If You Don't Try...You Will Never Get There

 

Image from Luis Villasmil
on UnSplash

During our lives as transgender women and transgender men, we come to many obstacles that we have no idea of how we are ever going to get around.

After many early failures in my unwanted life as a boy, it was increasingly evident to me that if I did not attempt to try harder being a girl, I would never have a chance of making it to my dream. In many ways I was stuck between a gender rock and a hard place. On one hand, I was running to hide behind any failures I might have with my dresses and makeup, and on the other, I was making myself afraid to try anything new at all.

It took me years to learn that if you don’t venture into the world outside of your little closet, nothing will be gained. I discovered after I went through male puberty, I had very little to start with as far as having any natural feminine characteristics to work with. Even still, until I got out of the mirror and into the public’s eye, I had no idea of how bumpy my gender path would be.

In the early days, my male ego took it badly and my female ego was hurt deeply when I was laughed at in public. Until I began to take matters into my own hands. In order to improve my feminine presentation, I went on a crash diet which enabled me to fit into and purchase more stylish fashion. I learned to be in the right place at the right time if I really wanted to try to blend in with the ciswomen who ran the world, I wanted to be in. It took time to try more extreme transgender bucket list items I had put together to learn how it would be to live in a woman’s world if I had to try hard enough.

It was about that time that I landed a job with a very successful casual dining restaurant chain who taught me a lot about not being a victim and if I did not try to succeed I wouldn’t. In essence the chain took what I had learned about myself in the military and improved it. Which was just what I needed to take the gender box I was stuck in and find my way out. What I discovered was that most of the world did not care anything about me once I began to learn the basics of not drawing undue attention to myself. Setting me up to try more and more gender trials on my own. Because I had no one else to help me. The mistakes I was making and learning from came from the fact that my gender workbook was blank and the women I could share my secret with left me on my own to learn my own lessons and be a better transgender woman. Once I figured out what that was and how I fit in with the terminology.

It turned out the only ciswoman with any access to me was my second wife who, for the most part, left me alone with my struggles. Only stepping in when I made mistakes causing huge fights. The problem became I had very little public output for my desire to work the world as a trans woman. I became very frustrated and depressed when I had no way to get out and live because deep down, I knew I was on the right path, and I just had to keep on trying. My only regret now is that I would have taken the steps sooner to be myself and not dragged my wife and I through all the torment I was putting us through.

It was not until she passed away, did I find my path again and began to try to actively carve out a life as a trans woman. In order to do it, I needed to have the confidence of my gender convictions that I had never had in the past. For once, I had few other distractions to slow me down and it seemed everyday I was learning and making progress towards a gender dream which had seemed so unlikely in my past. And, for once, I was not doing it on my own as I slowly build a small circle of ciswomen friends to do it. They were able to teach me more about womanhood than they ever knew as they allowed me behind the gender curtain into their world as lesbian women. Somehow, my male baggage which helped me was kept such as my basic mistrust of men since I had been forced into their circles in my life and the fact I could fit in with them image-wise because I was largely a tomboy in my tight jeans and boots.

Through it all, there were a couple of other things I needed to try to improve my world as a transfeminine person. The first was attempting to see if I was healthy enough to be approved for gender affirming hormones or HRT. I was and my life improved dramatically as I took on more and more feminine characteristics. The process was so easy, it was as if my body was saying what took me so long for such an important move. The other was the move initiated by my therapist’s permission at the Veterans Administration to have most of my legal gender markers changed. It was the best Christmas gift I ever received when I saw a judge and received my formal name change approval on Christmas Eve which got the ball rolling towards securing a new driver’s license, Social Security Card and getting my VA paperwork changed over. To the gender I always should have been.

I would never have made it through all the dark gender moments in my life. Especially with the added problems of depression and anxiety I had if I had not made it through and kept on trying to reach my dream of being allowed to live fulltime as a transgender woman. It was certainly touch and go until destiny stepped in and helped me along by pushing me back out into the world until I found other women to socialize with. I even played the online dating game and won after sorting through an enormous amount of trash, my wife Liz found me fourteen years ago and have been together ever since. If I had played my old victim cards, there would have been no way I could have ever made it out into the world.

