No Gender Fear

 

"Rest Room Selfie" from the
Jessie Hart Collection

On the rare occasion I hear from someone who thinks I was brave for pursuing my gender dreams. First of all I consider the "brave" word should be reserved for those who really deserve it such as those in the military, first responders etc. I was just doing what I needed to do to survive my reoccurring gender crisis stemming from my extreme gender dysphoria.

Looking back, I can vividly remember all of the times I was positively frozen in fear when I was trying for the first time to express my femininity. The times when I felt all eyes were on me when I first entered a new  venue and the walk from the door to where I was going to sit seemed to be at least five miles away. I also felt as if my feet were stuck in sand as I tried to remember to mimic every feminine move. Of course the harder I tried, the more I would mess up. It wasn't until I became more relaxed that I began to do better and enjoy the experience.  

Then, there were the dreaded rest room visits. Since I was known to consume lots of beer, a rest room visit was more than a luxury, it was a necessity. I found out early in the presentation game to beware of women who would quickly follow me into the rest room. When they did, I needed to be especially careful to follow the basic etiquette of using the woman's room. There were so many (and continue to be), all the points would fill another blog post. Again, it took me awhile to settle down and relax before I could even think about being accepted. 

As I climbed the invisible ladder to being a more presentable transgender woman, it seemed the times I experience extreme panic would come and go. Many times I felt how my overall presentation was working dictated the results I was going to experience. Examples included the nights I hurriedly was  sent packing in a lesbian bar I was frequenting. From the well documented time I was forced to sing karaoke with a big butch lesbian in a cowboy hat all the way to another woman who said she ought to pick me up and take me home, my fear set in and I rapidly left the bar. After all, what would my wife say?

As you can tell, fear struck me in many ways. Since I was basically a shy person to begin with, I was extremely intimidated by the idea of talking to another person (woman or man) as a feminine person. On one hand I was flattered they wanted to talk to me but on the other hand what would I say. In those days I still basically was dealing with the usual male life topics such as work and sports. I was truly scared when I came to the communication aspect of transitioning. I never planned ahead because I never considered I would make it this far. When I did indeed scale the gender ladder to a point I could reach the transgender woman level, of course I was scared. Among other things, I was scared of losing my family, friends and living. I was never scared of anything more in my life. 

The farther I went in my gender transition, I was able to put my fear in my past. Mainly because for the first time in my life I knew deep down I was doing the right thing. It wasn't bravery, it was survival. 

The Sweet Spot

Photo from the 
Jessie Hart Collection

 Relax, this is not another post about food. Following my post called "Cake" I almost went searching through out  the kitchen looking for baking supplies to augment my non existent baking skills. This post on the other hand, concerns the gender sweet spot we encounter when we finally are able to align our inner feminine gender selves with the exterior we show to the public.

As we all know, attacking the problem of presenting a respectful exterior self to the public as a brand new gender is very difficult. We face all sorts of issues from the lack of peer pressure to having (or acquiring) a knowledge of clothing and makeup In other words, we had no mothers, sisters or girlfriends to provide feedback on our journey to public womanhood. Through it all the pressures of maintaining some sort of a male existence  while at the same time trying our best to express true womanhood seemed to be an impossible task.

For those of us left literally alone on the gender frontier, often the mirror became our only friend. The problem was the mirror only showed us what we wanted to see. Not what the public was seeing in reality. The process led me to suffer tough love when I tried too many fashion statements. To put it mildly, they were ill fated and led to public rejections. The extra pressure of trying to disguise my testosterone poisoned male body was intense. Following more failures than successes , I finally found what I was searching for... a chance to live my life as my authentic self. The basic lesson I learned was when I began to dress for other women and stopped dressing for my outdated ideas of what men thought women should look like.

What my new path set in motion was a chance to live a life I had only previously just dreamed of. Even though I had set my new life in motion, it turned out I still had a ways to go before I found my sweet spot where my internal and external feminine genders aligned.  I knew I was coming close to alignment when gender euphoria set in for any number of reasons.  Primarily, one of the main changes I went through was when I was forced into communicating with the public as a transgender woman. To more than a few women I knew I was a curiosity but it was all good because we were learning from each other. They had a chance to learn why a man would want to join their "club". On the other hand, I had the opportunity to learn from the women how it was to communicate one on one with another woman. 

The more I was able to explore finding my sweet spot, the more I knew I could never go back to my old male self. Even though I knew it was a certainty I could not go back, I still stubbornly held on to my past. For what ever the reason, it finally felt as if  I was jumping off some sort of a gender cliff. I was on a very slippery slope until I hit the very edge and I let go. I was fortunate in that I had friends to catch me when I landed. All were women and I can never thank them enough. The whole process was similar to going to some sort of a finishing school.

Locating my gender sweet spot was a lifelong journey and was often very difficult. Deep down I knew the process was something I just had to do and it all became worth it. 

Cake

Image from Katie Rosario 
on Unsplash

I'm sure you have heard the term "Having your cake and eating it too." In itself the term brings a complex meaning to the average transgender woman. If there is such a thing as an average. I equate having my cake when I reached a point in my feminine presentation when I found the confidence I could blend in with the public at large. Little did I know I would have such a long way to go to be able to finally taste the cake I so desperately wanted.

Baking the cake took longer than I anticipated mainly because life got in the way. Before I knew it, I was trying to mix in a liberal dose of cross dressing with attempting to raise a daughter and make a living. Also, several wives were mixed in, all of which knew of my cross dressing urges before the relationships even started. The problem was my cake recipe at the time did not include anything which remotely included dealing with transgender issues.. As I would discover over the years my cake recipes kept being ruined when I faced my gender truth. All my poor recipes were being destined for failure because I did not diagnose my own gender dysphoria as more than just wanting to appear as an attractive woman. I can compare the process as being given a great looking piece of cake only to find out it was dried out and nasty. 

At that point, following more than a few bitter battles with my second wife over what a woman really was, I began to adjust my gender recipe after deep research into what she really meant. It took awhile but I finally began to learn what she meant and I set out to eat my cake. The wait was worth it and my new improved recipe enabled me to live a life I had only ever dreamed of. I could live as a full time transgender woman and as my wife told me being a woman went far beyond just looking like one. Appearance just turned out to be just part of the recipe which included portions of ecstasy mixed in with a large portion of agony. There was nothing better than when my look seemed to come together and my presentation confidence reached an all time high and nothing worse when I ended up looking like a clown.

When I finally was able to bake my feminine gender cake with confidence, I was able to attempt larger more complex cakes and eat them too. I was faced with the massive challenge of communication for example. If I had taken my overall presentation to where people were prepared to talk to a woman, it was time to not disappoint them. I learned the hard way communication meant much more than how I sounded, I had to build into my recipe how what I was saying was important too.

I had plenty of time to perfect my transgender recipe, nearly fifty to be exact. I ended up eating lots of cake, along with wearing plenty of cake also. On occasion, I thought I would never be able to get it all together. Plus when I added feminine hormones to my recipe my future was decided for good. Of course I could always go back without my hormones but I never wanted to. 

As a self professed "gender baker" the time and effort I put into my cake was so worth it. The fun part is we all have the opportunity to bake our own unique and distinct cakes.