No I Don't Hate my Body

Overlooking the Ohio
Jessie Hart

 I recently happened on a post from a transgender woman about hating her body. Reason's of course bordered on the effects of testosterone poisoning. 

Similar to many others, I paid the price of T-poisoning. According to casual on lookers the only feminine attribute I had were my legs. I had the typical thick torso and broad shoulders of any other men. I had to try my best to camouflage my shortcomings. Because I was a cross dressing or transgender woman, I struggled with styles and sizes until I reached a level of getting it right. 

At this point too, I struggled with how I viewed my body. When I was cross dressing as a man often I was ego driven concerning my appearance. Over all I didn.t see what the fuss was all about and except the time I was at work and had to wear a freshly pressed shirt and tie, jeans and T-shirts were the way to go. It was the easy way out. 

The feminine side of my soul which was desperately trying to get out into the world was the opposite end  of the spectrum. The wonderful world of women's makeup and clothes presented a glittering opportunity to explore the world I always wanted to try. However, the fashion and makeup mishaps were numerous. It took me time to leave the fun behind and find the proper look to enable me to blend in and enjoy my time out of the closet. 

Through it all, it would have been easy to hate my male body but I didn't. Primarily because this was the body who helped me to play athletics . Playing sports was the way I kept the bullies away. I wasn't particularly good but the plan worked anyway, Also, perhaps the biggest deal with my body was how healthy it was. In fact the only operation in my life outside of dental surgery was when I had my tonsils taken out when I was a kid.  The older I became, the more I learned how wonderful good health was,

Now of course I have all the aches and pains of a soon to be seventy three year old body but I still have to remember how good my body has been to me. Primarily now since it tolerates my hormone replacement therapy and equally as important the medications I take to control my Bi-polar condition. I am indeed fortunate. 

Not long ago I wrote how some transgender elitists may pull a transer than thou with me because I had not pursued or under gone any gender realignment surgeries. In my mind why should I when I have been able to live a fairly successful life as a full time transgender woman without subjecting my body to extremely invasive operations.   

So no I don't hate my body for happening to be male. It's taken me a long, often interesting journey. 

You Said What?

 

Image from Unsplash

More than a few novice transgender women and trans men think their gender presentation is the major path to being able to survive as their authentic selves in the world. Following my nearly fifty years as a cross dresser and novice transgender woman I was locked in totally on my appearance. In other words, I had made all the stupid mistakes I could as far as my appearance was concerned. I was also becoming fairly proficient in going out as a woman. Somehow I knew something new was going to happen on my transgender path. No matter how hard I fought saving my male self the more I failed and the more frustrated I became. 

What happened was I was suddenly beginning to meet the same people as my feminine self. All of a sudden I was expected to come up with a name, wear the same wig to look similar and use it all to try to communicate with new people. By this time you may be asking how did I handle the voice situation. Early, what I did was try to mimic the women I was talking to and attempted to not talk to men at all. Yes, that worked for awhile. As I progressed in my gender transition, the more I learned I had so much farther to go.

It was around this period of my life I learned the true secret of of blending in with and being able to play in the girl's sandbox had to to with how well I communicated with other women.  Dressing similar to them was not a problem, understanding what they were saying was a whole other issue. As a guy, I worked primarily with women and prided myself on understanding what they were saying. When I transitioned to being a full time transgender woman, all of it changed. 

First of all I learned the feminine equivalent of silent communication. I learned to watch (no really watch) other women's eyes when they were talking to me. On several occasions other women helped me to stay clear of interactions with other toxic men, On other occasions I learned to take what I heard from other women very lightly because often they were carrying a knife behind their back. I was clawed several times before I learned. A prime example would come when a woman, normally at Halloween, would say I "made" a good looking woman. What they didn't say was for a man, 

Gone were the good old days of straight forward communications. As I always thought women operate on a much more layered existence then men. I had to learn a whole new communication system. Of course all the effort was worth it as I assumed my feminine place in the world. Ironically the whole experience taught me women are the stronger gender. Even though I would never go back to being a guy, my time served as a woman would make it so much easier. 

What is Normal?

 

Photo Courtesy Jessie Hart

I love this question because the easy answer is nothing is normal. The more that transphobes and other haters like to say about it, the more they prove themselves wrong. Just because they think they are in the majority of hetero-straight humans, doesn't make it normal. 

On the other hand, during my life, I disliked being called "normal". If I was normal as compared to the rest of society I would have never succeeded in being accepted into the American Forces Radio and Television service when I was in the Army. Other lesser examples were how my daughter came along against the odds as well as various college changes kept me out of the military draft as long as I did. 

For the longest time in my life, I did my best to be a normal guy. In middle school and high school I did play sports, worked on cars and begrudgingly dated girls. In other words, I did what was expected by my family and society. Of course the entire process brought extreme confusion and often pain. My parents always were fond of telling me not to be into what other people said. But of course, all of that  ended when I wanted to be a girl. Then, normal, took a whole other turn in my life.

For the longest time I considered myself less than normal when I was dealing with the everyday public. I used it as an excuse to explain my cross dressing "habit" to myself. Somehow since I felt I had a different "hobby" I was less than normal. 

Once I started to increasingly explore the feminine world as a transgender woman, all of my thought patterns started to change. Slowly but surely I began to realize I truly wasn't normal. I had been doing my best to live a lie and exist in the male world. The more I transitioned into my authentic self the more natural I felt. Often how I was feeling was the only thing which kept me going during the dark hours I went through as I learned to play in the girls' sandbox. Even though it is painful to remember and write about, the tears were real and came too often. 

The more I learned the more normal I felt. I can only assume it is because I am finally living my own feminine reality. As I face the world now, I have found my own normal 

I am now living a better life because of it. After all, normal is fairly simple. It is what you make of  it.