I learned firsthand, if you never try, you will never make it to your dream.

 

 

Burning my Gender Bridges

 

Image from Issiac Viglione
on UnSplash. 

The first time I tried a dress on and put on mom’s makeup, I burned a couple of my gender bridges. Because deep down inside I knew I could never go back.

After a few missteps, I became quite used to it. Even though what I was doing by cross-dressing and building new bridges was quite risky to the only life as a boy I had known, I kept on burning the old bridges and building new ones. Fortunately, the new bridges I was building were the product of better construction than I had ever known before, I still had such a long way to go.

Early on, the problems I faced were simply formed by the lack of experiences I had being a feminine person at all. My gender workbook had never been filled out because I had never been allowed to hang out with the girls and have the chance to understand their lives. There were no girl’s sleepovers for me to go to get peer input into how I was dressing or ideas on how I should apply my makeup. It seemed as if I was stuck forever in my male world and I could not get out.

Another problem I had was I built too many invisible bridges that I did not need to. I was and am a worrier and I routinely build structures just to jump off of them it seemed. That has continued to be a lifetime problem of mine as we can take yesterday’s routine trip to the drugstore as an example. The store is very close to my house but yet I needed to worry about getting there and back in one piece, as well as what I was going to wear and not forget all the items I needed. Of course, I just dressed casually for the trip and it came off without a problem as I got everything, I needed including birthday cards for my daughter’s upcoming dinner my wife Liz and I are hosting her for before she heads off to Maine to climb a mountain to celebrate her 50th birthday. Already, I am stressed about what I am going to wear to the restaurant.

As I matured into a more complete transgender woman, of course I discovered more things to build bridges on or around my life. For the longest time, I refused to face the truth in my life that I was always meant to live in my femininity and leave my male life behind. It was then I started to run, move often and change jobs so I could better support my two women. My second wife and myself. All my building was doing was destroying my already fragile mental self as I desperately looked for answers which were there all along. Anyway I tried to cut it, I should never have been forced into a male box when I was born and had no power to do anything about it.  

It wasn’t until I got out of my gender closet and became familiar with the world as a trans woman, did I really have to begin to burn my old male bridges to the ground. Specifically, when I got out of the gay venues, I sought out some sort of safety and solace in and started testing myself in the real world did I discover how many bridges I had destroyed and how many more would have to go. If I was ever going to have the opportunity to live my dream. I was running as fast as I could in my high heels away from my old male privileges I took for granted until I torched them. Such as sacrificing part of my intelligence and all of my personal safety when I was allowed behind the gender curtain and out of the boy’s club.

The bridge which surprised me the most was when I needed to communicate with the world of ciswomen who let me in and wanted to know more about me. It was a shock to my system to have to actually carry on a conversation or better yet begin one because I did not want to come off as being unfriendly with another person, mainly women. The overwhelmingly group of men as a whole left me alone since they had the sense, I was a traitor to their club. It turned out that if I did not want to burn the bridges between men and myself, they did it for me and they were replaced by the ciswomen I felt more comfortable around anyhow.

When I worked on my male to female transition, the bridges I was building had to be so much stronger than they had ever been before. Mainly because I was risking life as I knew it to do it. Over the years, I had accumulated so much male baggage I needed to figure out what to keep and what had to go so my bridge would carry the load. My baggage included the usual suspects such as spouses, family and friends as well as employment. Again, I was fortunate when I discovered other women with the same interests as me such as watching sporting events.

Lately, I have been receiving comments from readers who are just beginning their gender journeys and the only advice I can give from the other side is to build your bridges well to withstand the changes you will go through. And don’t forget there are many ways to achieve your goal. You can go the surgical route to transform yourself into the person you always knew you should be and go the hormonal route like I did when I was able to thrive with the help of a few ciswomen who showed me my way to build my own bridge into a feminine world. The end result should be whatever feels good and natural to you, you should go with. The one life you have to live should be yours, even if your path to doing it may be a little more different and difficult than everyone else’s. Don’t be like me and take years running from your truth before you face it and win and are able to proudly walk across your bridge.

