Gender Baggage

 It's no real secret we transgender women and men carry a ton of baggage with us as we cross the gender frontier. Even though the amount of baggage we carry varies, we all seemingly have our share to bring along. 

Photo by Caroline Selfors on Unsplash

The older we are, perhaps the more baggage we have to bring along. In many cases we have years of building families, jobs, friends and lives in general to deal with as we transition. 

By the time I was able to transition I could cross a couple of the items off the list.   First of all, at my age nearly all of the few close male friends I had passed away. Secondly I was newly single and of the age I could consider an early Social Security retirement. Finally, my family was mostly distant and really only consisted of my daughter and brother. 

Tragically as I look back I wonder how much life I lost by not embracing my gender dysphoria and doing something about it. My excuse is my fear of transitioning held me back and I tried to not get close to many in the outside world.  After all I didn't know how many would accept the true me.

Years later, as I began to transition in earnest, I learned most of my fears were not grounded in reality. Looking on the bright side, I found I was presented with another opportunity to rebuild myself...from scratch. An opportunity many humans never have. As I was approaching my new gender challenge I learned I was experiencing a true void. The biggest example was my love of sports. How was I ever going to watch and enjoy sports again. My stereotypical brain told me cis women just didn't delve into sports as much as I did. Plus on the rare occasions I encountered a man who wanted to talk sports, I would have to "dumb" myself down and act as if I knew very little.

What really happened was I found three cis women who shared my passion for sports. All of a sudden we began to gather in big sports bars to watch key games. We even went to a women's roller derby event in Cincinnati. The biggest thrill (and scariest) was when I was invited along to a pro football game which I will go into in another post. 

All of a sudden I was just one of the girls and since two of the others were very outgoing I didn't have to worry about interacting with any men. The guys always took aim for them.

As you can tell, I was fortunate when I transitioned. I brought my love of sports with me and was able to shed most of my old male baggage. I give credit to my hormone replacement therapy also as the world seemed to soften around me. 

Whatever the case I was able to pick and choose what I wanted to keep in my new feminine life and move forward in life. The whole process leaves me wondering why I waited so long to do it. Which is also a topic for another post.  

Transgender Validation

 The power of gender validation is strong. Especially after we take on all the intense work and struggle to cross the binary gender frontier. For most transgender women and trans men validation is difficult to achieve as we attempt to live a new life as our authentic selves. In the past I have attempted to document my struggles with validation. 

Looking back, I suppose it all started with my earliest days of cross dressing in front of the hallway mirror growing up. Unlike girls of my age bracket, I didn't have any feedback. Except from the mirror.

Mirror Photo
Source Cyrsti Hart

Which I discovered later wasn't the best choice. The mirror was excellent in telling me exactly what I wanted to hear. Not what was really happening. A tendency which would cause me tons of pain as the years progressed.

Perhaps the biggest mistake I made in the validation process was getting past the idea women primarily don't dress themselves with men in mind. They dress for other women. As I began to understand the feminine validation process, I started to grow up mentally and began to dress to blend. My "style" shifted from borderline trashy into my beloved "boho" style which was coming back into fashion. I was able to relive a portion of my youth and still have the style to blend into the public's eye. This included upgrading my ill fitting clownish wigs into more expensive but presentable hair. Once I did all of this, I was able to achieve a feminine presentation which allowed me to explore the world as a woman without getting laughed at. 

At this point of my validation process was when I gained the nuances of gender communication. Of course I always knew women and men communicated differently but I didn't realize how much until I started to communicate one on one with other women on a regular basis. Many stereotypes were true. For example men really don't listen to women who communicate on a totally different plane than men. With my gender background I carried so many biases with me. For example, I knew many of the men I knew only looked at women on a sexual level and rarely paid any attention on a professional or intellectual level. Even still I wasn't prepared for the immediate gender rejection I experienced when I attempted to interact with a man.

My very first experience I remember was when my car suffered an untimely breakdown. As I waited for a tow truck of course I was "helped" out by a well meaning policeman. Fortunately, it didn't take long for the tow truck to arrive and the cop and tow driver got together on the best route to get my car home. Amazingly neither of them wanted to listen to my directions! I guess living there wasn't good enough. Finally as I rode back in the front of the tow truck, my perceived lack of intelligence presented itself again and again. As the driver painstakingly described his truck I finally dumbed down to asking the most basic questions. It turned out this experience was one of many as I explored being validated as a woman from men.

Women were much easier. As I quickly accepted, learned and ultimately enjoyed my new communication roles  my confidence grew as well as my validation . Most of it occurred when I learned non verbal communication skills women use.

Looking back at the transgender validation  process, it was a long experience to jump from the mirror to the world. But, it was worth it. 

Making the Basic Difficult

 Recently, here in Cyrsti's Condo I wrote a post which touched on the subject of transgender men using the men's restroom. At the time I wondered if they felt the same trepidation as many transgender women feel just trying to take care of some of their basic needs. I also asked for trans men to respond. In response, Norm commented :

"Yes, just from one guy's perspective, it absolutely is! I have been out for less than a year but do pass, and despite never having been given trouble, it ALWAYS terrifies me to need a restroom. I will avoid drinking when I need to just to minimize the chances I will need a bathroom in public.

Most of this I hope is in my head, but I guess it speaks the perceived intimacy of a truly private, gendered space that absolutely intensifies impostor syndrome and the feeling of 'invading something sacred' that we perceive is not ours by birth."

As always, I always appreciate comments! Plus another transgender man echoed Norm's comment exactly not to mention trans women who feel the same way also. 

Even though today I don't experience any problems using the restroom matching my authentic self, it wasn't always so easy when I first began to explore the world as a novice trans woman. Looking back at my process, most likely many of my problems had to do with how I presented myself. I know often my dressing style bordered on trashy rather than taking the effort to dress to blend in with other women. The whole process resulted in me getting the police called on me all the way to being asked to leave one venue. To this day I still carry the mental scars with me and do my best to follow the lessons I learned from using the women's room.

My first women's 
room.

A few of the lessons are common sense, some not so much. I learned to always check the seat before I sat down, all the way to never putting my purse on the floor. I even practiced directing my pee flow into the toilet to make sure a woman next to me wouldn't think anything was wrong. Of course too, there are the absolutes such as always sitting to pee and washing your hands. Perhaps the most difficult thing I learned was to look other women in the eye, smile and communicate if needed. A real change from my lifetime of experiences acting like I was a man. 

I used to think of the whole restroom imprinting process as a form of PTSD from my days of being yelled at for merely trying to pee.  Now I am more a fan of Norm's impostor syndrome comment. The final result these days is if I have to go, I go. However I know in so many states (like Ohio) which don't have protections for transgender people at all, I know I am still at risk in many mostly rural parts of the state. Fortunately I have my partner Liz to check out the situation ahead of time.

It's still a shame we have to make the basic needs we have so difficult for many of us.