Transition within a Transition

For someone who has never followed a gender path to their authentic selves, they don't realize  the path

Nesting Dolls

includes many different separate transitions. Once I began to think about it, I started to equate it with a set of Russian Nesting Dolls.

The first major transition I went through was when I realized just living in the mirror looking like a girl was not enough. After the feeling of exhilaration or gender euphoria quickly faded, the true desire to actually be a girl remained. You could say I was going through the earliest realization I wasn't a cross dresser at all. My gender issues went much deeper than just dressing like a girl. I was similar to the smallest nesting doll in the picture.

As I began to follow my new gender path in life which always reminded me deep down I should have been a girl, I desperately needed to find ways to satisfy my urges. Sadly the entire process wasn't the smoothest and led me to the point of desperation when I faced the fact I would not see the light of day as my feminine self except once a year at Halloween. I compare it to being doll number five in the set. the more I learned about my feminine side, the more I wanted to learn. which included getting out into the world and escaping my mirror and very dark confining closet.

Once I began to get out of my closet, there was no going back. I began to quickly move to the bigger nesting dolls following successful journeys into the world as a novice transgender woman. Slowly and very unsurely I found my way into ever larger gender challenges.  To me the fourth nesting doll from the top represents the times I had to learn to communicate with other women and men in this brave new gender world. I was trying to make my way without any of the old male privilege's I had built up over the years. Looking back, I'm lucky I didn't break this fragile doll.  Many times during this period of my life, I thought I had it made to some extent but I didn't realize how much farther I had to go. I thought the biggest dolls would be the easiest to obtain.

Surprise, they weren't. I view the second to biggest doll as when I started hormone replacement therapy. HRT provided me with the chance to improve my external appearance as well as opened my internal self to a new softening I never thought possible. All in all my second doll provided me with all I needed to know to move forward to the biggest doll. The biggest doll was my ultimate goal of living full time as a transgender woman. 

I managed so far to find my largest Russian  nesting doll and not break it. I survived many gender transitions within a transition and I am happy for it.

Transgender Fear versus Ignorance

Ohio State Student Union
Jessie Hart Archives

 Often I think all the right wing attacks in our country and elsewhere come from fear of what a transgender woman or trans man can bring to the table. After all we have had the opportunity to experience the two primary binary genders from both the male and female perspectives. Some people have a tendency to become uneasy when you have the possibility of knowing just a little too much of where they are coming from personality wise. Others carry very little self esteem and are always looking for the slightest edge when it comes to thinking they are better than someone else. I perceive many "TERF's" as suffering from gender insecurities normally reserved for men. "TERF's" by the way are Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist's. 

Perhaps the radical feminist's are fearful transgender women will find out too well how it is to be a woman and have access to too many feminine privileges. I have been fortunate in that my personal dealings with TERF's has been fairly rare. Going back several years ago when I was asked at a lesbian Valentine's Day dance what my real name was, all the way to being refused acceptance into my wife Liz's lesbian social club. Which she promptly left. 

I looked at the groups refusal to accept me as pure ignorance and nothing more.  These days though I perceive all anti-transgender rhetoric is mostly fear based in where it comes from. How could we trans folks have the courage to live as our authentic selves when others in the world are stuck in their mundane existence. Plus, as I have mentioned before, gender all by itself is a powerful force. So much so, many parents are afraid to discuss it with their children. They would rather take extreme measures such as banning books on the subject from schools and libraries. All stemming from a deep seated ignorance of the subject. Since the number of true transgender women or men is a small portion of the overall population, very few people ever have the chance to meet and know a trans person and realize we are not much different than the average person.

Then there are the drag queens who all of the sudden became threatened with all this far reaching anti-LGBT legislation. Once again it seems in some circles, transgender women are being mistaken for drag queens. Or vice versa. We will see how a few of the smug seemingly protected cis gay males take it when their rights come into question again. If motivated, they can bring at the least, monetary resources to help with the upcoming battles. 

Maybe I am making too much of the fear aspect out of all of this. In many circumstances fear comes from ignorance on a subject. The only way around all the ignorance is education. I consider being able to be out and proud with my authentic life is a blessing. Hopefully I will be able to help those coming behind me with my actions.

