Loving What You Do as a Trans Woman is Never Work

 

JJ Hart Doing Transgender Outreach. 

Perhaps you have heard the old saying about hard work. It goes something like this... If you love what you do, it is never work. Anyway, I looked at it, the phrase really fit my life as a transgender woman or an early cross-dresser.

Even though, early on it was hard work finding one of mom’s dresses I could still fit into and not rip apart in the seams, I still tried it. As I grew into a more mature version of my feminine self, I learned my work to transform myself into the woman I was always meant to be was not going to be an easy task as testosterone poisoning was ravaging the body I wanted to have as a girl during male puberty. While the girls around me were developing the curves I wanted, all I got was a larger angled male body I hated. If I wanted to continue, my path was cut out for me, and it was not going to be an easy one to follow. I would have to make it a labor of love to ever succeed.

The first thing I needed to do was find feminine clothes that fit me, and at the same time disguised my male body with my large torso, broad shoulders and narrow hips. Plus, I had the extra problem of look really liking the feminine shape wear I need to wear to suggest I had hips when I cross-dressed as a woman. It was always too restrictive for me to enjoy and I was not careful; the restrictions went as far as hurting my chances of success in a women’s restroom setting. If you know what I mean. What I did was make extensive use of pieces of foam which I wore under my panty hose to give me the illusion of hips under the skirts and leggings I wore back in those days. I remember spending day upon day of destroying foam rubber pieces until I thought I got them just right. That solved the hip problem partially so I could concentrate on my all-important breasts.

To advance my presence in the world as a transgender woman, having the proper breasts was another labor of love and at times a comedy show. Before the advent of easily obtainable silicone breast forms, I tried a number of ill-fated ideas to give myself the proper breasts which fit the size of my body but were not too big and looked like I came from a circus somewhere. Before my first silicone breasts were gifted to me by a purging cross-dresser friend of mine who was getting rid of all his feminine belongings, I tried exotic ideas such as bird seed and water balloons. Water balloons I liked because they warmed to the temperature of my body and did a realistic job of looking like real breasts in the bras I wore at the time.

All along, I knew on the negative side, I was taking a big chance using water balloons for breast forms because they can easily break. And of course, the worst-case scenario happened to me one night when one of my balloons broke in public. Luckily, I was going to the women’s room anyhow and it was empty so I could clean up and head back home to end my love affair with water balloons as breast forms forever.

As I put all this concentration into making my transfeminine better, I was concentrating less on my male life. Although it was a labor of love for me, it was not for my second wife who grew tired of my obsession to be an attractive woman and told me I was missing the whole point of being feminine. It was not to be obsessed with makeup and clothes; it was being able to slide behind the gender curtain and see how ciswomen’s lives really play out. It did not take many times of being called a terrible woman for me to drop what I was doing, change course and try to find out what she was trying to tell me. Then I found myself in a “Catch 22” of sorts because if no one would allow me to play in the girls’ sandbox how would I ever learn to do it. It was like the job interviews I went to, where they told me I did not have enough experience but would not give me a chance to work for them and gain the experience.

I finally had to stop being the victim and head out into the world to discover what my wife was talking about. If indeed I was a terrible woman, I need to correct that and move forward. It was then I went on a collision course with myself to determine what I really wanted in life. Did I want to be the successful man I was becoming or have the chance to live out my dream living in a ciswoman’s world.

The labor of love that I entered involved me having to learn what a ciswomen’s life was all about. I knew it was going to be quite the change to learn a new scary complex world, but I was not prepared for the barrage of information I needed to deal with. It seemed that half the women I met wanted to interact with me and find out what I was doing In itself, interaction was not bad if I was ready for it. Which I was not. I had to go on a crash course in understanding my communication with women like I had never known before. I was used to listening to ciswomen the way cismen always to by hearing only what they want to hear and ignoring the rest. Woman, on the other hand, have so many nuances in their communication that I had a lot to learn. But again, it was a labor of love for me and no work at all. If I had put that much work into my college studies, I would have finished with a four-point average. It showed me where my priorities in life really were.

From the first time I tried to experiment with mom’s makeup to living the life I live today, my male to female gender transition was never any work because I loved doing it.

I also love writing for you in the hope I can help you along in your life’s journey. Thanks for reading along and any comments are always appreciated.

 

 

 

 

 

It Was Exhausting Waiting for the World

Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie"

 Over the years, it was exhausting for me waiting for the world to catch up to me.

As I always mention, I was born into the pre-internet and social media years when information about any gender issues was difficult to find. I am old enough to remember the sensationalized reports on television in Dayton, Ohio when the police staged raids on “homosexual” venues and I saw them arrest men dressed as women.

In addition to the negative publicity I was watching, I knew from my limited research from books at the library, that cross-dressing was considered to be a mental illness which I did not feel was true with me. I was not mentally ill, I just wanted to be a girl, and it was simple as that. All it did was put extra pressure on me to never be discovered by my family or my brother in the feminine clothes I had found.

I felt so all alone as a “transvestite” as we were known back in those days until my second wife and I purchased our first home computer. Which opened a whole new world to me including a way to contact others with gender issues such as me. Before that, all I had were the “Transvestia” Magazines I subscribed to and the “Tri-Ess” social mixers I drove hours to get to. I could not believe the world was suddenly at my finger tips when it came to discovering others outside of the “Tri-Ess” community.