 

 

I Had No Idea

 

Image from Hayley Lawrence
on UnSplash. 

As we dodged yet another terrible weather bullet where we live in this part of Cincinnati, and I sit here writing, I feel a deep sense of belonging in the life I discovered years ago.

Certainly, through most of my life, I never thought I could make it this far and live out my own dream of living as a fulltime transgender woman. Possibly, it is because I got off to such a rough start when I left my gender closet and took on the world. Back in those days also I had such a simplistic view of what it would take me to live as a woman. I mistakenly thought I would just have to look as close as I could to a ciswoman. I had no idea of how wrong that would turn out to be.

What I had never really considered was how difficult it would be to truly cross the gender border and face all the everyday challenges ciswomen face in the world. Including the ones from toxic men. In that sense, I was fortunate in that I was not attractive enough to garner much attention from cismen at all and only had to deal with the new surge of attention I received from the women around me who mainly wanted to know more about what I was doing in their world. What the women never knew was when they were studying me, I was closely studying them because I was on a crash course to learn everything, I needed to be accepted into their club and be allowed behind their gender curtain.

Referring back to a recent post of mine and a comment from “Mark”, I was excited to be finding the true me and I enjoyed the excitement of being in a new world I always wanted to be in. Probably because I thought it would never be me who could do it. Thanks for commenting, Mark!

Change was slow, but eventually the confidence came that just maybe I could exist in a world where ciswomen ruled and make it. It was only then when I had any idea that it could be me that made it into the world I knew from my transgender mentors I had met at the parties I was going to in Columbus, Ohio. At that time, even though I had very few certainties of where I would end up in life, if I had my choice I rather be like the trans women I knew that the part-time cross-dresser than I was. It was my dream and I was sticking to it. Even though I knew I did not have the natural resources or the financial means to be as beautiful as my friends were. I realized that all ciswomen were not classic beauties but lived fulfilled and impactful lives anyhow. So, there was a path for me anyhow.

My new idea opened a whole new vista of being femininized for me. It meant so much more than the makeup, hair and pretty clothes I was having a chance to wear for the first time. Suddenly, I could see a path forward to where I could see the real me for a change. A person that I had no idea about was there but liked it when I discovered her.

Now is the time I always take to explain how difficult this part of my life was. It seemed nothing was coming easy to me as I struggled to find a middle point with my second wife over my gender desires and my work was making new demands on my male self. The worst part was that the idea of who I was internally was becoming clouded and I lost sight of where I needed to go to find me. As I grasped for answers, I could not wait to get back to my safe place in Columbus and interact with the diverse LGBTQ group of people who always gathered there.

It took a while, but I finally gathered the courage to set out on my own to see if my idea of making it in the world as a transfeminine person was dead. The problem was that I only had known the world of gay venues to attempt to express myself. Since I had never identified as a gay male, I never felt at home in their venues, only lesbian bars and large straight places. I needed an extraordinary amount of courage to begin to see if I could exist in both at all. When I found out I could, almost nightly if I was not working, I was trying out the new world I was carving out for myself. No matter how hard I tried to blend in with everyone else, I did not to the staff of bartenders and servers who routinely took care of me, and I was unmistakable to them and had no problems becoming a regular. A smiling face and good tips took care of the rest.

Long story short, I was finding myself as the person I had no idea I could be. Before I knew it, I needed to settle on one wig and decide on a new feminine name for me to use in every venue I was in regularly. The pressure was on to not lose everything that I had gained over the years, and this time I could just start all over again building a new woman from the building blocks of my male life. The prize I never thought I would ever get was suddenly within reach, and I needed to figure out what to do next.

