Affirmation

 

Photo from the Jessie Hart
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Affirmations of my gender on occasion comes from predictable sources.

It was voting day recently here in Ohio and I had the chance to be reaffirmed as my feminine self again. It all started years ago when it was time to vote shortly after I changed almost all of my legal gender markers. I vividly remember the pride I felt when the voter administration person asked for my identification card. Which in my case was my brand new driver's license complete with a new picture and the all important "F" under where it asked for my gender. 

Essentially, I knocked out two birds with one stone when I voted for the first time that year which seems like years ago now. I had always felt the need to vote all of the time because possibly my parents always did and seemingly there was always an issue on the ballot I was passionate about. Even on occasion, every once in a while a politician I was for or against would come along too. Little did I know back in those days I would be voting someday as my authentic feminine self. 

Now when I vote, not only I am doing my patriotic duty, I am doing it as a woman. In the past on occasion I think I raised more than a few gender suspicions with the occasional man who was taking my information but today I had a woman who was closer to my age and didn't seem to care at all she was talking to a transgender woman. 

Today was an important election on several fronts here in Ohio which made it more of a necessity to get out the vote. Two statewide issues were on the ballot which might just signal a new dawn of non conservative politics in a state which has become considered as a backwards one in many cases. The issues are considering abortion and marijuana, so it will be interesting to see how they turn out. Plus we had a chance to vote against a right wing school board candidate backed by out of town interests such as the "Moms for Liberty." 

I guess most importantly, no one paid me any extra attention today when I was out in the public's eye. I am starting more and more to get out again and begin moving around outside of my secure gender shell at home. I need the extra challenge to push myself along, Plus, as we approach Thanksgiving, I will have an appointment for my Covid booster shot coming up as well as another diversity council meeting for the Greater Cincinnati Alzheimer's Association. So as the holidays approach, there may be more and more chances to get out and socialize. 

No matter how I look at it, affirmation is good and helps keep my gender dysphoria to a minimum. A problem I can never seem to be rid of. Voting helps me to remember a time I wasn't so fortunate and I had to vote as my old male self. Not to mention the early fears I had of trying out my new feminine identification and voting as a brand new person. It still proves to be a wonderful memory. 

It Was All a Dream

Image from Marcos Paulo Prado 
on UnSplash

Similar to so many other transgender women and trans men, when I was young often I woke up sad in the morning after vividly dreaming I was living as my preferred feminine gender. 

Of course, then depression set in when I had to face yet another unwanted day as my old male self. On those days, very little motivated me to get going. Somehow I managed to make it through another day. On the good days, I had figured out how I could sneak around my family's back and cross dress in my small wardrobe and admire myself in the mirror. In the meantime, I tried to study the cis-women (natural born) around me to see if there was anyway I could copy their dress or mannerisms without being too obvious. I was so envious.

It took me years and even decades to figure out how totally reversed my gender dreaming really was. To this day, after living as long as I have as a full time transgender woman, my dreams are still flipped. In other words, most of my dreams still involve me as my old unwanted male self. I'm sure the main reason is the fact proportionately I still have lived the majority of my life in a stressful male world. To be successful I just had to learn the game well. All of which has carried into, and remains a substantial portion of my self-conscious thought. 

Plus, on occasion, I feel as if my entire gender existence has been nothing more than an extended dream. Perhaps it is because for such a long period of time I considered being able to live as a transgender woman was just an impossible dream. Then when I began to leave my mirror behind and break out of my gender closet into the world, I began all the changes I would need to do to live a new fulfilled life. Suddenly my life evolved from just doing my best to appear as a woman, all the way to communicating effectively as a trans woman with other women in the world.   

It was around this time of gender discovery when I started to believe I had my whole life backwards. There were certain aspects somehow I needed to do as a male but overall the other set of experiences I went through could have been lived by my dominate feminine self. I couldn't believe how much easier my life became when I finally gave in to her and let her live. She in essence was telling me she was right all along and she was.

It turned out, my dyslexic self had my gender mixed up also. All along when I  considered myself a male to female cross dresser, in reality I was a female to male cross dresser just trying to survive in an unwanted world. 

Now my past is mostly a dream, some parts good and others bad. Perhaps one of these days my sub-conscious will flip into dominant feminine role too and my dreams will become predominantly feminine in nature. I suppose if that is all I have to complain about, life is good.   

While My Blog Gently Weeps

Bubba and Brittini

Sadly, this story has been making it's way around the internet recently and friends such as Bobbi have reached out to me with the news.

Spoiler alert, the story is more than just sad, it is tragic. Perhaps by now you have heard of "Bubba Copeland" the former mayor of "Smith's Station, Alabama." I say former because Bubba committed suicide following being outed by a right wing publication called the 1819 News which outed Bubba's so called secret life as a curvy transgender woman. Bubba Copeland was also a Baptist minister who reportedly was a clergyman who cared deeply about their church and community.

Predictably, the only thing which mattered to the gender bigots who outed Bubba was the fact she was a transgender woman. If you are interested if the so called "news" source where all this came from felt at the least bad about Bubba's death. They didn't. "Craig Monger" who wrote the post supposedly supporting Alabama values on "X" (Twitter) said "Digging up someone's personal life is reporting on what someone posts on social media. The Alabama Baptist reported on the churches live stream. I actually spoke to the mayor." Not a word of sympathy was found on anything I read on the publication's site I could find.

Those of us who have dealt with gender issues our entire life know the inner torment Bubba must have gone through. No matter how many good deeds Bubba tried to do as a minister and a mayor in a small Alabama town devastated by a tornado, mattered as much to the 1819 News as much as how they dealt with a closeted transgender person. No mention was made of her life and what she faced. Gender dysphoria is hell to say the least. No attempt at any understanding of the tragedy. 

Brittini was survived by a wife and three children. May she be remembered for her good deeds.