Buckle Up....It's the Transgender Law

 

Image from Milada Vigerova
on UnSplash.

As any of you transgender women or transgender men already know, it’s time for you to buckle up for a rough and bumpy ride along the way. To coin a term used in Ohio commercials, “Buckle up, It’s the Law”. To which I added, it is the transgender law.

It all begins early in life when we learn we have gender issues to work out of. Then we must go through the cruel reality which fully sends us into masculine bodies we wanted nothing to do with. Or the opposite for trans men. In my case, I had no need for all the muscles, angles and hair my body was adding, but there they were and I had to buckle up for a lifetime of sometimes unpleasant experiences.

Adding to the problems, many of will not survive puberty as femininized boys or masculine girls but at least the “tomboy” label can get girls by. When they want to play with the boys, which is frowned upon if you are a boy wanting to play with the girls. In my case, I remember Christmas when I wanted a baby doll and received a BB Gun instead. Hear I was stuck in a life I never wanted. I had to buckle down to change it more than anything else I ever wanted to do.

Not being a feminine boy worked wonders for me as a boy around the bullies at school but was a difficult pill to swallow during my early days of trying to look like a pretty girl in the mirror at home. Back then, I could have never imagined all the work I would have to put in to shake my male external image. It would be so much more than just learning to apply cosmetics correctly or finding a feminine wardrobe which would fit me.

What I started to do was take better care of my skin by using good moisteners I could sneak past my wife and then started a crash diet in which I used to buy better fitting clothes in the thrift stores I was haunting, looking for bargains. It worked because I began to be able to present more effectively in the shopping malls I was going to. Which I never thought I could earlier when I was laughed out of them. By then, society was changing or I was because the teen girls who used to harass me began to leave me alone. But only when I was able to femininize myself to the point of almost blending in with the rest of the ciswomen I encountered. I considered it step one to achieve if I was ever able to make it to my goal of being a functional transfeminine person. Or, I had to at least look the part the best I could. It turned out that was going to be the easy part for me and I had better buckle up for what was coming up ahead for me.

Step two it turned out was going to be the longest step I would have to take, as I finally entered the world as a trans woman and started working for my future. Following several false starts and in-advised adventures. By ill-advised, I mean the nights I was asked to leave several redneck venues I went to just to see if I could. I did not make it and got asked to leave, which I did with no incident as I continued to settle into a life I respected, and it respected me as I began to carve out a new existence. The only way I did make it through this step was to consider every failure as a learning experience to never try again. I was fortunate that several of my experiences turned out to be potentially dangerous situations that a ciswoman would know from experience to try to stay away from. Such as dark city streets late at night and huge cross-dresser toxic admirers in small hallways at a party I was at.

During stage two, it would have been certainly better to learn from what ciswomen told me than trying to find out for myself. It was all part of my effort to see if I really wanted to step aside from all the male privileges I had learned and start all over across the gender border to find out if the grass was greener on the feminine side. Which is what stage three would teach me, as I had to buckle up for the first time in my life for circumstances beyond my control such as death and dying around me. For some reason, I had always thought I would be the first to die because of the destructive lifestyle I was leading but I was very wrong.

Death and dying meant that my wife of twenty-five years along with four close friends all would pass away ahead of me with a short two-to-three-year span. Knocking me into a deep depression, and a battle with loneliness. I had gone from being a very shy person in my early life to being a very social one and I did not want to go back. But the problem was, I had never had an easy time making friends with other men as a man, how would I ever do it as a woman. The answer was quite easy when I began to live it. I found I naturally interacted with women much easier once I was playing in their sandbox, and I became very social again. Which in turn brought out more of my feminine self but first, I had to summon the courage to buckle up and put myself out into the world.

It all worked for me and took me to stage four in my life. The stage where all my challenges seemed to disappear temporally. Many times, life still caught up with me, and I had to do my best to stifle my old male urges. But them again there were still many parts of my male life I needed to bring with me. I could not live for half a century without doing so. I guess you could compare my stage four to a giant-sized kitchen mixer when I needed desperately to turn out a quality product.

It was certainly never easy to buckle down and live a radical new life as a transgender woman for me. It was especially difficult to do since I was very much an easy-going person and learning about a new life was an interesting experience. If I was going to give any advice, I would say expect a dose of the worst and embrace the doses of the other. One way or another buckle up for your new life.

 

 

 

Where Do We Go From Here?

 

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on UnSplash. 

Typically, as we follow our winding gender journeys as transgender women or transgender men, we reach points where we must decide what we are going to do next.

It is especially intimidating to see all the political anti-transgender ads on TV funded by far away billionaires such as Theil and Musk who are pouring millions into defeating Democratic candidates here in my native Ohio. Especially the ones stating that the Democrats are extremists who supported sex change surgeries for children in school. That is about as far as I want to go politically in this post, so I will move on to what really matters…each of us and how we feel.

If the so called “civilians” in our world knew what we have to go through to see results in our individual gender worlds, they may understand more what it is like to be in our shoes and being constantly bombarded with negativity. Following years of struggles (or decades) I was fortunate to have found my way into discovering who the true me really was and most of the years of turmoil went away. Even still, I needed to follow a journey of steps which led me to blind curves which I knew nothing about.

