staring at me in the face.

To make matters even worse was the fact my fiancé who knew I was a cross-dresser told me we would break up unless I told the draft board I was gay. Which, there was no way that was going to happen, so we did end our relationship just before I headed out to Ft. Knox, Kentucky for Army basic infantry training. Even though I fought military service as long as I could, in many ways it did me good because I needed to stay in the present most of the time when I was going through basic. If I was not, I would feel the wrath of the drill sergeants which was not a place I wanted to be. I guess you could say, I was going through a whole different basic training by teaching me to stay in the present.

After I had served my time, I tried my best to pick up where I left off by trying to join the world as a transgender woman. A new life was just starting to come to me with the realization I was much more than a part-time cross-dresser and needed to experience more of a woman’s life to satisfy me. Change was upon me with the birth of my daughter and a new wonderful world of mall shopping experiences to explore. After a rough start, I was able to present well enough to enjoy being out in the world. In other words, the teenaged girls who made me a target suddenly left me alone. The rest of the mall time was easy because I discovered that my money was green and that was more important to the store clerks who waited on me than my potential gender.

Eventually, more reality than daydreaming set in with my life. I was becoming so successful in carving out a new transfeminine life I knew that I had gone too far to ever turn around on my gender path to ever go back. Sure, I was scared but a voice in the back of my head kept telling me this was so natural that my new world deserved to be the reality I always sought and I needed to stay in the present to do it.

I discovered as a transgender woman, the present was a very great place to be. For once, I had access to the gender I wanted to be with which were all the ciswomen who showed interest in what I was trying to do in their world. I had always had a difficult time making friends with other men when I was acting like one and I finally figured out why…I should not have been in the boys’ club to begin with. Living a lie was a total mistake which should never have happened. I was not interested in a club where I never belonged, and that was OK.

Old habits are hard to break, and maybe even more so for transgender women and transgender men. Primarily because we have to decide what baggage we are taking with us or leaving behind as we journey along our gender journey paths. Bring too much, and you can’t carry it all or don’t bring enough and end up losing all of your building blocks you need for a new life are all things to consider. And most of all, it is important you stay in the present, so you don’t forget where and who you are and slide back into your old self. It is frustrating when something as small as the look on your face can destroy all that you have worked so hard to perfect. That old male “stay away” scowl may have worked in your old world but in your present one, it certainly doesn’t.

It was difficult for me to find my present. Determine if it was the right choice and then stick with it. As I went through my male to female feminization efforts, I needed to finally decide on a wig to wear on a regular basis and quit looking for the miracle wig which would instantly make me attractive. Why? Because people were starting to recognize me as a person, and I needed to build on that. Instead of just carving a new person, I was blasting one and having the time of my life doing it.

I just wish I could have stayed in the present earlier in my life, which I know would have given a better understanding of who I was at the time. I almost did more after I served my time in the Army, but it was in the mid 1970’s and the world was different, and I did not have the courage to do it. Instead, I played my status-quo cards and thought I could help my life along by just cross-dressing. By doing so, I just ended up losing so much of my life when I ignored living in the present. One way or another, it is much too late to cry over time that was wasted and remember the good time when I discovered my present and lived it.

Thanks for reading along with me. Hopefully my insights can help you with yours and comments are appreciated.

 

 

 

 

  

Gender Affirmation Day

 

Image from Ava Sol
on UnSplash.

Recently, I had a rare opportunity to meet and enjoy the company of a small group of family for breakfast which I like to call a gender affirmation day.

Precisely, there were four of us including my daughter, son-in-law, my wife Liz and myself. For the morning, I chose a breakfast only small chain venue which we had never been able to go to before. Since it has been a while since I have seen daughter and son-in-law, I was very happy to see them. In addition, I have three grandchildren who did not come since they are adults now and have their own lives to attend too. Plus, the oldest, is a nuclear engineer and lives in Maine and the next two in age (both boys) are traveling in Japan. The youngest is some sort of a bio-engineering student at “The Ohio State University.”