All went well, until my second wife caught me in one of the old “AOL” chatrooms having a private conversation with another cross-dresser in a nearby city. I needed to learn quickly on how to cover my internet tracks better if I was ever going to stay out of trouble. The world was not catching up to me as I was catching up to it through the power of the internet. Then 1982 rolled around along with the classic gender movie of all time, “Tootsie” with Dustin Hoffman in the lead role as an actor who lands a soap opera job playing a woman with life changing experiences. For once, there was a film which did not portray a man in a dress as a criminal up to no good and I could not wait to see the film.

With the resultant good publicity which came from “Tootsie” I thought that maybe the puritanical gender ideas of the country would have changed and the public somehow would be more receptive to cross-dressers and transgender folk forever. Of course, I was being naive and over time, the public shifted back to the same old place it had always been…not accepting to people with gender issues like me.

Sadly, I had to go back to carving my own path as a novice transgender woman on my own without the publicity of a movie to help me, including the daytime talk shows which were the new television craze. It seemed to me that every week, one of them featured something about a cross-dresser on their show. In all fairness, some productions such as “Phil Donahoe” tried to present a fair view of our culture while the “Jerry Springers” of the tube just sought to sensationalize us. So, once again, the world had not caught up to me at all and did not help me when I needed to carve out my own life for a change in the world. I did not want another ciswoman thinking she was talking to a future “Jerry Springer” person, and I was real and down to earth. I was just trying to live a normal down-to-earth life like she was.

By this time, I had given up on the world ever catching up with the complex lives that transgender women and transgender men lead. It is why unless you are a very open person and secure in your world, you will never understand where we are coming from. That is fine, you do not have to understand, just do not try to stand in our way as we try to live.

Now I worry that all the fragile transgender rights we had gained under recent presidential administrations in Washington will be erased to an extent it will take decades to ever get them back. Then, I will have lived long enough to go from the “Tootsie” era of understanding to the “Orange Clown’s” world of rejection of our right to even exist. An experience I never wanted to have, and it is even worse here in my native Ohio where the state recently revoked their gender change requirements for driver licenses. So as they used to say back in the day on Top 40 radio stations the hits just keep on a coming.

Every once in a while, I hear rumblings from the regime in Washington trying to do away with my gender care through the Veterans Administration. So far (knock on wood) I have been part of the program for so long, and it is tied to my depression issues I have flown beneath the radar, and I hope others can too.

As a tribe, transgender folk have always existed through time, and if you are just realizing your potential as a trans person, welcome to a scary yet exciting world where you can be yourself. At least you can fall back on the resources you can find on the internet to help you and bring a little light into your dark closet you have been in for so long. Just remember not to let the brightness of your new day blind you to your new reality.

In the meantime, the world has caught up to you in your own way. Enjoy it because you have endured so much to get here.

Thanks so much for joining me in my lifetime of gender trials and tribulations! I set out to help anyone I could, and I hope that is you! All comments are welcome.

When My Tomorrow Became my Today

JJ Hart

My desires to always look like a pretty girl early in life led me to always be a tomorrow person.

 I always thought that somehow tomorrow I could get a real wig, nicer clothes and more makeup which would help with my feminine transformation. I guess you could say that the whole process made me into quite the dreamer as I sat in school and envied the girls around me in their pretty clothes I could not have. At least today but maybe not tomorrow if any of my dreams came true.

Soon I discovered that dreams never came true on their own and would take an enormous amount of work on my part to make a dream happen. Especially once as complex as crossing the gender border to live a transfeminine life. I often wonder if I would have had an ounce of foresight into how difficult I was going to have it; would I have ever undertaken such a crazy path to begin with. One which would completely consume all the spare energy I could use.

The first problem I had to conquer in my feminine life was my often-frustrating attempts to look like a woman and not some sort of a clown in drag at the circus. I found I was setting the bar way too high in my appearance standards as there was never going to be a day when I could match the prettiest women I envied. I just needed to blend in with the rest of the ciswomen in the world just going about their everyday lives. It took me many painful attempts at presenting properly as a trans woman before I got it right and was able to move around in the world without causing any undue attention to myself. When I did, I was happy to stay in the present until my brief gender euphoria went away. As I crashed from the euphoria of living as myself, I was bitter, nasty and tried to take my frustrations out on the world of ciswomen around me. Why could not I be like them and live in their world held me back in mine, so I kept dreaming about the next time I could I could live my dream in the world fully cross-dressed as a woman.

The good part was that all along I was becoming better in my presentation as a woman and was finding it easier to cross the gender border. The bad part was once I did it, I wanted to stay and not go back to the male I was living. It was then that my todays became longer, and my tomorrows seemed further away. My new mentors became the established transgender women I had met at the socials I was going to in nearby Columbus, Ohio. They had crossed border and were living successful lives and I wanted to learn more about how they did it. What I learned was that every trans person’s journey was different and it was rarely ever easy. All I ever knew was that every time I was accepted into their circle, I felt natural and wanted to learn more about them.

As I look back on it, the one thing the mentors had on me was their natural beauty which I never had, so I had to keep putting my tomorrow off until I found out I could do a male to female transformation my own way. Or out of sheer willpower as I had a transwoman friend of, mine tell me in a straight bar we were in one night. By this time, I had given up on any natural feminine beauty I might have and made my tomorrow become my today by using other strengths ciswomen bring to the table when they don’t happen to share the extreme passing gene that some women have. They go on to lead fun and fulfilling lives by tuning out all the demands to be beautiful they hear. That is what I had to do because for sure ciswomen come on all shapes and models and I could certainly find a group I could fit in with. Which in my case, happened to be lesbians.

