Owning Who you Are

Image from the Jessie Hart
Archives.

During Pride Month, it is extra important to to own who you are. Just as much as it is anytime but Pride may give you the little extra confidence to get by. 

To a large part, confidence in yourself, plays a huge role in you being able to own who you are as a novice transgender woman or trans man in the world. For me, it took many setbacks before I gained the confidence in myself to enter the public's not so accepting world. Just learning the basics of fashion and makeup was a major undertaking for me since like so many of you, I was starting from scratch. Slowly but very unsurely I was able to learn the basics enough to get by. In order to do so, I needed to learn to blend in with other women and not try to be sexier, which was a dismal failure. Stuffing a male, testosterone poisoned body into an ultra short mini skirt or dress just didn't work anywhere except for shock value at Halloween parties. 

Once I began to develop a slight amount of confidence in myself, I still learned the hard way that the sky was not the limit when I came to exploring a new life as a transgender woman. In one venue ( a  TGIF Friday's) I found myself becoming a part of a small diverse group of strangers who knew nothing of my old male life. The group was a mixture of a lesbian and her friends which included a beautiful exotic  dancer who drew the interest of a big bearded guy who owned a motorcycle and managed a lumber yard just down the street. Against the wishes of the group, he shocked everyone by proposing to the wild dancer and found himself in a short lived ill fated marriage. Ironically, I was the only one who showed him any sympathy in the group and we became close, before he moved on with his motorcycle to another job. The whole episode gave me confidence in the fact that men were not as off limits as I thought they were. Even though they were not knocking my door down to date me.

I found out quickly my sexuality did not change as I transitioned from male to female and even was enhanced when I learned all the attention I could get from other women. Most importantly, I did not need the validation from a man to give me the confidence to be myself. Even though I was prepared to see if there was any sort of a sexual spark between the authentic trans me and men, there just wasn't. I was busy owning who I was and she was doing a quality job during the process. As it was, the process led me down many different paths. Many turned out to be good and others were dead ends but my new found confidence helped me to continue to search.

Owning who I was also meant forcing my old, unwanted male self into the closet where my authentic gender self lived for years just existing by cross dressing in front of the mirror. Of course, he put up quite the battle before losing and nearly wrecked my mental health on the way. With the help of a key group of women friends and a loyal, dedicated therapist, I survived on my gender path and eventually thrived. I just had to muster up more courage than I thought I had to do it. To those of you who would ask why I would risk so much to transition, I can only say the process along the way felt so natural and saved my life. 

Some would argue I am less trans than the next person because I waited so long to come out in my life. That is ridiculous because I always knew I had gender issues but did not grow up in an easy time to express them Plus, I would not give anything to have missed out on certain moments of my male life, such as my daughter. Who has led me to having three grandchildren I love very much. So you can see why I don't consider my entire male life to be a waste of time because I learned so much from it. 

On the other hand, switching gears after being deeply embedded in a male world wasn't easy. The process took me many years before I could come up to speed in a new world which was and is constantly changing for women, transgender or not. In fact, it could be argued, catching up is more difficult for a trans woman because we have to start from scratch and often be better in the world than other women just to survive. Having the confidence to own who you are is the only way to do it. 

Life in Her World

Image from the Jessie Hart
Archives

Once I was preparing to live as a transgender woman, I needed to figure out what to do with my new life. . 

As it turned out, even though I had worked for years to figure out my ultimate gender puzzle, I found I still had a long way to go. When everything ceased to be in my mind and into the world, I faced the formidable task of rebuilding my life as a trans woman and leaving my male past behind. The first major problem came from my old male self accepting any of the idea at all. He kept reminding me of all the risks I would be taking if I transitioned. What would happen to my family, friends and employment if I entered my new exciting world. What I did for the longest time was attempt to live with one foot in one gender and one foot in another. Of course, my less than wonderful idea did not work and the pressure to move into her world fulltime became unbearable. I finally realized I did not have a choice and  I just had to complete my transition. I emphasize I had no choice because some transphobic individuals think I did. I would like them to live just a small time in a transgender life to permanently change their minds.

