If Your House of Cards is Broken, What Then

 

Image from Nik Korba on UnSplash.

If your house of cards is falling, what then?  Is something many transgender women and transgender men face as they transition to the gender of their choice.

The problem is, we hide our flaws so well over the years that many of the friends and family we associate with never had a chance to see the true selves we are internalizing. In my case, I knew very early on I had deep flaws that eventually I would have to adjust to. Somehow, I carried the misconception that age would solve all my gender problems which I hoped magically would just disappear. In the meantime, I set out to build a stable male existence on a house of cards.

The longer I built my house of cards, the harder it became to rationalize tearing it all down and starting over. As I started my path towards achieving my dream of living my life as a transgender woman. What I ended up doing was, trying to explore the world in stages as a novice cross dresser or transgender woman, to see if I had any chance of making it at all. Very early on, I had my doubts as my futile attempts to blend in with the world were met with scorn. I knew without a shadow of a doubt what I was doing was breaking my male and female self and I needed to discover ways to fix it.

It was then I began to shove my male ego aside and begin dressing for the segment of the population I wanted to blend in with, cisgender women. I began to re-study all I had ever thought of women as a whole and started to fix the way I was trying to look. I was certainly not making it as a teen girl dressed to thrill and settled in on a more mature scaled back look I could handle with my testosterone poisoned body. I immediately began to see dividends as I started to successfully blend in with the world.

The problem I discovered was I was beginning to be too successful in my exploration. Suddenly I realized I was not a casual weekend cross dresser at all. I fit in with the new up and coming term transgender almost perfectly and I began to change my mindset from thinking I was a man trying to be a woman to I was actually a woman trying my best to be a strong, successful man. When I discovered this, my life in some ways changed for the best, but in other ways turned out to be problematic. It was easy to accept my changes, but it was hard to decide what to do about them because of the seismic problems they caused. My house of cards was shaking and becoming broken, and I did not know (or want to face what I needed to do about it.)

To attempt to hold my broken world together, I kept trying to apply the strongest male glue available. All I ended up doing was hurting my mental health more in the process of trying to save myself. All the ripping and tearing of my gender dysphoria was literally killing me. Finally forcing me into action to save myself. As I struggled, I continued on my not so merry way, exploring what it would really mean to me if my house of cards collapsed and I had to fix it. The only thing I had going for me was all the experiences I had built up as a transfeminine person in my life. So, I did not have to start from ground zero when I decided to go after my male to female transition for the final time. I was secure in my feminine appearance and communication skills, and I had major hurdles behind me. Then all I needed to learn was what would happen when I lost all of my male privileges which were a major part of my house of cards. In many ways, losing things such as my security and intelligence as a trans woman were breaking all the remaining chains I had to my old male life.

The bottom line was I took a male life that was not broken and broke it anyhow. Giving up nearly everything I knew as a man. Gender affirming hormones or HRT put the finishing touches on everything I had ever known and shifted my knowledge of gender privileges to the feminine side of the gender spectrum. As my testosterone decreased and my estrogen level increased, I was free to build a new life. Which for once was not broken or flawed. No more house of cards for me, nothing was broken.

 

 

Transgender Dreams

 

Image from Felipe Delgado
on UnSplash

Obviously, we transgender women and transgender men do a lot of dreaming when it comes to the ultimate results of our lives. For example, when I was very young, I could never speak truthfully when an adult asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Saying I wanted to be a woman would have never been acceptable and would have rewarded me with a visit to a psychiatrist. So, I said something more acceptable such as a lawyer or a veterinarian.

I had to save my ultimate desires to be feminine for my dream world and often went to sleep thinking of how it would be if I could wake up as a pretty girl. Of course, I was never able to take advantage of such a thing happening to me and I needed to make the best of what I had to work with. Which was about ready to radically change for the worse when I went through male puberty. As I started my growth spurt, I rapidly outgrew all my mom’s clothes I had tried to squeeze into and had to rely on my meager allowance added to my newspaper route delivery money to try to sneak out to stores and buy my own clothes and makeup.

Through this portion of my life, my mirror was my friend and helped me to bring dreams of being a pretty girl to life, no matter how I really looked. It wasn’t until I began to experience the public’s reaction to me did, I finally get a fair and accurate reaction to how I really looked. I desperately dreamed of being more than a clown in drag. After tons of work and trial and error experiences, I finally made it to where the public at least knew I was being serious about achieving my dream of being a woman. Little did I know, the real work I would need to do to achieve my dream was about to begin.

The more I explored the world as a novice transgender woman, the more I found I had to do to survive in the new exciting feminine world I had dreamed of being a part of. When I was in the public’s eye, I found I attracted the attention of ciswomen as never before and as I did, I needed to get radical and do things such as talk to them. Initially, I was very shy and completely unprepared to take such a big step, but I was way past the point of ever turning back. For the first time in my life, my dream appeared to be within reach, if I kept learning what my new world meant.

I found I was stuck in some sort of a gender never-never land. Ciswomen instinctively knew I was not Cis but on the other hand, wanted to be in their world. Fortunately, I found most of them let me into their worlds and showed me a path to being successful, if they knew it or not. I did not care how I received the help and guidance; I was just trying to achieve my dream of living as a successful transgender woman. As I tried to point out in yesterday’s post, I went past the point of trying to be trans all the way to just being me. Which I think the women around me accepted because of my honesty. By now, you may be thinking what about the men around me? For the most part, they left me alone. Which was fine by me. I wanted out of their club and wanted nothing to do with going back if I had anything to do with it. I was successful and never did. My dream increasingly appeared to be reachable, and destiny opened her doors for more success for me. Primarily when it came for time to consider going down the path of gender affirming hormones or HRT.