All I discovered was that I had an unique life worth living to the fullest and very few other human beings can live a life which enables them to experience both sides of the binary gender road. It meant being able to exist in a life I never really wanted to live as a man. Slowly stop it altogether and start all over to earn a place like the other gender. As frustrating as that life as a trans person can be, the rewards can still be there if you can answer all the what’s next. Since most of us begin our lives cross-dressing in front of a mirror, there is plenty of ground to cover. Because we are destined to have such a small knowledge of the gender we are seeking to become. Again, because we are stuck on the outside looking in.  

Gaining access to your new life can take many paths. Sadly, many involve marriage, family and friends we do not want to give up but have to. The ways to announce your true self to the world can be done in several ways. Some just pull the band aide off, cross-dress and say here I am to the world, while others write letters and others still try to soften the blow by providing positive feedback from the internet or social media. Sometimes, I think I chose the most painful way of all as I tried to maintain my marriage to a woman I loved deeply while I knew all along that my truth was going to slip sooner or later. To make matters worse, she knew I was a cross dresser from the beginning and accepted it but told me time and time again she would draw the line at any moves I would ever make to going the transgender route and taking HRT hormones. She did not want to live with another woman. An answer I could never debate.

I guess you could say, I wanted the best of both gender worlds as I tried to do better and better in the male world I learned to survive in, while at the same time work very hard on my makeup and wardrobe to appear more realistic as a woman. All I was doing was creating severe friction within the marriage and within my head. If I was not thinking about work, I was thinking about how I could improve myself as a novice trans woman. Which I was just understanding that is what I was.

Without fail, I would get moody and nasty when I did not get my way and be able to cross-dress when I wanted which led to more friction within the marriage and more fights. In the heat of battle, my wife told me a couple of things I should have reacted to sooner. One of which would have been difficult for me to do and the other I should have been doing all along. Being called a “Terrible woman” was one thing I did not understand until I had the chance to live my truth as a transfeminine person and the other time she told me, “Why didn’t I be a man and live like a woman.” She was right, I should have done it. No matter how painful it would have been for me to carve out a new life for myself during that portion of my life when I was in my thirties.

Another problem was the sizeable male ego I was still carrying around with me. He wanted me to look and act a certain way as a novice trans woman which my wife did not like. Which led to more fights. The only revenge I ever got on her was the night she was forced to ask me for help on her makeup when we were invited to an upscale business dinner. At least the “Terrible woman” was better at makeup, I guess.

The thing it took me years to understand was that it was never about looking terrible as a woman, it was all about being socialized as a ciswoman. Sadly, my wife passed away before she could ever get to know the new improved feminine me. It took me until I was in my fifties to begin to get admission into the Girls’ Club and fully understand more about what my wife was talking about all those years before. I was suddenly on the verge of knowing where I wanted to go from that point forward. As every part of my being was telling me I was making the right decision about my life and should go for it.

I would not recommend taking the amount of time I took on my gender path before I made the final decision to live a life I always thought was going to be a dream. I think now there would have to have been a better way or like my second wife said, “Be man enough to be a woman.”  At the same time, I had my reasons for not doing it when I did which I will discuss in-depth on another post.

In the meantime, I hope you have a clearer understanding of where you want to get to in the everchanging world of trans women and trans men.

Thanks so much as always for reading along and I hope somehow, I have helped you on your gender journey. Comments are always appreciated!

 

It Was Always a Challenge

 

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on UnSplash.

As a boy and onward to manhood, I had plenty of challenges to be sure of. Early on, my challenges were in athletics where I had very little natural ability, except for a passion to play ball of any sort.

On the positive side, my love for sports kept the bullies away for the most part and on the negative side, I lost a lot when I played. In the meantime, my feminine side beckoned and I was challenged even more because once again, I was not blessed with very little ability to present well as a girl. Testosterone tore my body up and produced many results that I did not want such as a bigger body and hairy legs and arms. Not good for a boy who wanted to be a girl as the major goal in her life.

At that time, I did not realize how complex my life would become when I decided much later to pursue the life of a transgender woman. How would I ever maintain a marriage as well as a successful career as a man that I was expected to do, if I wanted to be a woman at the same time. It was the beginning of an intense amount of pressure that I needed to live with as it became part of my permanent baggage when at the time, I was trying my best to minimize my life. Especially when I was in the military and almost everything I owned was being shipped home, on my back or in my duffel bag. I would never be free of entanglements in my life that I had then.

Then, even if I was trying not to add more baggage, life set in when I was discharged from the Army and marriage as well as my first and only child were quickly coming my way. All along I was conflicted about the new challenges I faced, I had set up basic guardrails in my life such as telling my first wife I was a confirmed cross-dresser or transvestite at the time and trying to use birth control which ended up failing on me which I will not go into.

I suppose I had no choice but to accept the new life challenges I faced with parenthood and trying to build a career for her and my small family as I moved along. It was what I was supposed to do, and I was trying to meet the demands of doing it. What I never counted on was the strength of my feminine inner self. She was always demanding more and I was on the verge several times of responding to her call when I had very little other male baggage to deal with. But I did not and went on to struggle with my gender dysphoria the best I could by internalizing it. The only release I ever had was cross-dressing in front of the mirror for my own pleasure as I dreamed how it would be to live a life as a trans woman.