That decision was made for me when my second wife as well as the only good male friends I had ever had all passed away in a short span of time. I was left by myself to decide my future which without much thought turned out to be female. Yes, the idea I never thought would come true was, just when I thought again that it never would. I am a living example of how someone’s life can change if you stay on your gender path. Especially when you don’t expect it. Sadly, I remember the dark days when all I had was two dogs to comfort me in my times of duress and I had no idea I could ever climb out of my depression to where I could find the support, I needed to live my dream life.

It turned out for me that my grand idea was a good one after all.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

Every time I Looked Around...

Image from Mahrael Boutros 
on UnSplash

Until I began to become used to the new feminine world I was beginning to navigate as a transgender woman or cross dresser in those days, it seemed as if everyone was looking at me.

I was not used to the fact that both main binary genders look at women. Even though they do it through vastly different lenses. Men of course have the tendency to add a sexual aspect to how they view a woman and other ciswomen often compare other women to how they look and how much work did the woman put into her presentation. As any beginning cross-dresser learns early, it takes a lot of work and effort put into a quality feminine look. Especially when you are making the leap from presenting looking like a man with your testosterone poisoned body, all the way to being able to blend into the world of ciswomen effortlessly.

I know with me, before I could begin to blend in with my new world, I needed to shake all the cobwebs of male feelings I had about doing it at all. For the longest time, I listened to my male self on how he perceived women in the world as sexual objects and tried to influence the way I was presenting myself. What happened was, I was dressing too tight and too short in my clothes and attracting too much unwanted attention. Not only was everyone looking closely at me, I received negative feedback because I was doing it all wrong. I was fighting a losing battle with the age that I was and the body shape I had to stubbornly realize I could not go on that way and hope to ever try to live my dream of being a fulltime transfeminine person.

Then, I went back to my cross-dressing drawing board to set out a whole different way of trying to present myself. Out went the way too short skirts and dresses and in came more manageable denim skirts and oversized flowing tops designed to cover my broad shoulders and lack of hips. I even went to the extent of going on a crash diet so I could find clothes in the thrift stores I was haunting that fit me. Along the way too, it is worth mentioning, I started to take much better care of my skin after my daily shave which helped me to wear less makeup. If everyone was going to look at me, I needed to give them my best effort.

One thing I could not hide was I was a big woman, and I needed to not be ashamed of it but to understand there were plenty of other ciswomen in the world who were the same size as me. So, I began to look for them to see how they moved about in the world. Even though I was right around the six-foot tall mark, I could still wear my cherished high heels. Even with jeans and a tight top which accented my new properly proportioned silicone breast forms I was gifted by a cross-dressing friend who was purging all his feminine belongings at the time.

Amazingly to me, my life as a newly realized transgender woman begin to come together for me. I started to be able to move around in society without causing undo attention while at the same time completely enjoying myself. I even went to the point of buying sunglasses which hid my eyes so I could watch others to see if they were watching me. It was a great way to judge how well I was doing in my ongoing challenge of who was watching me and who was not. I learned I was not attractive enough to attract much cis male attention but attractive enough to be sized up in the public by the ciswomen I encountered. Most importantly, I was getting used to the attention I was receiving and often I wondered where it was if I did not receive it.

The way I began to see the attention I was receiving was I craved it because of all the hard work I had put in to being an attractive woman anyway I could. Positive attention was feedback that I was doing something right and the very little negative feedback I encountered could be overcome easily because of my new overall confidence. Which became my number one accessory I needed when I found myself in shark (human) infested waters with potentially dangerous people. My new training as a trans woman taught me to look ahead and do my best to not put myself in dangerous situations in the new world I was in stripped of my old male privilege of personal safety. Very quickly, I learned the problems of being a lone woman in a poorly lit deserted area.

I was able to test my passing privileges when I transitioned away from the gay venues I was going to and tried my best to become a regular patron in many of the very same big sports bars I used to go to as a man. It turned out to be easier than I thought it would be and I was not noticed much at all by cismen or ciswomen. Even though, on occasion, another woman at the bar would take the time to talk to me. I think more than anything else out of curiosity. Why would an ex-man such as me want in her world was the major point women of all sorts were trying to find out.