I knew first, I needed to find a doctor to approve taking the hormones and I found one in one of the Dayton, Ohio LGBTQ publications. He had openings and I was able to get in for a checkup and then receive my precious prescriptions for initial minimum dosages for estradiol and spiro to get started on a new path towards achieving my dream as never before. After I began the minimum dosages, I had no adverse reactions and in fact the opposite was true. I felt as if I should have been on the meds for my entire life. They made me feel so good.

By this time, I felt as if I was living proof that transgender dreams come true if you pay your dues such as I did. The dues I paid were certainly the best investment I ever made.   

 

Is There a way to Be Transgender

 

JJ Hart in Mystic, Connecticut.

To be fair, I saw this question posed on a couple different sites on the internet and thought I would comment on it. The question is, is there a way to be transgender.

As I thought about it, I initially thought for years that there was a way to be a transgender woman and that would be to copy all the other cisgender women around me. Even though I thought this was the best way to go, in the long run doing it hurt me. Why? Because doing it stopped me from becoming my true authentic feminine self.

Surely, cis women are guilty of forming cliques while men form teams and to be included in a feminine clique, you have to look and act the part…at first. I discovered that once I was accepted by an alpha female, my entrance requirements became easier to come by. But what I did not realize was how perceptive the other ciswomen in the group would be to me and how women can spot a fake a mile away. I would have to proceed with caution if I was going to succeed at the invisible goal of being transgender. To succeed, I did all the usual things such as obsess on my appearance so I could blend in with the other women when I received a cherished invitation to a girl’s night out.

Then, when I arrived at the function and my fear began to subside, I needed to look around and judge all my reactions to the conversations going on around me. Which marked my first real idea that there was not a real way to be transgender. Afterall, when the conversation turned to kids, I still could participate because I had one that of course I did not birth but still participated in the trials and tribulations of raising her. Similar to the other women in the group. It was just a small example of how I survived the evening as I added in my input when I could. It seemed to work because all the other women except for one accepted me and I ended up enjoying myself.

As the years went by, and I began to experience many nights as my transfeminine self, I found there was no way to be transgender but there was a way to be myself. When I did was when I became more and more successful in the world as a trans woman and my ultimate dream of living a full life as such could be realized. Also, during that time, I spent quite a few evenings socializing with a transgender woman friend of mine before she moved away to Dallas. The two of us were prime examples of differing ideas on how we wanted to pursue our lives as trans women. My friend Racquel wanted surgery to look the best she could and attract men, while I found myself comfortably in the company of lesbians who I found for the most part accepted me for who I was.  I did not and have not to this day desired any major gender surgeries. Mainly because I did not need them to help me to realize my way to be transgender.

Of course, as human beings, we are all different and one of the problems we have now is being forced into one small box by a society which does not understand us and for the most part has never met a transgender woman or man, that they know of. Some, like me, are forced into forms of living stealth just to survive. When just using the bathroom becomes a threat to your existence in some parts of the country, something needs to be done, yet we continue to be forced backwards in most parts of my native state of Ohio. It all makes just being transgender so difficult to do.

Enough of the negative, and now on to the positive. Even here in Ohio, the LGBTQ winds of change are blowing with several more communities proclaiming they are safe zones for us. And, with the strong showing so far for the Democrats in the country, real change could be on the horizon for change as we need it.

If and when change does happen, it will make it easier to live your gender dreams and realize one thing. In the end you are much more than just another transgender woman or trans man. You are you, and that is the most important fact to realize if you are to be successful in your world.

There is no way to be transgender but there is a way to be you. 

Transgender Week of Awareness and Remembrance

 

As we finish up the Transgender Week of Awareness then honor all trans women and trans men, we have tragically lost over the years during TDOR, or Transgender Day of Remembrance, it is time for me to add in what I have done recently to be out in public to advance the awareness of who I am in the world.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, yesterday was the day I needed to go to the main Cincinnati Veterans Medical Center to visit my hematology doc, who in turn ordered all of my blood work I needed from all sorts of providers including my primary doctor all the way to the nurse practitioner who monitors my depression and anxiety medications. So, the bottom line was I ended up seeing several people in a short span of time.

Of course, as luck would have it, the weather was beyond terrible for a mid-November day in Southwestern Ohio. During our trip to a very congested VA medical center my wife Liz had to battle torrential downpours, strong winds and even thunder and lightning. Through it all Liz got us there safely and it was time for me to meet the public as a transfeminine person. Fortunately, there is a drop off point at the front entrance, so I did not have to walk far in the rain with my walking stick. As I waited for Liz by the door, I sat near a group of four women who ignored me completely, so I thought I was off to a good start. In the distant past, I have caught people staring at me and worse at that VA, but not yesterday.

In some ways I am stealth these days as I transitioned into a senior citizen transgender woman. So, I can’t say I add much to the celebration of transgender people everywhere. Instead of all the people I did see yesterday, most of them paid me no extra attention except for the intake nurse who called me Miss Jessie and another volunteer who called me Mam when she was asking if I needed any help.

As far as the hematology doctor went, he was very nice and accommodating. He agreed to and set my estradiol blood test and even volunteered to give me more refills on my prescription. I left with a good feeling about him and if he ever knew I was transgender, he never said anything about it.

All that remained then was to make my appointment for next year and wait for the results of all the blood tests I did. It used to be I would have most of them within twenty-four hours before the ridiculous cuts to the VA that the Epstein crook made. So now I wait longer.

Now it is time to stand with all of you transgender women and trans men everywhere to make sure the public knows we have not gone anywhere. Even if you are still in your closet waiting to come out, be aware there are others to help you currently out in the world. You can join in the celebration also.