A well-known path out for me became the exciting Halloween parties I could go to in my favorite costume…as a woman of course. The parties showed me I could begin to exist on my own terms as the person I always dreamed of being. If I answered the challenge to do it. If I had the courage to present myself to friends as a woman, could I ever decide to do it as another avenue out of my closet and into the world. While I was at the first Halloween parties I went to, the more I learned of the basics of being in a new exciting yet scary world where I always wanted to be.

I learned quickly that cismen around me would avoid me completely, while ciswomen asked me questions about who did my makeup and how did I gather the courage to shave my legs for my “costume”.  Later on, I used the basics I learned from the parties I went to when I tried to meet the challenge of being out with other women who wanted to communicate with and were still curious why I would want to meet the challenge of being in their world. By this time, I was becoming more confident in my true feminine self that the thrill of going to Halloween parties disappeared.

Just because the parties went away and my confidence increased did not mean that the challenges I was facing went away with it. I needed to face the complexities of living a life as a transfeminine person head on if I was ever going to be successful, I needed to communicate with a world which wanted to know more about me for the first time and it was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life. It was the time I had always dreamed of when I could finally put the mirror behind me and put the total new me into motion. When another woman came at me with questions, I was there to answer hers and was beginning to be able to ask her questions of my own by looking her directly in the eye and doing it.

The only advice about overcoming the communication challenges you will face in the world I have is to somehow get out of your closet and experience what is going on firsthand. By doing that, you can let your own unique personality out into the world and leave your unwanted baggage behind you if you are a transgender woman or a transgender man. The same rules apply, just in different gender worlds you must live in and react to. If you do not answer your challenges and try your best to get out of your closet, you will make yourself a victim and never do it.

Also, the only warning I have is depending on where you live, know the anti-transgender laws and attitudes you will be facing and plan ahead accordingly. Remember you can not rely upon the old male security privileges you used to have and find yourself in a dangerous situation. Ciswomen are raised to be careful of potentially toxic situations and avoid them too.

You can also use your challenges as a mini-bucket list and move on after you have accomplished one goal. It is a relatively easy way to manage your male to female or female to male transition.

Good luck with your challenges and thanks for reading along. I appreciate you and any comments you may have!

 

Finding Your Trans North Star in a Straight World

 

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on UnSplash

As most all transgender women and transgender men know, finding your own personal North Star is often very difficult to do.

The first thing you have to consider is what your North Star means to you and down the road, what will you do to follow it. Very early on in my life, I knew the only thing I wanted to really do when I grew up wanting not to be in the male body I was born into. It turned out after fifty plus years of trying; I was able to make it mentally out of my male body and live as a transfeminine woman but never seriously considering undergoing any of the serious and extensive gender realignment surgeries which are going on today. At the time, I figured I did not have to risk my body which to this day has been healthy and just concentrate on the physical feminine side of life I enjoyed so much. Or my gender stayed between my ears and not my legs. Which started me down a very long path trying to discover what my North Star meant to me and where it was exactly.

The problems which clouded my view came almost exclusively from my male self-fighting the process of a male to female femininization every place that he could. He took a secret joy when I was laughed out of venues I was in as I was dressing to please him and not the public who really mattered which were ciswomen who determined if I could stay in their world at all. What he did not count on was that the stares and laughter just made me more resolute searching for my feminine self.

As I went along, I discovered even the most strenuous male activities could not mask the shine of my inner feminine star. Not even three years in the army could hide her glow when it counted. In fact, lessons I learned when I was away from my true self helped me when I could return seriously to my gender path. Most importantly, I learned I could rely upon myself more completely when the times became rough. Sadly, it took me years of living to learn a woman could be feminine and strong all at the same time as my two-role model’s mom and second wife taught me to be. Without ever knowing they were dealing with another woman. Much to the chagrin of my inner woman who wanted her chance in the world.

And yes, there were times that my North Star was completely lost in the clouds before I could completely reclaim her. Such as the time when I was stuck transitioning from a serious cross-dresser to a novice transgender woman. It turned out, it was only another mental transition because at this time, I had most all my appearance basics together and I was ready to experiment on the next step of mentally comparing myself as I socialized with other ciswomen. Following much fear and trepidation, I found that I could and more importantly, I felt natural and happy doing it. My star was shining brightly when I made it out of the comparative safety of the gay venues I was going to (where I was only considered to be another drag queen) to straight venues in the world where I could express myself as a trans woman.

I discovered that once I reclaimed my star, I reclaimed my life too. I was on the verge of reclaiming the life I was so unhappy in and turning it into an existence which restored my fragile depressive mental health and gave me a reason to be happy. Probably, for the first time in my life. But I still had a long way to go, because my male self stubbornly refused to give up all the privileges he had earned and was fighting for at least a partial share of my life. It did not matter to him that I felt happy and natural when I was a trans woman, carving out a new life with new privileges for myself. Such as constant interaction with ciswomen who were interested why I was in their world. I finally quit trying to figure it out and learned to sit back and enjoy the socialization process I was going through. As I was learning as much from them as they were about me. It all made me a better person as I continued to carve out a new life for myself.

