Transgender Visibility versus Liberation

Image from Elyssa  Fahndrich
on UnSplash

 Recently I read a post from my statewide organization "Trans Ohio" which made the point Transgender Day of Visibility's  name should be changed to Day of Liberation. I thought what a great idea. Even though due to weather and mobility issues I did not attend the annual local TDOV event this past Saturday, I was there last year and several trans people are still stuck in my mind who were more liberated than just visible. 

Primarily, the one I remember the most was a young transgender girl. Probably around the age of fourteen who was there with her Mom. Seemingly she could not quite contain how proud she was to be in a safe space with many like minded individuals. I thought at the time how wonderful it must have been for her and her Mom to see all the supportive LGBTQA organizations who had set up there for the day. In the young girl's case, she was more liberated than just visible. The great thing was, she wasn't alone. There were many more in different age brackets attending too. 

The entire TDOV process took me back to the actual day when I decided to put away my male life for good and assume a feminine lifestyle. This included a personal pledge to myself to begin hormone replacement therapy to help me as much as possible femininize my exterior appearance to match my internal feelings. When I did it, I could not believe the amount of weight and stress which was lifted from my shoulders. In other words I was liberated and was coming home to an exciting and new transgender life. Not so different than the young trans girl I talked to at TDOV. From that point forward so many years ago, I started to wonder why I waited so long to do it. 

The main reason was my increasingly complex and pressurized male life kept getting into the way. Successes in my job, having a child and loving my wife all provided road blocks to me jumping off the gender transition cliff and liberating myself after living years in a dark closet. To make matters worse, once I thought I had liberated myself from my gender closet, I discovered I had only became visible in the world and the entire liberation process had a ways to go. Those were the terrifying yet exciting days of learning how to react to and communicate with the rest of the world. As this brand new person within me I thought I knew so well but didn't until I was able to liberate her. I guess you could say I was visible first and liberated second.

During the current wave of anti-LGBTQA and primarily transgender legislation from often crooked politicians it would be difficult to consider changing any of the regular annual trans events such as TDOV to Transgender Day of Liberation but it certainly does deserve a second thought.

Gender Enablers

From the Jessie Hart Collection
Jessie (left), Nikki (Center), Kim (Right)

 Perhaps you had a special person or persons who helped you to open your own gender closet and take tentative steps into the real world. Perhaps you did it all yourself. In my case, after a very rocky beginning, I was fortunate  to have had several enablers to help me along in my transgender journey. My rocky beginning started when I enlisted the help of my first fiancé. After much convincing and begging I somehow convinced her to help me dress head to toe as a woman. 

My initial introduction to having a cis-woman make me up and help me dress turned out to have mixed results. I learned my fiancé didn't really have that much more skill than I had when it came to the art of makeup. Most likely because by this time in my life I had literally years of practice on my own face. Quite frankly, I was a little disappointed by the entire experience. Again it was because I had been trying and trying any new fashion accessory I could afford to help my feminine presentation along. Outside of the temporary thrill of having another woman provide instant feedback to how I looked, the entire experience lacked much fun or relaxation for me. The big problem which came about was not so long after this, she would attempt to use my cross dressing desires against me. 

For some unknown reason, my fiancé had a real paranoia about me going away to serve my country in the military. All the way to telling me if I didn't get out of my draft status by telling the military I was gay, she would leave me. To make a long story short, I wouldn't compound one lie with another by telling the military I was gay. So just before I signed up for three years in the Army, I graduated college and we broke up. Even though the whole experience was very painful at the time, it turned out to be one of the best moves of my life and she certainly was not one of my gender enablers. 

From then on I resolved myself to telling any potential serious relationships I was involved with that I was a transvestite as cross dressers were known back in those days. The whole idea worked well with my first two wives. As it turned out, my first wife was so mellow with the whole idea I think she would have not been surprised if one day I told her I was going back to where I served in Thailand but this time for a sex change operation. I was very close to doing whatever I wanted gender wise until I met and fell madly in love with my second wife who I write about all the time because we were together twenty five years until she suddenly passed away. Ironically, she was a gender dis-abler because she became dead set against any idea of me being transgender and beginning hormone replacement therapy. Through it all, we managed to stay together and I tried to learn from all the "tough gender love" she gave me. If she knew it or not. For example, she was the first one to tell me being a woman was much more than just looking like one. After yet another huge fight we had.