Just remember, the week ends with TDOR, the Transgender Day of Remembrance. It’s the time we pause to remember those trans people who tragically died just for who they were. Now, more than ever before, we have to stick together for change and in many areas such as Ohio, get our rights back.

As far as my wife Liz and I went, we stopped at our favorite coffee shop for a holiday joe and light breakfast sandwich which was a welcome sight for me after I needed to miss my breakfast and fast due to the blood tests. We went through the drive thru and headed home with our treats.  

Hopefully, all will turn out okay with my blood tests which I will be able to share with my daughter’s mother-in-law who always wants to know how my health is getting along. We shall see. In the meantime, take the opportunity if you can be a visible transgender woman or man. Except for those of you who have gone through the time and effort to go stealth in the world. Congratulations to you too.

I will keep you informed of my trifecta of medical reports which seem to pile up on me at certain times of the year. Anymore, it is my primetime to be out and about as a transfeminine person and do my bit for transgender week of awareness.

 

 

   

Stranger Things have Happened

 

Image from Alexander
Krivisly on
UnSplash.

My gender journey has proven to me that stranger things have happened, just not to me.

What I mean is, on a scale of one to ten at succeeding in ever living a life as a transgender woman, I would have ranked myself some where around an eight. Meaning I was giving myself very little chance of ever making it to my dream life. Along the way now, I wish I had kept more track of every time I succeeded at and then passed a goal I had set for my feminine self.

In many ways, the early days of shopping in mall women’s clothing stores was easy and gave me a false sense of hope. I was naïve and did not realize for the longest time, I just represented as a dollar sign in front of the store clerks, I was facing. Most certainly, I was not the first man in a dress and makeup they had ever seen in their store and would not be the last. Regardless, the false sense of confidence I was giving myself raised my faint hope of ever succeeding at my dream.

As I went not so blissfully on my high-heeled way, I did pick up bits and pieces of information I would need to survive. For once, I thought far enough ahead to set up time away from my wife so I could slip away and shop with the rest of the women in the malls on Black Friday after Thanksgiving. Which had been on my trans bucket list for years. By this time, I had experienced enough time in public as a woman, I knew things such as wearing comfortable footwear was a must for the long trips from the parking lot to the stores, all the way to being stylish but not overdone in my fashion choices for the day so I could blend in well with the other ciswomen I met. Stranger things happened and I had a great time which I will write about in a later blog post.

All of my continued success combined to make me think maybe, just maybe I could achieve my dream life, and I could increase my scale to a four out of ten. What helped me were the short trips I made to Columbus, Ohio to the small diverse parties I went to where I could meet and interact with anyone such as transsexuals on their way to surgery to cross dresser admirers who were there just to watch. I even met a stray lesbian there one night who I left with briefly to go to a big gay club together. Through it all, I was just trying to see where I fit in at all. I figured if I had any success at all at understanding where I was, I hoped I could see the light at the end of my gender tunnel was not the train and just maybe I could live my dream.

As much as I liked the interaction in Columbus, I knew I had to leave the relative safety of the group and try to carve out my own life as a transgender woman in the world. Sure, I was terrified to do it but I knew I had to overcome my fears if I was ever going to be able to move up my scale from a five to a seven. When I made it to a lucky seven, the pressure to live the way I wanted to really be increased. The reason for the increase came because of the new interactive experiences I was now having with other ciswomen around me. What I did was watch the women around me and try to learn how they were living their life and learn my own way.

From then on, when I could see the dream life I had hoped for was in sight, I could really concentrate on my future as a transfeminine person. At that point, I needed to begin my preparations for what do about telling the family close to me about my male to female gender transition, all the way to what I was going to do about surviving financially. I was to the point where I did not have to make it as a transgender woman, I just needed to let it happen. I had to stay in the new moment I was in and live it for all it was worth. It turned out my scale was worth it, all the way.

Stranger things happened to me. I may not have looked like a ten, but I felt like one.

Staying in the Present

 

ss

Image from Ekka Wessman
on UnSplash. 

As I progressed in my cross-dressing life to a novice transgender woman, it proved to be difficult for me in several different areas.

Just one of those areas was the amount of time I needed to stay in the present for the first time in my life. My problem was compounded by the fact I had trained myself to daydream my life away as I wanted nothing more than to be a girl. Then, when I took my feminine image out of the mirror and put it into motion, I needed to constantly stay in the present to remind myself where I was and what I was doing. If I did not, I would be in danger of slipping back to my old ingrained male self. The problem was particularly intense when I was trying my best to mimic the magical way ciswomen moved.

Sadly, I found if I relaxed at all, no matter how attractive I thought I looked as a trans woman, all would be lost if I looked like a linebacker in drag as I walked. And to make matters worse, I needed to quickly learn to change the old stay away masculine scowl I had perfected and replace it with a more welcoming feminine look. As I shopped and interacted with ciswomen in public, they wanted to smile at me, so I needed to be pleasant and smile back. Especially if they suspected all was not as it seemed gender wise with me. I did not want to appear as any sort of a threat.

Staying in the present brought about other pleasant rewards also, such as when I communicated with other women, I needed to look them in the eye and listen to what they were saying, not jumping ahead and anticipating what I thought they were going to say. My communication game with women had really changed.

After a lifetime of hiding in the future, the present started to be a very pleasant place for me to be. I could take the time to feel the different clothes and talk to different people from a whole new viewpoint. I could take and give compliments from others regardless of their hidden motives. I found just the most innocent mention of my earrings from another woman was not about my choice of jewelry at all, she was gently starting a conversation to find out more about me. It all carried into the learning curve I experienced when I began to take lessons in passive aggressive aggression, from other women. I never had needed much knowledge of passive anything with the alpha macho men I hung out with. They were upfront with me for the most part. Ciswomen, on the other hand, could smile at you while they clawed your back for whatever reason they had. For a while, I thought I was going to have to carry band aids in my purse for any surprise attacks such as one night when a woman was coming back from the restroom and caught me talking to her man and took a dim view of the situation.