Thankfully, my North Star continued to burn brightly for me during this time of my life. I needed the guidance of the star to help me navigate any more blind curves along my gender path that I was on. I never counted on the new life being so much more complex than the old straight forward male life I was discontinuing due to lack of interest. From appearance to body movement to communication, I needed to change it all, and I felt I was running out of time since I was in my mid-fifties, and my biological transgender clock was ticking. It all kept me going and interested to see what was beyond the next blind curve I would have to face on my gender journey.

By this time my North Star was starting to sink into the horizon of a new day for me as it guided me forward into my new day. As it faded, I was able to sit back and appreciate all the good things it had sent me through in my life, as well as helping me around some of the bad ones I needed help with. By following the star, I was able to finally make it to the dream I never knew I could do and that of course was being able to live a happy life as a transgender woman.

Even during my dark days of infantry basic training in the Army at Ft. Knox, my North Star came through and helped me see the way to overcome my gender shortcomings which turned out to be temporary. Permanence turned out to be the ability to follow and live out my dream.

As always thanks for reading along and I hope you have a North Star to guide you also through the thick and thin days of a transgender life.

 

 

 

 

It Was All That and More

Tim Curry in the 
"Rocky Horror Picture Show"

It took me decades of living to finally achieve my dream of slipping behind the feminine gender curtain and staying there permanently. When I summoned the courage to do it, my feeling of gender euphoria was deep and permanent.

It turned out that all the dreams and hopes I had ever had over the years came to fruition. Largely with the help of a few key women friends, I was kicked out of my old male nest and  into their embrace.  It was more than I ever asked for and I thought ever deserved because I was raised never to be happy or satisfied with anything I ever did. It could be too that I was happy because of all the work I put in to achieving my transgender goal was working.

Along my gender path, I discovered many blind spots along the way. Several of which almost derailed my attempts to reach my goal altogether. Examples included the times when I was out in the world as a crossdresser and almost was attacked by two men on a dark urban sidewalk outside of a gay venue in Dayton, Ohio I had just left. Or the time I was cornered by a cross-dresser “admirer” who was much bigger than I at a social mixer in Columbus, Ohio. Both were sudden reminders of how different a world I was in as a trans woman when all my personal security was taken away.  Following both of those unfortunate interactions, I learned the hard way to go slowly around any future blind curves I was facing.

It was about this time when I discovered that being able to make it behind the gender curtain was going to take much more than I thought. Mainly because even if I knew ciswomen operated on a whole different wavelength than cismen, I had no idea as to how complex the differences in life went between the genders. Suddenly, I realized why men said they never understood women. It was because women had set their worlds up that way to protect themselves from potentially toxic men. Which I needed to be particularly careful of since I was spending a lot of my life consuming alcohol in venues as a novice single woman. One night comes back to me as a strong learning experience when a toxic drunk man approached me and attempted to start a conversation. Quickly one of my woman bar tenders approached me and with out a word warned me to stay away from him. From then on non-verbal communication became a part of my learning experience when I dealt with other women.

Finally, I got to the point where I could navigate all the blind gender curves I was facing and was even up to the challenge. It became the all that and more time of my life. Sure I had my setbacks, but overall, I was successful except for the night a group of drunken men kept playing “Dude Looks Like a Lady” on the jukebox in a venue where I never had any trouble entertaining myself before. Finally, the spineless manager came up to me and said I needed to leave so I picked up my purse and headed up the street a couple blocks to another venue I was accepted in. It took a month or so but one night when I was back in that venue, one of my former bartenders from the venue I was kicked out of found me and gave me a personal invitation to come back. It seems “Mr. Manager” got fired for drug abuse and I had indirectly got my revenge because I never saw the drunks who harassed me that night again. Revenge was certainly sweet.

Back in those days, acceptance came easier for me than I ever thought possible when I left the restrictive gay venues I was in and began to explore the world as my true self. It was probably because my confidence kept growing every time, I was successful in going out. I needed to come to the point where if anyone had a problem with me, it was their problem not mine and happiness was just around the next blind curve and I just had to see around the curve to discover it because I was still so stubborn to continue to hang on to what was left of my marriage and my male life. Then sadly, destiny set in and I lost my second wife to a massive heart attack and three of my closest male friends to cancer in a two-year period. Leaving me desperately alone and searching for answers.

As I said, destiny set in and I went full circle into a transfeminine future complete with new friends, wife and life. I changed for good when my third wife Liz told me she had never seen any male in me at all, so why did not I just give up the charade I was living with one foot on either side of the two binary genders. It was as if I had paid my dues living as a man which was a lie and it was time to move on into my new world which included the magic of HRT. Which really helped to soften my view of the world as well as my own body as I synced my mental processes up with my external public presentation.

I never recommend anyone take as long as I did to follow their male to female (or female to male) trips across the border. But then again times change and hopefully the gender pendulum will swing back in our favor from all the ridiculous attacks from a certain orange president in Washington and his blind followers. Regardless of what happens though, crossing that border and finding your way behind the gender curtain will never be easy. So buckle up for the ride of your life.

