Building on Success

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I have written often on the times I was a dismal failure when I first came out of my gender closet. The times I went home crying following encounters with the public. To make a long story short, I was stared at all the way to being out right laughed at. Similar to many of my novice crossdressing or transgender sisters, teen aged girls were my worst enemy. During this time I kept asking myself why would I leave my fairly comfortable male world I worked so hard to build and survive in for a new existence in a feminine world. I had a long way to go because I had put so much effort into hiding any female mannerisms I may have had. In nearly all ways, I was (or tried to be) a man's man. It worked because I was rarely bullied or had my gender questioned at all except the one time my evil nephew thought he was hurting my feelings when he said I threw a football like a girl. I just replied thanks and moved on.

During all of the setbacks I did seem to have just enough positive feedback on my gender journey to keep moving forward. It could have been because my feminine inner self was starved for attention and wanted her chance to enjoy the spotlight of life.  Very early in my transition, success came when I wasn't laughed at and merely blended in with society as a whole as a woman. Very quickly I learned just blending would not be enough. I found others, mainly women, wanted to talk to me so I needed to quickly develop some sort of a feminine persona. An example was when I kept encountering a long dark haired beauty in not one but two of the venues I frequented. At first when she approached me she was very standoff-ish so I wondered why she even bothered. After a while though she started to warm up and we were able to chat awhile. Who knows, maybe she was just intrigued by the fact she was really interacting with someone who wanted to give up all their male privilege's and enter her world. All too soon, for whatever reason I never saw her again. 

Having success with women such as her led me to open my feminine self up to the world even farther. It proved to be easier than I thought the gender frontier process would be once I started. Looking back at the process, my inner previously hidden feminine person was finally getting her  chance to live. She was building upon her success and loving it. From then on it was a struggle with what remained of my old male self. After all. he provided years of success to my life's equation. It was difficult to finally totally let go of him but I had to if I wanted to keep living at all. Both of my genders were in a vicious struggle for survival. 

As I continued to build upon my feminine successes, I found not only could I play in the girls sandbox but I deserved my place as well as the next woman. Of course I was not able to benefit from growing up as a girl but again I put in as much time and effort as I was allowed to seeing how girls interacted with society. Finally, once I was able to go fulltime as a transgender woman, I learned so much more on how women exist in the world and how strong yet layered their existence is.  My path to success was slower than most but worth the wait. 

Another Transgender Lesson Learned

Yesterday I wrote a post concerning my limited experiences when I transitioned to a novice transgender woman and tried to date a few men. The process was a failure and then I moved on to the warmer and more responsive experience of getting to know other women as I was completing that phase of my gender transition. With their help, I learned so much on how to survive in a new feminine world. It turns out Fellow Blogger "Paula" from Paula's Place encountered some of the same pressures when she came out of the gender closet:

"  There was a time when I tried dating a few men. It never quite worked out, mostly for the reasons you too found, they were either ashamed to be seen with me, or were not attracted to me a person, but as an object. Maybe that was part of my induction into the the female world, but in the end it was not for me.

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When meeting new people I'm never sure just how much of myself to reveal, I try not to out myself, but sometimes it's difficult not to, so much of my experience has been male ~ often in what at the the time were exclusively male environments. Women were excluded from some Brass Bands well into the 1980s, and for some it was still an issue into the current century! and as for sport! Do I just sit quietly in the corner, or admit to some knowledge and experience and so out myself?"

Thanks for the comment Paula. I too was afraid to reveal too much information about my previous life  when it came to men An example was when sports came up as a topic, my knowledge was at least equal to the man I was attempting to communicate with so I needed to "dumb it down" so I wouldn't scare him off.

Through it all, the point which was lost on me was all of what I was going through was in many ways the same things cis women go through on a daily basis. I read all the time of the problems women have finding a good or stable man. I used to subscribe to "Cosmopolitan Magazine" and usually their letters to the editors  had to do with how to find and hang onto a quality man. Competition it seemed was fierce as both binary genders struggled to understand each other. In fact I wrote a few blog posts years ago pointing out the virtues of dating a transgender woman. The biggest benefit to dating trans as my biased self noted was we understood both sides of the gender fence. Especially the male ego. Unfortunately dating trans never became a real thing and to this day we transgender women still remain little more than fetish objects to too many men. Not to mention the cis women who resent us entering "their" world for whatever reason.

The end result is we transgender women have to be more skillful in how we approach the world. Paula used sports as an example. Since both Paula and I played sports in our pasts and still show a passion for it, how far do we go before we out ourselves to strangers, Just another of the reasons there is always another transgender lesson to learn. 

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Way back when I was seriously considering dating men as I gender transitioned into a transgender woman, I was stood up (or gaslighted) by approximately half of the men who told me they were going to meet me. One of my requirements was we meet in a public setting of my choosing, which could have been pat of the problem. Who knows, maybe they really did come and secretly took a look at me and were scared off. I always thought the least they could have done was tell me. 

All of this time of being disappointed led me to wonder if the men in question were too afraid to be seen with me in public, what would happen if the relationship became serious enough that I was invited home with them to meet their family or even parents. It turned out I never had to face that terrifying  possibility because I never met and became that serious with a man at all. However, I did meet several women who embraced me for what I was and invited me to family functions. It turned out the transgender attracted men I met were just interested in me as some sort of a fetish object. They probably found out I could not compare to the transgender porn models they were watching who were impossibly beautiful. Before you think I am stereotyping all trans attracted men with a broad stroke, I did meet a couple of men I enjoyed my time with who weren't afraid to meet me in a public place and treat me as a woman. Plus there were a couple men I became friends with and often wondered what would have happened if they had not moved out of town.

Regardless, it was always my cis women friends who took me in and treated me as my authentic self. Often I was terrified and excited when women like Kim insisted I join her and her immediate family for a Monday Night NFL football game. I was so nervous I was sure every camera in the stadium was looking at me. It was one terrific learning experience. Then there was my wife Liz. 

It was not too long after we started seeing each other seriously she invited me on a family birthday party at a local steak house. It was her very conservative elderly fathers birthday and it was the first time I had ever really met him. Plus her brother was there who was not far removed from serving his third term in the Army in the Middle East. I felt I was surrounded and was very ill at ease. Somehow I made it though and even managed to enjoy part of the meal. For the rest of his life, I don't think Liz's Dad ever knew how to take me but at the least he wasn't mean to me. As far as the brother went, I barely see him and he barely talks when I do, so he is very much out of my life. 

I don't have any words of wisdom when it comes to going home with a friend to meet their family. For me. as I said, it was a terrifying experience but one I felt I had to live through to be accepted fully into the world. All part of my learning experience of what being a woman was really all about. I really appreciate those who weren't afraid to include me in their families.  Thanks all for the learning experience. I really needed someone to lean on.