As I said, I began to crave and even expect the attention I was getting as the only transgender woman in the venue. Except on the nights that my trans woman friend Racquel met me there. We ended up having about five venues we went to that accepted out business with no problems. I also went to monthly lesbian social mixers with my two friends in many of the same places and I was overjoyed when another lesbian approached me. I guess you could say I was causing the right kind of attention.

Getting out and learning how to know and appreciate the right amount of attention even carried over to an on-line relationship I stumbled into with my future wife Liz who contacted me from an ad I had placed on a woman seeking woman dating site. Fourteen years later we are still together, so I guess I looked in the right place for attention.

Thanks for giving me your attention for my experiences! Any feedback or responses is always welcome.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

Gender Binges

 

Image from Andy Arjun
on UnSplash.  

Binge cross-dressing happened a lot to me when I was quite young.

Once I was able to scrape together my meager finances to put together a small wardrobe of feminine clothes that barely fit me, I could not stay away from wearing them more and more. In fact, I was able to come up with two main hiding places away from the prying eyes of my family and most importantly, my slightly younger brother. It was about that time that I really became involved with binging in my new clothes which I felt made me look like a pretty girl.

Very soon, regardless of the risk involved with me cross-dressing as a girl, I was doing it as much as I could get away with. I think now that my mom had to know something about my cross-dressing but was either afraid to say anything about such a complex subject or thought it was a phase that would go away. Obviously, the joke was on her. My wanting to be a woman never did go away; I just matured into it. Plus, back in the late 1950’s and early 1960's, there was very little good information about gender issues to deal with, so we were on our own as gender issues were called mental illnesses. Which even I knew at such a young age was not true. For all I knew at the time, I really liked experimenting with mom’s clothes and makeup and binge dressing was becoming routine.

As I said, once I began to mature into being a more accomplished cross-dresser (even before I considered myself transgender) I managed to dress more and more. I was even able to buy a beautiful long blond human hair wig that she hated and I loved. Finally, after I changed girlfriends, she went away and I kept the most important part of the relationship to me which of course was the wig. It brought me to a whole other level of cross-dressing away from Halloween wigs into the real deal. Back in the 1960’s when miniskirts were in, I could not wait until I could find a chance to slide on pantyhose and miniskirt and top it all off with my blond wig. Yes, I did binge any chance that I got!

Sadly, my binge dressing needed to come to a complete halt during my military years in the Army. Instead of worrying about how short I could wear my miniskirts, I had a more immediate and important problem of how to deal with weapons and drill sergeants in Army basic training. How I survived was that I put all my fond memories of cross-dressing in the back of my head and daydreamed about the future I knew I could have shaving my legs again and binge dressing as a woman.

After I served my time in the military, the only immediate release I had from all the tension I felt to be feminine at all was with all the many and varied Halloween parties I went to. During that time, I went from being a French woman with my blond hair, black outfit, tights and beret, all the way to professional woman one year when I was mistaken for a ciswoman just getting off work. The good news was I was learning a lot, and the bad news was Halloween only came about once a year. I needed desperately to find another way to binge with a purpose and express myself as a transgender woman. A term I was beginning to accept as my own.

Once I began to accept who I was, I needed to set out to prove it to myself and the world that I could live my truth. It was then that my binging took a whole different direction from where I was before. Thanks to the basic acceptance I gained from successful Halloween parties, I had the confidence to know I could look the part and blend in with society as another ciswoman. Little did I know then, the hardest part of my male to female femininization project was yet to come.

It took me finally getting out of the gay bars I regularly went to for some sort of validation I never received and into being accepted as a regular in many of the straight venues I went to and enjoyed as a man. My validation as a regular gave me the confidence to keep trying to improve myself as a transgender woman rounding out her life in the world. As I achieved goal after goal I set up on my trans bucket list, I really binged out every chance that I got which put me into a direct collision with my second wife who did not want to live with another woman and my male self who was dead against giving up his life all together.