Transgender Misconceptions

Image from Markus Spiske
on UnSplash

Since I had worked in the restaurant business for nearly thirty five years before I retired, I had a fairly good idea of how cis-women could trash a bathroom. So I often read with humor when I saw a novice trans woman and/or cross dresser singing the praises of how pristine women's restrooms tended to be.  Over the years, even before I began to use women's rooms exclusively, I began to develop a complete problem over how women discarded feminine hygiene products.  One restaurant in particular seemed to be more vulnerable than others I managed and I had to call the plumber approximately every two weeks for a stopped up toilet. In one restaurant I even put up signs asking women to please use the proper waste receptacles provided. All to no avail. Plumbers remained on my speed dial.

Little did I know, all of this would be just the beginning of the realization that women really weren't that much more tidy than men in the rest room world.  My first example comes with a warning to always look before you sit to pee. Sadly, it doesn't take very many wet butts for the point to get across that the last woman or two didn't bother to clean up after themselves. Plus, as the years flew by, I saw women using the rods holding the stalls up as acrobatic holders for their tricks. Wearing skirts or not.

Perhaps the ugliest women's room (if you really wanted to call it that) was at a venue in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. As I remember, the room had just enough space for a toilet and a sink. But the worst part about it was the smell. The place reeked of sewer gas so I hurried up and finished my business. It was so bad the tank lid on the toilet was just a piece of wood. As I said, I didn't waste anytime getting out of there and I was sure I had spent more pleasurable restroom experiences in "Porta Potties" or the green heavy plastic toilets you see at many construction sites. Even still, unbeknownst to me, a line of women had formed at the door waiting for me to finish. The first woman in line flashed me a disgusted look, probably thinking I was  responsible for all that smell. I didn't stop to return the favor  and headed back to our table while warning my then date Liz of the nasty potential which awaited her in the woman's room. 

By now you are probably thinking of all the gross men's rooms you have been to and most certainly that is true. Nature is an equal opportunity provider when it comes to rest room slobs. It's too bad when part of your job is having to clean up after a person or persons who don't care how they act. I can't begin to tell you all of the toilet stalls I have been into where the door latches and even the purse hooks have been broken. Even in newer venues. And, there is more.

The worst acting person outside of a restroom comes from a transgender woman She was in a group I was with viewing  an Any Warhol museum exhibit. She was coming down an escalator in front of me when all of the sudden she held on to both sides of the escalator and spread eagled flashed whoever happened to be watching below. She had a lot of class. It happened to be all low. Proving once again it doesn't matter if you are dealing with cis people, male or female and/or transgender people, it takes all kinds to screw up a world.

Plus, it doesn't just have to be in a rest room, where on a couple of occasions I had to nearly push my way through a group of gossiping women just to get to an hand dryer after I washed my hands. In fact I ended up giving one nasty cis woman a hair dryer experience when she wouldn't move and got too close. It was good for me.

If you are new to the restroom world expect the best but don't be surprised by the worst.

Fake it Till you Make It

 

photo courtesy Jazmin Guaynor
on UuSplash

I heard this comment from an unknown cis woman on a television show I was watching last night and it brought back so many memories. Some were pleasant, some not so pleasant. Similar to so many of you, I share many days and even years of living in the mirror as a young cross dressing girl. During these formative gender years I worked diligently on my makeup. While my other male friends became proficient at painting model cars, I increasingly became better at applying my own makeup. Even to the point of being able to buy my own makeup supplies with my meager allowance and earnings from delivering newspapers. Even though I did become fairly good at applying my own makeup, I still thought I was a pretender until my second wife began to ask me for help with her own cosmetic usage. 

The problem I had was, or one of many, I still didn't realize I had the entire gender situation backwards. All along I thought I was a cross dressing male but in reality I was a girl cross dressing as a guy. Not realizing this basic fact cost me decades of torment as I struggled to find my way out of a very dark and lonely gender closet. The only good which was coming out of the entire process was, the better and more I faked it, the more I slowly began to make it. 

