Preparing for the World

 

JJ Hart. Witches Ball Image.

Before we get started, I would like to take the time to respond to a comment from an anonymous reader to the blog.

For the sake of simplicity, I will condense the comment. The reader was responding to my post concerning my second wife never accepting my feminine self. The reader raised the question about if my wife was somehow jealous of the way I looked. Even though my ego often considered it, I never allowed myself the latitude to consider it. After all, I never considered both of us were in any sort of a competition when it came to appearance, we were simply different in our outlooks. As a cisgender woman, she believed in very minimal makeup and conservative clothes. I did not, and considered the makeup, hair and wardrobe process a woman goes through as part of the fun and challenge of being femininized. As it turned out, there was no way I could cross dress down to her level. If I did, I might as well not attempt it at all. As all of your regular readers know, I will never have a final answer to the appearance question because she passed away years ago. Thanks for the comment and now on to the rest of the post.

I found, as I evolved in life, it became more and more evident to me that cross dressing was more than the proverbial "sun" of my life. What I mean is, even though my entire life revolved in many ways around being a serious part-time cross dresser, deep down I knew I had so much more to accomplish in my gender journey. 

To arrive at where I wanted to be as a novice transgender woman, there was so much more I needed to do. When I put my so called "pretty, pretty princess" into motion into the world. No longer did I just have to worry about my appearance, I had to concentrate on how I was moving and communicating with the world. To say the least, it was a struggle to put all aspects of being a novice transgender woman together. My sun became my entire universe as I went out into the world as I attempted to completely feminize myself. I needed to stop with the ignorant way I was trying to present myself and learned the hard way, to survive in a world I found was run by women, I needed to be better. 

My brutal entrance into the world as a transgender woman, helped me to learn all I needed to know. Or so I thought. Every time I thought I knew where I was headed, only to find I had another wall to climb. Finally, I came to the conclusion in life, there would always be walls to climb and my life as a transgender woman prepared me to better attempt the climb. 

Since I was/am very afraid of heights, I could not spend much time enjoying the view when I had successfully climbed a wall. I needed to get busy and search for the next one. Plus, having a soft landing was never guaranteed. No one ever told me how many bruises I would suffer on my path to gender freedom. 

Finally, any purported competition between my second wife and my inner feminine being was put behind me and I could move on the best I could. 

Born This Way

Image from Vonecia Carswell
on UnSplash. 

 I had no choice; I was born with gender issues which I would have to deal with my entire life.

It is also International Women's Day, so in many ways, the gender issues I did deal with intersect with each other. Along the way, I have received pushback about saying I was a woman at all which I understand. At first, the transphobes attacked me with the old broken argument that I could not be a woman because I could not birth a child. I simply pointed out, many females for whatever reason cannot or choose not to have children. Their choice certainly does not make them any less of a woman.

So, how can I claim Women's Day as my own? Mainly because I worked so hard to gain my transgender womanhood and it should be included with every woman everywhere. At the least, I can provide unique perspectives on my life. Trans women everywhere are fighting now for their very right to exist as women and should accepted as such. In fact, I had some good news-bad news from the VA where I obtain my gender affirming hormones about my future availability of the meds. In my Veterans Administration LGBTQ support group meeting yesterday, the moderator passed along the good news about the long reach of the current felon's administration. The good news was there would be no changes to transgender care, but the bad news was, it said for now. We all know that is not good news. In the meantime, I received my new shipment of estradiol patches this week along with three refills which are plenty to hold me over to my next endocrinologist visit in the early part of May. 

Back I go to the subject at hand. As I always mention, transgender women never had the girl's workbook to benefit from. We never had on hands advice or guidance from our mothers or from the other girls around us. We were left on the outside looking in. What it meant was, we really had to hit the ground running when we came out into the world, we had a lot to learn. Lessons in femininity were often swift and brutal. As I survived mine, I earned my way into celebrating International Women's Day and you should too. 

I sense from the comments I receive here on the blog; I have a wide range of readers from weekend cross dressers, all the way to post operative transgender women. The only point I am attempting to point out is, no matter where you might be on the gender spectrum, you still matter. None of us have a crystal ball telling us the future. For you cross dressers, sooner or later, you may have the chance to open your closet door and live a life you possibly just dreamed of. As I found out, never say never is a good quote when it comes to a possible later in life gender transition. Along the way also, I learned I had tons of knowledge of the world I could offer to other women. Because of my life masquerading as a man, I have a leg up on demystifying the male world for other women.

Even though transgender women may be the underdogs in the overall women of women, we belong in celebrations such as International Women's Day because we were born this way.

I Was Ready but Was the World?

 

Image from the Trolley Stop, Dayton, Ohio

It took me years to understand and accept my transgender womanhood, but once I did, what was the world going to think.

Once I had worked very hard to cross the threshold into being able to put a reasonable effort into presenting as a woman, the difficult work started. Even back in those days, I was able to learn basic tricks to take a good-looking picture but then I found putting the picture into motion was the problem. The whole scenario presented me with big new challenges, The largest mistake I made was underestimating how quickly the world would want to communicate with me. All of a sudden, when I was going out to be by myself, someone (usually another woman) would invade my little world. Which was suddenly growing rapidly. Initially, until I grew used to it, just trying to look another woman in the eye and talk to her was a real challenge.

I started by merely trying to mimic the tone and sound of the person I was talking to, then took femininizing vocal lessons to aid my efforts. I discovered quite quickly, I was more ready for the world than I thought. I found putting too much effort into communicating with a stranger could be a turn off and too little interaction could come off as being bitchy. So, I needed to be careful and usually let the other person lead the conversation. 

For the most part, I found the world was ready for a stray transgender woman just learning her way. I even was able to converse with several other women I met regularly in venues where I was a regular and so were they. I was amazed I had such an easier time talking to them woman to woman than I ever did as a man. One venue in particular in my world was a tavern called the "Trolley Stop" in Dayton, Ohio. It was/is the oldest continuing tavern in Dayton and I quickly became a regular of Gabby the daytime bartender. I knew from previous experiences, having support from the bar staff was key to my overall acceptance. So, I did my best to be friendly, spoke only if I was spoken to, and tip well. Being accepted in the Trolley Stop helped to really expand my world as a transgender woman and prove I was ready to do it. To make matters even better, the Trolley Stop even hosted a lesbian mixer every month or so and I enjoyed good times there as well. 

All of a sudden, the more I was out in the world as a trans woman, I proved I was ready to make it completely in the new universe I was in. It turned out to be one of the most exciting and satisfying times of my life. I was interacting and communicating with others. When I did, I made a whole new circle of friends (mostly women) I write about frequently. They provided me with the building blocks I needed to find my gender dreams. Once I had the solid foundation I needed, the rest was easy and fulfilling. Especially to my long hidden inner feminine self who had been punished for my entire life.