Pictures

Very rarely do we learn the story behind any of the pictures we see on line. In fact, I stopped even looking at one site I used to be active on because I was beginning to doubt more than a few of the "glamorous" transgender women or cross dressers weren't actually cis women in reality. I tried to tell myself too, pictures can be photo shopped and are only moments in time. So much more goes into presenting as a woman than is represented in a picture. 

But, the neat thing is about pictures is, they often are all we have to pass along idea's and remember where we were at a time and place, Take this picture of me for example. First of all it was taken a couple of years ago when I had longer and a darker/auburn hair. Secondly, it was taken in one of those mirrors with special soft surround light, All of which contributed to making me look different than I normally did. Finally, it was taken during one of those rare moments in time i had my finger nails professionally done. All in all, the picture is still me...with an asterisk. I have to add though, nothing of what I did would be different than many cis women would do to enhance their appearance in a picture. 

In a recent Cyrsti's Condo post, I used one of a couple of Connie's pictures I happen to have on file to accent one of her comments. Here, is her return comment:

"So, the pic you chose was taken about eleven years ago. It was that very day that I came out, in person, to a woman friend. It was the first time anyone from my past life had met me as Connie (other than my wife). My friend had no idea of what she was about to see, when she stopped by my house on her way home from work. It went well, but I decided, afterward, that I would never surprise another like that again. I realized that it wasn't really fair to the other person, as it can put them on the spot. Then, it took another three years to come out to most everyone else - except most of my in-laws (about 100 of them, if you count cousins and such). The word had spread, though, so it was just a matter of making a gender reveal, of sorts, at a (very) large family gathering, in 2014. I don't remember exactly when we first met on that (pastel color) site, but, with all the back-and-forth yapping we did, I can't believe we waited so long to finally take action. I look at that pic of myself, and I see that I was beyond ready to transition at that time. I may not be as young, and less wrinkly and saggy as I was, but I'm still every bit the smartass. Sarcasm is not limited by gender! ;-) BTW, in my story, I was both of the people in the Thunderbird. I have had dreams, since my pre-teens, of being behind the wheel of a turquoise '57 T-Bird. I'm in a cute halter top that is tied at the midriff to show my skinny waist, my natural long blonde hair covered by a silk scarf, with big sunglasses and red lipstick on. Oh, and I can't forget the perfectly manicured and painted fingernails, as my lovely hands are resting on top of the steering wheel. Too late now; I can't get there from here, either."

Nice! Thanks for the memory!  Also as many of you who read the post comments know, Marcia also remembers our (witty???) give and take on the website I mentioned (not by name) because I believe it still exists. It's a small world in the trans community if we like it or not.

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! 

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.