Not a Choice

 This morning I was watching the news and came across a story about the average everyday person and choice. What the reporter didn't really ever say was for most things in life, we don't really have a choice. If we like it or not, choices are increasingly being made for us. By now you are probably thinking here comes another rant concerning politicians coming after transgender and even women's rights as a whole. But you are wrong. You all know my positions on the anti LGBT legislation sweeping the country. I would have to be Caitlyn Jenner not to. 

Jessie Hart Collection

What I am referring to is our lack of choice we feel as we transition our gender. Male to female or female to male, it doesn't matter. Normally we go through stages of despair and denial which has led the best of us to "purge" and throw away all the items we have acquired from what would become our authentic selves. My example came from when a close acquaintance of mine decided to purge his "collection" of feminine items. I was gifted a whole box of makeup, wigs and breast forms. Ironically, it wasn't so far before that when I did the same thing. 

During my purges I was sure I still had a choice and could quit the pesky idea I wanted to  be a girl. The feeling was so enlightening, for a week or so. Not being the sharpest tack in the box, I finally learned  my feminine desires were not going to magically disappear simply by throwing away my "collection" of feminine articles. Through it all I was slowly learning my true gender was not a choice and it was not the gender I was trying so hard to live as.

Maybe I shouldn't be so hard on those who don't understand why are living our choice to be our authentic selves. Female or Male. After all they were fortunate to grow up not having to question which gender they were. I will forever remember the lonely mornings when I woke up questioning why I was still a boy following dreaming I was a girl. Resentment  ran deep during those days. Why couldn't I have a choice on the gender I wanted to be?

Of course, gender choices during the 1950's and 60's were even more rare in those days than they are now. In other words, they didn't exist for me. I needed to learn any other method I could to depress my gender dysphoria. I resorted to sports and cars to basically just get by and hide my true gender from family and friends. 

Somehow, I bided my time until I could finally fully transition to a full time transgender woman. During the decades I experienced the highs and lows while living my life in a perpetual gender flux. Through it all, I wish I could impart on all of those considering a gender transition it is not a choice. Although I know the biggest problem can be convincing family and friends why you need to make such a radical move. 

It was never a choice. We just didn't know it.   

Sing Like a Bird

 It has been awhile it seems since I have written on any of my past experiences which directly led to my coming out of my closet and into the world as a transgender woman. Several happened in small lesbian bars which seem to be disappearing these days. 

One of the bars was basically a hard core biker bar and they did not like me, To put it mildly but on the other hand they still took my money and served me. I was just stubborn enough to keep going back and even playing Shania Twains' I feel like a Woman on their jukebox, I found it humorous when they found no humor in my musical tastes. Through it all, I was never asked (or told) to go. So I kept going back until I found another venue.

The second place turned out to be a much more welcoming spot. Part of it was it turned out my male self knew one of the bartenders and to my knowledge she never shared my secret life with anyone. Even to a few of the other customers. I always assumed everyone knew I was a cross dresser but never volunteered the information. Along the way I had several very interesting encounters. 

For this post I have added a very old picture showing a little how I looked when all of this was going on. Normally I wore tight jeans, a nice top with heels or boots depending upon the weather. Topping it all off was my favorite blond wig. I guess I was trying my best to an "lipstick lesbian" look.

One night it worked when I was approached by a woman every bit as tall as I and she bought me a beer. Then she said she should take me home with her. I quickly panicked and thought what was I going to tell my wife who was still very much alive at that time. She was working a night shift that evening so I only had a certain amount of time to have my fun and head home. Then once I got home I had to try to remove any stray makeup so presumably she wouldn't know I was out again leading my double life as a novice transgender woman.  I figured she wouldn't buy the excuse I was kidnaped by a scary/ vicious lesbian. 

It turned out to be another night when  I seemingly could have been forced into doing something against my will. Before I get into what happened, here is my disclaimer. I am a terrible singer and don't subject myself or others to the torture of my singing. One night though when a very stout, butch lesbian in a cowboy hat came in the bar during karaoke night and picked me to sing with her. Of course I tried to politely decline but she wasn't really giving me a choice  Again I panicked and wondered what I had gotten myself into. The only saving grace I had was my new "cowboy" friend was giving me the choice of songs I wanted to try to sing. The only karaoke song I had ever tried was a David Allan Coe  tune called "You Never even Called me by my Name." If you are familiar, Coe can't sing well either. 

Having chosen my ballad, we did actually sing. Which is probably an insult to the sing word. Having finished she turned to me and said my voice was actually lower than hers. About that time, I saw my chance at freedom. She went for another beer and I paid for mine and vacated the venue quickly. As luck would have it, I never saw her again. I also never sang again.

