No Fear

Image from Brian Kyed on
UnSplash

 These days with the advent of all the current anti-LGBT and primarily transgender sentiment going on, it is very difficult not to have some sort of fear of going out in public. I know in my case during my long years of gender transition,  many times I was petrified of trying out my feminine world. Having more experience in failure more than success made me quite timid in attempting more and more on my path. 

I understand how difficult it must be to be a novice transgender woman or man and/or cross dresser seeking to explore the world. I am fortunate to live in a relatively liberal part of Ohio in suburban Cincinnati and I have a nearly constant fervent ally (my wife Liz) who accompanies me almost everywhere. 

Ironically, possibly  coming up at the right time  on the end of the month is the Transgender Day of Visibility celebrated around the world on the thirty first of March but here on the Saturday before. Despite no problems last year when I participated in the event, I can't help having the slightest trepidation on what may happen this year with all the TERF's and other gender bigots being emboldened by all the negative transgender news. Even with all of that, I still plan on being a part in my own small way.

I believe by participating I am honoring all of my past efforts to simply live an authentic life the way I saw fit. Along the way, I had more than my share of testosterone poisoning and conditioning to overcome on my gender journey. Perhaps in my small way, if I encounter any younger transgender women or men I can give them some confidence they can have some sort of a favorable future. I would think many of them are scared about their future. Neighboring Kentucky has just passed a highly restrictive transgender bill and Ohio has tried and failed so far. Which means it is just a matter of time before the bigots in the legislature try again. 

In the midst of all this negativity and darkness regarding our gender quests, it is important not forget our LGBT and transgender friends and allies. I wish I could name all the wonderful people such as the Kim's, Jen's and Debra's  who have touched my life in a positive way.  They embraced me at the same time so many others were rejecting me. Primarily, they enabled me to learn how it would be to live my dream of surviving and even thriving as my true feminine self. 

I'm sure I will mention it again as the Transgender Day of Visibility draws closer but I hope in your own way you have the chance to be visible. Even if you are still existing in your own closet's mirror. You never know when your life may change and you will be able to escape your closet and learn to have less fear and live an authentic life you have always wanted to live. 

Remember life can change on a dime. If you can just locate the dime!

 

Transgender Seasons

Summer Fashion from the Jessie Hart
Collection

Calendar spring is coming around here in Ohio early next week on Monday. Traditionally the calendar change does not mean the actual temperatures will change that much. In fact, we are expecting snow today just days before the season changes. Even though I realize from long experience with the weather around here, finally I am closer to leaving winter behind than ever before. Which means it's time for the exciting wardrobe checking  ritual. 

The entire wardrobe process has always been one of my seasonal treats every year. It is time for me to enjoy the benefits of being a woman. I was always so envious of the women around me when they could update their clothes to match the new season. Which I might mention we have four of here in Ohio. Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. Plenty of opportunities for change. 

Even though I haven't really taken the opportunity to go through all my clothes, I certainly need to do it soon. Plus, this season I feel I need to really get into and accept change is my clothing selection. I think I am still caught up in the Covid isolation times of the recent past. I need bright colors to brighten up my mood. I can also enjoy one of my previous favorite pursuits of being a transgender woman, changing with the seasons. 

I am not a huge fan of summer or for that matter winter. But this year we were able to afford a new installation of a central air conditioning unit. Which will help with our hot humid summers. And, we just got the new furnace installed for hopefully winter's last hold on us. The revival aspect of spring appeals to me too when the brown vegetation turns green and the tree's bud out and flower. For some reason, fall has been my favorite season. Perhaps every fall I thought it would be the year I could finally open my gender closet and explore the world. It was a colorful time of change and why couldn't I be part of it.  Ironically, fall was when I finally was able to transition full time to an out transgender woman. Since my birthday is in October, I felt in many ways I had gone full circle. Fashion-wise wearing boots, leggings and oversized soft sweaters really appealed to me. 