The making it came in stages. I needed to grow out of my girlish adolescence and be able to dress my male body the best I could so I could make it better in the public's eye. Once I was able to accomplish this difficult task with little or no feedback, I was able to begin to sync up my overall feminine appearance and be successful. Or so I thought. I thought if I applied the lessons I learned the hard way in the public's eye and didn't get too outlandish, I could present fairly well as a woman. I did so well on a couple of occasions in New York when I was mistaken for a cis-woman at transvestite mixers, I went on a giant gender ego trip. I was so excited with my results making it a woman, I couldn't wait to do it again and again. It was all good until my wife stepped in and interrupted my ideas of further expanding my feminine pursuits and we began to have massive fights. One in particular which I have mentioned in my previous writings was when she told me I made a terrible woman. 

Of course I finally told her I wasn't trying to make anything but I still didn't have the courage to tell her what I really thought. I loved it when I could try new things as a woman. As it turned out, after she calmed down, she told me her comment didn't have a thing to do with how I looked. It was how I acted and the comment changed the trajectory of my life forever. What could I ever do to understand exactly what she was telling me. I was finally making it on appearance but still faking it as far as feeling good as a woman. It didn't come over night but after many years of trying I finally came to understand what she was talking about. In fact it took the presence of estrogen in my hormone replacement therapy for me to learn the effects of both male and female hormones. Sadly my wife passed away before she ever had the chance to see the complete transgender woman I had become. I don't labor under any ideas we could have stayed together but maybe we could have remained friends.

Age played a role in me being able to fake it until I made it as a transgender woman. I had enough time to make all the gender mistakes I made and still learn and survive. I most certainly faked my gender as a guy until I made it as a woman.  

Interesting Questions

Civil War Veterans Cemetery
Jessie Hart Archives 

Most of what I see and react to on  my social media has to do with politics or the occasional reference to the chicken chain I refer to as "Bigot Chicken." (Chick-fil-A) Last night though I received one of the more interesting questions I have seen in a long time. It came from a guy who was new to me and I immediately thought it was one of those leading posts wanting me to send them a friend request or worse. Of course I never respond to those comments. Surprisingly,  this comment was much different.

It turned he didn't care at all I was transgender. He cared because I mentioned I was transgender so prominently in my profile. He went on to say he hoped I understood he wasn't being negative but on the other hand it seemed these days everyone is trying to push their feelings on to everyone else. He used vegetarians as an example. I thanked him for the comment and said I would probably make a blog post from it. I also told him my opinion was people are so picky in promoting their preferences  is because our country is so divided these days. And the divides lead us to wanting to support a certain lifestyle. Especially when it is being threatened to be taken away.  

Then I began to think about what he said. Years ago, my ideal would have been just to live my life as a woman. Without the transgender part added on to it at all. I would have been flattered if I could have been able to go "stealth." as a woman in my life. I would have arrived at my goal of being in the same category as many of the other impossibly feminine transsexuals I had encountered in my life up to that time. What would be the harm in removing the transgender portion of my on line profile and see what happens. After all, for all intents and purposes, I have led a stealth gender life for years now in the public eye, so why not do it on line also?

Suddenly it dawned on me, going stealth about my transgender status would be repeating the same exact mistakes many of the trans generation did before me. Perhaps you remember the days when anyone who went the distance and underwent a sex change surgery (as it was known in those days) was expected to move to another town where nobody knew them. There they would to all intents and purposes disappear and never be heard from again. Which left very few "gender educators" for the rest of us to follow. When I started writing this blog approximately a decade ago, I did it with the hope I could help others who were questioning their gender also. In that sense, nothing has changed. I still hope others receive help from what I write. Even the guy who wondered why I pushed my transgender profile so hard.

I thought I would mention again briefly how important it is to stand up against the gender bigots who want to destroy us and suddenly going stealth on line would certainly not help the cause. So in the meantime, I feel I will leave my profiles alone. I am proud  of being a veteran as well as being transgender and hope I can carry it forward the best I can.   

"Trippin" Trans Style

Photo from Eduardo Soares
on UnSplash

To escape the Sunday shopping crowd at our local super sized grocery store, my wife Liz and I decided to get an early start. For the occasion I decided to just pull my long hair back, get a close shave, add some moisturizer, eye makeup and lipstick and went for it. Jeans, tennis shoes and a fleece finished off my shopping outfit. 

