Gender Rebuild

 

Once you make the determination you are going to cross the gender frontier as live as a transgender woman or trans man, the clock begins to move forward on a total reconstruction process.

Of course the first things you have to do is to rebuild your appearance to come as close as you can to present correctly in the world. I write often how the process was often a painful one for me as a tried to work my way out of my so-called teen aged cross dressing or transvestite years. I was dressing to what I thought my male self wanted me to look like. Instead of a more realistic version from my feminine side. As I exited the difficult appearance years, it was time to take my rebuild further and begin to interact more completely in the world as a transgender woman.

It all meant, the public was crushing in on me and I was forced into moving my old male self into the background and beginning to learn the basics of communicating in the world as a woman. The differences were at once shocking but soon became easy to understand.  My rebuild had started in earnest as men steered clear of me for the most part while women mostly were curious why I wanted to play in their sandbox. The gender testing program was often intense but I just needed to succeed.

As I tested out, my rebuild continued as I needed to put the image I so admired in the mirror all those years into actual motion. How I walked, talked and even ate became my focus as a novice transgender woman. It took awhile before it all became a habit and it was difficult to reverse my gains when I had to go back to living as a man. Slowly but surely he faded into my past and I was able to rebuild even further towards my gender future. 

As I moved closer and closer to going full time as a trans woman, the most amazing thing happened. I was seemingly making less and less effort to live. Now I believe my inner feminine self saw her chance to finally live in the daylight and took over. When she did, it was like I always was meant to live the new way and to let her handle it. What I didn't know was, there was going to be a bit of pressure or thought which had to go into it. The main question was, what kind of new person did I want to be? Quoting my wife Liz, very few humans have the opportunity to rebuild their lives and start over. I took that seriously and decided I should take the second chance and try to be a good person, Of course being a good person is often tough to live up to but at the least I try.

I also try to keep any remaining pieces of my lifetime of rebuilding to an end. Ironically now as I enter the twi-light years of my life, I have to again attempt to safeguard what I have built. Or, how will I be received as a pre-opt transgender woman in an assisted care  facility.  It is a final process I try not to dwell on often. 

Total Disclosure

 

Liz to my right at the Picnic
from the Jessie Hart Collection

Total disclosure of our deepest gender secrets often comes at a huge cost to many transgender women or trans men when we choose to let others into our authentic life. 

Losses are well documented, such as losing everything from spouses and family to employment and friends. Sadly it all happens when we simply decide to tell others. Plus, not many realize we trans folk never really had a choice of whom we just had to be to live. Then we have to go through severe nervousness  we decide who to tell and when. 

In my case, I decided who I needed to tell and ranked them in order of importance to me. I chose telling my only child, a daughter to tell first. Total disclosure to her was rough. I couldn't believe it was my words telling her I was transgender and then waiting for a totally negative reaction. It turned out she was shocked and then a little upset. She asked why she was the last to know. Truth be known, she wasn't the last to know. Her Mother knew I was a cross dresser or transvestite back in those days but thought it was a fairly harmless side "hobby" of her husband. She (or I) didn't know how deep my gender urges ran and how much I put in to denying who I really was. 

The only other person my daughter could be referring to as far as people knowing about me was my second wife, her step mother. Since she is deceased I will never know how many people (if any) she ever told. As with most cis-women, I feel as if she may have confided in her closest friend because of how the friend started to treat me. So all in all my daughter, who made my coming out process so incredibly easy essentially spoiled me. Next on my list to tell was my only brother because my parents had long since passed on. 

As it turned out, as well as my experience with my daughter went, my brother's was just as bad. Mostly I think because of his fear of dealing with right wing Baptist in laws, he wouldn't/couldn't accept me. To cut the only real tie we had as family, he pulled my invitation to the annual family Thanksgiving dinner back. That was close to a decade ago and we have sadly not spoken since. So much for brotherly love when total gender disclosure was involved. It seemed with the total disparity between my daughter and my brother was involved, destiny had taken a moment to show me both sides of disclosing my authentic self. My daughter just wanted me to be happy, while my brother just wanted to ignore the entire matter. 

I waited so long to let others in to my world, most had passed on. Also with the help of my remaining and new supporting friends and family, I was able to build new support systems without the worry of total disclosure. Since the new people already knew me. Which was quite the weight off my shoulders as you can imagine. 

Sadly, as transgender women and trans men face total disclosure, we still face too many obstacles to live as our authentic selves. Many end up living lonely lives although I believe social media is beginning to provide connections within the trans community. Until the problem is totally resolved for the benefit of all, we have a long way to go. 

Shadow Man

 

Image from Stormseeker 
on UnSplash

For years I have struggled to describe most of my gender journey from being a semi successful man to living as a fulltime transgender woman. 

Finally I came up with one idea. During the male moments of my life I was merely a shadow man. Even though I acted as if I was in the moment, I wasn't really all there. I was just looking for a way to survive the lie I was living. In order to do it, many times I needed to overdue my put-on macho image to hide my true self. I don't believe I was a toxic man but I certainly hung out with the macho guys even though I was still in the shadows. 

Perhaps it's the reason I had so few male friends. I was so afraid I would slip up and friends would see my true feminine self. It's also possible it is also the reason keeping so few people close to me meant I would have fewer people to tell if and when I came out of the shadows. With me, tragically the plan worked when most all of my close male friends passed away within several years of each other. So I don't recommend the path I took at all. 

Over the years in the shadows I also learned well the male privilege's I came to expect as I led the life of a white male. Perhaps the only drawback which turned out to be a positive was my time in the Army. The three years I served led me to very male pursuits such as learning how resilient I really was. Lessons which would serve me well when I became a father as well as other as surviving other male dominated areas such as my job. In many ways, I could go in to a room of my peers and hold my own. I didn't especially want to but at the time it was great to have a back up plan for my shadow man.

Perhaps, once I seriously started to complete my Male to Female gender transition, I began to realize how my gender life was directly backwards. Instead of being a feminine crossdresser or transvestite, I was a female cross dressing as a man. My dominate gender increasingly turned out of be feminine not masculine. Which meant my shadow man left the spotlight and retreated ever deeper into the background of my life. All in all, the deciding factor turned out to be was how natural the process turned out to be. When I subtracted out all of the moments I was totally terrified when I suddenly was losing all of my male privileges. Life was suddenly much fuller and exciting. What a shock it was the first night when I learned I had suddenly lost a significant part of my intelligence when I unknowingly was involved in a male dominated conversation. To add insult to injury they were discussing a topic I knew quite a bit about but it didn't matter. 

As it turned out, my path was illuminated when I finally gave up on being a shadow man. When I embraced completely being a transgender woman, I finally was living my truth . She had waited years and years to let any sort of light come in to her very dark and lonely gender closet. Once she was out in the light, she was determined to make the most of the opportunity and with the help of several close friends, she made the jump into the real world. 

The shadow man was exposed to the light and disappeared. Never to be seen again.