I was really seeking out the company of lesbians so to speak; I just happened to stumble across their culture at a small lesbian venue I started to go to as well a through a bartender at a big sports bar I used to go to who introduced me to her mom. Through it all, I knew the next step for me was to become more feminine by using HRT or gender affirming hormones. My approval to take the hormones focused my tomorrow so much I could not wait to get there. I changed during the time I was socializing with my new lesbian friends who took me to watch sports as well as big lesbian mixers. I was having the time of my life as my tomorrow was rapidly becoming my today.

Maybe most importantly, my friends helped me to validate myself as who I was really was as the subject of my past life as a man never came up. They did not want to know, and I did not want to bring it up as I was just appreciating my spot in my new present as a transfeminine person.

The final touches in my today came when my daughter accepted me totally and I met my current wife of over a decade Liz. They helped rid myself of any lingering doubts of how I should live my life. Over my gender cliff I went into their soft arms and my gender tomorrow was gone for good.

My only passing regret was that it took me so long to face up to who I was always was as a full-fledged human being. There was no way I should have let it go as long as I did, I should have let tomorrow be my today. I was all wrong as I tried to cross-dress my pain away. My excuse is I was jinxed all along into leading a backwards gender life thinking I was a man trying to be a woman rather than the other way around. That way, I would have never let my todays and tomorrows get mixed up the way they did.

 

 

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.

 

 

Leaving the Male Noise Behind Me

 

Image from Vinicius Amano
on UnSplash. 
 

I write often of the misadventures I had growing up as a gender I never wanted to be. Often my life seemed unbearable when I made a big error on the baseball field or missed a key tackle on the football field, causing my team to lose. When I did, the only thing I knew to do was to run home to my dresses and makeup and do my best to tune out all the noise of male failure in my head. If I could not be a good athlete, maybe I could try to be a pretty girl.

To make matters worse, the older I got, the more noise kept popping up in my head. Especially from my male side, who was increasingly watching any chance o a future he had slip away. Successes such as making it through the military, and job promotions did not help either.

As the probability of a male to female gender transition increased, the noise did too. Mainly because I noticed an increase in the male world, I was never have been a part of. Perhaps, it was because I was thinking about leaving it anyhow, so I was looking for sure if I wanted to.

One of the sounds I noticed the most were coming from the alpha-males who were posturing for a better place in the world. Since in many ways, my job forced me to be successful in my competition with the alpha’s (as well as my upbringing) I could listen to the noise and tell exactly where it was coming from and how I could compete. Which ultimately led me down a path I had no desire to be on.

The further I traveled along the transgender path I was on, the more I noticed the noise from both sides of the gender border increasing as I stopped to look around at one of the many stop signs I had along the way. Sometimes the screaming from both sides reached a pitch I could barely stand as each side was yelling, they were better. To make matters worse, my male side had most all the advantages which he used to his benefit when he stated his claim on my life. Afterall, he had been there from the beginning and had taken the time and effort to learn how the male world operated and how he could fit it. All my feminine side could do then was continue to cross-dress in front of my favorite mirror and dream of an uncertain future.

The one main thing she had going for her was she had the advantage of feeling natural when she was allowed to express herself in the world. It was a powerful emotion which at least kept the male screaming down to a minimum, for a while. What always happened was, I had a several days of gender euphoria after I cross-dressed which would sadly fade when I mentally and physically had to go back to my male world. Which was far from being a mellow existence. The gender headphones I was continually trying to wear in life never seemed to work well. Even to the point of causing so much guilt, I would purge (throw away) my feminine clothes and vowed to never wear them again. You know how ell that worked as my female side screamed louder and louder to once again be a bigger part of my world and I would be forced to give in.

The sad part about all the noise I was subjected to internally and externally by my gender dysphoria was wrecking my fragile mental health. I never bargained, ever having to deal with the stress of having to bargain with two of the main binary genders ripping my life apart. I only survived by taking advantage of finally listening to good therapists who told me that my gender issues would never just go away and would always be a part of me. I guess you could say that it was therapy which helped me cut through all the noise and essentially saved my life from being extremely self-destructive.

Finally, when the noise reached a fever pitch, I needed to take drastic measures to do something about it That is when I went on an aggressive all-out push to see what a ciswoman’s world was all about and better yet, could I ever be accepted into it. My so-called discovery tour took me out of the worlds of dark gay venues into the lights of straight places such as TGIF Fridays which back in those days was becoming a safe venue for single women to go to. To do what I wanted to do, I needed to put my extreme fear of discovery behind me and see if I could survive in Fridays. When I did, a portion of my noise suddenly made sense to me, and I realized what I needed to do to tune out the rest.

I was proving to myself that there was nothing wrong in what I was doing, and I was starting to ignore all the panic warnings I was receiving from my male side about what I would lose if I left him behind to follow a feminine road. The best part was, the more I started to listen to the feminine noise, it made me feel better about where my life was heading. Even though many of the things I was trying scared me to death, as I succeeded in each step, I was building a calm confidence I would never lose.