I suppose it is a good thing when I can be so mundane and seemingly invisible in public as a transgender woman. No one gave me an extra glance, not even the woman who took our order for  coffee in the in store coffee shop. I was allowed to push the cart which serves as sort of a walker so I could survive the long walk around the store. All due to my sore back. So it was good to relax the best I could while Liz did the serious shopping. 

For a short time at least, all the worry of being harassed because I am a transgender woman faded into the background and I was just living my life just like any other human being. The threat of not being able to do so is becoming very real because right across the river, the state of Kentucky is on the verge of passing another very strict anti transgender bill. I have several transgender friends on social media from Northern Kentucky who are rightfully ultra concerned. Once the LGBT dominoes start to fall, who will step up to stop them. 

Perhaps now, more than even before it is up to we transgender women and trans men to strive even more to blend in with the remainder of society. I also am of the opinion now is the time for anyone, even cross dressers in the closet, should be ultra aware who they are voting for. Because in the future, you could be the one who needs to go "trippin" trans style. Rest assured if the Republicans are making drag queens an issue, you could be next. Closets are destined to become darker and darker unless we unite to fight for our rights. 

These days, I don't get out much anymore and mainly when I do, I run into a sour lady at the pharmacy who glares at me everytime she sees me. I can never tell if she is reacting negatively to me or the world at large because she is miserable. Because as I was told years ago by my second wife, it wasn't all about me. We all know though during our times as novice transgender women or cross dressers, it is all about us. As we try to navigate the new gender path we have chosen on the road to our authentic selves the entire process is very intense. 

Now that we are starting here at home to actually go the grocery again away from having groceries delivered. Which just became too expensive, I can look forward to getting out another day each week. More "trippin" for this transgender woman is in my future. 

 

Stay Safe out There

Photo from the 
Jessie Hart Archives

 These days it seems, with all the Republican anti LGBT bills which are mainly directed towards transgender women and trans men, it's increasingly difficult to relax in public. Who knows when the next shoe will fall and another person will confront you about living as your authentic self.  Sadly, in today's society people are less into minding their own business and more into minding yours.

All of this creates the extra gender pressure I previously mentioned. Through it all, the ability to present yourself authentically becomes extra important. Sadly for some of us cis-women are seemingly not so into taking advantage of what nature gave them. If I was going to go out and run errands right now, I'm sure I would see almost no women who took the time to wear any makeup and dress up at all. The real dilemma for transgender women is to look feminine without really trying. It is certainly a product of having to try harder than the average cis-woman to be accepted.  All ready there are stories surfacing about cis-women being rejected from using the woman's room by over zealous gender bigots. 

Rest rooms of course produce a unique challenge to the average transgender woman. Unless you live in the rare state or area which you are protected by law to use the restroom of your choice, it pays dividends to pay extra attention to your surroundings and be careful to use common sense women's room etiquette. Examples are many but a few of the most important ones are to sit when you pee (look at the seat first) always stop to wash your hands, don't be afraid to make eye contact with other women and don't put your purse on the floor. Perhaps the most important point to remember is to have the confidence to use the rest room of your choice.

It hasn't always been easy for me during my transition to use the women's room. Years ago I had the police called on me as well as other harrowing experiences. The scariest experience came when my wife Liz and I were on a tour bus trip from our native Ohio to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The bus made regular rest stops which were bad enough but the one at the border of Mississippi/Alabama was the worst. First of all, I had to wait in a line of women just to pee which I did. When I finished and opened the stall door I came face to face with two hostile looking women glaring at me. I hurriedly excused myself and went to wash my hands and got out of there. It took me a half hour on the bus to finally relax. I half expected a highway patrolman to pull the bus over and seek me out but it never happened. 

Of course, perhaps the major loss of male privilege we experience when we transition away from the "men's club" is personal safety. Growing up we never had the chance to learn what other cis-women are raised to know. Some men are predators and need to be steered clear of. As a male I learned how to not exist with toxic males by being the better guy no matter how hard that was. By bigger I mean the times I had to "puff" myself up to ward off any unwanted angry advances. It was a real gender upbringing when all of that was stripped away and one night I learned the hard way how a man can trap a woman and force himself on her. Nothing happened when my wife walked in except learning a valuable lesson concerning my new life. It could have been much worse. 