Following her death when I was free to start HRT and begin to seriously explore the feminine world, I was so fortunate to have found several serious gender enablers who helped me find my way in the world as a transgender woman. I have mentioned several times in the past several cis women lesbian friends who taught me so much about finding myself as a transgender woman. To this day I don't think they ever realized what all they did for me as my gender enablers.

Around the same time, I met my current wife Liz. Without a doubt she became my best gender enabler when she told me eleven years ago she never saw me as being anything but a woman. More importantly she encouraged me to grow into the out and proud transgender woman I am today. Even though the journey was rough and filled with tough times, destiny showed me the way to what I should have always known was true. I was just cross dressing as a man and biding time until my true feminine self could emerge.    

Once I Started

 

From the Jessie Hart
Collection...The Ohio State
Student Union

I discovered quite early in life my gender identity was in flux. From the first time I felt the allure of feminine clothes to the first time I glanced at my girl self in the mirror, I knew I could never go back. In the classic feelings  of if I knew then what I knew now, I would have saved myself a ton of gender angst and unrest. Primarily I would have understood why the gender euphoria I experienced when I dressed as a girl was so fleeting. Before I knew it, I was back to my same old struggle to be everything male. I know now all of these feelings were the very beginnings of my desire to look more than like a girl. I wanted to be a girl. Long before the term was even invented I was transgender.

If I was wise enough to write down my deepest secret somewhere and hide it away, I am sure I would have told my future self to relax and enjoy the trip because in the end I would have no choice. No matter how hard he tried, my feminine self would in the end win and I would end up living full time as a transgender woman. Of course there was no possible way I could know all the twists and turns my gender journey would take me. My younger self would have known I would experience transitions in the middle of living in a major transition itself. My primary go to example is when I was living as a very serious cross dresser, I decided to transition again. This time to hormone replacement therapy and into a transgender life. There was no way my early self could predict what she was really asking for. She wanted me to uproot all the hard earned, unwanted gains I had achieved in the male world and finally realize they were all for not. Once I started I should have realized I should have fought harder to let my inner feminine self win and get on with living a better life. 

The major problem I would experience was all of the male gifts I experienced as I lived life as a guy. The biggest gift I experienced was the birth of my daughter who I love deeply to this day and she has been behind my transition since I told her tentatively years ago. I consider the whole experience as I said as the pinnacle of my life as most of the other so called accomplishments were rather shallow, such as success in my working world. 

My fondest hope I should have ever asked for was the wisdom of knowing my dominate gender was female in nature and even though trying to change it nearly killed me, I could never change who I truly was. The whole process was nearly miraculous in how a new wonderful feminine world was opened to me.  Once my she was given the chance, she quickly took over and established herself . Once I started my transition early in life it was a long project but one which was worth it in the long haul.

Transgender Survivors versus Victims

 

Image from Jen Theodore 
on Unsplash

There is a huge difference between being a survivor in life than a victim. Perhaps an over simplification of the two is a survivor takes what is given to them, lives with it and in the end result make it all better.  On the other hand, a victim becomes a martyr in their own mind and is slow to make improvements. It is very easy for a transgender woman or trans man to be a victim. After all, why were we "chosen" to live such a difficult life. Often it takes years to realize we are not victims after all. For some reason we were given the opportunity to explore two sides of the binary gender spectrum. 

By years I mean the struggle we go through to just fit into a society which seems increasingly hostile against us. I went through some of it yesterday when I was running my errands.  My first stop was at the Post Office where I stopped to mail one of Liz's (my wife) packages which contained her handmade beaded jewelry she makes. I could only describe the woman at USPS behind the counter as older and somewhat bewildered with her meeting a transgender woman probably for the first time. But, since it was the weekend of  Transgender Day of Visibility, it was a good as time as any to be exposed to the real world. In a matter of seconds I dropped off Liz's package for it's trip to California and the clerk turned her attention to her next postal patron. 

Ironically, on my way back home, I needed to stop and reward myself for all the errands I attended to. So I stopped at a coffee shop drive through for a special coffee brew. One for each of us. As I pulled up to the window at the drive through, I was waited up by a cute, tattooed obviously young queer girl who was very nice. Perhaps she noticed we were distant cousins on the LGBTQA spectrum. To keep the line moving, I quickly paid and exchanged pleasantries with her and was on my way. Looking back, she reminded me of my transgender grandchild. I left with the hope she has a bright future of life ahead of her.