Of course, the more my feminine noise clamed me and made me whole, my male noise started to subside to a low whimper. Gone were the days of being lonely and searching for my gender identity when I discovered ciswomen lesbian friends who gave me mine. As they taught me more about validating my own womanhood than they ever knew they did.

Very soon I even healed from my destructive days of listening to all that male noise and was able to throw those old gender headsets aside and live my dream life.

Hey you!!!! Thanks for reading along with how I escaped my male gender noise and maybe it can help you escape yours too. In any case thanks for being here!

 

 

 

I Wanted it All

 

Image from Sindy Sussengut
on UnSplash.

During my gender journey through multiple transitions from cross-dresser to transgender woman, I have been selfish and wanted it all.

It all started very early when I was experimenting with mom’s clothes and makeup when I had the first idea all that I was doing may go deeper than just wearing feminine clothes. I did not have the terminology or knowledge back then to work my way through it, but in reality, I was discovering I was more transgender than anything else. In the years to come, that would be a major point to think about along my gender path.

As I grew through my first two marriages where both wives knew of my cross-dressing desires, my first wife was far less demanding than my second and on numerous occasions during fights we were having about me, my second wife rightfully pointed out that our relationship was not all about me. Since I was in the middle of an obsession with my appearance and all things related to makeup, as I said she was right and I was needlessly selfish about our relationship. She was far wiser than I and knew even at that early time in our marriage, her husband was slipping away.

Even though I loved her dearly, I still could not stay away from the powerful draw of wondering if I could ever achieve living fulltime as a transgender woman. Deep down, I knew my second wife would never come with me on my journey as she made it abundantly clear she never signed up to be married to another woman.

With a lot of work and repetition, I did finally get better with my wardrobe and makeup and then needed to figure out how to sneak out of the house and get into the world. It basically meant my imagination had to go into overdrive as I tried to think of reasons I needed to explore the world as my new true transfeminine self. Even if I was not sure what the word meant back then. I went as far as going to the grocery store for my wife who was working on the days, I was off and combined the trip by going to a nearby big box store to shop for panty hose and makeup. My biggest takeaway came when I noticed very few people were noticing me and I started to think I wanted to experience more. My restless feminine spirit was dominating me again.

At the same time, I was doing all of this, I was still searching for my dream job in the commercial restaurant business and after switching jobs and locations several times, I finally did. As I finally broke free of my fast-food background and landed a job with “Chi-Chi’s” Mexican Restaurants in the Columbus, Ohio area where I had ties to. It was a win-win situation for me because I was back home again and could start to interact with the diverse small LGBTQ group that I had known from years previous. This was the tight knit group that had several transgender women who were on their ways to gender realignment surgeries, and I could pick their brains on what it meant to do it. Even though, I did not have the resources or the willpower to consider such a radical move for me in my future, Just being considered as an equal in their group was good enough for me…then.

I say “then” because in life everything rarely stays the same. As I continued to break the vows I had with my wife, I kept going out to venues from the house and began to actually carve out a life as a transgender woman with people who had never known my male side. Wanting it all was staring to mean so much more to me than ever before as my male life began to slip away from me and wanting it all increasingly meant an ongoing break with my long-term marriage of over twenty years. Because she was not giving into her demands, and I was discovering just what mine should be if I was willing to risk it all to live my dream life. Sadly, it would have to be all me to do it as I tore down everything I had worked for as a man to start over in a woman’s’ world.

Sure, I was scared to death as I decided to keep concentrating on the feminine me who had waited so long to live her life. But the whole process and path I was on felt so natural, I decided to be selfish and continue it. By proceeding along the path I was on, I needed to take several abrupt detours when I had problems with deciding my sexuality all the way to just basically communicating with the remainder of the world I was in. Which I discovered was made up of ciswomen not so unlike my second wife. Many were strong and sure of themselves and set up forms of communication which were totally foreign to me as I was coming from a male world. Suddenly, I needed to adjust to forms of non-verbal and passive aggressive communications which were reserved for use when cismen were around.

Perhaps my best selfish move I made was to be approved for gender affirming hormones or HRT which enabled me to come closer to my transgender mentors of so long ago. Since I had ruled out any surgeries, the changes from the hormones would be as far as I could go to sync up my female mind with my male body.

By this time, my wife had passed away and there were very few people left who knew the old me at all. So, I was mostly all-alone with my new emotions and bodily changes such as hair, breasts and hot flashes. When I reached out to any of my lesbian friends, all they would say was welcome to their world. Little did they know how badly I wanted to be there. I was rewarded by the fact that the people who knew the male me told me they thought I was much more relaxed and happy now.

Since I can now love more deeply than I ever could as a man, my life has come full circle to encompass feelings I never knew I had before. All because of my selfish one sided past to get here. I wanted it all and finally was able to find it.

Thanks for reading along and I would be remiss if I did not mention two things. Thanks to Grace Ann Hansen for publishing my stories in her “Empowered Trans Woman” site!

And sadly, I would like to mention the passing of a true icon, Dolly Parton who was a staunch ally of the LGBTQ community. She will be severely missed.

 

 

 

 

On A Gender Vacation

 

Image from PR Media 
on Ubsplash.

As I matured as a person and a crossdresser, taking a vacation from my male gender became a reality for me.