By all out gender binging, I had set myself up for an internal war I was fortunate to survive. It took me all I could do to keep all my lives together as the years progressed. All I knew was I was able to carve out a dream existence as a transfeminine person. No one knew of my male past, and I loved experiencing every moment of my new life. Deep down, for once I felt I was fighting my self when I was binging as a trans woman and expressing my true self.

By turning back, the clock the best I could, I tried to take the best that I learned from my male life and apply it to building a solid base for my female life. I think it worked because I was able to decide which of my male baggage was important enough to bring along and I benefitted from being blessed with a long life, so I can see a number of important things come full circle (which is another blog post.)

The bottom line is I have always been an impulsive person which helped me all the times I just had to binge to satisfy my needs. Dealing with my gender issues was just an integral part of that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's a Lonely World

 

Image from Jarle Johnasen
on UnSplash.

It is a lonely world for many transgender women and transgender men as we journey along our dark gender paths.

As I always point out, like so many of you, I got a late start on filling out my gender workbook on how I was even going to begin a transfeminine life. Before the word was even invented. I was not invited to any overnight stays with the girls I admired so much to take advantage of early make-up tips and even feminine peer pressure on the clothes I was wearing to do a better job of looking the best I could in front of the mirror. Ironically, I was probably ahead of most girls age-wise when I started wearing makeup and shaving my legs, but I did not know that because I was not allowed behind the gender curtain to play in the girls’ sandbox.  

Looking back, I thought for a while there was always a chance I was going through some sort of a phase and I just could not be the only boy in the world with a strong desire to be a woman someday.

To make matters worse, I was always exceedingly shy back in those days which made me an introvert, and I had a tendency to not trust others. That would manifest itself much later in life when I had a very difficult time making close friends. Especially with other men. Who I thought would never understand my deepest darkest secret which by then I knew was no innocent phase in life I was going through. Not surprisingly after a while, I lost most of my shyness around ciswomen and enjoyed my time with them even more. Even though my true motives were never revealed that I just wanted to be like them in the worst way possible and I was just trying to see what it took to live their lives.

Even though I was still married to a couple of very different women through this portion of my life who knew of my cross-dressing desires and did the best I could to surround myself with other women, deep down inside I was still lonely. It never occurred to me why and what I could do about it for years. I just never realized for the longest time that I was living much of my life completely backwards. I was never meant to be a man and was forced into it by a cruel twist of fate I could do nothing about. Being a woman trying to live as a man put a terrific strain on me and caused me to constantly dwell on what I was doing wrong to feel so lonely.

When I finally made it out of my gender closet and into the world, my loneliness amazingly began to go away when I started to interact with other women. While men shunned me, ciswomen were curious why I was in their world. When they found out I was not some sort of fraud and a honest human being, it was OK to talk on a shallow level. Which was fine with me because I was so lonely after my second wife unexpectedly passed away. Her death taught me to never take anything for granted again and I set out to live more deeply as the transgender woman I was becoming. Just breaking down the gender barriers I was doing was never enough to get behind the gender curtain. I needed to do more.

Primarily, I needed to learn all over again how to talk to people. Mainly women but also men. Women I found came at me from all different directions and practiced a lot of nonverbal communication. I needed to practice the art of passive aggressiveness also when I found a smiling woman was not necessarily a friendly one. Until I proved to be up to the gender communication challenge, life became very interesting. Perhaps you have noticed that for the most part I left men out because for the most part, they left me alone. Which was fine by me, because with most of the men I did encounter, all I did was soothe their ego. Payback I guess from all the time I spent in the male world.

By this time in my life, I was looking at being sixty directly in the eye and could see very few avenues available to me to combat the extreme loneliness I felt at the time and had just figured I would have to spend the rest of my life by myself. As someone once said, the darkest hour is always right before the dawn and that is what happened to me. I already had my casual lesbian friends who met with me several times a week to watch sports and drink beer until my current wife came along online of all places and we cemented a wonderful relationship. Firat of all, Liz made me a believer in myself again. A confidence I had always had as a man but never as a trans woman.