The more time I spent in the present, the better my life had become, and I got to the point where I missed out on all the time, I spent daydreaming of my life away. As I wondered how it would be if I could shed all my male existence and redo it as a transfeminine person which made me unapproachable to family and friends as well as making me totally miserable. Also, all the jealousy I felt towards ciswomen would have been swept away if I had had the chance to live and compete with them in their own world. To be sure, it was a different world but a life I discovered I enjoyed immensely as I found my new life to be all I thought it would be and more.

To arrive at the point I wanted to be, I first had to be confident in how I arrived at my own womanhood and if someone did not like me, it was their problem not mine. Then and only then could I fully live in the present and most importantly, try to forget most of my past. The future is still a problem for me as I wonder what will become of me if I have to encounter an assisted living situation where my gender issues are not addressed. The difference now is that I don’t spend the time dwelling on it as I used to. The present is just more important for me, which was a hard lesson to learn.

 

 

United States Veteran's Day 2025

 

Female Service Person
from UnSplash.

Today is Veteran’s Day in the United States. The day we salute our numerous numbers of military veterans who served and serve our country. Especially those who made the ultimate sacrifice with their life.

As most of you know, I am a veteran myself and survivor of the Vietnam War conflict. Plus, I know I have plenty of other veterans who read and respond to the blog. To all of you, I would like to thank you for your service to our country.

In all my Veteran’s Day posts, I always make it a special point to mention all of those who were serving as they were in the closet or questioning their own gender issues when they lost their lives. It is suspected that there is a higher percentage of transgender people who try to serve but can’t or just hide it and go deep into their closets. I can’t imagine what that would feel like.

In my case, I have a couple of different positives which came from my time in the Army. First, infantry basic training taught me how to have a deeper respect for myself and the pressure I could endure. Secondly, I was able to travel the world on the military dime and learn how other cultures lived. Thirdly, I was able to come out of my gender closet for the first time and admit to close friends I was a transvestite after a Halloween party I went to as a woman. And perhaps the most important positive I gained from my time in the military was the chance I had to meet my first wife who was in the “Woman’s Army Corps” in Germany. She went on to be the mother of my only child (my daughter) who turned out to be one of my huge support systems in the future, and now. The gift that has kept on giving from the Army.

While I am on the topic of gifts, my continuing use of the Veteran’s Administration health care system has been a tremendous help in my life. It initially came at a time when I was financially broke and could not afford to buy my depression medications and gave me life giving hope especially when I sought out hormone replacement therapy and mental health help. So, as you can tell, I have been repaid many times for the service I gave to the country.

I am but one example of what is possible for veterans, but the fact remains that too many veterans young and old are suffering from PTSD or are homeless on the streets. If our country can afford to fight wars, it can afford to take care of those who fight them.

On this Veterans Day, please pause for a second and remember (or more importantly thank) those around you who have served our country or who are serving.

It is Right When you Know it Is

 

Image from Caroline Herman
on UnSplash.

Some have asked me over the years, when did I know it was the right time for me to leave my closet and emerge into the world as a transgender woman. It is a complex question with a very easy answer. I always knew I was having problems with my gender but did not have a clue for years what to do about it.

The only relief I had was the brief time I had to rapidly cross dress in front of the mirror, away from my family and friends. Even when I was able to accomplish my goal of looking like a pretty girl, I still was aware deep down that something was not right with my life. In my own way, I set out to find any gender solutions I could, on my own, with no available sources to aid me. Plus, at the time, my male self was rapidly settling into a relatively successful life, and he wanted nothing to do giving up any of it to my inner feminine self. It turned out, this would be a battle I would have had to face for decades of my life to come. I would spend any available free time I had as a cross dresser, only to have what I learned rejected when I went back to my male life.

The only thing which kept me going was the deep idea I had that what I was doing was actually the natural part of my existence. And the parttime male life was an act. The act which became so good over the years that I shocked a number of people I knew when I finally came out as a transgender woman. I always had assumed they had thought something was up with me when they saw me at Halloween parties dressed as a woman but never did. It was like my male self-tried to dig a deep hole to bury my female self was never quite successful as she kept digging herself out.

The years at that point seem to fly by with the continuing fights with my second wife over considering if I was transgender at all and at the same time, me improving my transfeminine presentation during the times I was out in the public’s eye. I started to do more than just walk around in malls to see if I could present well and started to accomplish small tasks such as doing part of the family grocery shopping as a woman. I found I could do the tasks, and my life began to feel so natural again. The opposite of when I needed to go back to living as a man. It seemed unfair to me when my wife and my male self-ganged up on me to protect their interests in the relationship and I did not know what to do because I was just doing what was becoming more natural to me.

All the infighting only did one thing and that was prolonging the truth from coming out. I had always been destined to be feminine and when the time was right, I would be able to claim my birthright. The longer I lived as a transgender woman among ciswomen I knew I was in the right spot and had to face the facts about myself. My wife unexpectedly passed away from a massive heart attack leaving only my male self to protest any idea of me being trans and starting the HRT medical treatment. Under a doctor’s care of course.

Finally, when faced with the reality of my future life, my male self-gave in to my inner feminine self who had waited so long to live and prosper. More importantly, I was tired of all the internal fighting and knew I had readied myself to make a choice. All the frustrating years of playing with makeup and clothes came back to help me. I did not have to worry so much about my presentation when I made the decision to permanently be in the public’s eye as a transgender woman. I found a great majority of the world either didn’t pay any attention or were just curious of me which was a great surprise. I could relax and enjoy the wonderful new world I had always dreamed of.

