No Growth without Change

I saw this quote this morning as I was going through a few of my Word Press contacts and discovered this quote from Almas who writes about his internal monologue. At that point I started to think about all the times during my gender transition when I have been so scared I thought I couldn't move. 

Possibly the first of which occurred when I was probably no older than twelve. During that time of my life, I augmented my meager allowance by delivering newspapers  in the rural area we lived. I was able to save enough money to attempt to buy my own cross dressing accessories such as makeup. As it turned out, my Grandma lived within walking distance of the medium sized town we lived close to. 

Once I accumulated enough money, I figured out a way I could visit Grandma and spend the night. With my plan in place, I proceeded to do it. As I was to find out, that was the easy part. Finally the time arrived to try out my plan and needless to say I was equally thrilled and scared to go shopping for makeup for the first time ever. The downtown had several of the old school variety stores before Wal-Mart and the mall wiped them all out. I carefully chose one and after circling it several times, I decided to go in. My Dad didn't work too far away and he was the last person I wanted to run into! After I was fairly certain I didn't know anyone in the store, I found the makeup counter. Then I was truly in a panic. I had no idea of what to buy, there were so many choices. 

Somehow, I calmed down enough to purchase a couple items and found the nerve to go pay for them. My worst fears were not founded as she barely checked out my treasures and sent me on my way.

I changed and grew dramatically on that day. I knew from then on I was capable of buying my own feminine items. Even tough countess times I bought the wrong thing, again I was changing and growing. As it turned out, my next big purchases were a pair of my own black tights and shoes. 

Little did I know, this would only be the first of many chances to expand my transition in the years ahead.

On a another subject, I decided to add an old picture of me from several years ago as a dark haired summer casual woman to combat all the recent blondes I have shared here in Cyrsti's Condo,  

Transition Can be Such a Bitch

As we have recently discussed around here in Cyrsti's Condo, often a gender transition is a peak and valley experience. In my case, the climb out of the valley of gender dysphoria was long and often painful. Quite possibly one of the top two or three people who have followed or been around me over the years has been Connie. I can't quite remember the transgender discussion site we met on so many years ago. I just remember Connie's sharp wit and sarcasm when she "discussed" a topic with one of the many "trans nazi's" who tried to rule the site. These were the days before being "transer than you" became fairly well known. Back in those days, many transgender women thought the amount of operations you had endured made them an entitled class of people within the community.

I remember well, engaging in many not so pleasant discussions with the ultimate...a transphobic trans woman. I remember also making a conscious effort  trying to mold my emerging new person in a different direction, away from being a bitch.  In a recent comment, Connie was kind enough to mention my efforts. And in a new comment mentions it again. Plus builds upon it:

Connie with her "realtor pose"

" And, here, I was hoping you would have, first, picked up on my comment about how you could be such a bitch before transition. :-) I did say that I was willing" to give up my male privilege. I can't say that I totally lost it by transitioning, however. Nor will I ever be able to enjoy the totality of the privilege of being a woman. In a sense, we end up in No Man's/No Woman's Land. We bring with us all that our male privilege had gotten us before, and we try to immerse ourselves in womanhood with hopes that we will be granted some privilege that comes with that. Symbolically, a man can open a door to a world of privilege, while a woman may just wait for a man to open the door for her, so that she can enter one room. Of course, it's much more complicated than only that, but having lived with the privilege of a man's world gives us a unique perspective.

I've thought that the old joke about a man refusing to ask for directions kind of sums it all up. The picture that plays in my mind has a man and a woman in a '57 Thunderbird, top off, stopped at one of those old gas stations along a deserted highway. The man is in the driver's seat, of course, and it's probably out of dumb luck that he came across this gas station with only a mile's-worth of gas left in the tank. He's lost, but he won't admit it, and the woman is frantically studying a road map - which the man assumes she can't read. In fact, he's even annoyed that she opened the map, in the first place, because he thinks she won't be able to re-fold it properly when she's done with it. As the attendant is replacing the pump handle, the woman is saying, under her breath, "Ask him, just ask him!" The man hands the attendant a five dollar bill (more than enough to fill the tank of a '57 Thunderbird in those days) and, while the attendant is fumbling in his pocket for the change, the woman, pointing to a spot on the map, blurts out, "How do we get HERE?" As the man sits in silent embarrassment, the attendant takes a quick look at her map, and then drawls out, "Well, y'all can't get there from here." No Man's/No Woman's Land."