The only other time I wished I could have stayed for was when the owners arranged for several exotic dancers to visit the bar. I waited as long as I could to check out the fun but had to leave before the dancers arrived.

Sadly, small lesbian venues seem to be disappearing everywhere leaving one less place to go and have a good time. Or, sing like a bird. 

Now What? A Transgender Odyssey.

My life as a transgender woman has certainly produced it's share of peaks and valleys. As I look back on it, I remember so many times I seemingly hit a wall with my male to female gender transition. Along the way I became very good at either climbing the wall or finding a way to go around it. 

I have plenty of examples. Perhaps one of the bigger ones occurred when I was very young. Even though I didn't really understand at the time my gender problems really had very little to do with the clothes I was collecting to at least outwardly present myself as a girl. Very quickly the thrill of looking at myself in the mirror faded and I was left with the same old feelings of gender dysphoria. Of course then, I had no idea of what gender dysphoria even was. I simply went around the wall and kept dressing in my feminine clothes hoping to relieve the pressure I was living under.

Incredibly I lived with this pressure for years until I began to take my first tentative steps out of the closet in the late 1970's through the early 1980's. During this period of my life I felt as if I was in some sort of a gender maze. I would be successful during a few of my trips out as a feminine person. One day I would experience little or no problems in the world only to be confronted with laughs and giggles other times. It took me awhile to get to the point when I finally figured out I was building my own walls. Primarily from attempting to dress too trashy. Once I finally learned my lesson, my transgender odyssey began to calm down and be more productive. By productive I mean I was experiencing fewer stares and laughing and was beginning the very first stages of establishing a whole new life in a new gender. Gone were the days of just obsessing on my looks and mannerisms and all of a sudden needing to really consider what the new person i was becoming would be. 

Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash

By this time, the walls were coming fast and furious. Just when I thought I had a handle on my new feminine self, new challenges came along. As I developed a whole new set of friends, they expected me to come along when they did fun things. I found myself going to lesbian mixers all the way to a NFL football game. Even with all this new excitement going on in my life, I still had to keep one foot in the male world. Which led me to continually be in the gender maze. 

It wasn't until later on I finally was able to climb all the walls and escape with my life. Perhaps my biggest miscalculation was not understanding how much more complex feminine lives are over what a man experiences. When I transitioned I had to unlearn all the male privilege power structures and relearn what a women has to do to survive and even flourish. 

Ironically, even though I have negotiated the gender maze fairly well, larger challenges still await me. Yes I am afraid of the increasingly malevolent attacks on women of all types and I wonder what it will mean to me in the future. Primarily if I need to go to a nursing home. 

It looks as if my transgender odyssey is far from over,   

Normal? Archive Post

 Today was therapy day so I have limited opportunities to post. So I decided to go back to the Fall of 2020 for this post:

 As transgender women and/or crossdressers, we spend much of our lives wondering how we ended up being a person who has such non normal urges. Or so we feel. I know I lived so many years wondering how I was the only one I knew who had the peculiar habit of wanting to cross dress in clothes of the opposite sex (women). Then, first I learned through magazines such as "Transvestia" which was started by "Virginia Prince" in the 1960's and later through the internet, I was far from being alone.

However, the feelings of normalcy persisted. I finally learned no one was truly "normal" and I learned to embrace my true self. Last night, during another virtual meeting of the transgender/cross dresser support group I am part of, I found out once again how normal I wasn't. Out of the ten or so attendees last night, I was the only one who made it to the point where I live full time as a transgender woman. Many of the others were really bemoaning the fact their weekend trips out as a cross dresser had been seriously curtailed, or stopped all together by the virus. I too, don't like it but the fact remains I know what gender I am when I wake up in the morning. 

To look at the process from a different angle, let's bring in Connie:

"I was reminded of Transgender Week of Awareness last Friday, when a local newscast mentioned it. At first, I thought it was funny to start a week on a Friday, but then I realized it is so that it would culminate on the third Friday of November - which is Transgender Day of Remembrance. I actually joked to my wife that it was a good thing for the news to remind me that I was trans, and needed to be made aware of it. Really, though, I don't think there are any activities in Seattle until tomorrow - TDOR. That will be virtual this year.

By the way, about that joke I made to my wife: She said that she doesn't think of me as trans very often, anymore. I guess that maybe one can be so aware that it just becomes the norm. As I like to say: When the extraordinary becomes ordinary, that is truly an extraordinary thing!"