It all started when I first felt the inclination to try on articles of my mom’s clothing and moved on from there. Very soon, I spent as much time as I could in front of the family’s full-length hallway mirror imagining myself as one of the pretty girls I envied so much. Before my unwanted male puberty set in, I did not have so far to go to be on vacation from my boyhood self. Then the changes set in and I began to develop the body angles and shape of a man as the girls around me were showing off their new curves in pretty clothes.

At that point, vacations became harder to earn, as it was becoming more difficult for me to look like a girl at all and try to work my way around having no knowledge of makeup at all. That chapter of my transgender notebook (like all the others) was empty, and I struggled not to look like a clown in drag at the circus. In a very short time, I became aware that if I was to ever reach my dream of living my life as a transgender woman, I had a long, hard struggle ahead.

It did not make matters any easier when I went on family vacations and saw other girls my age in cars on the highway. One young dark-haired beauty still stands out as one I remember. As I saw her time and time again when we passed on the highway, I so wanted to be like her and put my pillow over my head and pretended to sleep. No imagined vacation for me on the real one. My gender reality was with me all the time.

One way or another as life went on, I needed to do something to survive. Somehow, I needed to break through the bonds of the increasingly complex male life I was living and start to carve out a new transfeminine existence on my own. If my reality was indeed female, I would have to do something about it. What I did was begin to mix business with pleasure on my vacation. Business was when I was learning that ciswomen ran the world I wanted into and pleasure was when I was able to finally blend in until I was allowed behind the invisible but so real gender curtain.  To maintain the lifestyle, I was trying to lead, I needed to do a lot of research and repetition to see if I wanted to be there at all. Those were the nights when I broke away from all the gay venues I was going to and started to see if I could be accepted in lesbian and straight places.

The vacations I took into the world as a new transgender woman turned out to be life changing for me. For once, I did not have to wonder what if would be like to live in the world as a woman and just do it. My time away from my old boring male world, took me into a wonderful new life as the woman I always wanted to be. I was the trans woman at the big sports bar enjoying my large beer as I watched my sports teams play on the big screen televisions. Occasionally, I received some pushback from a toxic man, but it was not enough to deter me from having a good time. Mainly, because of my confidence in who I was building every time I was successful trying out the me, I always should have been. I was not building anything new, just allowing my true self to flourish in the world.

At that point, it occurred to me that my vacations were changing drastically. Instead of believing I was taking vacations from my male self as a trans woman, I was now taking time from my feminine world to allow my male self to finish up important things such as working and keeping up a false image of a man for the world to see until I could fully complete my male to female transition. Since I had accumulated so much male baggage over the years, clean up was not going to be easy. Finally, it occurred to me that transitioning to my new life was going to be an all or nothing proposition…or was it?

A big decision I needed to make was involving my sexuality which had never been a question for me in my male life as I had never been physically attracted to another man ever. It did not help me when I got a suggestion from ciswomen to buy bananas to get ready for a new sex life that never came. Even though I had dates with several cismen, nothing ever sparked within me and we never went anywhere except kissing, Women, on the other hand were different as I still cherished their company which I found they enjoyed mine too as they went on vacation with me. Since HRT hormones took away any possibly of traditional sexual intercourse between me and another woman, by choice I took it off the table.

It all led me to wonder what I would do about sports, the one big passion left in my life. Could I still interact with the world as a passionate sports loving woman or would I have to give it all up. It turned out that no, I did not have to give up my passion, it just changed direction like so many other things in my life. For example, when my lesbian friends and I were talking sports, we did it on an equal footing. But when I talked sports with a man, often I needed to take a back seat to his sports knowledge even though I had plenty of my own. I learned my lessons and moved on.

Even though many of my vacations from life were just quick, cheap escapes, many were extensive, expensive paths to my future life. Plus, they handed out much needed respites for my often-battered mental health as I battled depression and anxiety. It all helped me to survive and make it to my dream goal I never thought I could make it to. A life as a transgender woman.

As always, thanks for not taking a vacation to read and comment on my posts. Your input always means a lot to me!

 

 

Help Me Out of this Box!

 

Image from Tamara Bellis
on UnSplash. 

Since I was born “AMAB” (Assigned male at Birth) I was automatically put into a box I could not easily get out of.

Plus, I had the extra disadvantage of being born into a very male dominated, competitive family, so my box was harder to get out of. Like many of you, I had to sneak around my family’s back to even cross-dress into mom’s clothes and makeup to feel better. The worst part about it was that I did not understand why I wanted to be feminine and felt so all alone when I thought about it. Society had done a good job of building a sturdy box around me with very high sides to see the world out of.

As life went on, I learned to be self-sufficient as I hid my gender truth from the world. Very early on I learned I wanted to do so much more than just look like a girl, I wanted a chance to live their life. But I needed to escape my box somehow to do it with absolutely no help from anyone at all. There were only the girls at school for me to envy and try to copy myself after I returned home and had a chance to cross-dress again in front of the mirror.

When I first tried to take myself out into the public’s eye for the first time, it was difficult leaving my box to do it. I was safe there, and I could be the pretty girl I always wanted to be without anyone questioning me. Even though I was not surviving the world well as a novice cross-dresser walking through the malls that I knew, I was determined to keep trying until I got it right. That is if I ever could as I was very insecure in thinking I ever could come close to my dream of living as a woman.