So, in the matter of two stops I had seen both ends of the public gender spectrum. One bewildered older person and one friendly energetic queer person. By now you may be wondering what all this has to do with victims versus trans survivors. I learned long ago, I couldn't run and hide if I was ever able to progress in the world as my authentic feminine self. I needed to overcome all the nights of coming home crying after being laughed at or stared at in public. I think being a survivor to me was when I came to the realization if I could never be mistaken totally for a cis-woman, I could still live a life as an out fulltime transgender woman. I wish I could tell you where I came up with the strength to be a survivor rather than staying home and feeling sorry for myself. Perhaps my best trans girlfriend at the time said I passed out of sheer willpower. I believe it was because deep down I felt what I was doing was right and felt so natural. Just to be able to go out and free myself from my gender closet encouraged me to not be a victim. Perhaps for the first time in my life. 

The urge turned out to be so strong for me to live as a woman, I was able to overcome the false idea that women have an easier life than men. When in realty, the opposite happened. I learned a cis woman's life was a many layered often difficult existence and I wanted to learn more and more. As I did I became more of a survivor than I ever thought I could ever be as I lost all of my male privileges. No more could I expect to be respected because of my white older maleness and be called the hated and unwanted "Sir" word. I needed to start all over again in a feminine foreign world and prove once and for all I was a survivor versus a victim. Now we all need to be survivors to battle all the gender bigots seeking to erase us. Perhaps now more than ever before.    

Girls, Girls, Girls

Image Courtesy 
Motley Crue

This morning following a quick trip to the post office, I happened to hear the group Motley Crue sing their song "Girls, Girls Girls".  Hearing it always takes me back to experiences with girls I had when I was growing up. I would say my formative years but then I think I am still in my formative years in many ways during my senior years. 

I grew up outside of a small to medium sized town in a pre-suburban rural area where there were relatively fewer children in the neighborhood. As I remember, only around six and only one of them was a girl. It was definitely a male dominated structure including our family lives. There would be no discussion at all of the possibility of not wanting to be a boy at all. The problem I had was I had very few feminine role models to interact with in my own peer group. Since I was exceedingly shy, my gender issues which I was becoming increasingly aware of became even worse. Much of the problem was I was too isolated from girls and watched them from afar. 

Since I did live in a rural area, the school I went to was small also. In fact I went there from Kindergarten through the ninth grade with basically the same students which meant the same girls. When I hit the eighth grade and puberty began to set in, more and more I began to realize I didn't just want to socialize with the girls, I wanted to be one of them. I remember vividly how a few of the girls would wear their mini skirts, cross their legs and tease all the boys who wanted to admire them. I so wanted to be like them.

Little did I know, the older I became, the stronger my desire to be a woman would be. As I was a disk jockey for many events, I wondered how it would be to be a female groupie for one of the major musical groups they followed.  I was really triggered when my second wife and I went to one of the many Jimmy Buffett party/concerts we went to in Cincinnati. Of course there were tons of scantily dressed attractive women to look at. Even though I was a "Parrot Head "and loved the music, I couldn't get over how much I wanted to attend and look just like one of the attractive women I was admiring. As I did many times back in those days, I just tried to drink my feelings away to no avail.

Sadly, these days, "Jimmy Buffett" still comes to Cincinnati for a fun riverside concert but even though I could go now as a transgender woman, it would be very difficult due to my problems walking any distance at all. It seems my desire to be among the  "girls girls girls" in a big party situation will have to wait for another lifetime.  In the meantime, I can still listen to the song with the satisfaction I made it to my goal of living as a transgender woman.

Transgender versus Bi-Polar

Image Courtesy Fa Barboza on
UnSplash 

Years ago, when I was diagnosed having a Bi-Polar disorder, suddenly a portion of my life I had struggled through so long made sense. At the time I was going through terrible long lasting mood swings that often lasted for days on end. On some days I found it very difficult to even get out of bed and go to work. Plus, to make matters worse I tried to self medicate with immense amounts of alcohol.  At the time I was seeing one of the only gender psychologists in Ohio at the time. Ironically, she almost said immediately she couldn't "cure" my gender desires to be a girl but started to question me in depth concerning the immense mood swings I was suffering through. After a very short time she explained to me my moods were not all attributed to my gender dysphoria but in reality I was suffering Bi-Polar issues. 

At the time, I was relieved. She started me on medications which I remain on to this day. In addition I was able to separate the problems which were hurting my everyday life. At times it seemed unfair I needed to live with being transgender as well as Bi-Polar at the same time. But who ever said life would be fair (said my parents). 

