Gender Side Effects

 

Liz on Left from the 
Jessie Hart Archives

When a human being attempts to cross the gender frontier to live a life as their authentic selves, they naturally undergo many side effects. 

Perhaps the biggest side effect is just having to live as the gender you had always dreamed of living. Quickly you find the grass isn't always greener when you transition. My primary examples include when I suddenly lost a part of my intelligence when I started my life as a transgender woman and when I found out the hard way my personal security most certainly wasn't the same. The entire process most certainly was an eye opening experience. All of a sudden, I was more than the "pretty, pretty princess" my wife called me, I was discovering how a woman really lived. 

Other side effects came when I began to live more and more as my feminine self. Gender discoveries were coming fast and furious and were often as terrifying as they were exciting. My male self did not want to give up all the white male privileges he had won in the world. It seemed just the time he could have been situated to enjoy the positives of his labors, it was all taken away because he decided to live as a transgender woman. Side effects for my male self were all negative. 

When I was able to step back and view the entire gender trnasition experience as a whole, the biggest side effect was the entire process felt so natural. When I was having any of the self doubts concerning moving forward in my transition, deep down inside my feminine soul told me to just keep going and everything would be alright. I just needed to learn my own way how difficult the process would be. It seemed every layer of womanhood I learned would just be scratching the surface of what I needed to learn. How was I ever going to be able communicate with the world as my new self and would I ever be accepted to being able to play in the girl's sandbox as an equal. Just two of the burning questions I was facing day to day as I considered reaching for my dream.

Another huge side effect was the time it was taking me to move forward in the world. For every step forward I felt good about, the were two steps back I needed to worry about. Examples included, what was I going to do about a very non approving spouse and how could I ever live without the fairly high paying job I had worked so hard to obtain. As it turned out, biding my time while I learned more about what being a woman was all about turned out to be a good side effect because I was more prepared when the time came to actually begin my life as a full time transgender woman. By the time my transition fully happened, I don't think I had ever prepared better for anything in my life and I was in my early sixties at the time.

Now I can safely say, the final side effect for me was a positive experience. By transitioning I have been able to live out a lifetime dream and never looked back. 

Destiny as a Transgender Person

 

Image from Abbas Tehrani 

Throughout our lives transgender women as well as trans men suffer from everything from intense anxiety to full out gender dysphoria. 

Along the way we never consider none of being transgender was ever our fault. We were destined to be this way. Also, history tells us transgender people have been around since the beginning of time, so no whatever pressures society in some areas put upon us will not work. The transgender tribe will find a way to survive. How is the question for many of us locked in our dark and very lonely gender closets. If you are similar to me, I started by hiding my cross dressing from the world and then slowly expanding out into the world. Slowly but surely I was leaving my old boring male life behind as I was following my life's destinies. 

I can't say much of the process was ever easy because I was so entrenched in attempting to live a macho male life. Through it all, I kept trying to refine my femininity until I finally was able to blend in and exist in the world as a transgender woman. 

What I never factored in my life I was facing was I never had a choice to begin with. Every now and then, I write about the possibility of my Mom being on the "DES"" medication which was routinely prescribed to mothers who had the problem of poor pregnancies' which often resulted in mis-carriages and still births. My Mom suffered through three still births before I came along.  My research into "DES" says it was a synthetic form of estrogen which was later banned because it caused cancer in young girls and women. In addition, the medication was prescribed between 1940 and 1971 and I was born in 1949.  So, the question remains for transgender women is was the extra estrogen prescribed to our mothers while we were in her womb contribute to our gender issues later in life.   

As my life went by, I was fortunate in that I was able to barely satisfy my desires to explore the world as a transgender woman . Even when I reached the suicidal depths I suffered, a little voice kept telling me to keep trying and learning because everything was going to be alright. And it was. 

All of a sudden, the years of gender rejection turned around. Often for all the worst reasons. Within a couple years time nearly all of my small group of friends passed away including my second wife of twenty five years. By this time, I was mostly alone in the world as I was faced with rebuilding my life. The negative was I had to do it at all but the positive was I could do it as my long neglected feminine self. She seized the opportunity and never looked back.  In addition, she was helped along by the new acceptance of VA (Veterans Administration) of transgender veterans. All of a sudden I had access to relatively inexpensive care for my hormone replacement therapy. 

It seemed all the long closed gender doors were opening for me. Destiny was calling and all I needed to do was seize the opportunity. I couldn't believe it was all finally happening.  

Boundaries

Photo from the
Jessie Hart
Archive

 Throughout the journey I undertook to live as a fulltime transgender woman I faced living with many boundaries. 

The earliest boundary I faced was learning how to dress and makeup myself to present well as my feminine self. As most of us know, just learning the art of makeup is daunting enough. Not to mention the time effort and money it takes to acquire and wear a new women's wardrobe. Believe me, the process involved more error than trial until I finally began to get the process right. Problems included not dressing for my age and body shape. In other words, I certainly wasn't the teenaged girl I was trying to look like. Predictably my early experimentations did not work because of my testosterone ravaged body and I just ended up subjecting myself to ridicule by the public. Learning my boundaries of how to present as a woman were difficult to learn but I did become fairly proficient in the ways of dressing to flatter my body style (the best I could) as well as learning through practice better makeup routines. 

Along the way, my personality entered in when I considered the boundaries I faced when I was a serious cross dresser or transvestite. By nature, I always had pushed the boundaries of any thing I attempted. Once I thought I could do something above average, it was never good enough and I had to try to make it better. My whole attitude came from my parents pushing me along in life. I learned the hard way, nothing was ever good enough. 

The whole process pushed me into going places I shouldn't have attempted as a novice transgender woman. Once I rejected going to the so-called "safe" gay venues, any other venue became fair game. Even though many times I was just going there to just see if I was presenting well enough to do it. The process led me to my well publicized times when I was formally asked to leave venues I shouldn't have tried to be in-in the first place. Once I learned what my venue boundaries were, most of my problems went away. Once I was able to dress the part and knew where to go, I was able for once to enjoy the process of living as a transgender woman away from the mirror in the world. 

Just about the time I was becoming a little too satisfied with my progress in the world as my authentic self, I began to meet and gain friends. By doing so, I was able to progress farther and faster as a woman than I ever thought possible. I was able to watch and learn from them and just happened to have a wonderful time doing it. At the same time my friends were in essence were shielding me from potentially negative gender responses from the public, at the same time they were providing me a platform to learn and exist as a feminine person. I was enjoying the best of both worlds as I had the finest on the job training I could find.

By the time I had completed my on the job training as a transgender woman, I was ready to cast my boundaries aside and live my dream.