When I finally stopped the gender in-fighting I suffered through all those years, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders at the age of sixty. Why I waited so long to face my true self in the mirror and decide to do the right thing will forever be a mystery to me. My only excuse is, I just knew the time was right.

 

The Transgender Fear Factor

 

Image from Darius Bashar
on UnSplash

Even though my transgender fear factor is a relatively dramatic term, it was very real to me.

So much so, I used to walk clear across malls to avoid groups of teen aged girls who in the past treated me with scorn. Finally, I had enough and decided to zero in on what my presentation problems were. When I did, I was able to blend in with other ciswomen I was around and only then did I begin to really address my fears.

Before I did though, I needed to define exactly what transgender fear meant to me. The problem was I could not go to an internet site and read about someone else’s definition of fear could be. I was on my own to decide. To figure it out, the only way I could was to test my new life out in person. At that time, I was used to going to gay venues because of their relatively safe spaces and was afraid to leave the venues and see if I could be successful in so called straight venues where I knew I would like the atmosphere.

Then, my biggest issue was being pulled aside in one of these new venues and being physically assaulted. Ironically, the only place I ever was in any kind of danger was outside of a gay bar I went to a lot. I paid my way out of the danger with my last five-dollar bill. The two men who stopped me took the five and let me on my way. I learned my lesson and never went back there again.

Fear as a transgender woman and fear as a man was obviously different. I was stripped of all my former male privileges. Most importantly, out of all of them the privilege of personal security proved to be the most dramatic change I needed to face. All my life as a man, I was fairly good size and was able to bluster and bluff my way out of any difficult situation I ran into, plus I was always the protector for the ciswomen around me. All of a sudden, I was put into a world of who was going to protect me.

What I learned from my fear factor was what all ciswomen learned from situations early in life. Plan ahead for potentially negative situations is the best way to have very little happen to you. Such as staying out of dark or dimly lit parking lots and go out with other women friends whenever possible. When I did learn my new limitations, I felt better about my new life in the world as a transfeminine person.

Dealing with fear factor with me also was involved in the amount of male baggage I needed to lose to survive. Since I took until the age of sixty to finally completely transition into a cisgender world, I had plenty of baggage to get rid of. What I managed to keep was my life-long love of sports. I discovered I could go to the big sports bars I was fond to going to as a man and watch my favorite teams play, something I could not do in the gay venues I was going to. When I did begin to be accepted as a regular in the big venues, I began to notice the other women around me who were also into sports. Which made my life easier. I began to be more confident, friendly, and overall, more fun to be around.

Predictably, when my sports baggage stayed, many other parts of my life had to go. I was fortunate that I had retained a relationship with my only child, my daughter. On the other hand, I lost all contact with my only brother’s side of the family. We had not talked in over a decade ago when I came out to him right before Thanksgiving and my invitation to the family dinner was revoked. In the long term, I never missed any interactions with my brother and ended up cherishing my time with my daughter. So, putting my fear of rejection proved to be unfounded and I won the battle.

It was never easy for me to put my transgender fears behind me as I transitioned from a male to female dominated world. Mainly because I did not realize all the rules which would change in the world when I aggressively pursued my transgender dreams. Some of my changes came seamlessly, when others came with big obstacles. An example is I was always a basically shy person as a man, which was easy to lose, when I started to live as a woman in a cisgender world. It was worth it to battle and win my wars with transgender fears.

 

A Thing of Beauty?

 

My Trans Friend Racquel.

During my male to female gender transition years, I always stressed to the max about my appearance as a transgender woman or cross dresser.

Every now and then, I go back into my very early blog posts to see what I was fixated on and quickly noticed I was all about how I looked. In those days, I thought being a woman was all about looks and beauty and I wanted to overcome my testosterone poisoned body to achieve what I could.

The big test of my so-called beauty pageant was when I began to free myself from the mirror and break out of my closet into the world. By doing so, I found I had a lot of work to do if I was able to make it in the world as a transfeminine person at all. My first big test was too present well enough that the teen girls would not notice me and send me home in tears. During that time, my makeup had to be just perfect, and I did not want to ruin my mascara and carefully applied eyeliner by crying. Even when my makeup and hair was done just right, I struggled to think I was anything close to being beautiful. I just wanted to be presentable and live my new experience as a transgender woman.

It wasn’t until my second wife began to call me the “Pretty, pretty princess” when we fought about my cross-dressing desires, did I begin to think about what she was really saying. Since she was an attractive but a no-nonsense makeup woman, and she was my idol in so many ways, I tried to tone down my makeup the best I could to please her. On occasion, she would even go out with me as my feminine self, so I wanted to do the best I could to not embarrass her or myself with how I looked. Of course, the problem continued to be I could not get away with wearing no makeup like she did which led to more fighting.

Many years later, after she passed away, I began to build my own feminine self from what I had learned about beauty and how it related to other ciswomen around me. The first thing I did was becoming a better student of women than I had ever been before. I needed to remove the male blinders I still had to get a realistic view of the world I so desperately wanted to enter and be a part of. I discovered I paid an inordinate amount of time admiring the beautiful ciswomen I saw and not notice the vast majority of women who were doing the best they could with the physical attributes they had to work with. An example was, I was always worried about my height as a trans woman until I began to notice plenty of other tall successful women in the world I was in.

