How the Army Made a Girl out of Me.

 As strange as it may seem, my three year stint in the Army, so long ago did wonders to further my goal of living as my authentic self. It turned out it just took me a while to get here.

First of all my forced enlistment was instrumental in ending a toxic relationship I was in with my first fiancé I was with in college. She knew I was a cross dresser and expected me to use it to stay out of the draft by saying I was gay. Obviously, I didn't.

Then there was basic training where everyone learned how to be an infantryman. Needless to say, there was no room to pursue the true source of my gender dysphoria, What it did do though was to make me mentally tough enough to realize sooner or later I could achieve almost any goal. After all, I was heading to what was deemed an impossible Army job as a radio/television broadcaster. I ended up serving on three continents  in three years.

During the process, as I have written many times, I met the woman who was to present me with the greatest gift of my life, my daughter Andrea. Even though she was to find out later on I was a cross dresser (or transvestite) back in those days, when I summoned up the courage to dress completely as a woman at a Halloween party we went to. I ended up admitting to her and two other friends later on my desire to dress as a woman. This was way back in the days in the Army before the "Don't ask, don't tell" LGBTQ so called protection policy. So I could have found myself in trouble if the wrong people found out my "secret". 

It turned out this experience in the Army set the way for me to work harder on my cross dressing feminine presentation and even to attempt to come out to my Mother. Which turned out to be a failure. Undeterred, I continued to stay in my closet and explore being a girl.

Throughout the middle of my life, regardless of what the Army taught me (or didn't), I became a more accomplished feminine person and increasingly wanted to try out my new found skills in the public's eye. It was about this time as I lost almost everything else in my life, I decided to take advantage of the Veteran's Administration medical benefits which would include access to hormone replacement therapy or HRT. It turned out, the meds resulted in a wonderful feminization process which continues to this day.

So you could say again, the Army was and is - is making a girl out of me. 

  

Transgender Socialized

 There is a collection of LGBTQ posts called "Medium" which I have recently been exposed to. Since after a few visits, it becomes a paid site, I was too strapped financially to explore it further. However, through another person's blog I follow, I was able to explore another post concerning being socialized as transgender from Theresa Jean Tanenbaum.

Following my decades long attempt to fit into a male world (and failing), I have given too much thought to the fitting in process, or the lack of. I never really considered the process as being socialized as such. Until I read Theresa's post.

Here is part of it:

"I’ve been a girl my whole life, but I didn’t always know it. As a result, many of my childhood experiences were defined by cognitive dissonance. Growing up as a trans girl is like being gaslit by the whole world and still finding the strength and confidence to say “No! THIS is who I am!” After all, no other girls are subjected to the same degree of toxic masculinity as trans girls. No other girls are forced into boys locker rooms, or men’s restrooms, or all-male prep schools. No other girls are told to “man up!” or “don’t be a sissy”. No other girls are asked to prove they are girls again and again, by people who can’t themselves clearly explain what standard of proof they require, short of direct inspection of their genitals.

Trans girls are sent into male spaces, like canaries in coal mines, often not knowing why we don’t fit it. Not knowing why we are uncomfortable. When we express discomfort with the bullying we frequently experience at the hands of boys, we’re told that “that’s just how boys are” so we’d better get used to it. My failure to properly participate in male tribal behaviors made me a target for male aggression throughout my childhood. Boys who had been taught to “never hit a girl” had no problem starting a fight with someone they perceived as a boy, who acted, talked, and responded like a girl.

For my entire childhood I thought that it was normal to feel sick and nervous around other kids. 

To feel like the other kids were following some script that I couldn’t read. Fearing that if I got a line wrong they’d turn on me. Interacting with boys always made me feel like a rabbit sneaking through a den of lions….one misstep and I’d be devoured. Boys radiated danger to me. "

There is more and you can read it here.

Cyrsti's Condo "Quote of the Day"

 Another blog I follow all the time through another blogging platform is the "Tony Burgess" Blog. 

He features many different quotes and every now and then, one really seems to lend itself to the transgender experience. Here is one of them.