Cis-women probably take the seasonal fashion changes for granted. For transgender women fashion changes provide an extra opportunity to express our feminine side. Just one of the fun aspects of transitioning which at times can be so agonizingly difficult. Seasonal fashion changes are also a part of maintaining a positive feminine public presentation. Not unlike mixing business with pleasure. 

I also hope to for once do some serious shopping for spring fashion. It is definitely time.  

Girl Talk

First Girl's Night Out. I am on the
bottom left. From the Jessie Hart
Collection.

Every so often I reflect back on my first girl's nights outs.  Naturally before each event I was terrified. Here I was having the chance to enter a feminine only space I had previously only dreamed of. I was petrified of thinking what I would say to attempt to add in my input to all the conversations. What do women talk about when men are not invited to be around.

It turned out over the years I was fortunate to be invited to four girl's nights out. It turned out they were all unique in their own way.  

During the first one I learned women (as I suspected) were more apt to discuss, family and friends topics. No more relying on work and sports to get me by. I was lucky I had a supportive daughter I could talk about. Other than that, I had to sit back and be more of the observer rather than a real active participant. I didn't know several of the other women not shown in the picture and one didn't seem to care I was transgender while the other one did. I was a little surprised no one gently probed my reason of being there. It was probably because I was there with good friends such as my future wife Liz, Min and Kathy. 

Most likely the most exciting and scary girl's night out I was ever invited to came at the request of a couple servers at one of the venues I was a regular. One afternoon I was there and the servers came up to me and said they were planning a night out with a couple of other women and another nearby venue. As frightened as I was, how could I possibly turn such an invitation down. Since they were all young an attractive, I really had to try to step up my fashion game to fit in. I decided on wearing my favorite all black outfit. Wide legged pants and short sleeved top along with my long black wig. It turned out not to matter because all the other women, for the most part, were occupied by guys trying to pick them up and I was ignored. All in all, it worked out for the better.

Another girl's night out I was invited to was a Halloween party years ago. I had a fun time wearing my black tight legged leggings with boots and my big frizzy red wig. There was plenty of beer to be consumed and one woman even came up to me ad asked how I ever took care of all of that hair. It didn't  hurt that Kathy was there also and she was every bit as tall as me so I didn't have to feel self confident about being the tallest woman there. 

The one night out I missed through no fault of my own was a bachelorette party I was invited to, then it was cancelled. I knew the bride and her friends were a wild bunch so I was disappointed when it was cancelled. 

All of my "women only" events taught me I did have the confidence as a transgender woman to interact one on one with other women. I was correct in assuming when I subtracted sports and work from my conversation with others and added softer topics such as family and clothes I would be all right and I would be accepted into a new and exciting circle. Girl talk I discovered was fun. 

She Would Not say No

 

Image from Jazmin Quaynor 
on Unsplash

As my life progressed, I found my inner feminine self was certainly the dominate personality of the two binary genders I was forced to live. Seemingly, the male person I found myself trying to succeed at being was overall a dismal failure. I tried sports, auto mechanics and various other male dominated passions to no avail. The only real success I found was masking my inner feminine desires enough to keep the bullies off my back.

In the meantime, I suffered the usual gender problems others similar to me went through. Take sports for example. The long days on the football practice field were mixed in with watching the cheerleaders practice while I day dreamed about how much fun it would be to be one of them instead of yet another faceless defensive end. Finally I could take it no longer and quit the team. In many ways my "she" had won a major battle for supremacy. Of course, this was just one of many struggles to come in my life. There were the small ones such as simply slipping away in private and dressing like a girl. Which ultimately led to completing a transgender transition to a fulltime feminine life.

None of this was accomplished easily. First of all my inner "she" had to face the fact she was born into a very male body. When the very occasional feminine characteristic would creep in, my male self would try to battle back and squash it.  I think deep down all along he knew how the battle would go and he would lose. In the meantime my inner girl was growing into a woman  And the growth would require much more time and effort. All those days of simply admiring myself in a mirror just weren't enough.  More and more, she needed to get out and live.