Unbelievably, destiny had worked its magic, and I found someone to love in the world again and we lived close enough to make a romance work. As long as we are together (over twelve years now), we will not have to experience any lonely days in a cold world ever again.

For those of you who want to know more about how I did it was the only way I made it out was putting myself out there in that same cold world. I had to battle my fears by going out in big straight sports bars and becoming a regular. And, beat all the long odds to find a romantic partner on an online dating site. My big break came in the sports bars when a bartender I knew as a regular set me up with her single lesbian mother who I am friends with to this day. My moral to the story was I needed to put myself out there before I could reap the benefits, but I know the world has changed and you have to be careful.

One way or another, we transgender women and trans men live in a potentially very lonely world which is a shame because we have so much more to offer than the average human because we have seen so much in our lives.

Thanks for reading along and contributing with claps and comments! Hopefully I can come up with something meaningful to you.

 

Dreaming in "3-G"

 

Image from Amin RK
on UnSplash.

Dreaming in “3-G” seems to be coming natural for me these days.

Somehow, I have skipped the old two gender dreams I was having and replaced them with a more complex series of dreams I can remember in the morning when I wake up. I call them three gender dreams.  It’s kind of like going from black and white movies back in the day to full color masterpieces.

Here is an example. Recently I was having a dream that I was a guy but later became a woman complete with a new bag of lipstick. I wondered at the time how the lipstick got there but I had no answer as the dream moved on. Also, I have noticed recently that my dreams have been shifting out of my old male world and into my relatively new feminine world. I suppose I was expecting miracles when I thought fifteen years of fulltime transgender life could replace sixty years in the male world. In my subconscious.  

All my gender dreams can be traced back to my earliest days of life when I had vivid dreams of being a pretty girl and being very disappointed when I woke up in the same body every morning. But as I remember, my dreams were all in “2-G” and involved me in one of the two main binary genders, male or female.

I find it interesting that some transgender women or transgender men who I happen to talk about concerning their dreams say they are always their authentic gender self when they dream. When I have always been a mixture. I suppose that it is another complexity of what trans folk go through. The only constant in all my “2-G” or “3-G” dreams I have had over the years is that from most of them I was having a positive experience that I wanted to continue. Such as in my early years when all I really wanted to do was present well enough to make it in public as a transfeminine person. Who could blend in with ciswomen everywhere and not cause any extra attention.

What confused me was when I was starting to successfully lead a trans woman’s life, why it didn’t it follow me more into my dream world. I took what I could get and kept moving on with my own male to female femininization program. Dreams were just an integral part of keeping my gender sanity along the way. They helped with dispersing all the pressure in life I was feeling from juggling two genders. Plus, I have considered too that the anti-depressant and anxiety medications I am on may contribute to the vivid dreams I have been having.

I also find it strange when I have a “3-G” rare negative dream. I would have thought that with all the success I finally had on my gender path, I would not have an ugly dream about someone pulling off my wig in public. Especially since I have not had to wear a wig in almost a decade and never had anyone try to pull mine off when I did. It is my own version of a nightmare-cross dresser style.

At the least, when the “3-G” dreams don’t turn ugly, they are cheap entertainment and I wonder how I got here. When I do, the answer always comes back loud and clear that I made it to the place in life where I always should have been. And my dreams just are a reflection of that.

Maybe too, my dreams are finally transitioning to my current feminine self. Which is currently making the transition to just being the me I needed to be. “2-G” or “3-G” dreams should not matter anymore as they are just a needed respite from the real world we transgender individuals must put up with.

No matter where your dreams lead to, I hope they find you in a good place in this sometimes-negative world we live in today. We need all we can get to lead a quality life away from all the gender haters and bigots and a little daydream of how your future could be can never hurt anyone.

This is just a little shorter post than you are used to seeing from me today as I have to get mentally prepared for my Veterans Administration assigned psychiatrist virtual visit. I thought it would be a fun time to write about the effect dreams of all kinds have on our lives as trans people.

Good night!

 

 

 

 

Just Feeling Good Being Me

 

Image from Mathilda Khoo
on UnSplash.