As life always does, it got directly in my way of ever getting out of my box. The only way I could try very early was by going to Halloween parties dressed as a person who I really wanted to be in life but could never tell anyone. At least at Halloween, I could show the world the transfeminine me and hope it did not wreck my life at the time before I could scurry back to my box and hide again. The problem with Halloween was it only happened once a year and I couldn't wait for the next one to show off my feminine spirit. It all led me to gaining a greater awareness to who I really was and how much I needed to expand my world as a new transgender woman in the world.

Another problem I had was having two strong influences around me, who wanted me to stay in my box and even make it stronger. The two were my male self and my second wife who had everything to lose each time I gained more confidence as myself. They did not understand the turmoil I was going through myself and could not help me, I was on some sort of a gender roller-coaster with all its ups and downs. One of my major ups or gender euphoria came when I was mistaken for a ciswoman at a cross-dresser, transgender mixer I went to one night without my wife. That was certainly the high point, but then the lows began to hit me when I was firmly stuck back in my box with no way to experience the next high. Sadly, I did not know where my life was going to take me then. Except for the small idea that I might have the appearance part of my gender puzzle solved.

More frustration sat in when my wife told me there was so much more to being a woman than just looking like one and I was stuck with no real way to understand what she meant. I was still operating as too much of a cisman to be allowed to be behind the gender curtain to understand all the complexities ciswomen go through in life. To make up for it, I tried to adopt female mentors to learn from. Immediately I chose my mom and my wife to learn from because they were both strong, independent women whom I wanted to be like. It was a true jump for me to go from being a shy trans woman hiding in my box at home to getting out and trying to find out if I could live my life-long dream. What I did was build up confidence slowly until I could shed my male self and his privileges and just do it.

Little did I know, when I did shed my male self, I would end up bringing a big part of him with me. I made him my beast of burden when he carried what was left of him into my scary, yet exciting new world. I learned again how complex ciswomen were and if I wanted to watch sports on a big screen television with a beer in front of me I could and not feel out of place as a transgender woman.

In many ways, I was dismantling my old box and using the pieces I needed to construct the new me who had always been there but had nowhere to live. It felt great for once to feel free of all the old male constraints I had to live with. I had many, so the path I embarked on became very complex as I sorted out exactly who I wanted to be. Plus, I needed to be careful to finally judge when the best jumping off point for me to put my old male self behind me and start a new one. A unique spot that most humans do not ever have the chance to do.

If you are considering what you will do with your gender box, just be careful when you deconstruct it because it can contain many hidden problems. On the other hand, you are embarking on an exciting journey if you can make the best out of it.

Thanks for reading along with all my lifetime adventures as I attempt to bring our gender struggles into focus. Taking the time to read, and comment too are always appreciated!

 

A Busy Day

 

JJ Hart

Today will be a busy one for myself and my wife Liz as I am going with her to two doctors’ appointments. So, I will have no time to write.

Going with her on her visits is normally not a big deal because everyone else is normally wrapped up in their own worlds or on their phones. Not enough to notice a stray transgender woman in the waiting room. Also, going dressed casual is no problem because I blend in with all the other ciswomen.

Today, I am getting radical and wearing one of my pro-LGBTQ elder care lavender T-shirts, which if anyone decides to read close enough, they will surely identify me as a trans woman. I don’t care because if I encounter a gender hater, it is their problem not mine. I relish it because of all the years it took me to have the confidence I do these days when I encounter the public.   

In addition to the new T-shirt I am wearing, I am just going to wear a pair of blue leggings along with my new tennis shoes for a comfortable walk. I am putting off a close shave until I am done with this post because I also have my Veteran’s Administration virtual LGBTQ support group meeting later this afternoon and I want to look my best for it too. These days, it almost takes me as long to brush out my long hair as it does for me to shave and apply a light coat of makeup and lip gloss.

I doubt if anything very exciting will happen, but if it does, I will write about it.

 

Figuring it All Out

 

Image from Erik McLean 
on UnSplash.  

I correspond quite a bit with one of my regular readers “Bobbie” whose life and mine amazingly align up in many ways including our military service. And if my memory is correct, she also benefited from a heavily influenced lesbian set of interactions. My apologies if I am wrong with my old memory which is like a steel trap…a rusted one. Because I heavily benefited (and still do to this day) with my feminine “upbringing” with my lesbian friends.

At any rate the reason for this post I to explain how Bobbie and I diverged on our gender paths. One very important way was when Bobbie went into how precisely she planned her male to female transition. All the way down to having a supportive wife. Which I did not and I needed to work my transition around her because she flat out refused to live with another woman. But on the other hand, did not mind that I was a cross dresser. She even went as far as scraping money from our limited family finances for me to rent a motel room to cross-dress in so I did not have to go out from our house which was on a heavily traveled street.

 Another way I diverged from Bobbie was her employment as a man required her to have several backup plans for every move, which mine didn’t. I was in the fast-paced casual dining industry which required me to work in an environment which constantly changed and was very difficult to plan ahead for. All of which really appealed to me at the time. Also, for various other reasons, I have decided to stay away from all gender related surgeries. Much different from Bobbie as I will translate for you:

“When the transformation began, the checklist was social first, add HRT, get the orchi and then the bottom surgery. A BA may be in the offing as my P has finally exhausted any more growth and a "Barely B" doesn't quite cut it.” Translating, “Orchi” means removal of the testicles, “BA” means breast augmentation surgery and “P” means taking progesterone hormones in addition to any Estradiol you may be also taking. Finally, “Barely B” means her breast size under the hormones she is taking, and “bottom surgery” is genital realignment surgery and is a major move.