The more she escaped, the more she wanted. Even when my wife and I came to an agreement I could spend time and money twice a week to get out and free my authentic self, it wasn't enough. Those were the days of trying to go behind her back and go out. The problem quickly became when I was living secretly more as my "she" than as my "he." The only real things which kept "he" grounded at all were my everyday macho work experiences which I was being paid very well to be successful at doing. Even with all the compromises to my life my "she" would not say no. She needed more and more freedom to express herself. Over all, the gender pressure on me nearly ended my life. I just couldn't take the pushing and shoving or ripping and tearing any longer, I needed desperately to find a way out. At that point I tried to kill myself with pills and alcohol and luckily failed. I think it was a compilation of both of my genders which caused the failure of the suicide attempt and ultimately the success of what happened later in my life.

After I tried self harm, I decided it was because of the influence of my "she" side and decided on a purge of everything feminine I was doing.  Little did I know I was doing it for my wife who would only end up living approximately six more months. Once she passed away completely unexpectedly, there wasn't much standing in my way to completely transition. Something I had been working for since early in life. Still my male side fought back because "he" still brought tons of baggage to the table. For a few more years I still had a job to worry about before I could retire and I still had to tell what was left of my family and friends I was transgender. Nothing it seemed was going to be easy. I viewed the whole process as sliding down a very slippery slope towards a very steep cliff.

Once I finally made the decision to jump, I was in my early sixties and it was one of the best decisions I had ever made. Allowing my "she" to rule my life and have the chance to live out her own life removed much if not all of the gender tension I was feeling. The final night when "she" would not say no was one of the best moments of my life. It all felt so natural.  

Trans Boomers

 

Without really trying to do so, I believe the blog has settled into having an older clientele, so to speak. Very rarely do I receive a comment from a younger transgender person or even a parent of a trans youth desiring to transition. By far the number of comments I receive come from other trans women of age. Meaning my age. I also have feedback from many other transgender veterans. Where ever the feedback comes from , I completely appreciate it. Here is my latest comment from a reader who prefers to keep her name private:

"When I look back, as I often do these days, I often feel that sense of regret for things done and things left undone. But, then I try to remind myself that my life has been remarkably good in comparison with the billions of sentient apes that have ever lived and is arguably better than most of the billions of humans who presently inhabit this planet. I do wish I had transitioned earlier and more gracefully, but imagine how many never had the chance at all."

Thanks for the comment! I like the parts about your life being arguably better than others who never stepped out of their comfort zone to live their dreams. Plus having the ability to have transitioned earlier with more grace really struck a chord.

I find the main things I have in common with other readers, is what we went through when we started to question our gender to begin with. The main problem we all had was the lack of internet communication with our peers. I remember distinctly the days when I communicated with other transvestites by writing letters, remember those? I believe my first experience with another "friend" on line was on an old "AOL" dial up chat room. All was proceeding past my expectations until my wife caught me one day. Then my brief experiences in chat rooms came to a halt. Until I could find a more secure way to do it.  Those were dark and lonely days in my closet but I was still desperate to get out and sample a more feminine world. 

It wasn't until I discovered Virginia Prince and Transvestia magazine, did I finally have a way to see there were actually others who shared the same desires as me. I was very excited when I learned the "Tri Ess" cross dresser organization  (which was somehow connected with Prince and/or Transvestia had regular meetings in my native Ohio. The first transvestite mixers I ever went to were a three hour drive away in a location up near Cleveland. Even better than that, I learned other organizations were planning get togethers in Columbus, Ohio which was only an hour away. I can't remember for certain now how many of the mixers I needed to attend before I began to feel more comfortable. I mostly was so dazzled to be around other people with similar gender pursuits to mine, I just came to view and judge the proceedings. 