Excellent! You have come a long way too my friend!

Candis Cayne

Remember transgender actress Candis Cayne? I first saw her on the TV series "Dirty Sexy Money" She performed in drag in New York City nightclubs beginning in the 1990's. After coming out as transgender in 1996 she went on to play the trans mistress Carmelita on the ABC series on 2007.

 

Trans-Transphobia?

Even though it sounds like a contradiction in terms but in the transgender community you can definitely think transphobia is possible. It could come from two sources.

The first of which are left over male vestiges from a Mtf gender transition. Take Caitlynn Jenner for example. Knowing fair well the incoming Republican candidate was anti trans, she still supported him anyhow. She couldn't do away with all her previous male life, even if it meant protecting future transgender rights. Most certainly cis women support Republican ideas too but does their phobia's come from different places than men. Most people think women are the kinder and more gentle gender aren't always correct. I have known too many trans women who still can't leave their male past behind for any number of reasons. 

I think too, much of this relates to the "I'm more transer than thou" attitude, another reflection of latent transphobia. 

In our earliest cross dressing days, many of us (including me) fixate so totally on looking feminine, we do lose fact of what being feminine is all about. However, all the operations in the world, can't "teach" you how to be a cis woman. You have to live it, like they did. At this point, good old male competitiveness sets in. More operations and/or a nicer wardrobe make you more of a "woman" than the next trans woman.  Maybe the people who still advocate for going stealth to escape the community are right. 

Plus, it is exceedingly difficult to cross the gender frontier and it takes more than a little internal fortitude to do it. If you able to come through it unscathed as a human being, you have done well. As we all know too, there are so many different layers to being a cross dresser all the way to living full time as a transgender woman. I am one myself as I am relatively rare in the circles of people I know. I have been able to carve out a successful life living in a feminine world. Without the expense or pain of any operations. To each their own though, I have one dear friend who had her genital realignment surgery postponed at the last possible minute because of the Ohio Covid Virus restrictions on elective surgeries. Daily, I hope for the day she can finally realize her dream of have the gender confirming surgery. Like her, it is easy to get stuck in the complex layers of who we are. 

Before we know it, if we are not careful, we can become transphobic without even realizing it.  

Secrets

Connie sent in an interesting comment on the recent post in Cyrsti's Condo entitled "You Maybe Trans If." 

Parts of it reveal what I was thinking "back in the day." 

Read on: 

"Well, we've known each other (although never meeting in person) long enough that I can remember you telling me you were comfortable with living as both man and woman, switching as the opportunities and situations presented themselves. I also remember that I challenged you on that. While your late wife had questioned your being "man enough" to be a woman, my wife was telling me that it seemed all I wanted was to enjoy all the fun parts of being a girl. Although we've each accepted challenges in different ways, procrastination was not a friend for either of us. Not that we procrastinated purely for the sake of it. Our established relationships with our respective families, friends, and careers were of such importance to us, and the perceived risk of loss with either seemed daunting. 

At some point, though, we came to our own realizations that we needed to accept ourselves before we could expect that anyone else would accept us as our true selves. For me, any acceptance, of and for my feminine-self, was dependent on a total honesty with myself and others. One can no longer call their behavior cross dressing when doing so is the only time when they feel happy and at ease. I remember you telling me about your comfort in switching back and forth between your masculine and feminine lives so well because I had reached a point, at that time, where I could no longer tolerate switching away from my feminine self. For me to present as a man had become nothing less than a necessary evil, and I was engaging in a reluctant cross dressing activity when doing so. In fact, I dubbed this as "cross duress-ing." I had come to not only accept the not-so-fun parts of being a girl, but I was also willing to give up any male privilege I had in order to do so. It was the way I felt, then, that was cause for my challenge to you, as I knew you were so close to that same realization, yourself. 

It wasn't too long after that you began a new year with HRT! My old competitive male-self might have seen that as a challenge, but I really just couldn't have been happier for you. As time went on, I could see the effects of the HRT in you, and you became such a nice woman that it made me wonder how I ever could have liked you, at all, before! (only kidding, my dear). The truth is that we don't transition away from our male-selves, so much as we allow ourselves to integrate those parts of our pasts that fit our feminine-selves. As you said, it's a matter of perspective."

Thanks for all of the true perspective. I especially like the comment about giving up all of your male privilege when you transition from being a cross dresser to living as a transgender woman!