Transgender Losses

Photo from
the Jessie 
Hart Collection

 One of the main transphobic arguments I read is we transgender persons have a choice to live as we do.

No one ever mentions all the things we have to give up to exist as our authentic selves. Just a few of the things we often have to give up is contact with immediate family, employment and friends. The older we start our transitions, often the it is the more we have accumulated in life and have to give up. Being placed between the gender rock and the hard place leads to terrible problems. Problems no one would accept if they didn't need to, just to live. In no way was it ever a choice. 

If you have gone through a transgender transition, I am sure you have losses you have undergone. I am an example in that specifically I have lost all contact with my only brother and his family when I came out to him. I would have lost more than my brother if I had it to lose. By the time I completed my MtF gender transition in my early sixties, I had sadly lost (to death) my second wife of twenty five years, nearly all of my close male friends (which I had very few of) and employment, since I was nearly old enough to retire on Social Security. As you can tell I did not have that much to lose once I made the choice to transition. Seemingly destiny had intervened and doors were being opened wide for me to go through. So wide, it was even about same time the Veterans' Administration health care system approved administering hormone replacement therapy for transgender veterans which I was one of. 

All in all, I feel I experienced an easier time during my later in life transition than most others. During the decades before I considered myself transgender, I described myself as a "serious" cross dresser. Being a serious cross dresser enabled me to come closer to learning the fine art of feminine dressing and makeup. I even survived the cross dressing teen years when I tried to dress too sexy which turned out to be too trashy. Having all of that behind me really helped my survival rate when I needed it the most as I was seriously out in the public's eye as a transgender woman. 

I would also be remiss if I didn't mention the loss of all the male privileges I went through. All of a sudden I seemingly lost part of my intelligence. Even to the point of not being listened to when my car stalled out one day and I needed to call a tow truck. When I did, the driver, along with a sheriff who had stopped to help me huddled (without me) to map out the easiest route back to my house. Like I didn't know? I learned the hard way perhaps the biggest privilege I lost when I began to live fulltime as a transgender woman was my own personal safety. I was lucky in a couple circumstances when I exposed myself to danger by placing myself in situations which could have led to problems. I had to learn the hard way what every other woman knows about not going into dark places with no potential escape routes. 

Even though my transgender losses may have been less than others, I still lost enough to know transitioning was more than a choice for me. I had to do it or take my own life. 

Was the Big Easy, Easy?

Image from Jade Photography 
on UnSplash

Several years ago, my wife Liz and I made the journey on a tour bus from Cincinnati to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. New Orleans is also known as the "Big Easy". 

As it turned out, the trip turned out to be anything but easy. It was a very challenging learning experience. Previously, Liz and I had gone on other bus tours with the same company which were shorter and turned out to be pleasant. The only main challenge which occurred was not being allowed to use the in bus restroom except in times of dire emergency.  Very quickly I learned the "pleasures" of standing in line with a group of other women waiting to use the bathroom. Often at a cramped state supplied roadside rest. After the first couple of times with the same women, I seemingly was accepted and allowed to do my very basic business without incident. I was relieved in more ways than the obvious.

The trip to New Orleans proved to be much longer with many more "rest stops". Again I didn't have many problems until the bus made it to the deep south and we stopped on the Mississippi/Alabama state line. As we joined the line waiting to go in, my nervousness increased. My feelings proved to be unfounded until I had to come face to face with two women after I paused to wash my hands. They took one look and me and glared and I thought here it goes. In response I smiled, dried my hands and vacated the rest room as quickly as I could. I was so scared I kept thinking a small town deep south redneck cop would be pulling the bus over looking for me. Fortunately, nothing happened and the bus then took us to the outskirts of New Orleans itself before it needed to stop for fuel. During the refueling stop again I needed to take care of business and hurriedly did it. Liz, however was behind me and took longer to get a stall, so I needed to wait alone for her. While I was waiting, I tried to waste time by looking at the truck stop tourist items like I was really going to purchase an alligator skull. My paranoia told me to keep moving as I waited for Liz and the Bus to get ready to go again. By having some sort of a purpose, I hoped to ward off any sort of unwanted advances by anyone. Which never came.

Once we arrived in the "Big Easy" the bus stopped at the big seafood restaurant with wonderful food. As I finished my meal, I excused myself and went to the restroom. While I was in there, another woman from the bus saw me and said something to the fact that I used "their" bathroom too. Since she was elderly and not overly negative, I chalked up the entire experience to education...for her. From the restaurant it was on to our fantastic hotel and the blur of an actual Mardi Gras experience,  I say blur because it is how I remember it. As a casual visitor I think being at Mardi Gras was a wonderful one time happening but a less crowded trip to New Orleans would be more enjoyable as I have been there twice now. Once as my male self.

Our trip to the actual event involved quite a bit of walking and pushing our ways through huge crowds, Plus the rest room theme raised it's potentially ugly head again as any restroom was difficult to find. We had to stop and eat off the main route to basically find a restroom to use. Before we knew it, the entire Mardi Gras experience was taken off the bucket list and we started our journey home. By this time my confidence was good and I had no more experiences to remember.   

How New Was It?

Photo from Civil War Cemetery. The
Jessie Hart Collection

 During my transgender journey, I considered each hill I climbed and every blind curve I conquered as being a new part of my life.

Looking back at it now, I wonder how new it really was. Through it all, as I learned from all the ups and downs of transitioning I was just being me. The sad part was how long it took me to arrive at the point of my life when I could put my old male self behind me and move on. It was at once so exciting yet terrifying to put all my male privileges away and explore what a feminine life had to offer.

The more I explored the world, the more I learned much of it wasn't new at all. If you are a believer in reincarnation somehow I felt I had been there before. In other words, my transition to a transgender woman felt so natural. I felt as if I should have always been living this way.  Even though I felt more and more natural, my old unwanted male self still stubbornly hung on thinking he could make a come back and reclaim my life. I even tried to live between the two main binary genders until the stress became to much to bear and I needed to make a decision. Finally I made the right decision to begin hormone replacement therapy and try to adopt a fulltime life as a transgender woman, without any of the major surgeries some trans women undergo. I just didn't feel the need to subject my body to any major gender surgeries seeing as how I was reaching my mid sixties by that time in my life. I considered myself fortunate in that my body was in good enough condition to accept the rigors of the changes I went through. 

Since my main premise through the years was gender was between the ears and sex was between the legs, I opted for more work between the ears. The final straw which broke the camels' back in my transition was when I met my wife Liz going on twelve years ago. Before I met her, I thought the chances of having anyone accept the new me would be nearly impossible. I couldn't believe it when  one day, Liz told me why didn't I just go all the way in my MtF gender transition because she didn't see any male in me at all. At that point I knew somehow I could make it another relationship with another person. Let alone another woman. The concept was very new because my previous two wives accepted the fact I was a transvestite but never adjusted to any of the concept I could be transgender. The unexpected turned into reality. 

From then on, the adjustment was immense as Liz and I needed to learn to live together as I was adjusting to living in a totally new gender. Ironically the easiest part probably was the gender adjustment I needed to make. When my feminine self was finally freed up to live out of the closet, she took to it completely and without reservations. She proved I should have been listening to her all along.  As far as my male self went, he quickly faded into the background and was rarely missed except for situations when I found myself in highly testosterone laden places such as auto shops. In those places, I learned quickly what "man-splaining" was really all about. 

It turned out, completing my gender transition wasn't new at all. I had been working my whole life to do it.