Over the days which have recently passed, I did mention the death of music and world icon “Dolly Parton” but neglected to mention “Tim Curry” of film fame for his role in the 1975 cult movie classic “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” which helped to re-define the boundaries of gender for all of us. He was 80 as was Dolly and will be missed although his work will live on forever.

 

 

Being Accommodating...Not Intimidating

 

Image from Billie
on UnSplash.

Being accommodating versus intimidating was very difficult for me as I transitioned from male to female.

It was all part of learning a new feminine world and escaping the male bonds I had suffered so long from. What happened was, I was thrust into a male dominated world in which if I was ever going to survive, I would have to play the intimidation game of life. That way, I could stand a very good chance of keeping the bullies away as I matured. It did not hurt that I developed into a larger slightly above average sized male person (which I hated) but again when I added sports into my life’s mix kept the doubters away from my masculinity. In fact, I needed to play that intimidation card well into life and used it before I transitioned into a transfeminine world. Intimidation became easy to use for me, and I counted it as one of my male privileges even though I stopped short of ever being a toxic male because I respected all women so much. But it worked well with the male kitchen crews I needed to manage in the busy restaurants where I worked.

The problems began with my basic personality outlook I had been forced to live so well when I began to try to join a world which was largely controlled by ciswomen, not cismen as I always thought was the case. Women just found unique ways always to work around males and their drama. And here I was in the middle of a new world just trying to find my way successfully.

I felt it most intensely when I was forced into communicating one on one in the world with other women. I found I was unprepared and initially just tried to keep my mouth shut, which turned out to be exactly the wrong move to make. Here I was trying to make new friends in a feminine world without talking? How was that going to work. It did work. In exactly the way I did not want it to. If I did not express who I was, the other woman I was trying to communicate with just assumed I was being standoffish or in some way stuck up which was the last thing I wanted to do. So, I immediately trashed my male scowl and quiet behavior as a form of intimidation to keep people away and went to a more open form of interaction with the public which invited people in. In many ways, it was one of the most intense and scariest things I ever went through in my life. I was in uncharted territory for sure and even resorted to feminine vocal lessons to help my progress.

And then there was the experience I had with a small girl who startled me in a clothing store I was in. She ran around a rack of clothes and almost hit me and went running back to her mom saying something about a “Big mean woman.” Immediately I was relieved that she got the woman part right but right then and there decided to do more about the old male intimidation factor I was obviously still carrying with me. In no way did I want to go around scaring little kids.

Life went on, and so did I as I started to feel more secure in my new role behind the gender curtain. I learned that many ciswomen were just curious about who I really was in a world in those days dominated by day-time sensational talk shows such as Phil Donahue and Jerry Springer. Here I was. The real deal cross-dresser or transgender woman right in front of them to talk to and know that I was just a normal person like them after all. It all happened because I had the courage to let them into my world and turn my old male intimidation ideas off for good.

Perhaps the most intense topic in the intimidation versus accommodation discussion came from my initial introductions to the women’s restroom. It was the exact opposite from the men in many ways except the obvious. In the men’s room, you were expected to never make contact or acknowledge another man while in the women’s room just the opposite was true when a polite smile or greeting was the proper way to acknowledge another woman. It took me a little bit of time to get used to the change, but I did it quickly because I wanted to earn my women’s room privileges desperately. For obvious reasons, I was drinking a lot of beer.

I see intimidation versus accommodation as just another step in acclimating yourself into the feminine world. But you have to do it right to be accepted. You must be yourself behind the gender curtain you choose without becoming a doormat. As an outsider to transgender men everywhere, my thoughts are it probably is more difficult to assume an intimidation role in a male world. On the other hand, accommodation in the female world I was in was always an easier path for me to take. I just had to understand and react to anyone who was setting up to take advantage of me. I came away with plenty of claw marks up and down my back from unfortunate experiences I had in a new (to me) passive aggressive ciswoman world. I learned often that a smile meant nothing in most situations when another woman was just sizing me up.

In the end, the whole experience just boiled down to very important experiences I needed to learn to finally make it out of my closet and into the world as a transgender person that other people would like to know and often my smile was the beginning of that process instead of my stay away old male scowl. The fun part often was seeing the results from the amount of learning I needed to do in my stubborn head to make it happen.

As always, thank you very much for joining me along my gender path and I hope you gained something from my mistakes. Any comments are always appreciated!

 

 

 

 

Dealing with Gatekeepers

 

Image from Ries Bosch
on UnSplash. 

Unfortunately, all the people who see it as their job to be a gender gatekeeper can run the spectrum from nice to nasty.

The nice ones are just normally curious as to what you are doing in their world and will sometimes even help you come through their gate and cross the gender border you so desperately want. Then there are the other ones who sadly make a bigger impact in the world when they overstep their bounds and attempt to keep transgender women or transgender men from ever entering their spaces.

My problem with gender gatekeepers is who gave them the right to do what they are doing anyhow. I see the titles of woman and man as socialization words only. Meaning just because you were born female or male does not mean you are ever socialized enough to earn the title of women or men. I fear the ones who never deserved to be called a woman became the gatekeepers who are trying to stop us transgender women from ever achieving our socialization goal of at least being able to have a feminine life which includes entering spaces such as restrooms.

