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| In the Women's Club. I am on the bottom row to the left. |
As I transitioned into transgender womanhood, I learned how quickly I could be pushed out of one gender club and make my way into another.
The first club I was quickly rejected from was the good old boys club which I was tired of anyhow. I quickly found many of the gender stereotypes were true. My primary example was and is when I am in a conversation with a man, I seemingly have lost a good portion of my intelligence. In many ways, I was expecting it because of the way I had seen many men around me in my life treat women. I wanted a change in the worst way.
Of course leaving one club and being accepted into another was not going to be the easiest thing I had ever done. As I set my course into the world of women, initially I was met with little resistance except for two key people in my life. Along with my second wife who hated the idea, of course my male self was dead against it also. He was the one who was getting kicked out of the club.
One of the first aspects of being accepted into the woman's club I learned was to look for the hidden knife behind the back trick. All of a sudden I was in the world of passive resistance. Some women did not like the way I looked or acted all the way to resented my presence in the club all together. Rather than tell me to my face, they worked behind my back to drive me away. I came away from the learning experience with many claw marks on my back. I considered it all as a initiation experience into a new exciting world where all I wanted to do was play in the girl's sandbox. What I never counted on was how complex the new world would be. I knew women were much more complex than men but slipping behind the gender curtain and living my dream proved it.
I fought hard to keep my dream from becoming a nightmare. First there was the problem with learning how to dress myself so I could stand a chance of blending in with the other women in the world. Then there was the problem with learning how to go with the flow, or practice moving like a woman and last but not least, there was the problem of learning to communicate with the world in my new club. The more I progressed with all of this, the more I did not want to be forced back into the male club because the pressure was constantly there. Going back meant leaving all the gender struggle behind me and regaining all the male privileges I had lost when I entered transgender womanhood.
Somehow, I always managed to keep my dream alive and no matter how beneficial going back seemed to me at the time, maintaining my hard earned membership in my new club was more important to me. I had served my time in an unwanted male existence and had no desire to return. So I continued to spend time in my new club as a transgender woman and learn the benefits of living an authentic life.
I never really missed the benefits of living in the male world. Then I needed to set out on the complicated process of telling all of those who thought I was still in the male club, I was not and please listen to the reason why. Some people and family I was successful with and some I was not but none of it kept me from trying. My main goal now is to keep my membership in good standing in the transgender woman's club.