Once I found my way into the Veteran's Administration health care system, I needed to separate my two main issues. I certainly did not want one issue to interfere with the other and somehow the "experts" would say my Bi-Polar condition was due to me being transgender. Then my quest to be approved for hormone replacement therapy would be rejected. At this time I was assigned to a therapist I would never forget. Destiny was smiling on me and way back then there were few therapists who knew little to nothing about transgender issues. Defying all the odds, I was assigned to one of the few VA therapists who did. She never questioned  my two issues and immediately began to fill out and approve the paperwork to allow me to begin HRT.  At the same time she cleared the way for me to continue my Bi-Polar treatment so my moods and excess anxiety was kept under control.  I was with my therapist non stop until last month when both of us decided it was time to conclude our sessions since so many others needed it too and VA staffing levels weren't getting any better. I am extra fortunate also to have an understanding wife  who can help with any of my mental health issues. 

In my past I have encountered several other transgender individuals who said as soon as they completed their gender transition all their anxiety and/or depression faded away.  I was just not as fortunate.  For better or for worse it seems my Bi-Polar issues are irrevocably intertwined with me being a transgender woman. It is something I just had to learn to live with. With a lot of help!

Making It

Photo Courtesy
Jessie Hart Archives

 In many ways this post is an extension of yesterdays which mentioned the feelings you had when you saw your true self for the first time. In this post, I am going to look at the point you when you figured you had achieved a portion of your gender goals. My example is looking back to when I started to break out of my gender closet and explore the world as my feminine self. 

It all happened when I got past dressing as a trashy teen girl in a male body and learned more or less what I could wear to fit in and blend in with the public at large. Without attracting undo attention to myself.  The hard way I learned the meaning of fashion styles such as business professional and boho to name a few. If I wanted to blend in with other professional well dressed women at an upscale mall, I would dress in my best business professional outfit. I was able to purchase on sale a beautiful black pants suit I loved which I paired with black heels or flats and my shoulder length blond wig and never had a problem when I went to an upscale venue. To this day, I wish I had a picture but I don't. 

On the other hand I had several "Boho" influenced outfits I wore frequently to the other venues I went to such as sports bars. The fashion influence came as close as I could come to my late college, pre Army days when I yearned to be influenced by the hippie style of the women I admired. The true success to both of the fashion styles I was attempting was I was all of the sudden "making it" in the public's eye. When I did, I found I could then concentrate on the finer challenges of being a woman. Which up till then, I thought was an impossible goal. In other words, I could concentrate on moving more femininely as well as the most important challenge of all...communicating one on one with other women. Initially I was caught off guard with how many women wanted to start a conversation with me. Looking back, I am sure the great majority of them were just curious of why a former male person would want to join their world. Conversation starters such as I love your earrings were common. When it happened I was scared even more because then I had to rely upon my challenged vocal skills to get by. 

Ironically, making it on occasion brought more challenges than benefits. Every time I made it to one goal such as basic communication, it all felt so natural I needed to move forward to another equally as distant goal. Such as maintaining my feminine self longer and longer before I needed to go back to my unwanted old male self. The longer I waited to go back, the more distant his memory became and the only real hold he had on me was the love I felt for my wife of twenty five years who was adamantly against my final trnasition to a all feminine lifestyle. When she tragically passed away from a heart attack at the age of fifty, my path was suddenly open to change my gender lifestyle to be a full time transgender woman. 

Finally, when all the expected and unexpected effects of hormone replacement therapy set in, I knew I had all the help I needed to never turn back. I most certainly had reached the true point of making it.

Meeting Yourself the First Time

 

Cell Phone Picture from the 
Jessie Hart Collection

Perhaps you remember when you glanced in the mirror and saw your true, authentic self looking back. I know I do. It was such a long time ago, I wondered if I thought this is great but what do I do next. What I ended up doing was going on a lifelong search to discover the feeling of meeting myself again. For the most part the process led me to an often ill fated worship of mirrors. The only other outlet available to me was the invention of disposable camera's. I took the pictures to a drive thru kiosk to be processed. Which led me to an embarrassing moment when I turned in a roll of film which turned out to be less than flattering and then having it developed by someone I knew. From the look on his face when I picked my pictures up, I knew he had a fairly good idea I was a cross dresser. 