Indeed Connie, it is an extraordinary thing. I'm sure the two of us are not the norm in finding spouses who accept us so totally. The norm becoming the norm is truly an extraordinary thing.

Cover Girl

I have chosen to feature another photo from one of my favorite Facebook transgender woman acquaintances. This is Melonee Malone before her and wife Lisa went to an upscale country club party. Not to be outdone, Melonee decided tp go all out to impress.

I'm sure you will agree, she probably did not disappoint!

 

The Dreaded "M" Word

 All was going relatively well during my visit to the local vampires to have my blood labs checked. When my name was called, no gender pronoun was attached to it. Such as the dreaded "Mister" word. The nurse simply came through the door and screamed my last name. In no way warm and fuzzy but effective which is all I really cared about. 

After they quickly took my blood samples I sat back down as directed and waited, and waited, and waited. Finally I followed the instructions on a sign in the waiting room which said if you waited more than fifteen minutes, go up and check in with the receptionist. I should have known trouble was coming when I had to interrupt her being on her phone. She then rapid fired questions at me asking who set up my second visit with my new primary provider. Then grew frustrated when I told her I didn't know who I talked to. At that point I should have known to be prepared for the worst. It turned out just not being seen by my new doctor right then wasn't going to be the biggest complaint I had. It came when she used the dreaded "M" word with me. In other words she called me "Mister".

Photo by Javier Martínez on Unsplash

When I promptly corrected her through her thick glass window, either she chose to ignore me , didn't care  or was doing it all on purpose because she promptly turned to the woman next to her and called me "him". Again I corrected her. 

It all ended up as my appointment was shifted to a video visit a little later on that day. The whole affair just turned out to be a trigger object for my impostor syndrome. As a long time, full time transgender woman it seems I am always waiting for the other shoe to fall as far as someone  not viewing me as a feminine person. 

Basically the entire situation just hurt my feelings. After a while though, of thinking all the years of trying to prefect what the world sees my gender as has been a failure. I decided to move on and redirect myself to my feminine self. Maybe during the shut in time during the pandemic I just grew too lazy and neglected my appearance, 

Then again maybe I was over-reacting to a woman who rarely see's any other women come into the VA health facility where she works. Maybe she didn't really even look at me and my voice is not the most feminine. 

One way or another, I fortunately don't have to go there much, so I won't have the opportunity to test her "gender reflexes" again. If I do and she fails, I will be writing a formal protest to her bosses.   

Happy Mom's Day

 I was going to be lazy today and simply reuse one of my former Mother's Day posts. Then I began to consider how my thoughts about my Mom have changed over the years. 

As I grew up, I did have a vague understanding of the difficult journey my Mom went through before she finally was successful in birthing me. She went through three still births that I know of before I came along. It turned out I was the first of two boys as my brother was born two years later.

As the years went by, it was increasingly obvious I not only resembled my Mom, we had the same personalities. 

None of this meant I was ever allowed to show any sort of a feminine side with her. I had to be a study from afar when it came to secretly watching her put make up on all the way to her mannerisms. 

It took me a long time to attempt to come out to my Mom. For some unknown reason I was able to successfully hide my stash of girls clothes and makeup I had acquired over the years from her. Or, as I have considered also she had decided to ignore my desire to dress as a girl simply as a phase. Of course we all know it all turned out to be much more than a phase, it turned out to be my life.

It took me until my Army days to begin to accept my authentic transgender self. In fact, way before there was even a term for it. In those days, I referred to myself as a transvestite and became brave enough to come out to a small group of very close friends following a Halloween party when I showed up as a woman. It was such an enlightening experience for me that I ignored the potential disaster which could have come to me if my superiors had found out. 

The whole process emboldened me to come out to my Mom once I was discharged from the military. One night after a hard evening of partying she was still up when I returned home. All too soon the topic somehow turned to my time in the service. Before long I told her the truth, I was a transvestite and I had felt so much better. The entire process was similar to a huge weight being taken off my shoulders. Somehow I was naïve and expected the same result from her.

What I received in return was she was in shock and disapproved to the point she offered to put me through therapy. Electro shock as I remember. Of course I not so politely refused and the topic was never brought up again the rest of her life.

I used to deeply resent her for her feelings but over the years I have mellowed after I considered the sacrifices she went through to bring me into the world. Age also helped me to understand many topics we clashed about were simply because we were so similar. Along the way she taught me important lessons such as determination and reliability. 

When I set out to legally change my name, I decided to adopt her name as my new middle name not so much to honor her but to show her in the end I had won my battle to live a feminine life as a full time transgender woman.  Now I feel even that idea has changed.

