Only a Fool

 Only a fool knows everything is a quote I recently heard. Of course when I heard it I made a mental note to try to remember it and use it for a blog post. Amazingly I did remember since my memory is not what it used to be, or never was to begin with. 

Photo Courtesy
Jessie Hart

What I was thinking of when I heard the quote was how many times I was the fool when I thought I knew all there was to know about completing my gender transition to a transgender woman. Living my dream fulltime. Looking back I realized there were many times when I thought I knew everything and was certainly the fool. 

The first time was when I was very young and thought my new exciting girl like image in the mirror really meant something. It took me years to realize the cross dressing process did mean something. What it meant was the mirror was lying to me and the underlying reason I was feeling the gender stress I was came from the fact I wanted to be a girl rather than look like one. I did some foolish things when I came out dressed as a girl to a neighborhood friend of mine. When he refused to even look at me, I knew I had done something wrong.

Following my failed experiment of coming out to a person I knew I went back into my deep, dark closet for years. Approximately twenty I think. I certainly did not want to be the fool again when my deeply hidden secret saw the light of day. As it turned out, I would still have plenty of time to play the fool as I attempted to grow into my authentic self. The most self destructive urge I had was the one I document so often in my writings. By far the biggest mistake I made was when I tried in vain to dress sexy which in turn came out as no more than a trashy attempt at validation. I was so stubborn and the mirror lied to me so much, I'm lucky I came out of my trashy period of life relatively unscathed. The worst which happened to me was to get laughed at. Obviously I was the fool who thought she knew everything about being a woman but was just getting started. 

My learning curve finally stated to kick in and I realized if I dressed to blend in with women and not to supposedly attract the attention of men, amazingly I could exist successfully in a feminine world. But still I was caught playing the fool. In what seemed like a small period of time, I had to build on merely looking like a woman and develop a personality to go with it. I had to quit changing wigs every time I went out and doing crazy things such as changing my name to go with the wig I was wearing. Darcy was the redhead, Karen was the brunette and Roxy was the blond. Of course all I was doing was destroying any attempt I was making to establish a solid base for my brand new feminine persona. This time it took me just a short period of time to quit playing the wig game and settled into to a person who had wanted out of me for so long. My closet finally was coming open.

Even with all of this new found gender success, I had to guard against being the fool again. An example was one night when a cis woman with her smiling face in essence tricked me into thinking we could be friends. I learned the hard way she was carrying sharp claws behind her back and was just making fun of me. From that point on I learned a smiling feminine face did not necessarily mean acceptance into the girls sandbox. Until I grasped the whole world of how women communicate with each other, I was doomed to play the fool when I was cornered in the world.

These days, I am a combination of being guarded and on the other hand confident at reading other women. However, I don't think I know everything concerning a transgender transition which would make me the fool.  

When Did you Kniw

 
Not long ago my daughter asked me indirectly how long was it since I knew I was transgender. Then she corrected herself  by saying I probably had always known. To refresh your memory, my daughter has always been a staunch ally of the LGBTQ community and has a transgender child. Of course I said yes, I had always known. Which perhaps wasn't always true. Back in the dark ages before the internet, as I always refer to, there was a huge gender void filled only by the sparse offerings of Virginia Prince and her "Transvestia" publications or the news of an American G.I. (Christine Jorgensen) who changed their sex. I was having a difficult time figuring out all my gender issues. 

Photo Christine Jorgensen
Archives

It wasn't until social media  became popular along with the world wide web did I learn how others shared the same gender issues as I did. One example is Paula from across the pond in the UK  when she wrote in and said: 

"  Our generation growing up had no role models, no concept of transition, hey, we didn't even have the word transgender. Without the vocabulary it us difficult to understand the concept, or more importantly the feelings we were having."

 And she goes on to write:

"Younger generations growing up now have different issues, but at least they have the vocabulary to investigate them ~ I suspect this is the reason why so many of our generation transitioned later in life ~ long live the interweb!"  

Thank you Paula. I imagine similar to so many age related disparities most younger transgender women and men can not relate to not even having a word (transgender) to describe their condition growing up. 

Looking back also, I discovered many unresolved gender issues which would have led me to believe I was indeed transgender. A prime example of how envious I was of girls my age and the perception I had that they had life so much easier than me. Or how one Christmas I wanted a doll baby but was gifted a BB Gun instead, The list could go on on and on but the point which kept on proving the point indeed I had been transgender my entire life. 

While we are on the subject of generational transgender change, social media and the internet too have contributed to a more cohesive LGBTQ group for political action. I am proud to say the Ohio version of yet another anti transgender bill was rejected in committee yesterday. So at least for the time being the State of Ohio is not joining an increasing amount of states with crippling anti transgender legislation.  

When you come right down to it, young or old, transgender or not we spend a lifetime growing into ourselves. Sadly on occasion we can't see the life forests for the trees. It happened to me, I missed the reality of the fact I was transgender for too long. I should have always known. 

Why Do I Write

 

Image Courtesy Aaron Burden
on UnSplash

As I took on the challenges years ago of writing a daily transgender non fiction based blog, many questions came about. During the years, often who my audience was began to change. Initially I thought my readers would be primarily transitioning gender women and men who may be able to benefit from the lessons I learned. I mentioned transgender men because I know of several who read the blog including one who was my first date with a guy. It was quite the experience. I added non fiction because I see so many fantasy based blogs with their filtered pictures, I felt along the way somehow without being over bearing I had to explain all of these experiences really happened to me and they were not stories. I couldn't make all this up if I wanted to. 

Because I had so many errors in my trial and error periods of my life, I  decided to write about them. When I did I  began to receive so many good comments. I kept it up again hoping I could help someone else. The old don't do what I did sermon which I never listened to anyhow. Like going out to public spaces dressed as a teenaged slutty girl in my oversized male body. It's no wonder my second wife didn't approve of the way I cross dressed most of the time. Luckily, it didn't take me very long to grow out of this phase of my transgender life.

 During this time I considered (and still do) my main reader audience to be transitioning transgender women. I had a real pleasant shock when I received comments from wives trying to understand their spouses gender issues. Then I considered adding more information which may be important to a wife. Until  I thought I wasn't or shouldn't be in a position to offer any advice because I did such a poor job communicating my gender challenges during my marriages. Finally, I thought if anyone learns from my past mistakes again it is a good thing. 

Currently I think transgender women and men of age are my primary audience as well as a small group of people who allowed me to join their circle of friends when I so desperately needed it. I could name a few names but I am afraid I would leave someone out. Also recently I have discovered a growing group of transgender veterans on both platforms I write for, Google and Medium who share similar experiences to me when they served in the military. It always has been amazing to me how the dark days before the internet and social media affected us all as we had little to no help when we battled our gender struggles. A battle we may have to have never fought if we had access to the transgender information which is available today.

Probably, the group I leave out for no particular reason are the crossdressers. Even though I can certainly write, I spent a half century as a crossdresser, I think I don't spend enough time including them in my writings. Or, worse yet end up sounding as if I am better than someone else because I started hormone replacement therapy and made the move to living full time as a transgender woman. Without the lessons I learned from my crossdressing days both as a man and woman I would have never made it to the life I live today.