Transition within a Transition

For someone who has never followed a gender path to their authentic selves, they don't realize  the path

Nesting Dolls

includes many different separate transitions. Once I began to think about it, I started to equate it with a set of Russian Nesting Dolls.

The first major transition I went through was when I realized just living in the mirror looking like a girl was not enough. After the feeling of exhilaration or gender euphoria quickly faded, the true desire to actually be a girl remained. You could say I was going through the earliest realization I wasn't a cross dresser at all. My gender issues went much deeper than just dressing like a girl. I was similar to the smallest nesting doll in the picture.

As I began to follow my new gender path in life which always reminded me deep down I should have been a girl, I desperately needed to find ways to satisfy my urges. Sadly the entire process wasn't the smoothest and led me to the point of desperation when I faced the fact I would not see the light of day as my feminine self except once a year at Halloween. I compare it to being doll number five in the set. the more I learned about my feminine side, the more I wanted to learn. which included getting out into the world and escaping my mirror and very dark confining closet.

Once I began to get out of my closet, there was no going back. I began to quickly move to the bigger nesting dolls following successful journeys into the world as a novice transgender woman. Slowly and very unsurely I found my way into ever larger gender challenges.  To me the fourth nesting doll from the top represents the times I had to learn to communicate with other women and men in this brave new gender world. I was trying to make my way without any of the old male privilege's I had built up over the years. Looking back, I'm lucky I didn't break this fragile doll.  Many times during this period of my life, I thought I had it made to some extent but I didn't realize how much farther I had to go. I thought the biggest dolls would be the easiest to obtain.

Surprise, they weren't. I view the second to biggest doll as when I started hormone replacement therapy. HRT provided me with the chance to improve my external appearance as well as opened my internal self to a new softening I never thought possible. All in all my second doll provided me with all I needed to know to move forward to the biggest doll. The biggest doll was my ultimate goal of living full time as a transgender woman. 

I managed so far to find my largest Russian  nesting doll and not break it. I survived many gender transitions within a transition and I am happy for it.

Transgender Fear versus Ignorance

Ohio State Student Union
Jessie Hart Archives

 Often I think all the right wing attacks in our country and elsewhere come from fear of what a transgender woman or trans man can bring to the table. After all we have had the opportunity to experience the two primary binary genders from both the male and female perspectives. Some people have a tendency to become uneasy when you have the possibility of knowing just a little too much of where they are coming from personality wise. Others carry very little self esteem and are always looking for the slightest edge when it comes to thinking they are better than someone else. I perceive many "TERF's" as suffering from gender insecurities normally reserved for men. "TERF's" by the way are Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist's. 

Perhaps the radical feminist's are fearful transgender women will find out too well how it is to be a woman and have access to too many feminine privileges. I have been fortunate in that my personal dealings with TERF's has been fairly rare. Going back several years ago when I was asked at a lesbian Valentine's Day dance what my real name was, all the way to being refused acceptance into my wife Liz's lesbian social club. Which she promptly left. 

I looked at the groups refusal to accept me as pure ignorance and nothing more.  These days though I perceive all anti-transgender rhetoric is mostly fear based in where it comes from. How could we trans folks have the courage to live as our authentic selves when others in the world are stuck in their mundane existence. Plus, as I have mentioned before, gender all by itself is a powerful force. So much so, many parents are afraid to discuss it with their children. They would rather take extreme measures such as banning books on the subject from schools and libraries. All stemming from a deep seated ignorance of the subject. Since the number of true transgender women or men is a small portion of the overall population, very few people ever have the chance to meet and know a trans person and realize we are not much different than the average person.

Then there are the drag queens who all of the sudden became threatened with all this far reaching anti-LGBT legislation. Once again it seems in some circles, transgender women are being mistaken for drag queens. Or vice versa. We will see how a few of the smug seemingly protected cis gay males take it when their rights come into question again. If motivated, they can bring at the least, monetary resources to help with the upcoming battles. 

Maybe I am making too much of the fear aspect out of all of this. In many circumstances fear comes from ignorance on a subject. The only way around all the ignorance is education. I consider being able to be out and proud with my authentic life is a blessing. Hopefully I will be able to help those coming behind me with my actions.

Transgender Misconceptions

Image from Markus Spiske
on UnSplash

Since I had worked in the restaurant business for nearly thirty five years before I retired, I had a fairly good idea of how cis-women could trash a bathroom. So I often read with humor when I saw a novice trans woman and/or cross dresser singing the praises of how pristine women's restrooms tended to be.  Over the years, even before I began to use women's rooms exclusively, I began to develop a complete problem over how women discarded feminine hygiene products.  One restaurant in particular seemed to be more vulnerable than others I managed and I had to call the plumber approximately every two weeks for a stopped up toilet. In one restaurant I even put up signs asking women to please use the proper waste receptacles provided. All to no avail. Plumbers remained on my speed dial.

Little did I know, all of this would be just the beginning of the realization that women really weren't that much more tidy than men in the rest room world.  My first example comes with a warning to always look before you sit to pee. Sadly, it doesn't take very many wet butts for the point to get across that the last woman or two didn't bother to clean up after themselves. Plus, as the years flew by, I saw women using the rods holding the stalls up as acrobatic holders for their tricks. Wearing skirts or not.

Perhaps the ugliest women's room (if you really wanted to call it that) was at a venue in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. As I remember, the room had just enough space for a toilet and a sink. But the worst part about it was the smell. The place reeked of sewer gas so I hurried up and finished my business. It was so bad the tank lid on the toilet was just a piece of wood. As I said, I didn't waste anytime getting out of there and I was sure I had spent more pleasurable restroom experiences in "Porta Potties" or the green heavy plastic toilets you see at many construction sites. Even still, unbeknownst to me, a line of women had formed at the door waiting for me to finish. The first woman in line flashed me a disgusted look, probably thinking I was  responsible for all that smell. I didn't stop to return the favor  and headed back to our table while warning my then date Liz of the nasty potential which awaited her in the woman's room. 

By now you are probably thinking of all the gross men's rooms you have been to and most certainly that is true. Nature is an equal opportunity provider when it comes to rest room slobs. It's too bad when part of your job is having to clean up after a person or persons who don't care how they act. I can't begin to tell you all of the toilet stalls I have been into where the door latches and even the purse hooks have been broken. Even in newer venues. And, there is more.

The worst acting person outside of a restroom comes from a transgender woman She was in a group I was with viewing  an Any Warhol museum exhibit. She was coming down an escalator in front of me when all of the sudden she held on to both sides of the escalator and spread eagled flashed whoever happened to be watching below. She had a lot of class. It happened to be all low. Proving once again it doesn't matter if you are dealing with cis people, male or female and/or transgender people, it takes all kinds to screw up a world.

Plus, it doesn't just have to be in a rest room, where on a couple of occasions I had to nearly push my way through a group of gossiping women just to get to an hand dryer after I washed my hands. In fact I ended up giving one nasty cis woman a hair dryer experience when she wouldn't move and got too close. It was good for me.

If you are new to the restroom world expect the best but don't be surprised by the worst.