Getting back to my experience, I was dressed very casual in my favorite jeans, new OSU T-shirt and comfortable tennis shoes to face the world at large in a place I had never been to at all. Plus, I did put on some light makeup and partially tied back my increasingly long hair. We were lucky enough to beat the Saturday morning breakfast rush and got a seat as the place was filling up. As I always do, I try to find out if anyone is paying any extra attention to me as Liz and I made our way to our seats. Nobody did except this pesky kid (boy) who would not stop staring at me after we sat down close to where he was sitting. Through it all, I managed to ignore him until his family finished eating and left before we did. Leaving me to completely concentrate on my food and the pleasant conversation that was going on.

As I always point out, being transgender in my daughter’s extended family is not much of an anomaly after all. The nuclear engineer in Maine is trans and my first wife (who is my daughter’s mother) has a transgender man cousin. Diversity runs in the family, whether the naysayers, which are a few, like it or not. My first wife’s in-laws are very redneck conservatives, the same as my ex-communicated brother’s. So, I have not talked to him in over a decade.

My daughter was and is one of my strongest allies and used me as an example to all three of her kids on diversity in the family. She has always been by myside during my male to female feminization journey and I love her deeply for that and how she turned my out-of-control life around when she was born. As a point of reference, she will be fifty years this year and I am trying desperately to come up with something special to do for her but she I like most all of the other ciswomen in my life, they do not have a grasp on what they did for me.

Since now, I spend so much of my time isolated from the real world and because I have mobility issues, I don’t have a chance to match wits with the public anymore and face people such as the pesky kid who would not quit staring at me. It is a good thing he was not sitting at an angle where Liz or my daughter could see him or there could have been some sort of an altercation about having manners. That would have been bad because I am used to fighting my own rare battles. As most kids do, he got bored and turned his attention back to his breakfast. Per norm, is mom was too busy on her phone to be paying any attention to her kids and at least they were not screaming.

Since my daughter’s world is so busy with work and acting as a home care person for her mom, it is difficult for us to put together the time to get together, and I can take advantage of a powerful shot of gender affirmation. Because I can still benefit from it so much and I have always been just me to her and the rest of her extended family no matter what gender I was living as. As a matter of fact, it took me longer to adjust to them accepting the authentic me than them to me. One of the reasons was because the pressure of living an unwanted life was over and I was free to be happy. They knew me better than I knew myself.

More than likely, I won’t have to wait as long as I did this time for another shot of gender affirmation from person who went through my transition with me because my daughter has access to many old pictures of my family I need for my book I am writing for them about my life. She lives in Dayton, Ohio about an hour away from where I live in Cincinnati so it’s not like we live right around the corner from each other. Plus, her big birthday is coming up on Labor Day, so perhaps we can pick up the photos then and if her mother-in-law throws a big party, there will be more gender affirmation for me to selfishly enjoy. Maybe my second wife was right, my gender struggles were all about me.

In many ways, gender affirmation is just another term for having an extended period of gender euphoria. It is just another way of saying that I need to be relieved of my transgender insecurities because they run so deep. Maybe it is because I was forced into that male box, I wanted no part of for so long yet eventually learned to master in so many ways. Or me just wanting to be a transfeminine person was so difficult for me to accomplish, I could never forget the struggle and still bear the scars from him fighting me for control.

Regardless of my insecurities, I still try to keep them hidden around my supporters and do my best to show my appreciation for the gender affirmation they have given me.

 

 

 

It's All in the Details of Gender

 

Image from Liam Nguyen 
on UnSplash.

Quite early in life, I learned to pay attention to the details when I followed my instincts and started to cross-dress into mom’s clothes and try to put on her makeup. I thought all was good after I had snuck around and managed to shave my legs again without anyone noticing.

That was until I snagged mom’s hose on an unkept fingernail and ran yet another pair of good stockings or pantyhose. I learned the hard way to take better care of my nails as well as the rest of my body on my path to femininity. Little did I know, paying attention to just the smallest of details would rule my world as I climbed my gender path towards my dream of living fulltime as a transfeminine person.