During my life, I have met both sides of gatekeepers. I have seen it all from being called a pervert in one women’s restroom to being helped to an empty stall in another. Then, there was the Lesbian Valentine’s Day dance Liz, and I went to years ago in Cincinnati. While Liz went up to the refreshment area to get us some appetizers, unannounced I was approached by this lesbian ciswoman who wanted to know what my “real” name was. She was nasty and naturally, I would not tell her anything about me because for some reason she took it upon herself to be a gatekeeper where she did not need to be.

Because I was completely and quickly kicked out of the men’s club when I transitioned, I did not have to worry about very many male gatekeepers. I still remember vividly attempting to join a conversation when I first came out between men when they were dealing with a subject, I knew a lot about and was quickly ignored. It reinforced in me how much I would not miss getting kicked out of the men’s club and sought out the company I really wanted which was with women. As I realized I had always felt that way and life had just got in my way as I always had been pressured to find and date a girlfriend as a male. Ironically, I was very shy and afraid to challenge the feminine dating gatekeepers to even ask a girl out. I finally overcame my internal gatekeepers with the help of friends who set up dates for me with unattached girls they knew.

As I began to explore the world increasingly, I began to meet and utilize more feminine gatekeepers to my advantage. I started to realize how much more ciswomen were secure in their sexuality than cismen and were not afraid to interact with me. Plus, when they went out of their way to do so, at the same time it gave me a chance to learn so much more from them. With men, if most of them even talked to me, they felt somehow, they were gay. Again, I was happy the male gatekeepers kept me out.

Then, let us not forget the most extreme gatekeepers of all, who are the TERFs (or Radical Feminists) who have even teamed up with groups of Evangelical Christians to keep transgender folk from crossing gender borders. There is nothing I dislike more than having a so-called Christian tell me they will pray for me as they jump on the gatekeeper’s bandwagon.  

Sadly, gatekeeping still exists in the gay and transgender community as the Log Cabin conservative Republicans have recently announced they would be taking the “T” out of their LGBT language. I always use them as an example of what will happen when the current administration grows tired of coming after a minority transgender community and comes after a larger gay one.

Even sadder yet are the transgender community members I have known over the years who have tried to exclude certain trans women for not having as many gender realignment surgeries as they have had to prove how trans they are. And they are nothing more than glorified cross-dressers. As if there was anything wrong with being a cross-dresser which most of us started their active transition to being a transfeminine person by experimenting with their mom’s clothes.  Who must say that in the future, the cross-dressing person you shunned may want to do more in their gender life and blossom into their full desired gender lives.

These days, with how divided the country is, it is so sad that so-called normal people are ready to jump into other people's business and become novice gatekeepers. Who gave the woman the right to call me a pervert or even transgender women chiding me for wearing pants too much and who needs to know my previous name except for me anyhow. I know all humans face gatekeepers in life, but it seems the trans community faces more than their fare share of people attempting to exclude us. To put it another way, I faced way too many four way stops on my gender path to finally living my dream, Seemingly, destiny had to show me the problems of living with then losing to death a disapproving wife all the way to losing friends and my brother when I transitioned across the gender border to be a happier person.

I guess I was lucky I wasn’t on a toll-road where the gatekeepers wanted a payment for passage. If I was, I would be broke by now and I was lucky to have received so much more than I lost as I carved out a new feminine life.

Hopefully, you can navigate your gates successfully as you move along your gender path.

Thanks for stopping by and sharing my lifetimes worth of experiences! Any comments are always appreciated.

 

Loving the Skin You are In

 

JJ Hart.

Loving the skin, you are in is often difficult for a transgender woman or transgender man. In fact, we often come to hate the skin we are in. 

We start early in our lives boxed into a gender we were born into but never felt comfortable with. Many of us go through times of discomfort as we try to sort out who we really are. We have many questions such as are we going through a phase, is it just a fetish and someday will we somehow outgrow our desire to be the gender we always wanted to be.

In my case, it took me decades to accept the skin I was in and to learn to live it in the world as a transgender woman. Recently, I was reminded of my past when I attended a virtual LGBTQ support group meeting at the Veteran’s Administration. Normally it is a very tight knit group of the same people who come every week, but this week we had a new person who joined us who was coming out of her gender shell and slowly learning to live a life as a transgender woman. During the session, she asked if anyone had any advice on dealing with public in general and the police in particular when you are out in the world.

I am not good at giving much advice in situations such as that, so I mainly kept my ideas to myself. Such as the fact that I have had few interactions with the police over the years and those have been mostly positive. Even the ciswoman who called me a pervert once in a women’s restroom, did not call the cops on me. Leaving me with the time I was in a venue I was not a regular in and two women at the bar made it a point to call the police on me after I had used the women’s room. All that happened was I was stopped on the way out by a female cop who told me not to do it again and I went a short distance up the road to one of my regular venues where I knew I would not have any troubles. To make a long story short, I was sorry, but I did not have much of any ideas on a magic cure to dealing with a potentially unaccepting public. You just must develop a thick skin and complete confidence that you are doing nothing wrong and you can make it.