I became less of the “princess” and more of the trans feminine person who was just trying to blend in an survive. It was about this time when Racquel, a trans woman friend of mine told me I passed out of sheer will-power. My willpower took me into a world of lesbian women when hers took a different path into facial operations and men. I guess, in our own ways we were successful transitioning into the world at large with her as a tall, slim beauty and me on a completely different level socializing at lesbian mixers with my friends. By doing so, I learned valuable lifetime lessons on how to live my life without the validation of men at all. If they liked me fine, and if they didn’t (which most did not) that was fine too. Afterall, I was not the ideal girl to being brought home to see the family for the holidays.

Years later, after I met my wife Liz and we became serious, it was difficult enough for me to meet her family for the holidays. Her dad was an extremely right-wing gun rights supporter, and her brother never talked so I did not know what they thought about me. I will never know, since dad passed away years ago and her brother lives south of Cincinnati in Louisville, Kentucky. All I know is, I was extremely ill at ease during holidays with the family.

Now, all I know is that I present well as being old with non-age-appropriate long hair. I can’t do anything about my age and love my hair, so it is not going anywhere. Perhaps I am making up for all the years I had to have my hair cut short in my youth and military days.

As with all other ciswomen, over the years, I have learned to work with what I have been given physically. I was extremely fortunate to have found people who accepted me for who I am as I presented as myself out of sheer willpower.

 

Falling Asleep in my Heels

Image from Toa Heftiba
on UnSplash.

Falling asleep in my new high heels turned out to be a very dangerous thing for me to do.

There was a time when I was in my early formative cross-dressing years that I thought wearing high heels was a fashion necessity I could not do without. Instinctively I knew the heels made my legs shapelier and longer. But what I did not realize was how much power the shoes gave the ciswoman wearing them. Have you ever noticed how men follow the sound of heels when a woman enters a room? Plus, the power extends from men to other women, who at the least responded to the expertise it took to wear a pair of high heeled shoes.

So, where did the danger come in for me? Actually, in. several different ways. First came the pure challenge of wearing heels. I had never experienced anything like it in my entire life but only knew the shoes made me feel so deliciously feminine. Through sheer effort, I conquered my fear of wearing heels so much that I forgot I was wearing them and ended up with another big problem, looking like a linebacker in drag, in heels. So much so that one night as I was trying to negotiate the stairs at home, my wife barked at me with a feet forward command. I never forgot that night and resolved to walk better in the future.

There were times in my past when heels went out as a fashion accessory and flat shoes were in with over-sized sweaters and short mini skirts for ciswomen everywhere. I was overjoyed with the idea of showing my legs off in tights and opaque pantyhose but again found myself in a situation where I needed to really concentrate on how I walked femininely without the heels I had come to rely upon. It seemed one of my favorite female privileges was taken away just when I was getting used to them. As with anything else in the fashion world of women, if you don’t like something, just wait because change is just around the corner.

That corner for me turned out to be a long way away. My fashion sense turned into a strong urge to blend in with other women in the world. Which meant where I was going, the women around me never wore heels. Especially all of my lesbian friends. Like them, I went for comfort in my footwear and blended right in, especially at all the lesbian mixers I went to.

My caveat to all of this comes from the transgender women such as “Stana” at the “Femulate” blog who have fabulous legs. Years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting her in Dayton, Ohio. Stana is tall to begin with and makes a striking beautiful woman when you meet her in person. Where we met, there were a group of men waiting for a ride when the elevator opened and out stepped Stana in all her long-legged glory. From where I was waiting, I could see everyman in the lobby turning to admire her. As you can tell, I have never forgotten the moment years ago when Stana took every advantage of her legs and heels as a transgender woman.

As I grew older, unfortunately, I had an old football injury destroying my ability to wear any heels at all. I broke my left ankle twice in the same place and wearing heels just became unbearable. To compensate in my own way, I try to buy stylish shoes and boots with no heels that I can walk in.

Regardless, I still remember the days when I felt the power of wearing my high heels gave me. Even after I went through the paranoia of feeling I was so much taller in the shoes. I decided to stand tall and be proud of myself, even though I was barely six feet tall. I had the opposite effect of going to sleep in my heels. I was wearing them proudly when I could. As I said, time has passed for me and I need to go for total comfort in my footwear, and it makes me sad. I feel I have lost a portion of my transfeminine self which will never be reclaimed. In the meantime, I can sit back and admire any woman I see negotiating the world in her high heeled shoes. As I know what she is going through, so I appreciate it.

As for you, if you haven’t checked out the “Femulate” blog yet, try it and you will see several transwomen and cross dressers in their heels and hose. Then you can go home and practice. Till you have your walk down and attempt in the public’s eye and watch out for sidewalk cracks which can cause you problems. Which I know from personal experiences.

 

  

The Yin and Yang of Gender

 

Yin and Yang from Gabriel Vasiliu 
on UnSplash. 

You might ask why I would write a post explaining why I was in such a hurry to transition into my womanhood when it took me nearly fifty years to come out of my gender shell. I finally discovered I was in a classic war between my yin and yang personalities.

Today, I am writing to explain the two forces I faced as I decided when and how to transition. My own personal yin and yang of gender. I guess it doesn’t matter which of the two forces I had to deal with, or if my yin side was feminine and my yang side was masculine because both were prominent parts of my life. Yang flourished because he had to early in my life and yin did the same when she finally had a chance to live and exist. I found this description from “Wikipedia” which backs up my theory:

“In Chinese creation theory, the universe develops out of a primary chaos of primordial qi or material energy, organized into the cycles of yin and yang, force and motion leading to form and matter. "Yin" is retractive, passive, contractive and receptive in nature in a contrasting relationship to "yang" that is repelling, active, expansive and repulsive.” It described me completely.