My major problem was that I was restricted to viewing what a woman’s life was like from the outside in a male dominated family. Through it all, my mom became my mentor and role model more than she ever knew and it went way past just using her makeup and wearing her clothes. I could see how she worked behind the scenes to make sure that the family ran as smoothly as possible. Way past all the traditional female duties such as cleaning and buying groceries. She taught me all that a ciswoman could be at a young age. All the time not realizing what she was doing because she actually had a daughter, not a son.

It was not until I began to get out on my own as a novice cross-dressing transgender woman did; I really have to develop my sense of detail. It was very difficult for me because I was never a detail orientated person. When I went out initially as a trans woman, there just seemed to be so much to concentrate on and remember to do to succeed. Even if I thought I had perfected my fashion, hair and makeup for the evening, there was the problem of putting it all together outside of the mirror and getting all my movements down, so I did not look like a linebacker in drag. The details weighed on me heavily and they were all I thought about in every spare moment I had. So much so that I needed to think ahead to which gender I was at key moments in my life.

It all carried over into life events such as weddings and dances when I had to step back and wonder what I would be wearing if I ever had the opportunity to attend as a trans woman. Sadly, I did get to experience attending a funeral when my wife Liz’s dad passed away after I had transitioned. I wore my best black outfit and did the best I could to blend in properly with all the other ciswomen who attended.

The funeral was just another reality check for me as I needed to face how far I had come in my male to female femininization journey. At my age, I always knew attending a funeral as me was a possibility, but I never knew how real it was until it happened. At that time too, reality and details were becoming increasingly important as I expanded my life in the world to new and exciting groups of strangers such as in spiritual circles and Meetups of writers in Cincinnati. They were the first groups of strangers that I had ever met outside of LGBTQIA+ support groups I attended locally and at the Veterans Administration in Dayton, Ohio. Meeting new people as I said was exciting and kept me active at an exciting time of discovery in my life.

By this time, repetition replaced my need for detail as my makeup habits, along with clothing needs became ingrained as I finally knew who I was in my life. No more searching in a dark lonely closet for an answer. I had it with the help of the world of new and exciting discoveries I was in. I had brief moments of releasing my gender euphoria before but nothing like this before as all the possibilities of the world were opened to me. When I sought out and was approved for HRT or gender affirming hormones. Which I write about a lot. New emotions outweighed the need for details as I moved ever closer to being the person I always wanted to be.

One thing I never forgot as I male to female transitioned was how I was treated early on and how I needed to respond by going back to my cross-dressing drawing board time and time again until I got my details correct. There was so much more to what I was trying to do than my home mirror had told me as I tried to exit my gender closet for good. All I knew was, once I was released from my loneliness, I never wanted to go back. I spent as much time as I could out in the world working on my feminine presentation so I could overcome my testosterone poisoned body and make it.

I cannot stress enough how much of my journey has been filled with fear and or panic when I lost key male privileges such as intelligence and personal security. Details just weren’t enough to help me through all the anxiety I felt meeting strangers in my new exciting world. In fact, just yesterday, I felt the same old twinges of panic sneak in when Liz’s son and I had to take our old lawn mower into the shop for a tuneup. After all these years in the public eye and I still have the same problem is ridiculous I know, but I still do when I am entering predominantly male spaces for any reason. Again, all went well as the young person at the mower place was only interested in taking care of us. Not my gender.

All in all, the extreme work I put into crossing the gender border was worth it as I achieved my goal of living the life I wanted to live. Even though there were times when I did not think I was going to make it.

Thanks so much for joining me with my life experiences. Hopefully you can gain some insight into your life from them. Comments are always welcome!

 

Open Up, I am Coming In!

 

Image from Jason Hoehne
on UnSplash. 

During the many years I have written my blog, I always have been careful to give credit where credit is due, to the ciswomen who helped me go behind the gender curtain.

