Is Seeing Believing?

Image from Unsplash

 Many cross dressers or novice transgender women and trans men spend a majority of their time living in their mirror. Many because they don't feel secure in totally leaving their gender closets and checking out the world. I know I spent years over respecting whatever the mirror was telling me. I would think I looked extremely good, then immediately get laughed at when I gathered the courage to go out the door. I learned the hard way the mirror was lying to me. 

Once I did learn looking good in the mirror wasn't my primary goal, my life changed. Instead of the mirror the public became my focus in judging how successful my feminine presentation was becoming or, how far I still needed to go to be successful in my gender dreams. Once I started to begin to communicate one on one with other women, I began to see in their eyes and actions how I was doing. The whole experience of stepping out of the mirror and into the world was at once exciting and terrifying. But everytime I felt as if I failed, I picked myself back up and decided to try, try again. 

Along the journey also, I learned there were so many different kinds of women. Some were attractive and had their own sort of extra special passing privilege and others needed to work harder on their hidden strengths to get by. I finally concluded being the most attractive woman in the room was not a reachable goal for me but perhaps being the most authentic one could be. By setting a more realistic idea of how I was presenting helped me to survive in the world.

I wonder now with all the anti-transgender feedback going on in the country, how it will effect the segment of cis-women who do not possess passing privilege. What  will happen when other people begin to question their restroom usage?   Will the transgender community gain more allies by default? It will be interesting to see what a cis-woman thinks when she is faced with the same discrimination trans girls grew up with. 

If by chance you were a "natural" and your feminine transition was relatively easy, perhaps your life in the mirror was too. For the rest of us the learning curve was so steep, hanging on was often the main problem. The mirror was all we had to get by since we didn't have a real peer group to rely on. I have included the infamous "faux" teenaged dressing years in this thought. Sadly, most of us were far beyond our younger years when we first escaped the closet and tried out a new world.  

Seeing is believing for me came when I became confident I could negotiate the world as my authentic feminine soul had wanted to do for so many years. Mostly pursuing my goals as a very serious cross dresser. It took me many years to realize the truth I wasn't cross dressing as a woman at all. In reality, I was cross dressing as a man and the mirror never told me.

Impostor Syndrome Revisited

 

Pride Ohio River Photo
from the Jessie Hart Archives

For many years as I started my transition from male to female, I felt as if I was an actress just trying to fit in with the world. In many ventures into the public eye I felt I needed to concentrate on having a feminine walk, among other important things. In many ways I was creating my own problems as I began to settle into a public presentation which fit in with other women. As I was having fun exploring all the new aspects a woman takes for granted, I was feeling guilty about my progress.

All along I wondered why. After all I was beginning to live a life I  previously could only dream of doing. Perhaps it was because I was still experiencing my age old guilt I suffered in my lonely, dark gender closet as I was growing up. In other words I was experiencing the same old problem expressing my true authentic self. At times the struggle seemed to be to much to bear. As the saying goes, what doesn't kill you, just makes you stronger, did make me stronger in many ways and hurt me in others. I overcame by trying my best to explore ways to power through my gender issues. 

By powering through, I attempted many less than successful opportunities to express my new self. I ran the gamut of reducing a young grocery bagger to a stutter all the way to be snickered at and or stared at in public when I tried too hard to be sexy. I  found when I did that, I never had the chance to experience impostor syndrome because I was attracting the attention for all the wrong reasons. For awhile, one of my favorite activities was making sure my short skirt was even shorter when I slowly passed a semi truck on the highway. When the driver responded with a horn blast or the flashing of the lights, it validated my femininity. Which I discovered was all wrong.

My impostor syndrome really began to kick in when I found myself in situations when I needed to communicate one on one with other women. All of a sudden I needed to evaluate what I should talk about and how I was able to voice it. Often I would be talking with another woman feeling great then the doubts would set in and I needed to try to encourage myself to keep going. If you are familiar with bowling at all, it is similar to bowling three strikes in a row then overthinking the next attempt and totally messing it up. 

It took me many years to overcome my impostor syndrome by primarily realizing I had as much of a right to be a woman as the next person. As with every other female I had earned my socialization rights. I can't stress enough how difficult the process was for me. My deep seated paranoia (from childhood) that somehow living as my chosen gender was wrong took almost as long for me to completely overcome it.  But I did and these days my primary response to impostor syndrome is to get over it. Especially if I encounter any out spoken gender bigots.

My Last Date...as A Man

 

Long Dark Haired Wig Look
From the Jessie Hart 
Archives.

In many ways this was the final straw in my attempt to live in a male world. Approximately two years following the passing of my wife, I had the opportunity to date the Mother of one of my servers. She was smart, single ( near my age ) and very attractive. If I was a "real" man, she was the ideal woman I had ever wanted. As always, I realized nothing had really changed with my gender issues when it came to dating other women. Still I went ahead and tried and succeeded on setting up a few dates.

Along the way, we went on dates to places such as the Frank Lloyd Wright designed home in Springfield, Ohio all the way to a company sponsored suite at a Cincinnati Reds professional baseball game. Seemingly we were moving along at an reasonable rate until she sprung the question on me which probably ended it all. She asked me what my deceased wife would say about the situation I was in life without her.  I fired off the answer I drove her to an early grave without thinking of the consequences. Even though essentially I told the truth, I didn't immediately realize my future days with her were numbered. Obviously I decided not to mention any of my gender issues as probably added to the extreme stress of my wife's life.  

Through it all, my daughter had monitored my return to the dating field with some interest and at that time I hadn't come out to her as a transgender woman yet. As a gift she gave me two tickets to the late Joe Cocker who was performing at a nearby outdoor venue. I immediately took the opportunity to invite my new friend to join me. Initially she said yes and I thought all was good. Then about three or four days later she abruptly called me and said she wanted to end all dealings with me. I was shocked and said goodbye forever. Then I had to decide who I would invite to go with me to the concert.. Fairly quickly i decided I only knew one other woman well enough to invite and that was me. It was a great opportunity to judge how well I could present in a totally different situation. 

First I had to come up with a proper wardrobe choice which would blend in with a probable slightly upscale audience. For the evening I chose my black slinky wide legged slacks along with a black sleeveless top. The outfit was one of the benefits of having nearly hairless arms. By this time, I had arrived at a point where I didn't have to worry anymore what people may think of me for having hairless arms when I was still presenting as a man. For the evening I selected my long black straight haired wig to go with comfortable flats and sensible makeup to fit in. 

To my knowledge, all went well during the concert. Nobody gave me an extra glance and I was able to enjoy a cocktail as well as the concert. I ended up being one of the better dates I had ever had. A fitting end to my often discouraging history of my dating as a man. Something it turned out I never wanted to do anyway.  

When I transitioned to a transgender woman and was dating women such as my future wife Liz, I relaxed and was finally able to enjoy a new and wonderful life. The entire process was similar to everything else I had discovered about myself. Living a gender lie was never easy or successful, My last date as a man just proved it again.

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.