I also decided against taking any progesterone after my endocrinologist did not like the idea at the Veterans Administration. But on the other hand, I started like Bobbie did with social and then went to the HRT or hormone replacement therapy and then went off to live my life as a transfeminine person. By this time, I was in my sixties, excited about my new life and set out to find someone unique enough to want to share it with me.

As you can tell, the whole male to female femininization path is not for the weak of heart and very much trashes the idea that transgender women embark down this extreme path out of a desire to just dress and look like a ciswoman. I get amused when I read that and think if the person saying it only knew the truth, they would certainly think differently.

Also, you can tell from Bobbie’s and I’s paths, there are many different ways to get to where we want to go as transgender women and transgender men. Even though my first dinner date as a trans woman was with a trans man, I still thought I knew the layers of the lesbian community, but I did not. Not only was I learning something totally new, but at the same time, finding out where I fit in. As the result of pure effort and observation, I learned I fit in quite well with the femmes or “lipstick” lesbians I encountered. To this day, I still benefit from my initial friendships I made with lesbians. As I have been in a relationship with a ciswoman lesbian for over fourteen years now and is going strong.

You may not have the circumstance or the ability yet to go “social” like Bobbie and I did, but the world is always changing, and you can change with it. Change is also different. You can plan ahead for six different scenarios (like Bobbie did) or pretty much just step out into the world and do the best you can like I did. I think now, I just wanted someone to realize my truth who knew me, but then it grew into carving out a whole new feminine life away from my old male one. I guess you could say I won the battle by taking an approach I never thought of taking. It was only then that I did set up an orderly “bucket list” of what I wanted to try to do behind the gender curtain in the world at large. As I was getting closer and closer to a dream life I never thought I could succeed in, for the first time in my life I needed to plan ahead and then let destiny take control of my life.

Examples of how destiny led me to successful outcomes were when I was matched up at the VA with a therapist who was knowledgeable about LGBTQ persons and specifically trans ones and was willing and able to help me with important tasks such changing as many of my legal markers that I could. She was really good and even helped me separate my depression and anxiety issues from my gender dysphoria. Maybe most importantly, she opened the door for my approval for HRT which I still cherish today. Sadly, my therapist moved on but I was lucky to have her when I did.

No matter where you are in your gender journey, I always enjoy hearing from you. As I said, remember there is no right or wrong way to discover your true self. I am always interested to hear of different paths. Humans are a very complex tribe and being transgender might be the most complex as all. Just remember you are in excellent company.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Being Better as a Trans Woman

 

Image from Donald Gianetti
on UnSplash.

Often you must be better than the world to prove yourself as a transgender woman or transgender man.

An easy example would be we have to be better with our appearance. Because of the current lack of concern over appearance with many ciswomen and cismen, it’s an anything goes fashion world when women are wearing their pajamas and slippers to shop at a big box store, I won’t mention. Because we trans persons have so far to come in the appearance department, we cannot set our appearance bar that low or even want to.

Another problem with appearance is that we have had so few natural advantages to help us along when we first take the tentative steps out of our gender closets. In the case of transgender women, very few have the advantage of escaping the ravages of puberty which gives us angles, broad shoulders and deep voices. So, unlike the curves and softness we see in the women around us and envy so much. To get by in the world as a cross-dresser, we must strive to cover our natural flaws and act like we are not doing it.

The good thing is that ciswomen provide us with a big range of fashion to work from. Some wear dresses, some wear pants, some go without makeup and others don’t as life goes by. All you have to do is grab a spot you feel comfortable in and try to maintain it in a world of curious ciswomen who want to know more about you. You notice I said try to maintain it because early on, finding the best fashion and learning hair and makeup are major challenges we face. As our old bodies do not want to cooperate with the new path you have set them on.

Since I have always felt more comfortable in pants, leggings or well fitted jeans as a trans woman, I often took in criticism from other novice cross-dressers when I went to mixers in pants. Per norm, I did not care what they said about wearing pants as a man all the time so why I would do it as a woman because I was noticing how stylish some women look in their pants. I even had a glamorous silky black low-cut pants suit I wore to prove them wrong. Plus. most importantly what I wore was none of their business if I was aiming to be as good as the world of ciswomen in public at large who were increasingly wearing pants in their wardrobes. Not a bunch of cross-dressers at a social/mixer.

The more I was out in the world and interacting with the public, I discovered that appearance was just a small part of being better than the next person. Following some rough early experiments with my presentation as a transfeminine person, I settled into noticing who was noticing me. I learned men rejected me almost completely (which was fine by me) and women on the other hand wholeheartedly accepted the new me who wanted so badly to be in their world. The percentage of gender acceptance I received totally surprised me and I had to up my game to get better when I faced the public with so much more at stake.

Suddenly, women wanted to talk to me, and I was initially surprised and had to talk back. Then as now, I am very self-conscious about my voice, and it took me what seemed like an eternity to understand my communication skills centered more around what I was saying more than how I was saying it. In fact, I needed feminine vocal lessons to learn more about how women speak to each other. Primarily when men were not around. I also leaned the power of passive aggressive speech behavior in cis women and how it could apply to me when a potentially smiling face did not equal a supportive woman who could just as easy stab you in the back. After I tended to more than a few claw marks down my back, I adjusted to the new world I was in and survived by being better than them.

