Prom Time

 

Image from Amy Kate
on UnSplash

I graduated from high school way back in 1967 and where I went to school in Ohio, going to prom was a big deal.

I was very shy and as it turned out my junior year in high school prom was my first date with a girl ever. I didn't even really ask my date out, it was pre-arranged by her friends who knew she did not have a date nor did I. So I was set up for success. 

Of course success for me was scary. I had no idea how I could ever spend an entire evening with a girl. What would I say? How would I even communicate? The only real interactions with girls were with my Mom. All others just seemed to be up on a far away pedestal I had invented. Then my gender issues came crashing in to make my problems even larger. All I really knew was deep down inside, I wanted to be the one wearing the pretty fancy gown rather than the restrictive monkey suit called a tuxedo. Worse yet, I had to spend my own hard earned money to rent a tux. 

It turned out renting the tuxedo was only the beginning of my expenditures. I was fortunate at the time to have had a very well high school paying job so my parents did not have to contribute much to my initial adventure with a girl. In order to go all out for the evening, tradition was the guy paid for nearly everything from flowers, to dinner at a supper club, to tickets to the after prom which was a way to spend the entire night out. What I didn't factor in was how much my date had to spend on finding a dress, having her makeup and hair done and of course locating matching shoes. All of the processes the girl went through for prom to me felt like a labor of love to me I couldn't have waited to try. 

My date's parents were doctors so Dad even went the extra mile and let me borrow his car for the evening. Needless to say, I was scared to death in my tux when prom time approached. Somehow I managed not to blurt out anything stupid when I was introduced to my date and let her Mom put the corsage on for me on my date's spaghetti strapped gown which I loved and told her so. Just didn't happen to mention just why I loved her dress so much as I wondered how it would look on me. Fortunately, we were meeting another couple for dinner, so I didn't have to feel so stressed about carrying any sort of a conversation myself. So far so good, my first date was coming off without a hitch and ironically I was able to experience some sort of transgender revenge when I went to the old supper club when it became a gay venue. I was there one night and was able to use the women's room completing some sort of gender circle in my mind.

By the time my senior year rolled around, I was a seasoned prom pro and ended up going to two proms in one night. Since I was dating a girl who went to a competing high school, we decided to go to both proms. I even drove my own car since she was familiar with it and I didn't have worry about asking my Dad for his car. Overall, I managed to have a good time since I wasn't so frightened of the whole experience. For the rest of my life, my prom experience was over. For better or for worse. 

Probably, my parents were relieved I was finally dating girls. I on the other hand wasn't doing anything to relieve my gender dysphoria. I still wanted to be my girlfriends and live their lives. My cross dressing tendencies continued all the way until I was drafted into the military and had to stop for obvious reasons. By this time, I had more to worry about than how I looked as a girl. I was looking at surviving college so I could stay out of Vietnam as long as I could.     

Today I see the young high schoolers seem to view proms as less structured affairs than we did so long ago. It's all for the best.

Transsexual Harassment

 

Pow Wow Image from the
Jessie Hart Archives. 

In a previous post I promised to write about the times I was sexually harassed as a transgender woman. 

The first time I experienced harassment came when I attended a nearby mixer/party with my second wife in Columbus, Ohio. The parties were relatively small but very diverse group. Anyone from cross dressers to transsexuals headed for gender surgery to male admirers attended. 

To begin with, my wife did not approve of the outfit I was wearing, saying it was way too short to start with. Of course I did not listen to her and went with the dress I wanted to wear anyway and yes it was very short on me. Even to the point of making it very uncomfortable to sit down even though I had freshly shaven legs and new panty hose.

Once we arrived at the party, I grew restless and needed to move around. Space was limited in the small house of the host so everyone was basically confined to the living room. There was also a hallway which led to a bedroom and bathroom. When I did get up, I didn't notice one of the male cross dresser admirers got up to follow me also. I was/am a big person and had never experienced any problems with my size before and was shocked when I saw how big the person who was suddenly stalking me was. Before I knew it, he had me cornered in the hallway and for the first time in my life I felt helpless. I didn't know what I was going to do until I looked up and saw my wife glaring at both of us. He saw her too and immediately backed off and the threat was over but not before my wife gave me the I told you so lecture concerning what I wore. Even though deep down I knew my wife was right, the deeper meaning of what happened to me never went away.

From that point onward, I knew how a woman could be overpowered and sexually assaulted by a man. I found out the difficult way, once I put on heels and hose and cross dressed as a woman, my male privileges changed forever. Gone was the idea I would not be stalked and attacked on a dark lonely city street or parking lot. Of course I needed to learn the safety lesson the hard way too. 

When I first came out of my gender closet, I frequented my share of three male gay venues clustered together on a city block in downtown Dayton, Ohio. Once I made into the venues themselves, I normally did not have any problems. It was when I was going back to my car one night, I ran into problems.  As I was walking down the sidewalk, I was approached by two men who ended up stopping me. I was lucky that night and was able to "buy" them off with the last five dollars I had. 

From that point forward, I told myself I would be safer where I went. I made sure I parked in lots which were safely lit and park as I could to where I was going. I even would ask friends to follow me to my car when I was out. I was lucky to escape any actual harm when I first ventured out of the closet as a transgender woman. I discovered negative harassment in no way validated me as a woman. All it did was put me in danger. In fact, it wasn't until I began to hang out and visit my lesbian friends did I learn I didn't need a man at all to validate my existence, transgender or not. 

