Crowning a Winner in Thailand

 

Following several years of holding no competitions due to Covid, Thailand is once again holding it's world famous transgender beauty queen contest. 

Check out the winners with runners up on either side of the winning contestant from the Philippines. 

For the Kids

 Another reason I write is my hope a few of my ideas might find their way to a stray transgender youth. At my age, youth includes twenty somethings or even younger. I do realize however to most of them I a

Photo Credit Jessie Hart

m a dinosaur. What I went through in my transformative transgender years is so different from theirs I understand it does not matter. For instance, the idea of  not having an internet or any social media is completely foreign to younger transgender women and men. What it meant was we had to contend with darker closets where we felt totally alone. 

Over the recent years I have had the opportunity to experience the feedback of younger trans individuals. Predictably most don't want or need my ideas and that is all good. 

Recently though, I was mildly surprised when a close family member who just turned 21 is attempting to come out as a transgender man. I say mildly surprised because they (preferred pronoun) have matured into a very androgynous individual. At first I was speechless when I was presented with the idea. Quickly I recovered and asked did they understand what all they were getting themselves into. I am fairly certain they do yet they don't. The power of youth allows us the luxury of making mistakes and then going back and correcting them. My example is another young local person I know who announced not long ago they wanted to be a boy.  She tried it and went back to being a girl. 

My problem with my relation is they are talking about pursuing gender realignment surgery. My thought is they need a chance to live as their preferred gender and then make the decision to go through such a major surgery. Plus there is the question of having insurance (which they do) and finding a skilled and reputable surgeon. 

Maybe I am over cautious because it took me so long to give up my cross dressing in a toxic male world and fully transition into a full time transgender woman. Many of you have read my excuses of why I didn't transition earlier and as a matter of fact I wish I had pulled the plug on my male life much earlier in my life. Most of my past just doesn't lend itself to current transgender individuals but then again a few key points still do.

The fact still remained deep down I knew I felt more natural as my feminine self. Advice is like a certain rear part of your body...everyone has one. I still ended up telling the person closest to this post's subject to put them in touch with me if they wanted to talk. I believe they will have a slightly easier chance of transitioning into a male world. Most of the trans men I know are completely passable as their authentic selves.   

As we all know, the transgender journey is never an easy one. Especially for those just starting down the path. 

Transgender Bravery

 Some individuals call a transgender persons path to achieving living as their authentic self with terms such as bravery or even courage. Over the years I have been more likely to refer to me following my path as one of bravery rather than courage.

Courage I rather use to describe service members and/or first responders. It takes real courage to do what they do. On the other hand it takes bravery to take the first steps out of our tightly closed gender closets. For some, including me when the unbelievable pressure began to weigh on me, I just had to take steps to relieve the gender stress. If I didn't I would be nearly unbearable to be around. In fact my wife became quite adept at knowing what I was feeling and why. Most of the time all of it was a good thing except when I was suffering extreme gender dysphoria. She naturally became upset when everything she was doing was never enough. Sadly it never was. No matter what she did to give in to my cross dressing urges, she always drew the line at any suggestion of me being transgender. 

What happened was I increasingly pushed my gender boundary which led to possible discovery by family friends. When I was emboldened to do it, I guess you could say I became brave enough to leave the house and attempt to live a life as a transgender woman. An example was the night she was working and under the cover of darkness, I took off in my favorite oversize cuddly sweater, leggings and boots to take it a local Christmas light display which needed to be enjoyed on foot. The entire evening proved to be very successful as I even enjoyed a cup of hot chocolate I was brave enough to stop and order.

Then there were all times I gave up on the male gay bar venues I was being rejected in and started to explore going to larger straight venues. Sure I was scared but I wanted to see if I could be accepted as my new authentic self. As a began to go down this new path I needed to be very brave to have any success because I was scared to death. 

So, all in all I will accept the bravery comment. Mainly because I think it shows what I needed to go through to arrive at where I am today. There were so many times I thought living life as a full time transgender woman was definitely an impossible dream. During my brief time in the military during the Army drills we went through I learned what courage could be about. I learned to think courage was an intangible which showed up (or didn't) during times of great duress.  

Whatever you decide to describe yourself as, courageous or brave, basically we are dealing in semantics. Your transgender journey is yours alone and will never be described as an easy one.