Initially, I thought most of the women interacted with me because they were curious about what I wanted to do in their world. But lately I wonder if how I acted had anything to do with it. What I mean is, by that had anything to do from the point I had reached on my gender path as I transitioned from cross-dresser to transgender woman. As I had reached the point of meeting the women who showed a casual interest in me, I had already taken my appearance and movement levels as a woman to a higher level. I did not have to worry about any of that and could concentrate on the matter at hand, communicating with mostly other ciswomen.

When I did so, I was not giving them a chance to wonder who I was as I was not coming off to the world as a clown in drag anymore. I was announcing myself as a person who wanted to be let in behind the gender curtain. Something I had dreamed of for years. By the time I was behind the curtain, I felt so natural that there was no way I was going back. I thought, open that curtain, I was coming in and you couldn’t stop me.

That was the point in my life I could put my potential male aggressiveness behind me because I found more women were willing to help my gender cause rather than hinder it. I encountered very few negative TERF’s or radical feminists who rejected me totally as some sort of self-imposed gatekeepers to the feminine world. So, my very fragile confidence as a transfeminine person was rarely questioned, and life went on. Basically, how I wanted it to.

It was about that time also that I began to learn all the nuances of a woman’s life I would need to survive in it when I jumped into playing in the girls’ sandbox. Somehow, I needed to prove I was not the terrible woman my second wife always called me after the fights we had about me progressing from being a cross-dresser to a transgender woman whose next step was being approved for gender affirming hormones or HRT. The only clue she gave me was she was not talking about my appearance as a woman. Thankfully, even though my feelings were hurting deeply, I needed to somehow figure out what she was telling me. It took me years, but I did.

What she was talking about was I did not have the basic experiences of a woman yet to build a new life as a trans woman. I was stuck in quicksand trying to get the feminine experiences I needed when no one would help me get there. Finally, I decided I needed to find out for myself if I was ever to not being a terrible woman. There were two labels I rebelled at in life. The first that early on I could be called mentally ill because of my gender issues and the second was that I made a terrible woman when I was clueless in what that meant.

The good news was that later in life I learned both were wrong and I escaped my own brand of quicksand and was finally able to leave most all the male baggage behind I wanted to lose and use the rest of the blocks to build a solid future as a transgender woman. Perhaps it was easier for me to build a new feminine life because the weight of my old life was behind me and I was happier. Humans are like sharks and can sense when blood is in the water with another unhappy toxic person and ciswomen are especially good at it. I think they sensed with me that I was honest in my path, and it was OK to open up and let me in.

Ironically, the only real problem I faced was concentrating on taking the old “don’t mess with me” male scowl that I had perfected over the years off my face. The last thing I wanted to do was to come as far as I had in my male to female femininization project was to ruin it all with a simple facial expression.

When I made it to the point where going behind the women’s gender curtain was not going to be a problem, I needed to make sure I was not screaming open up, I am coming in to anyone. That would have been like announcing my arrival in a woman’s restroom. I learned to do it with a small smile just like the other women do in the most sacred of women’s only spaces.

Now that I have made it through the major obstacles of feminization, I learned to evolve myself into the person I always dreamed of being. I escaped all of the quicksand of a gender transition by staying on my feet in my heels as I needed to be quite selfish at times to make sure I stayed in my deadly serious gender game. It was nothing I was ever happy about but on the other hand, I was stuck in pure survival mode looking for the best way out.

Whatever you want to call it, surviving a gender struggle is no joke and all the transphobes need to walk a mile in our existence to discover just that. In the meantime, you may just have to use the “Open Up” on them to let you in.

 

 

Exceeding my Expectations

 

JJ Hart

I once worked at a great job where the company’s motto was, we exceed expectations.

As luck would have it, about the time I worked there was the same time that I really kicked my gender explorations into hyper-speed. It was the time when if I was not spending time with my second wife or working, I was out the door as a novice transgender woman learning the world. Looking back, that period of my life seems like a blur as both sides of my gender personality competed for attention.