All these steps led me to pursuing an expanded transgender bucket list of potential things I wanted to do as a trans woman. To learn if I would want to do them on a permanent basis. As my checklist grew, my confidence did too and I discovered how natural I felt in the new exciting yet scary world I was in stripped of all my old male privilege such as dealing with my own personal security. With the menacing male scowl being gone, I had to rely of my new feminine senses to get me by and to stay out of potentially dangerous situations. It was all a major lesson of being better in the world out of a sense of pure survival as a new transgender woman.

At that point, destiny set in for me and set my life upside down as nearly all the loved ones I new and respected passed away. Leaving me all alone. To survive, I had to quickly quit being a victim and decide which direction my life would take. I took the feminine path, was approved for HRT or gender affirming hormones and prepared myself for a bumpy path ahead. At the age of sixty, I needed all the wisdom I had learned from a predominately male life and apply it all to a new female existence and exceed my own expectations.

By taking chances in the world, I had lucked into finding supportive ciswomen friends into my new life and I give them all the credit for the ease that it happened. And it made all the prep work I had done in my life worthwhile. Even still, I found I had to be better than the average woman to find my way and stick to it so I would not slide back to my old male ways.

Before I go, I would like to thank “Grace” for inviting me to write for her group “Empowered Trans Woman” on Medium. I really appreciate it

 

 

 

There Was Never a Plan B

 

JJ Hart, Back row far left
Girls Night Out.

Very early in my cross-dressing days, I always tried to have a plan b in the back of my head if danger approached in the form of my brother discovering me or my parents coming home early from work.

Seeing as how I had no effective plan to get out of what I was doing in mom’s dresses and makeup, I thought that somehow, I would have to just try to lie my way out of it and say I would never attempt it again. Knowing that was a deal with the devil I could never make and expect to keep. As I continued to cross-dress in the family mirrors, I finally had to throw caution to the wind and just go ahead and do it.

Years went by as well as the complexity of what I was doing as I tried my best to express my feminine self. At the least, I thought of better ways to hide away my resources from prying eyes and was successful all but once when I got careless on a weekend, I was away when I was waiting to go into the Army and start basic training. What happened was, I had just mixed my feminine clothes and wig in with a bunch of my male clothes thinking that one would disturb them until I returned. I was wrong and when I got back, everyone else in my apartment had not returned home for a college break leaving me all alone except for one other guy who had come over to visit.

As we sat around drinking a few beers, I decided to gather my courage and somehow asked would he like to see me dressed as a woman. Effectively, throwing all ideas of a plan b if he got up and bolted out of the apartment. To my surprise, he did not and was receptive to the idea, so I left to start the prep work needed to finally come out to another person. After I had taken the time to shower and shave my legs and face, I went into my bedroom looking for my feminine clothes, wig and makeup. Only to be shocked to learn they were all gone. Someone had stolen them when I was gone. All the plans for the evening I had were shattered as we sat around and then finished all the beer and nothing was ever said about him coming so close to meeting the true me. As far as confronting anyone about where my clothes, wig and makeup had gone, I decided to keep my mouth shut because I was so close to having to report to Ft. Knox in Kentucky for Army basic training anyhow. A final solution for a plan b during the next three years of my life. I knew I could not entertain any ideas of cross-dressing at all.

When I was discharged and Halloween parties with my friends became the only external form of feminine expression that I had, I needed to ignore any of the warning signs that I was giving away any idea I was not as masculine as I acted. I was so into going to Halloween dressed as a woman that I decided to take matters into my own hands and ignore all the plan b’s that I had thought up. Even to the point if some other person commented on my “costume” and the effort which went into it, I would just try to laugh it off. Mostly what happened was compliments from other ciswomen on my shaved legs and I even gained the nickname of “legs” with several of them which I had to act like I did not care. When deep down inside I was overjoyed and wanted more input. It took me years to understand what they were really saying was I looked good for a man dressing as a woman.

As more years went by and I became very serious about being a transgender woman and was attempting to hide it from my second wife, plan b’s became very important to me. In many ways, I had regressed to my childhood in the ways as I had to hide my femininity away from her. In addition to being very tuned in to when she got off of work, I needed to get better and better at makeup and eye makeup removal, so hopefully she couldn’t tell what I was doing when she was at work. The problem was that practice was making my femininized presentation more effective.  Success just made me want more and having a plan b at all was disappearing totally.

For the longest time, the only recourse I had was to attempt to lie my way out of whatever transgender activities I even had to resort to trying therapy to save our relationship. The gender therapist was wiser than I was and told me there was nothing she could do about my deep-seated gender issues. I was trying to buy time with my wife and save our relationship as long as I could, but the therapist was not a miracle worker and I quit going. Leaving me to wonder what I would do about finding the next plan b I desperately needed to hold my marriage together. Because I knew it would be just inevitable my wife would discover what I was doing as a transgender woman exploring the world and we would have a gigantic fight because I had promised I was going to stay home.

The problem was that I knew I was wrong and was just buying time until the next adventure I had in the world with the ciswomen that ran it.

Finally, what happened was I ran out of all needs to have a plan b when it came to me being a transfeminine person. I had learned to live freely behind the gender curtain which I had waited so long and worked so hard to do. In fact, it was the only big dream I had in my life. I then resorted to a new plan to live out my life the way I wanted.