Another problem I have with giving any trans person advice is that I came out seriously so long ago and times have changed. You see reports of so many toxic men harassing ciswomen these days which were barely seen in the days when I was trying my hand at being a single woman at a big sports bar. Plus, I am lucky to live now in a fairly liberal part of Cincinnati where the public at large does not notice me, or care. I am allowed to exist in the world as my true self in my own skin for the first time in my life.

I was fortunate to be one of those trans women who could get out of her gender closet and exist in a stable world where I could flourish and share my ideas about my femininity. Hopefully the new member of the support group will stick around long enough so that I will be able to share thoughts with her about appreciating her own skin. Another problem too is that the group time is at a premium, so I am reluctant to take too much up with my thoughts. Such as, if she is already out enough to wear feminine clothes and paint her nails, what is she waiting for. Maybe she is waiting for someone to come along like I was and kick me out of my closet for good. Which is what happened to me when I was miserable trying to juggle living in both genders, and my future wife Liz told me that she had not seen any male in me at all

Destiny really set in with me when my daughter came on board with knowing the true me by saying among other things that I looked so happy. I mentally added, because for the first time in my life I was having the chance to live in my own skin.

Even with all the positives I was dealing with, I still had to get out into the world and live my new reality. I always had some sort of an idea that ciswomen live more of a complex life than men do, but I had no idea of what I was walking into in my new high heeled shoes. Primarily learning to deal with curious ciswomen and their passive aggressive behavior and potentially drama-filled toxic men filled my evenings when I was going out in my new skin in the world as I knew it. Through it all, I needed to adjust my way of thinking quickly and radically away from the old male way I viewed the world.

What kept me going was the fact that I felt so good and natural in my new transfeminine skin. Deep down I felt this new life I was living was always the way things should have always been for me until the cruel joke of being born a biological male set in. It was something I would have to battle for my entire life.

As far as the physical part of having a new skin, it was way past time for HRT or gender affirming hormones to set in and help me. When I was approved for my life improving hormones, it was like my body was telling me I should have been on them all along. As my overall body skin softened dramatically, along with bigger breasts and longer hair.

The best part of adding hormones to my body was the fact that my emotions set themselves up to better appreciate the whole process. For the first time in my life, I could cry tears of joy which I did when I began to live my life in my own skin. I certainly loved it.

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

In Praise of Transgender Men

 

Image from Aiden Craver
on UnSplash. 

I am fairly certain that this is the first time I have written a post which almost exclusively deals with transgender men and how they relate to trans women. But it is long overdue as I know I have several transmen who join me on occasion and read along.

Plus, they are kind enough to comment on my writing to give me an idea of what life is all about from the other side of the major transgender border. Sometimes I even have a hard time remembering what the time was like when I was struggling to be a man, so I can understand and comment back.

My actual dealing with trans men goes back to my first dinner date as a transfeminine person. At the time, the person who asked me out identified as a super butch lesbian who had not yet decided completely to live a male life. We went to dinner at TGIF Fridays and yes I was scared to be on my first date as he reminded me of later. It was the first time I was not in complete control (or thought I was) for a date and I got to see life through a whole different viewpoint.

To this day, I still follow his social media to see what he is up to and on very rare occasions in the past, he included me in some of his observations which happened when he transitioned from the other side.

It turns out, many of the same obstacles of crossing the gender border are the same but just reversed of course. Such as the problem of suddenly using the opposite restroom that you were used to using. I wondered what the shift was like from a brand-new male viewpoint when you were expected not to make any eye contact with another guy in “the room”. You were there for one reason only, and that was not to socialize, do your business and get out. Then there is the problem of having to use the stall to pee and having another guy hear you do it. As we all know, cismen have a very fragile sexuality which could be challenged unknowingly at any time when you play behind the gender curtain from female to male.

Not so long ago, I received a comment from a trans guy named “Omey” who said he was not accepted much anymore by the girls he used to know but I would think leaving the girls club would not be dealt with so harshly as leaving the men’s club is for transgender women. I know the club house door was slammed shut on me quickly when I left the men’s club for good. Again, it goes back to a man’s basic lack of belief in his sexuality. I found ciswomen did not care as much that I was living in their world as much as men resented me leaving theirs. And I wonder what transgender men face as a challenge from other men as they try to break into the “team.” Because, like the rest of us, they have no gender workbook to work from.

I know I am forgetting many of the details that went into being a successful cisman for me such as the one-on-one confrontations I had with other men. I was fortunate in that I had built up enough male privilege to get by. Basically, other men could not challenge me at work because I was the boss and could fire them. Even though that was always my last resort. I also found that men are more effective when they build teams and women when they are allowed to form cliques behind alpha-females. Which I know is a stereotype but a successful one for me.

Then there is the argument who has an easier route to passing in the world as their chosen gender, trans men or trans women. I am biased, but I think trans men have an easier time of transitioning into the public once testosterone has a chance to take hold of their body. It is the reason we see so many transgender men later in life with male pattern baldness. Before the baldness sets in, trans men also have the benefit of a good haircut which can make them appear more masculine where transgender women usually must wear wigs because their baldness has set in already.