I'm glad I adopted her name now and view the whole process as honoring her. Thanks Mom! Of course she has long since passed on, so this is the best I can do. I hope your Mom is still with you and accepts your reality.

Friday's and the Transgender Woman

Many of you know I have a history degree and consider myself an amateur historian of sorts. Along the way I have developed a deep respect of the historical past being able to predict the future. Somewhat similar to building blocks.

Many of you also know I have written several times about what I consider to be my first night out or history as a transgender woman, rather than as a cross dresser. The difference to me was, it was the first time in my life I was getting the chance to see if I could actually exist in a feminine world. If I was successful I felt I could actually move forward with my dream of living full time. 

In order to try, first I needed a venue to try it in. I had unsuccessfully tried in a number of gay venues and discovered I was only being viewed as yet another drag queen. Far from my goal of being seen at the least as a transgender woman. During the same period of time, a chain of casual bar/restaurants was being invented in NYC and Texas. They were called Friday's and were nearly the first to welcome, attract and serve single women. Before Friday's all bars were essentially were for men only. 

I came up with this information from a television show on food service on the "History Channel". I was instantly attracted from two angles. The second being I built a thirty plus year as a manager in the commercial food business. I ended up working everything from fast food to large casual dining food

operations. The first (and most important) reason was a Fridays in the Dayton, Ohio area was where I first went to see if I could be successful in blending in with and living as a single woman. In this instance, blending in with other women just getting off work from a neighboring up scale mall.

By now, you may recognize how the rest of the experience played out that night. Even though I was scared to death, I did my best to dress in feminine professional attire to blend in with all the other cis-women I knew would be frequenting the venue a little later from when I arrived. To this day I remember the black pants suit, flats and shoulder length blond wig I wore for the evening.

From my experience working in similar concepts, I knew once I made it past the hostess stand and to the bar, I stood a fairly good chance of being served and hopefully accepted. 

To make a long post relatively shorter, I was accepted. I wasn't laughed at by anyone and even though as terrified as I was, I was able to drink two drinks before I made my escape. Most importantly I was still afraid because deep down I knew I had touched a nerve and could possibly live my ultimate dream...a life in a feminine world. I loved it!

Of course Fridays went on to spawn a whole genre of spin offs.  But I will forever be grateful to one of the originals which helped me on my way to a life as my authentic self.

Transgender Health Care

 Another potential problem we face as transgender women and men is finding and using quality health care. I read too many experiences from trans women in particular I know who ran into  problems with doctors. Specifically, the docs were dragging their feet with treating transgender issues such as hormones.

Fortunately,  we have a relatively larger medical entity in our area which is dedicated to helping transgender patients with their health care. They are doing a wonderful job helping those in need with their health care.

As most of you may know, I am a trans veteran who receives health care through the Veteran's Administration system. Years ago during a time of great need I needed to take advantage of nearly free benefits which were available. It turned out to be one of the better choices I had ever made in my life. It was so long ago, I was still in a state of shock over my wife's death and was even way before I embarked on my hormone replacement therapy. My therapist at the time (and still is) was instrumental in helping me start HRT. 

National Cancer Institute from Unsplash 

Back in the day, as the world was catching up to what a transgender person even was I found myself educating every medical person I encountered at the VA. To be fair, none were really negative with me but just didn't seem to know very much. Plus, during those years the Dayton, Ohio VA was conducting transgender seminars with their staff educating them to our needs. 

The point of this post is tomorrow I get to break in a new primary provider. A primary provider in the VA is the equivalent to a person's family doctor in the civilian world. The only thing I know about her is her gender which I definitely prefer. For some reason I have always felt better seeing female physicians and nurse practitioners. Maybe it goes back years ago to the one male doctor I had who always wanted to see my breasts as an "educational" exercise to the residents following him around. Whatever his intentions were, since that time I have always liked female medical people better. 

Looking forward to tomorrow, I don't see any potential problems coming up. In fact, now I can have my endocrinologist blood work done at the VA clinic closest to where I live and not have to drive nearly an hour north to have them done. To be fair, it was my fault because I wanted to keep the Endo doc I had in Dayton and not transfer everything to Cincinnati. Now though, the VA computers have caught up to extent where Dayton can read Cincinnati results. So my blood work tomorrow will be checking my all important estrogen (estradiol) and testosterone levels.

I hope no matter where you are you have been able to locate and take advantage of quality transgender health care. If you can't, my suggestion would be to contact your local LGBTQ center for available resources. I know too not all VA centers are created equal and hopefully your overall experience has been as positive as mine. 

All of us deserve quality transgender health care to help us down our journeys to our authentic selves.