The first thing I discovered was how layered the group really was. It seemed everybody quickly formed their own little cliques. Almost everything on the female stereotypical spectrum it seemed was there. And perhaps most dramatically, the rule that everyone had to be a heterosexual man was quickly thrown out the window. Too many people were disappearing behind closed motel doors to be totally innocent. Then there were the "mean girls" or the attendees who were often impossibly more feminine than the rest of the crowd and knew it.  I so wanted to look as good as them but without the attitude. The best part about knowing the mean girls was being able to go out with them and party after the mixer was supposedly over. That's where the true feminine action took place. Usually, a group went out to a large gay dance venue in downtown Columbus. Just being able to tag along and watch everyone else was my favorite part of the evening. Mainly because I was finally having the chance to live out my dream of living femininely. I felt I could never look as good as the mean girls but I could still enjoy myself.

Today I feel much has changed for the younger transgender population and that is mostly the reason for the "boomer" niche I find the blog to be in. These days (in at least many larger metropolitan areas) there are special LGBTQ organizations to reach out to. I can't imagine though the extra fear and even panic a younger person has these days when they consider coming out as transgender. I guess it proves no one gets a break, young or old, when it comes to being trans. 

I just wish as a trans boomer I could have helped provide a clearer and safer path for the younger generation today.  

Past, Present and Future

From the Jessie Hart Archives
The Ohio State Student Union with 
Brutus Buckeye

I know I write about my past experiences quite a bit but my excuse is I am old and allowed to. If you believe it or not it's my excuse and  I'm sticking to it. One thing I try not to do is dwell too much on the past to the point it effects my present. On the other hand, I find many of my readers who take the time to comment (thank you) share the number of years lived and similar experiences lived  as I have. Even more are very similar. Take the military for example. Since most of us who share the same age will agree, like it or not, the whole experience was a life altering time. Including what we were able to do concerning our gender issues.

In my case, the whole impact of losing three years of my life to serving my country did not impact me as much as what was going to become of my more than serious cross dressing urges. I couldn't imagine my drill sergeants in Army Basic Training would have approved of my favorite mini skirt or heels. On a serious note though, I learned several lessons in life from my gender dysphoria and the military. My biggest lesson learned from both was I could essentially make it through anything if I tried hard enough. In basic, for the first time in my life, I couldn't hide behind my skirts and use the excuse if I only was a girl, life would be better. Which might have been true but the problems would have still been there in a different form. 

The truth was the only unescapable fact that separated my past gender problems was my overwhelming jealousy women could not be drafted into the military and the burden of fighting all the wars and possibly dying fell upon the men. I learned the hard way in basic, to get over my problems and move on. Which was the best possible result which could have happened to me. I think too, my cross dressing-transgender past helped me to get by too. While it was true I couldn't sneak off and practice my feminine craft, I brought the idea with me that someday in the future, I would be free again to be as much of a girl as I wanted. 

Another part of the past which was really important to me was when my daughter was born. Little did I know how much she would force me to begin to settle my life down and be some sort of a father. An art form which I had little past knowledge of because for the most part, my Dad was very unapproachable. Even though my daughter was raised in two separate homes due to her Mother and I divorcing, later in life I found I must have done something right because my daughter grew in to having much of my spirit and also turned out to one of my main supporters during my gender transition. 

The problem is having the opportunity to learn from the past while still attempting to live the present in it's fullest.  Surely there are times I have a tendency to dwell on things I should have done differently in my life. Most certainly the possibility of transitioning earlier was one of them. Even though I know the world was vastly different. As the old saying goes, you can't cry over spilled milk and it quickly becomes useless to worry about the number of bridges you may inadvertently burned. It's a fact a long successful gender transition is better than never taking the chance to do it at all. I wonder how many tombstones in the cemetery would read "I wished I could have lived as my authentic self".  Which leads me to the future. Since I will be seventy four this year, I can see the end of the line and I worry about my health as well as the health of my loved ones. Then, of course what will become of me if I live long enough to find myself in an assisted care facility as a pre opt transgender woman. 

In the meantime, I do my best to honor the past, live in the present and plan for the future the best I can.

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.