In many ways the competition was not fair because I was beginning to feel so natural in the feminine world as my fear of doing it subsided. I was discovering that my testosterone poisoned body could indeed be shaped into something that could blend in with the ciswomen who ran the world I wanted to be part of. My confidence rose every time I succeeded in presenting successfully in the world as a transfeminine person. I was exceeding my expectations and many times I could not believe it was me.

To do so, when I could, I picked out many feminine things I could do to prove to myself that I could. Such as the time I was able to do the “Black Friday” Christmas shopping with the overwhelming majority of the women in a mall I always wanted to go to back when malls were still the place to be to shop after Thanksgiving for deals. I had tried for years to schedule such an adventure but finally, the sun, moon and stars came together for me, and I was able to do it.

When I pulled into the mall, it was already packed and I was lucky I found a close parking place to a side entrance and wore my most comfortable boots with my big soft sweater and leggings to brave the Ohio cold and headed inside the warm mall. As I said, the place was packed with women on a shopping mission, and I soon learned they could not be bothered with worrying about a single trans woman going about her business. Sadly, I did not have a long time to spend there because I needed to go to work later in the afternoon, so I had to leave my adventure behind and drive home. But, on the plus side, I could mark another experience off my feminine bucket list as I finally was able to take on the world as a woman during one of their favorite activities…getting the best shopping bargains at the post-Thanksgiving Black Friday deals.

As I took that off my transgender bucket list, I needed to rack my brain to think of other primarily ciswomen dominated things to do. Next, I decided to try my hand on seeing if I could be accepted in a couple of the small lesbian bars I had heard of in the Dayton, Ohio area. I turned out to be extremely successful in one of them and extremely hated in another. Which at the time, I did not think was too bad. The venue I was intensely disliked in was essentially a lesbian biker bar which did not accept trans women such as me at all. But the other bar did and I ended up having several great experiences there.

Such as the night when I was forced to sing karaoke by a super-butch lesbian in a cowboy hat who I did not think she ever realized I was trans. At any rate, I made sure I had paid for drinks and left before she realized why my voice was deeper than hers when we both tried to sing a classic country song by “David Allan Coe.” Then there was the night I was approached by another butch who bought me a beer and told me she ought to pick me up and take me home with her. The only problem was that I was still married at the time, and my wife would have never believed me if I told her I was abducted by an alien lesbian. Probably the best part was, out of all the people I knew in the bar was the main bartender who by accident I learned knew my male self. I never knew if she had given my secret away that the “lipstick femme lesbian” everyone was approaching was transgender. Before I found out, sadly the venue had closed, but my expectations were exceeded when I knew I could be accepted by the lesbian culture.

Perhaps my biggest win came when I was able to get away from the gay venues, I was seeking refuge in from the world and try to become more of a regular in all the straight I sports bars I used to be a regular in when I was a man. I say the biggest win because for the first time in my life I was coming out of my gender shell with the chance to learn who I really was in my new trans womanhood. All of my expectations were quickly exceeded the night I finally gathered my courage to go back to the nights I thought I was only a part-time cross dresser and prove myself wrong. I was so much more as I struggled to learn about and live my reality. The night I did it for the first time at a TGIF Fridays, set a standard for me and taught me a lesson I could never unlearn, I could never go back to being a man again.

Setting up a whole new set of expectations for me was never easy. Especially when it comes to something as complex as living as a whole new gender. I was naive about how complex a ciswoman’s life could be, as I primarily learned I had so much more to work through than just worrying about my appearance. Which was just the first high heeled step into the real world of women. Many times, I needed to kick my heels off and dive barefoot into the girls’ sandbox to survive and exceed all the expectations I had ever had.

Hey You!!!! Thanks for reading along with all my writings and as always thanks for any comments you may have.

 

 

 

 

 

What Will You Do with your New Time?

 

Image from Elana Korcheva
on UnSplash. 

When we come close to completing a major portion of our gender recovery project as transgender women or transgender men, we suddenly learn we have more to do. It seems our work is never done.

