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! 

Playing with Dolls

Perhaps you remember Roddy Alves who went through all the expensive and painful surgeries to resemble a human "Ken-Doll"? Well, he became tired of being Ken, and now wants to be Barbie:

You May Be Trans If...

My word goal for my book is a rather mundane 60,000 words. Supposedly, the average book contains 64,000 words. So, along the way, I am trying my best to remember every little nuance of my life and how it related to me ultimately deciding I was transgender. I easily remembered the Christmases with no doll as a gift and the envy I felt when my girl cousins appeared up in their velvet dresses, black patent shoes and white tights. 

I remembered too, the fishing trips we took to Canada as a family. On occasion, on the interstate we would encounter another car with a girl I could admire. One in particular stands out to me. She had long dark hair and was riding by herself in the back seat. My heart ached to be just like her. 

What has been harder to remember ironically are the years later in my life when I was still so envious of the feminine gender. The biggest envy was not so surprising. As the Vietnam War increasingly encroached on my life through high school and college, I really resented the fact women didn't have to worry about being drafted and killed too. 

Recently as I considered all of this I remembered vividly one of the conversations my second wife and I had one summer day when I was in one of my severe emotional downers. In fact, it was during one of the vacations we took to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. During that period of my life, I had achieved quite a bit. I was a highly successful restaurant manager with a loving wife and daughter and a unique restored Civil War brick home. She finally sensed my mood and asked what the one thing I needed to allow myself to be happy. I never gave her the answer I quickly thought of. I wanted to be a woman. I would rather be making the trip as a girl. Instead I did the manly thing and hid my emotions. Sooner more than later, we would be back home and I could cover up my true emotions by cross dressing and relieving the strain for awhile. 

Looking back at just these three instances (there were more of course) I wonder now what took me so long to come out as trans and how I even made it at all. The only way I really did make it was maintaining a rather frenetic lifestyle, with a pressure packed job and self medication with too much alcohol. I was able to build a successful male life which was difficult to think about giving up totally. So again I did the guy thing and tried to "tough" my way through it. 

What  a relief it was when I finally decided I was transgender and had been all along.     

Building a Dream

I am currently working on one of chapters of my book which focuses on the past decade or so of my life. I did it because it occurred to me a large majority of the book dealt entirely with my life before that time and nothing more current. 

One of the ideas which occurred to me was how long it actually took me to leave my male self/life behind.  I literally wasted decades seeking out an answer to my gender dysphoria which I had known all along and was afraid to confront. I only knew the time I was spending as a prospective transgender woman felt increasingly natural. The changes came because the time I was spending in a feminine world had changed because of my perspective. Suddenly I was approaching my life as a transgender woman as just that...not a cross dresser. There was a huge adjustment to face when I did it.

There was also the question of what I was going to do with the decades of male baggage I carried with me. I was fortunate in that I discovered I could go to and be accepted by others with similar "hobbies" such as drinking draft beer and watching sports. In fact, back in those days, it was just becoming fashionable for all women to enjoy a craft beer and watch a game on one of the many new giant televisions in the venue. 

I began to appreciate the male years which had did their best to deliver me to the spot I had finally arrived. After all, the body I inherited proved to be very resilient to health problems and provided me just enough background to not be bullied much at all. Plus, good or bad, my body had carried me through three years in the Army and provided my share of DNA to reproduce a very talented and intelligent accepting daughter. 

I'm not a big fan of "what if's" but if I had it all to do over again, I would have followed through on my wife's advice to be man enough to be a woman much earlier. I was just too stubborn to do it.  

Another Transgender Success!

Variety reported in January transgender actress Josie Totah will be playing "Lexie" a beautiful cheerleader and the most popular girl at Bayside High School in the reboot of the "Saved by the Bell" television series. Josie Totah is 18 years old. For more, go here.

Big day Out?

Anymore, Sunday has replaced Saturday as our "market" day. This morning though, Liz was feeling bad with a headache, so this Sunday morning changed around for me significantly. 

First of all, I went through my wardrobe and found a pair of distressed jeans I haven't worn for awhile. I tossed them in the laundry yesterday and surprisingly they fit me well. From there I found a matching lightweight soft sweater and decided it was time to put on some makeup and get ready. Getting ready for me still involves some shaving. Since I am blessed to have a light beard anyhow which is predominantly gray these days I don't have to seek out expensive painful electrologist sessions to look my best. From beginning to end on a normal day, getting ready to go takes approximately fifteen minutes to apply my makeup. This morning though, I took the extra step of wearing ear-rings. I felt I needed to, to insure the piercing holes in my ears are still open. Which they were.

After all this effort though, it was still unclear if Liz felt good enough to go at all. After a couple cups of coffee she felt good enough for a partial trip to our pharmacy. From there she decided she still had to go to the market for a few essentials. By this time, I was regretting not bringing my mask so I had to stay in the car  to be safe. 

For once, the wait wasn't very long, plus I was still enjoying being out, no pun intended! Finally, on the way home I offered to buy us lunch to go at our favorite local BBQ venue. I happened to see the owner this morning on the local news speaking on the difficulties the virus has caused local, home owned small businesses. I am especially sensitive to restaurants since I spent most of my career in them. So we headed to their store front and ordered lunch out of our meager funds and felt good about supporting them. 

Please make sure you are supporting your local small businesses too!

So much for my exciting day out.

A Triple Transition?

I have written here in Cyrsti's Condo how I believe I have transitioned twice in my gender journey. The most likely transition was from cross dresser to transgender. It took me over a decade to finally decide I could make the decision to live a full time feminine existence. For me, starting hormone replacement therapy sealed the decision. In a relatively short period of time, it became impossible to hide the changes in my body. I know too, others who have not needed hormonal assistance to make the transition. 

Now I think there is a third gender transition on the journey, To be fair, like so many other ideas here in the Condo, I picked this up from a Tweet I read on one of my email feeds. The person was explaining how she had transitioned from what her previous male self had thought she would be all the way to what her feminine soul knew she was. 

I thought, Wow! That was me, When I first began going out and exploring the world as a transgender woman, I spent way more time on worrying about how I looked rather than how I felt. In fact, if you go back to the earliest days of this blog, you will notice a definite difference in an underlying theme. Again, it was appearance over feelings. 

Of course, living full time did have a lasting impact on me. Having to plan a wardrobe out of only feminine clothes for days, weeks, months and years has taught me what I needed to transition from what my former male self thought would be appropriate to what my inner woman told me what I really was. For what it is worth, my partner predicted the very same thing would happen years ago when she asked me what kind of a woman would emerge. 

Who emerged was a person who wouldn't normally leave the house without some sort of makeup but wasn't the extreme picky fashionista I used to be. In other words I could be described as a "lipstick lesbian" a little mixture of leftover butch with a touch of makeup. 

The interesting part of all of this speculation is the fact I am still evolving in my journey when I think it is nearly over.

Who knows, maybe there could be a fourth transition other than death. The ultimate one.