Just feeling good being me took me years to learn. In fact, I needed to go through three male to female transitions to get there. 

First, I needed to go through all my cross-dressing years and feel the angst of how I looked above everything else. In fact, when I go back and read some of my very early blog posts, all I basically mentioned was my presentation as a woman and not how I felt as one. It probably was because I did not feel transfeminine at all at that point in my life. Or, in other words, I had not matured yet in my journey to transgender womanhood.

I wonder if I had known what a long and winding route, I ended up taking, if I would have still attempted it years later. But it turned out, life had a different path for me than nearly all the other people I knew. Since I was deprived of having any input on where I wanted to go with my gender struggles, I was left on my own to find my way. Many times, the only clues that I got came from the dreams I was having that I was actually a pretty girl and was very disappointed when I still woke up in my male life. I was not feeling good at that point until I could make it back to my makeup and dresses to cross-dress in front of the mirror. That was all well and good, except the time feeling good, or gender euphoria I learned it was called, did not last very long.

Somehow, the good feelings took over regardless and I pursued a feminine life even harder. It did not matter that the more I tried to do to transform myself into a pretty girl could result in disaster if I was ever discovered. I don’t know how I never was, except mom maybe knew and just did not want to bring it up thinking I would outgrow it. It turns out the only thing I outgrew was her clothes and I had to be resourceful to find fashion items that I could add to my wardrobe and wear. Like one day in junior high school, I found a discarded stretchy elastic skirt that fit me, and I brought it home with me and cherished it for years to come. I was fortunate in finding me a pair of girls’ shoes in my size at the store where I had first gone shopping with my own money for makeup. I could even afford them along with being able to buy a new pair of panty hose. To come up with the money, I worked a rural newspaper route and put the money I earned together with money I earned from doing chores around the house. I was on a mission to succeed feeling good as me, as a girl.

The mission was due to be paused as military duty came my way during the Vietnam War as I ended up serving three years in the Army. My new task was to put my cross-dressing life on a back burner as I went away to serve. Even though I was bitter at the time since I was drafted by the government to do something I was totally against, I got a lot of good from it as I traveled the world (covering three continents in three years) and learning powerful lessons about life. Army basic training in particular taught me what I could do to survive on a temporary basis without a skirt and makeup to fall back on.

Even on those long-forced marches I was on, during a not so mild Ft. Knox winter, I learned to always look ahead and not behind me. I used the lesson on the days when I encountered a gender hater or TERF (cis woman gender gatekeeper) who wanted to berate me because I knew I could outlast them. The TERF just couldn’t grasp that I was not there to threaten their femininity, I was there to be me and live mine.

After all that learning experience, I still had a long way to go to feel good about being me. As I always say, I was similar to most other men in not understanding what really goes into a ciswomen’s life. It did not matter that I had spent my life admiring women from afar, I was still a novice at trying to go behind the gender curtain to truly understand a woman’s life. And I would not come close to feeling better about the gender disconnect in my life until I did.

I left the world of gay venues and started to enjoy my new life in either one of the very few lesbian bars which were still open at the time, or one of the big straight sports bars I was used to going to as a man. All I knew was I was being accepted as the transgender woman I always wanted to be as a regular in those venues and I loved putting my old male self completely in my past. The new strangers did not know anything about him and the positives and negatives about his life, and I wanted to keep it that way. Until I found a few friends I could trust. At that point only could I begin to fill out my life’s story to them. While at the same time never alluding to the fact that I ever lived a male life at all.

I was a little slow, but my life came full circle from being a part-time cross-dresser to a transgender woman, back to just being who I was always meant to be (me) and I could feel good about who I was for the first time in my life.

Earlier in this post when I was mentioning my military experience, I wanted to take the time to thank Dana and Bobbie for their input on my Fourth of July post. They were both in the Navy and Bobbie in particular is very active in the state of Michigan pushing equal rights for the LGBTQIA+ community. I know too there are other trans vets who follow along and I appreciate you too! All of you who just read and or comment are always deeply appreciated. Trans vet or not.