In my case, my wife Liz and I were talking about the rare chance I had to stop my previous life as an unhappy man and start all over as a pleasant trans woman. As she wisely said, not many humans ever have the chance to stop, start over and live their lives again. Then I began to think of all the people I called “Trans-Nazi’s” who just gave off the vibes of being evil people.

I first ran into them on an on-line site I found when I first bought a home computer and started exploring cross-dresser or transgender web sites. Back in those days, complete sex change or gender realignment surgeries seemed to be rarer than they are today and those individuals who went through them were expected to move on completely from their former male life and start all over as a complete woman.

On the site, many of the transsexual women banded against the cross dressers and even the newer transgender women for some sort of supremacy simply because they had more operations than the other person. It did not matter to them when someone such as myself pointed out that my gender was always located between my ears, not between my legs. I was always placed in the gender “pretender” crowd which never made me happy as I waded into the “discussions.” As you can imagine, quite a few of the “discussions” grew quite heated behind the screens of gender computer warriors. On occasion I wondered why we were spending all this time and energy fighting each other when so many others in the outside world wanted to attack us anyhow.

Once I made it away from my computer and into the twisted reality of the old transvestite- transgender mixers that “Tri-Ess” and others put on, I was able to meet some of the “Nazi’s” one on one and changed their name to me as the “A-Lister’s”. They were the predecessors to the girls in the “Mean Girl’s” movies and reminded me of some of the less than pleasant popular girls who set themselves up on some sort of a pedestal when I was in high school. During these social mixers of course, I was left out from being with the “A” girls because I could not match their spectacular femininity. Again, I could not understand why they decided to not bring the best of femininity with them instead of the worst. But the result was that I just wanted to tag along when they went to special gay venues after the regular activities were over and most of the attendees had given up and returned to their rooms.

It turned out, once I got to know one of the “mean girls”, she wasn’t so mean after all and I was invited to her restored home in nearby Columbus, Ohio. She threw very small and diverse parties, and I learned a lot of what I thought I wanted to do with my future as a transgender woman from her. Unlike me, she was headed towards a complete gender realignment surgery, and through our discussions she helped me to determine what the best path may be for me. In her own way, she taught me to be gracious and giving in her femininity.

In other ways, her get-togethers were teachers for me. Such as the time I was in danger of being sexually molested and over-powered by a much bigger man who had attended the party as an admirer (and was only saved by my wife after he cornered me in a narrow hallway.) Plus, the first time I found I could be attracted to a lesbian and her with me on a night when my wife did not attend with me. We ended up leaving the party early and going to a big lesbian/gay venue, but it all ended there because I was married. The only problem I had was being able to make it to all the parties I wanted to because I had to work many weekend nights in the restaurant I was in.

Since I needed to make a living, I found other ways to spend my increasingly beneficial time learning what my future may be like as a transfeminine person. Even though I knew I would never be as attractive as my unintended mentor, I needed to find out if I could still make it to my dream goal of womanhood on my own terms. Too much was riding on my ultimate decision not to research it totally. Which meant trying to establish myself as a new person in straight venues I was used to. To my surprise, I was able to with relatively no problems as most of the world did not care if I was trans or not.

More than anything else, during this time, I was trying to rebuild myself into a person that never gave away any of her male past, unless I was forced to like when I came out as the person, I always was to my daughter, who accepted me and my only blood relation still alive (my brother) who did not. Which resulted in an ugly breakup which on occasion I go into. The easiest thing to say is that we have not interacted for over a decade now.

Through it all, I decided to listen to the person I trusted the most, which was my wife Liz and try to build my new feminine life as close as I could to my mentor (Michelle) so long ago in Columbus. I wanted to be a kind and giving gracious woman. Who used her extra time in life to love and cherish her new family and forget my largely toxic background.

I just had to take my extra time and make it as worthwhile as possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gender Gatekeepers in the Way?

 

Image from UnSplash

Perhaps you have gender gatekeepers blocking your gender transformation.