The more intrusive cosmetic operations from both sides of the gender spectrum are pretty much a give and take in my opinion. Trans women can’t wait to grow their own breasts through HRT while trans men want to go through the traumatic operation to rid themselves of theirs. It’s all a matter of which side of the spectrum you are on, but trans women are more apt to go through more severe facial femininization surgeries to rid themselves of their testosterone poisoned male features. Not to mention the incredible expense most must go through to do it.

My praise goes out to the transgender men who can bring the best examples of the feminine culture with them. Such as deep love and understanding and applying it to a masculine world which desperately needs improving. There are far too many toxic males running around these days. I know early on I benefitted from the understanding of trans men and found them to be so much more intellectually stimulating than cismen and their drama. That is why I so enjoy hearing from trans men, ciswomen and the rest of you on a regular basis.

I am sure, no matter where you end up as a trans man or transgender woman, you are more than happy to give up your place in your old gender world to anyone who wants it. We just need to be allowed to take the best of both worlds and build a better one from it.

Thanks again to all of you who read along and even take the time to contribute to my writing! I’m sure in this post I have skimmed over many of the obstacles transgender men face, and I just hope I flipped my usual script and mentioned a few.

 

 

A Want...or a Need

JJ Hart Discovering her Needs
I am in the first row on the left.

When a want turns into a need, sometimes you can feel it. Other times, not so much as if it sneaks up on you from behind.

As I began to wear dresses and makeup as a young boy, for the most part, it was because I wanted to do it. Cross-dressing just relieved the pressure of my unwanted everyday male world. It did not take me long to figure out my want was much more than just a casual appreciation of women’s fashion and makeup.  I did not know it then (and the term had not yet been widely used) that I was transgender more than a cross-dresser. I could not feel the change because I did not have the gender knowledge to do it.

Life began to change for me when I started to cross-dress for the thrill of it and attend Halloween parties. The parties ended up teaching me the basics of being a woman in public around people I knew, and I wanted to take it a step further by not having to wait another year to try again to get out of my dark closet and into the world. That is when my story turned out to be dark as I was not met with many positives by the public as a novice trans woman, cross-dresser or whatever you would like to label me as. To too many people, I was simply a man in a dress and clown makeup. I learned the hard way to get back to my drawing board and work harder on my feminine craft to find out if I was ever going to be able to succeed at all at my dream.

I also learned that if I was ever going to find success on my gender path, I was never just going to make it by just thinking it was just a want. It had to become a deep-seated need. I went back and dieted, worked on my skin and did everything I could to improve my testosterone poisoned body. All it really taught me was how much deeper I needed to travel along my gender path to make it at all and I needed to do it very badly. As the pounds melted off, I was able to find more stylish feminine wardrobe items to fill out my fashion needs and dress for success to blend in with the rest of the ciswoman crowd. Who I learned the hard way, were the people who ran the world I was attempting to be a part of. Or I could go casual if I needed to and a more polished business look when I needed to upscale my appearance. Fashion-wise I was learning that looking the best I could and blending in with the public at the same time was a definite need not some sort of a frivolous want just to justify something I wanted.

The more I tested the world as a transfeminine person, the more I needed to do to help myself along in the learning process of just belonging in the world I always should have been a part of to begin with. It was a real chore just to put the mirror image I thought I had perfected into the public and into motion to see how it worked. For the most part, I was improving to the point where I needed to start trying to communicate with the world as a more complete trans woman. As I always point out, the communication challenge to me was immense because I had always been a lazy communicator in my life. By that I mean, I had never really had to listen closely to what another man was telling me. I knew instinctively how to respond to another man but was clueless when it came to woman to woman talk. Which I always had known was different but how different I did not know until I was made aware of it. For example, for the first time ever in my life I needed to really stop and listen to whomever was talking to me. Were they trying to point out danger to me or just being friendly as a ciswoman who was curious of me or a toxic man who just viewed me as some sort of a fetish object.

Quite possibly, the communication aspect of my male to female femininization need passed my desire to be as attractive as I could as a transgender woman in the world. Instead of just wishing and wanting to be accepted as an equal by the other ciswomen I met, I needed to make it a priority. I even swallowed my pride and took female vocal lessons to make the process easier. It was difficult, but I think I gained enough confidence to help with my overall presentation and life.

I was helped too when the pressure to succeed was relieved here and there by the new success I was having in the world carving out a new life which on one hand to be terrifying and on the other feeling so natural like I was coming home to the self I always should have been.

I found I did not discover all my true self until I could step away from me for a minute to look at how far my gender path had taken me. After years of experimenting and trying different things, I finally achieved my need to be allowed to play in the girls’ sandbox and I was not disappointed with what I found there. Even though I had to put up with the occasional hater or TERF who wanted me out, but the majority of women made me feel welcome in their world and that was all that mattered to me.

The sandbox provided me with firm lessons and reassurance in what I was trying to accomplish in life. The want I always felt was always a hidden need which took me years to realize was my true problem in life to solve.

I hope you can realize your true wants and needs on your gender path also and life becomes easier for you if you are searching like I always was.