Yin and yang caught me chasing my tail as I would run back to the mirror as quickly as I could to put on a dress, make-up, and convince myself how pretty I was. It was yang’s primary form of escaping any potentially troublesome situations. As I always explain, coming to terms with all of this caused great torment, and now I wished I had someone to at least discuss it with except the one good therapist I was fortunate to be placed with at the Veterans’ Administration in Dayton, Ohio. She was understanding and even had a basic understanding of the LGBTQ community, so I did not have to educate her at all. However, we did not ever get into the clash of my yin and yang genders. On the plus side of our therapy, she never tried to equate any of my bi-polar depression issues with my need to express my yin side of myself.

Ironically, I think my yang side was very active and expansive in pushing my yin into the world. He provided the life lessons I needed to get out and push my gender envelope by learning new things. Without him, the initial exploratory trips to the regular venues I established myself in as a novice transgender woman would have never happened. So many nights I sat in my car for what seemed like forever before I summoned my courage to go inside.

On the other hand, it was yang who did his best to ensure his male world would never be taken away and he made a strong, experienced adversary. The problem became was how I was ever going to join my yin and yang together and form hopefully a good transfeminine person. The answer was I never had to really give up all the life which yang brought to the table. It turned out, I still was able to follow my love of sports, all the way to keeping my sexuality when lesbians took over my life. Altogether the entire process of joining my yin and yang proved to be easier than I thought. I just needed the courage to do it.

It would be too easy to say all transgender women and transgender men suffer from yin and yang gender problems, but the idea may go along way towards explaining what we feel to an outsider. It is far out of my pay grade to predict what anyone may do when confronted with such complex gender problems a trans person has. In fact, when I go back to “Wikipedia”, it even mentions gender in this form:

“When pertaining to human gender, yin is associated to more rounded feminine characteristics and Yang as sharp and masculine traits”.

I don’t know about you, but the whole definition works for me, and I wonder why it has taken me so long to stumble upon it in my research. In some ways, yin and yang reinforces my idea that transgender people deserve a special place in the world. Not one of scorn and discrimination. Maybe the average person just needs to know more about us on a regular basis and not what they hear from politicians. But they can’t even govern well enough to keep our government open, so I can’t see much chance of that anytime soon.

Gender "Muscle" Memory

 

Image from Jeremy Bishop
on UnSplash

Perhaps you have heard an elite athlete talk about having muscle memory when they play their sport. Especially professional baseball players who make a living off of hitting curve balls. Which has nothing to do with presenting as a transgender woman, or does it?

I remember the days when I was going through an unwanted male puberty, and I was so self-conscious of how I was walking as a man. I did not want to attract any bullies by thinking I was too effeminate. I must have been fairly successful because I rarely had any problems. I was just a boy who liked sports and cars and stayed under society’s bigotry radar.

Then, when I started to explore the feminine world, I needed to throw out all of my walk like a man training and start to mimic the distinctive walk of a woman the best I could. I took me a while to do it, but I finally came up with a transfeminine walk that did not look like a linebacker in drag. The problem became doing it enough to have it become muscle memory. Mainly because I was not doing it all the time. Spending a day as a transgender woman learning the world, then reverting back to being a man on a job which demanded control was literally mentally killing me. On the days I had to be a man, I felt as if I was in some sort of a gender fog as I could see and feel my dream of womanhood but could not quite achieve it.

What I did was try to practice my feminine muscle memory anytime I did not think anyone was watching. Big box stores later in the evening were my favorites because they were largely empty of other shoppers. Later I wonder if I made the store’s security cameras and they were amused by a man trying to walk like a woman. But, of course, I never found out because I was not doing anything wrong. At least I found out I was being a success as a novice woman when on a few occasions on my male days at work, I was referred to as a woman.

Finally, practice started to make a successful feminine presentation possible for me, and I started to relax when I was out of my closet and the mirror exploring the world. The only problem I ran into was when I became too comfortable and forgot what I was doing. Like the time I was walking through a mall not paying attention when one of my heels became stuck in a sidewalk crack and I twisted my ankle. Lesson learned as from then on, when I was wearing heels, to watch out for cracks in the sidewalks. Muscle memory the hard way.

Until I began to live my life increasingly more as a transgender woman was I able to put the image I always saw in the mirror into motion. The pretty pictures I was able to take of myself were one thing but surviving in the world of cisgender women was another. Every time I thought I had learned all I needed to know, something else came along to shock me into going farther. I was growing increasingly frustrated and again my fragile mental health was suffering. Until I found a good therapist to help me face my truth. I should never had attempted to assume the male role I was in and all of the muscle memory which came with it. All it solved was making my life more complex when I tried to change it and enter the feminine world for good.

Especially with the help of the gender affirming hormones I was approved to take, my confidence as a trans woman grew and any resistance to losing my old male muscle memory went away. I carved out a new life and even found away to be happy in it. I was similar to the very successful baseball player who is winning the world series as my outward motion fit my inward feminine feelings. Even the HRT hormones enabled me to develop my own hips I was so envious of on other women. Anything I could do to come closer to my dream was welcomed.

Having the gender muscle memory from so long ago is something I still think about to this day. Even though I am highly immobile. It was the way I could get started towards another huge step in my male to female gender transition.

 

All that And More

 

JJ Hart

When I jumped from the cross-dressing world and I went into the public, I found myself in a situation where all that was more in my life.

Why? Because I was very naïve about how the two binary genders react to each other. In my relatively sheltered male life, naturally I had only experienced life from the male side only, and I was trying my best to make all I could out of it. To make matters even worse, I was so shy I could barely talk to girls at all. So, I never had any experience with them. No experience led to no confidence which sent me further into my shell.