These days, more and more cis women face the same pressures we trans women do when it comes to their personal safety. It's important we all keep our heads on a swivel to stay safe when we go out in public. Stay safe out there.

Vocal Transgender Presentations

Photo from the Jessie
Hart Archives.

 As  most of you know, I am a transgender veteran. This morning I went to the Veterans Administration local clinic to have them take blood for my latest upcoming appointments. Not so long ago, at the same clinic  I seemingly always faced someone who would mis-gender me. I was always infuriated and dejected for two reasons. The first of which I was not presenting well enough as a woman to get by and/or why should it all be on me and my transgender status to be accepted. It became up to the VA. 

I said exactly that to anyone who would listen at the VA. At least in the clinic I go to someone seemingly listened because the clinic has not mis-gendered me once in the last couple of times I have been there. Plus, others in the system have taken the pronoun usage such as "Sir" out of their vocabulary all together. 

Furthermore, this morning my voice once again had a chance to play a bigger role in my presentation because the clinic is still requiring facial masks to get in and be looked at. So, it was up to my voice to carry the day since most of my face was covered up. As far as my voice is concerned, I feel at it's best, it's borderline feminine. In my past I have taken vocal lessons to improve my voices feminine qualities and I do my best to remember what I was taught. It was an easy fix this morning because my technician was so chatty to begin with and started out the conversation with the proper pronouns. I didn't have to do anything but give my blood for the lab tests and I was free to use the exit through the waiting room so everyone could look at me. 

This morning, no one barely raised their head to look at me which is a good thing. So I removed my mask and headed back out to my car through the heavy rain we have been having. But...

Overall I still need to work harder on my voice. One of these days I am going to have to gather my courage to talk to my wife Liz about what she thinks about it. I look at the whole vocal process as putting on the finishing touches to any feminine gender presentation. It's a shame when we transgender women work so hard on our appearance from head to toe, to have it all destroyed when we open our mouths. I know there are many inexpensive tutorials around on line to improve vocal presentations. Many have to do with inflection and how you form your voice in your upper body. My training came through the VA and was very helpful in a short period. 

As with seemingly anything else these days, there are ways around any problem on the internet. I will probably seek out more help when and if I begin interacting with the public more. It's called having your voice and using it too.

It's Women's History Month

 

Image courtesy Christian Lue
on Unsplash

It's Women's History Month which means the world to all transgender women. It's the time of the year when we should scream from the rooftops we belong in the feminine universe known as women. I know you regulars probably have noticed over the years of writing this blog, I have attempted to keep being female and being a woman separate. Why?  Because I equate being a woman as a socialization process.  Being born female is an act of fate while making it into the status of being a woman is a learned process which many females never do a good job of completing.

Plus there are the age old theories you have to be female to birth a child, which is true but on the other hand you don't have to be a woman to not wanting or able to birth a child. My second wife was a prime example of a woman who never wanted a child of her own. All of that disputes the "birth theory" of womanhood as a fact. 

It seems with the rise of anti-transgender feelings has given the "TERF" movement, or transgender-exclusionary radical feminist added chances to be vocal. Especially across the pond where reader Paula Godwin lives. She once described the U.K as "TERF Island." Radical feminists reject trans women and refuse to accept us as sisters. Especially in "women only spaces". You are welcome to do your own research on "TERF's" but it proves to be a complex subject. To oversimplify it,  I always thought the radical feminists  resented us primarily because we used to be men in their eyes. 

I don't know why many so called feminists don't reach out and embrace transgender women during times such as Women's History Month. Most certainly we trans women had the chance to embrace the benefit of male privilege but we soundly rejected it for any number of reasons. Plus, with the state of anti-transgender issues everywhere, there needs to be strength in numbers. While we weren't born female, there still is much we can add to being a feminist. After all, we have seen  first hand the prejudice and discrimination which goes on against women. In fact many of us trans women suffer from a double dose of discrimination. First because we are trans and secondly because we are women. 

The end result to all of this is transgender women arrived at where we are by taking another path to our womanhood. But arrive we did and deserve to be recognized for it. Go head and celebrate your part in Women's History Month!