It is often a hot button issue for people drawn into the fray by unreasoning political debates which more times than not center around transgender girls in sports as well as trans women and men using the restroom of their choice. The problem is we all have had the gender label slapped on us from birth if we liked it or not. And what’s that old saying about everyone having assumptions? Everyone has one…Well that certainly applies to gender also. Gender is such a powerful building block for humans today, as they think they are vested in a certain gender simply by being born into it.

As far as gatekeepers go, leading the charge along with the religious right are the Trans- Exclusionary Radical Feminists or TERF’s for short. Mainly TERF’s arrived on the scene around 2008 as a way to block transgender women from having any access to women’s only spaces. Even though I would venture a guess that the average trans gatekeeper has heard the TERF term at all, she still attempts to practice it. My prime example was the night a ciswoman was yelling at me at the top of her lungs in a women’s rest room (at a venue I was a regular at) by calling me a pervert for just trying to pee. After she backed down, I got her to even give me a card to her beauty salon she ran, so I could pass it along to the very powerful LGBTQIA+ organization in town. Even though I emerged with a modest sense of success, the experience still influences me to this day. Even though I have been able to use the women’s room for years now with no problems.

Another problem I see in our trans world today are the people who assume (yes, I used that word again) that they have reached a certain age, they can be anointed with the term woman or man. When becoming a woman or a man is a socialized term and just because you were born female or male, you don’t have an automatic right to it. Beyond everything else I have gone through to achieve a transfeminine womanhood; this fact has given me more confidence than anything else when I am being stared down by an unfriendly person anywhere, I go. Chances are, I have gone through more to achieve my womanhood than they had, mine just came from a radically different path. Plus, it was more mentally driven as I rejected the gender status I was born with.

Even so, it took me a long time to not fear the gatekeepers who were trying to keep me from experiencing my dream goal of slipping behind the gender curtain and seeing if I wanted to permanently live there. To do so, I needed to take chances with my male life which had provided me with so many positives. Also, I needed to overcome the haters who thought I was up to no good as I tried to learn a new world.

From my days dealing with serving teams in the restaurant business, I learned of the power of Alpha-females. Or I discovered once I was accepted by the Alpha women in the bunch, the easier time I would have it. Many times, my plan worked to perfection when my gatekeepers paved the way for me and opened doors, I never thought possible. I was approached for the first time in my life by well meaning women who were curious about me and more importunately shunned by potentially toxic men.

As I bring up the gender with the frail sexuality (men) I need to mention most all of them were all too happy to act as gatekeepers to me. Unless they wanted to treat me as some sort of a fetish object, they were all too happy to slam the door on me. Even the gay men who just saw me as another drag queen. I grew used to having my hands well out of the way when I was dealing with a cisman.

The more I tested the public as a novice cross-dresser or transgender woman, the more skilled I became on testing the gatekeepers I was going to face. My biggest drawback by far was adjusting to the passive aggressive attacks from ciswomen who for one reason or another were out to get me. I learned a smile from some women was just masking their claws that were out to get me and I needed to move on from them quickly. As I learned, the more I was able to become my own gatekeeper and even help a few others come out for the first time themselves in the public’s eye. I was humbled and flattered anytime it happened to me.

Today I believe that the government gender gatekeepers have been emboldened by their recent political successes. But even that is being challenged here in backwards Ohio as the number one anti-LGBTQ politician in the state is being charged with child sex crimes. I bet that sounds familiar right? Whatever comes from the charges here in solid red (conservative) Ohio, it is the slightest chink in the armor of the heavily gerrymandered Republican party and brighter days may be ahead of us.

What it has to do with you is an incredible chance to vote and change the system. No matter if you are a beginning cross-dresser looking for answers in your dark closet, or an out and about transgender woman or transgender man, you need to have your voice heard. Because when you finally make it out of your closet, you will need the fewest gatekeepers in your way as you follow your gender path. Look at them as some sort of a gender haunted house of scary attractions you have to overcome to make it.

Gatekeepers can be won over and help you to survive in the world if you are a survivor and want to make it. It is a learning experience but an interesting one if you take the time to enjoy it.