I used my shell to protect myself the best I could and give the best impression I could that I was a so-called normal boy. For years, I fought the good male fight and internalized all of my feminine feelings. In the meantime, I was studying the girls and women around me, daydreaming of the day I could be just like them. My gender workbook was blank at the time, and I should have hung a sign on me saying “no experience necessary to survive.” In the meantime, I immersed myself in sports and cars and appeared to the outside world as a normal young male. There I go, using the “normal” word again, when I know now, there just isn’t such a thing.

It took me years of trying to break out of my shell or closet and tentatively go out into the world as a girl. I started at night by going to places I knew would be deserted but then again had big windows where I could still see my dim reflection. I was actually headed to a book/magazine store where I could hopefully navigate the books but never had the courage to do it and ended up going back home deeply disappointed in myself. Slowly, I resolved to do better but I never did make it into that particular store. Instead, I began to explore the world of women’s clothing stores where I found any number of helpful clerks who were more than willing to look past my gender, and into my available money.

After I realized that the women’s clothing stores were too easy on me and did not present a challenge, I began to branch out and try to look for more challenging venues. I came up with the plan to stop for lunch when I went out cross-dressed, just to see what would happen. I discovered that when I was dressed to blend in with the rest of the cisgender women around be, I was able to interact with the servers waiting on me. More importantly, I was beginning to realize, it was easier for me to talk one on one with another woman than it ever was when I was a man. It was a huge point in my life which ranked right up with realizing I was much more than a male wanting to wear feminine clothes on occasion. It would lead the way to me discovering I could live the transfeminine life I had always dreamed of.

In many ways, I was able to channel the pure fear I felt when I went out for the first time as my true authentic self and turn it into energy I used to further my communication skills with the public at large, and women in particular who seemed to be more receptive to me because I was in their world. Before I knew it, I was able to settle down and begin to enjoy my new life as a transgender woman. To be sure, I was different than most everyone else I encountered but I wanted desperately to make it a positive difference. Mainly because nearly everyone I met had never known another transgender woman or trans man in their life. I just had to make our meeting a special occasion which was all of that, and more.

In return, I was learning valuable lessons from the ciswomen I met. In ways they never realized, the women helped me discover the wonderful world of my own womanhood. In doing so, I was able to navigate the pitfalls of my male to female transition and always move on to higher ground.

When I did, I went on to discover the layers of life women live in during their lives which they hide from men. My life went from chasing a dream to living it as I discovered a transgender woman’s life was all that and more.

 

When Gender Makes a Restroom Call

 

Women's Restroom 
from UnSplash,

Quite early when I began to leave my gender closet behind and navigate the public, it became evident that I would have to do something about how I was going to use the women’s restroom.

Initially, I had two problems and one benefit to deal with. The two problems I dealt with were the forms of liquid I was digesting, beer and coffee. Both of which did not want to stay in my body long, so I had to use the restroom more often than I normally would. The benefit I had was I had had many occasions to be in the women’s room as a man when I managed my restaurants. Sadly, I learned that ciswomen were not the fastidious gender I thought they were as I cleaned up many messes and tried to unclog stopped up toilets when there were trash receptacles nearby for sanitary products. So, I was prepared when I ran into a mess in a women’s room when I entered for the first time as a novice transgender woman.

On the other hand, I recognized the seriousness of entering a women’s only space and set out to be prepared. Naturally, I learned many lessons I added to those I already knew. Out of the many things I learned was I needed to flip totally the male idea that no one looks at another man at all in the restroom. Whereas, as much as I did not want to, I needed to smile and acknowledge other women in the restroom because that was the right thing to do. Little did I know, I was just getting started on learning the basics of survival in the women’s room.

I learned to look for an extra hook in the stall so I could hang my purse up properly and a secure lock to keep my all-important privacy secure. As you might remember, a poor abused lock let me down on a recent vacation to New England. Fortunately, I was just finishing my important business in a stall when I was rudely interrupted by a young girl who broke through the lock and surprised both of us. The disaster was averted since I was almost dressed and had pulled my leggings up. It was the only time something like that happened to me and it gave me the extra incentive to check the locks in the stalls I chose.

When I was younger and more insecure in the women’s restroom, I went to any extent to cover all my transgender bases. Of course, I always sat to pee, which I had seen cross dressers in the past not do, as they even left the toilet seat up. Then they wondered why they lost women’s room privileges. Which leads me to this point, cross dressers or not have to look before they sit on toilets. You can save yourself from bad situations by doing so. Also, when I was younger, just in case a prying woman asked, yes, I did have an extra feminine protection product for her to use. I was that paranoid of being discovered and losing my gender restroom privileges. I even tried to mimic a ciswoman’s urine flow to keep up.

Outside of having the courage to use the “room”, perhaps the second biggest act of courage is leaving the relative security of your stall and leaving. I had to remember that normally there was a line of women waiting to use the stall, so I had to move it along. That also meant ALWAYS washing my hands, quickly checking my hair and makeup and leaving. Hopefully safely without any negative feedback such as being called a pervert by a nasty woman one night. Thankfully, it was an isolated incident which happened years ago, and I have had no further repeats of such a negative experience.

Sadly, with many states coming up with more stringent anti-transgender restroom laws, we trans women and trans men also must become more adept in how we use the restroom. And I can’t imagine how bad it is for trans youth just trying to get by.

My words of wisdom are to look for restrooms which are uni-gender such as coffee shops and easy acceptance venues such as bookstores. Anyplace you can scout out the potential restroom you need to use. Then build your confidence from there. And one more thing (at least) make sure there is toilet paper in the stall you use because the next woman after you will wonder how you used it without paper.

Once you are confident of your transgender womanhood, other ciswomen will notice nothing is wrong with you. Which there isn’t. When your gender makes a restroom call, you are just doing what comes naturally.