The only other alternative available to me was the Polaroid camera when it was invented and coming into it's own commercially. As I remember, the pictures were very expensive to make up for a do it yourself photo experience. Even though I managed to buy a camera finding someone to take a picture became the real problem. I had considered the fact I thought I looked fairly good as a cross dresser in the mirror but how did it all relate to how I appeared in a picture. Which is as far as I could sneak out of my gender closet at the time. Plus, I had just started to receive my cherished editions of "Transvestia" magazine, so I was eager to compare myself to all the featured transvestites I saw there.  Somehow, someway I convinced my wife to take a few pictures of the real me so I could look. 

As I try to remember all those years ago, I still can't say I was seeing any more than the occasional sight of my true self. I was probably teased enough to think I was but all in all I was still missing the mark. I was so desperate to open the door of my gender closet anything I tried looked good by comparison to my old, boring unwanted male self. 

These days, cell phones and their advanced cameras are everywhere and it is difficult to remember when they weren't. I remember vividly of trying to talk my wife into buying me a new cell phone with a camera so I could sneak around and take pictures of myself. Sadly she had passed away before I attempted to become proficient at taking pictures of myself on a cell phone. Now, with all the photo apps available to nearly everyone, you have to take most pictures you see with a grain of salt. Many are out and out fakes. Regardless, it is still a luxury to me to be able to have such a convenient portable device with me which can help me document my true self.

Amazingly, meeting myself for the fist time still happens over and over again when I get up and look at myself in the mirror. Some days I am pleasantly surprised when I see a feminine person looking back at me. On other days, the opposite happens and I am depressed when I see my old masculine self still peeking back at me. Anymore I am used to the process and just move on before my gender dysphoria can return in full force and depress me. One thing is for sure, the ability to meet yourself for the first time is never boring.    

Looking for Love

 

My "Sad Eyes" Photo
from the Jessie
Hart Archives

Perhaps I should say looking for love in all the wrong places. Maybe you remember the country song from the "Urban Cowboy" movie. Sadly due to extreme loneliness many transgender women and trans men experience, we sometimes look for love in all the wrong places. Back a decade or so ago, on line dating was just becoming a thing and due to my extreme loneliness I thought I would give it a try. Due to a lack of finances and overall knowledge I attempted to find dates on three of the free dating sights.  My biggest success turned out to be a real bonanza. 

On one of the sights I had a response when I was on a "woman seeking woman" page. To be clear, I was always up front about being a trans woman which wiped out much if not all of my responses.  Ironically, I had a response from my current wife Liz eleven years ago when she said I had sad eyes in my profile picture. Since she only lived a manageable distance from where I did, we decided to correspond in writing. The "writing" phase of our relationship started eleven years ago and we are still going strong. It took awhile though for me to feel secure enough with my voice to talk to her on the phone but when I survived the test I decided to gather the courage to ask her out on a date. She was a Wiccan lesbian and sad eyes or not I was fascinated,  The first date was a drag show and all went well, even when I followed her into the women's room on our way to the gay bar which was putting on the show. She didn't flinch much and our first date was fun and successful. 

At the same time, I was still frequenting the big sports and social venues where I had become a regular as a single transgender woman. The only problem with all of that was, the usual stigma attached to a single woman drinking by herself in a bar. For the longest time I was unsuccessful in locating any companionship in any way. Outside of a few dates I had with men who actually bothered to show up as they had promised. The brief encounters I had with men were strangely exciting but not to the point I could ever feel comfortable. Especially with the men who seemingly wanted to just wear my panties. As close as I came to really ever getting around to knowing a man I met was the one I ended up meeting briefly at a TGIF Fridays Grille and Bar I was a regular. He was a big sweet heart who drove a classic motorcycle and had just gone through a very messy and brief marriage with a part time exotic dancer he had just met. I was able to lend a sympathetic ear and in a short time we became friendly but not to the point I ever got the chance to ride on his bike before he was transferred out of town for a new job.  As I bid him farewell, little did I know he would be the last man I would be interested in and women were to be my future as I was looking for love or at the least, companionship. 

By pure accident I was able to meet two other women who happened to be lesbians. One was the Mother of a bartender I knew The other indirectly introduced herself one night to me in venue where I was drinking. Together, the three of us formed a bond and we had good times partying.  Topped off by the experience of going to lesbian mixers and being introduced to the culture. It seemed destiny was paying me back for all the recent hard times I had suffered by providing me with a group of friends who provided fun and companionship including one other transgender woman who sometimes joined in and partied with us.

Call it luck or not but somehow I was able to sort through the junk and locate quality friends who helped fill my void of not having any friends. It took awhile and effort but I did find love by looking in all the wrong places. I found good people and to this day I am still married to one of them.