Connecting the Gender Dots

 

JJ Hart, from
the archives.

Many outside of the LGBTQ community, or more precisely the transgender community, think connecting the dots between male and female is as simple as putting on a dress and makeup.

One of the problems is, in order to  walk a mile in our transgender shoes, you have to learn to tie the laces first. Very few people have the patience or understanding to do it. The complexity of gender scares most people off. They think gender is cut and dried but is the opposite. 

Even those in the community have a difficult time connecting the dots and don't realize that even if we have similarities as trans women or trans men, we have just as many differences. Obstacles such as male lives, spouses and sexuality face us as the next dot to connect becomes bigger and bigger or worse yet out of reach.

During my male to female transition, many times, connecting the dots seemed downright impossible and I would never be able to move ahead in my life. My primary problem was my spouse and my male  self were standing directly in my path to gender realization and they would not move or give up their spot in my life. What I did in the meantime, was fall back into a more realistic journey to the next gender dot. An example would be when I began to get out of the non challenging mall shopping experiences and into actual interaction with the public as a transgender woman. 

Many times, the dots would totally fool me when I totally had a mis-conception of what a woman's life would be like. For some reason, I did not think I would be the one whose personal security would be challenged or my intelligence would be diminished when I jumped the gender border into trans womanhood. I was wrong in my judgement and needed to rapidly rethink my path to another dot. Of course I always knew women's lives were much more complex than men's but I did not really know until I succeeded in connecting my dots. 

The frustrating part of my whole experience was two-fold. The first part was I needed to accomplish it on my own with no help and the second part was everytime I thought I had accomplished something, immediately it seemed I needed to accomplish another milestone or dot on my gender journey. It was not until I was accepted in a small tight knit group of women friends did I really begin to make progress in the world. I learned through them, I could validate myself in the world as a trans woman without the help of much of the public, including men. Connecting these dots made my life fun again and so liberating. 

I can not begin to completely describe my experience connecting my own dots because they could be so much different than yours. The one thing we may have in common is, in order to have success in the world, you have to summon the courage to put yourself out there. Of course the problem these days is the concern for your personal safety. You have to be very careful, be aware of your surroundings as any other woman would and connect your dots the right way.       

 

When Every Night is Girls Night

Grae Phillips is still active
on Facebook if you want to 
see more. Or just keep up. 

I know I make a big deal out of my second huge transition, when I mentally moved from being a serious part-time cross dresser into being a novice transgender woman.

Sometimes I feel as if I am putting myself on some sort of a gender pedestal when I write about not considering myself a cross dresser anymore. If it comes off that way, I don't mean it to. On occasion, the written word gets in my way. Getting back to the cross dresser versus transgender statement I made, I think in my case, it was a matter of me judging my own life. Originally, as I was working my way through my early years of admiring my girl self in the mirror, I knew it could never be enough. There had to be more. I was so tired of cross dressing for one day and then two or three days later wanting to do it again. 

As I always mention, all of this occurred back in the pre-internet information era when any news and contact with like minded gender individuals, be they transvestites or transsexuals, was very difficult and rare to come by. This was even before the barrage of talk shows led by the late Phil Donohue who interviewed female impersonators such as "Grae Phillips", all the way to transvestites seeking approval from a doubting world. It was quite a bit for me to sort out. But I did. I knew I could never be as beautiful and talented as Grae but I could reach the standards of most of the transvestites I saw on my television. There was hope for my future after all.

As I progressed into meeting more and more diverse cross dressers or the women known as the new transgender group I began to think what it would mean if I went all the way and every night became girls night. In other words, a time when I would never have to go back to my old male self and live. Deep down I knew there would have to be some sort of line drawn in the sand if I did. As much as I loved all the fun of the newness of applying makeup and picking out clothes, I wondered what would happen when the newness wore off and I needed to settle into the daily routine of the transgender womanhood.

It turned out, I had nothing to worry about. I settled into my new feminine routine as if I had always should have been living this way. I found I didn't have to do much special on many days such as most cis-women do and then again still have the fun of dressing up for special occasions. It was true, once I jumped the gender border from cross dresser to transgender, I could experience what life could be like if every night was girls night.