Another problem I had was the longer I lived in my new trans life, the more routine it became.  I found myself slipping back into my old male bad habits which were long gone. When my white, male privileges disappeared, I had no where to turn when life turned the tables on me. A primary example came on the occasions when my personal security was threatened as a novice transgender woman just learning the world. I discovered I could not just bluster or bluff away problematic situations which arose in the world. In many situations, like every other woman,  I needed to work hard to distance myself from the problem and try to learn from it.  Every time I slipped back into male mode, I was rudely reminded of what I did and quickly adjusted.  

Just moving around became a priority for me. I needed to unlearn the male walk and talk and learn to try to flow like a woman. I practiced everytime I could until I thought I had achieved a basic successful walk so I would  not look like a line backer in a dress. The whole process became easier when I finally realized I needed to put my male self away and adopt the feminine one forever. Without totally knowing it, I had moved away from my cross dressing days into a life in her world as a transgender woman. As far as talking was involved in the process, I write about the feminine art of communication often. As a male my habit of frontal aggression needed to go away as I found myself in a world dominated by passive aggression. All too often, I suffered the pain of claw marks on my back when I thought I knew what another woman was thinking or doing. Instead of making the first move in situations, I learned to lay back and let the other woman make the first move and then go from there.

Life in her world then became a question of how confident I had become. I came to realize even though another woman realized my path was different than hers, I still could be accepted as an equal. When I reached this moment of confidence, my life changed forever and I knew I could live the life I always dreamed of. In her world where I always belonged. 

In order to do so, I needed to finally trust my inner feminine soul to take over and run my life. She did a wonderful job since she had waited so long to do it. I was able to become a well rounded person in her world.

Trans Girl at Pride Day

 

Pride Flag image from
Jason Leung on UnSplash

Welcome to Pride Month. The only month of the year when the LGBTQ community is celebrated by a portion of the world and hated by others. Sadly, the month brings out all the gender bigots in the world. 

Early on, I had many experiences at various Pride Days with my new circle of lesbian friends. Including non lesbian friends when a meetup group my wife Liz and I were in operated a table at Cincinnati Pride for a couple of years. On occasion, I even felt as if I was the token LGBT person in the group. Regardless, I had a good time people watching all the diverse public which was walking by. I saw everything from lesbians wearing nearly nothing to cross dressers teetering painfully around in their heels and hose. Then, of course there were the drag queens who I almost felt were embarrassing to me because I did not want anyone to think I was part of their culture, I was transgender not a drag queen. My disclaimer is I have nothing against drag queens but my days in male gay bars taught me how unfortunate it was to be mistaken for a queen. 

Plus, I wanted everyone to know how important it was to me to be recognized for being a transgender woman in a sea of other diverse people. Along the way, I felt the Prides I went to started to emphasize trans people and not the drag queens who seemed to get all the attention with their flamboyant attitudes and clothing. Cincinnati in particular a couple of years ago featured a trans woman I don't remember now as their parade marshal. Plus, I started to see many more transgender women and trans men in the crowd along with groups of butch lesbians and gay male "bears". It made for an interesting experience as my preference was to be mistaken for a lipstick lesbian. Or a lesbian who wears makeup. 

Early on, back in our drinking days, Cincinnati Pride always featured an after hours "Pub Crawl" which one year even featured a bus which took us to many gay venues we had never been to before. I had always wanted to live in Cincinnati and this was a great way to experience it, without ever driving because at the end of the evening, we took an Uber to get home. A great time was had by all. 

Of course, Cincinnati wasn't the only city in the region which hosted a huge Pride celebration. Before I moved to Cincy, I lived within a half hour of Columbus, Ohio. Columbus, as I said, had a LGBTQ celebration which rivaled all the others in the state. This time I went with my new circle of lesbian friends including Liz and two others. Similar to my Pride experiences in Cincinnati, the drag queens became less of an influence and better yet, I could relax and enjoy myself. That night for some reason, we ended up in several straight bars without any problems. 

These days, Pride has really expanded. In the local metro area alone, there are four separate celebrations going on this year. Sadly, with most, after the celebrating has died down, the same old problems exist for transgender women and men in the community. Big corporations who support Pride go back into their closets and I assume wait for the push back from the gender bigots. 

At any rate, it is refreshing to see the public media support for our community. Even if it is temporary.

Enjoy your Pride month no matter where you are in your gender transition! That includes all of you who identify as cross dressers. You never know when all of that may change. It happened to me.