Once I learned losing my personal safety as a former man was behind me, I could move forward and recognize what being an out and proud trans woman was all about. Transsexual harassment became an unwanted and unneeded determent to my life.   

A Toxic Male?

Image from Jurien Huggins
on UnSplash.

As I transitioned from a male to a feminine life, I often looked back at my life as a guy to determine if indeed I was a toxic male in any way. 

Of course I immediately mentally recoiled when I thought I could be toxic towards women in any way. After all I had spent a considerable amount of time worshipping the women around me, wondering how it would be to experience just for an instance being a girl. How come I couldn't wear the pretty clothes and be the gender who was so admired by the other. The problem with me was, I went way past just admiring a girl sexually, all the way to wanting to be a girl physically.  

Did any of it make me a toxic male? No, I don't think it did. In fact, I think the opposite happened as I put women up on some sort of an impossible pedestal. By doing so, and adding the fact I was extremely shy, I never had much of a chance to interact with girls or women growing up at all. From my perspective, the feminine grass always looked so much greener. 

Since I was forced into the male camp, I needed to learn to exist and had to put up with sexist comments directed towards women from many of the guys I grew up with all the way to adult hood. Mixed in too were the bullies I needed to somehow co-exist with. I learned to bluster my way around the bullies without jeopardizing my inner transgender self to ridicule or worse. In order to do so, I participated in as many of the male activities of the day as I could such as sports and cars. It worked and I was left alone for the most part and I even dated a few girls along the way. Since it is prom season around here, I am always reminded of the two proms I went to in high school. Even though I was the perfect gentleman at the proms, I wonder if my dates thought perhaps I was a little too timid and took it personally. I will never know because one of my dates and first serious girlfriend before college later in life committed suicide years later when her husband left her. What a shame. 

As I started college and started to date more regularly, I really began to see the results of toxic males around me. Especially in the fraternity setting I was briefly in. Certain fraternities were expected to co-mingle and party with certain women and sororities only where I went to college. I found out very quickly I did not fit in with the frats social system. Which was a forerunner to me not fitting in with the strict layers I encountered at the first cross dresser - transvestite mixers I went to. I felt so out of place and the only toxic people I saw were the "A" listers who were doing their best mean girls high school impressions. Maybe their male toxicity was bleeding through. 

I completely learned how not to be a toxic male when I settled into a career in the restaurant business. Along the way, as I progressed into higher management positions, I needed to coexist increasingly with women. Both crew members and managers. I learned quickly female crew members had the tendency to build cliques (not teams like the men) to be successful and the women managers I knew had to be tough but fair to survive. I on the other hand needed to be on their side when it came to battling any toxic males at all. Looking back, I think male toxicity was the prime reason for letting someone go. Which included sexual harassment which is a topic for another blog post.

My only regret was I wasn't a more vocal advocate for women my entire life as a man. I could have certainly spoken up when another guy joked about a woman. My only excuse is I was so intent on hiding my interior feminine self, I was afraid to do more. Transgender women and trans men speak of the importance of allies speaking up for us. I feel the same way about standing up for women before I transitioned. 

Being Prepared for a Transgender Future

Image from Chad Walton
on UnSplash.

For nearly a half a century, I hid behind the idea I was nothing more than a cross dresser who liked to wear women's makeup and fashion. What harm was I really doing? The answer is, the only harm I was doing was to myself.  

Had I known all I was doing was to prepare myself to transition into a transgender woman later in life, I may had approached the process in a different light. The problem was, everything seemed to be so life and death serious. Primarily since I was locked into a very lonely, dark gender closet. I had no role models around me to prepare for a highly uncertain future. No one to tell me my make up looked clownish and my skirt was way too short. I only had my old male ego and a mirror who were teaming up to make my life miserable. 

I really learned how miserable I could be when I began to leave my closet and explore the world.  Being stared at and laughed at to my face taught me the mirror could lie to me and the way my old male self was telling me to dress was all wrong. I was going back to my cross dressing drawing board too many times before I learned what I had suspected all along, becoming a part of the feminine gender was going to take a lot of work. I needed to go so far to finally understand all along I was a woman cross dressing as a man and not the opposite. 

The more I began to understand where I was in life, the more the future came into focus and preparations for major upcoming decisions became important. As I was exploring and building a new life as a novice transgender woman, it became clear to me I could indeed live my dream of living as a woman. Before I could arrive there, I still had heavy preparation work to do. There were major issues of coming out and telling what was left of family and friends I was a trans woman. Once I did, there would be no more running home and hiding in the mirror wearing a dress, The first person I told was my only child (my daughter)  went very well and I was emboldened to tell more people such as my only sibling ( a brother). He accepted my transness terribly so I ended up with an even split in salvaging any of the family life I had left since my parents had long since passed away.

The next crossroad I needed to navigate was what was I going to do about supporting myself in my new world. Following quite a bit of planning and preparation, I decided I was close enough to being able to take an early Social Security retirement which back in those days was sixty two. To get there, all I had to do was work another two years. Ironically, during the two years, I was able to prepare even further for my future when the Veteran's Administration Health Care System I was part of suddenly began to accept HRT or gender affirming hormones for veterans. So, the extra two years gave me the time to further prepare for a future which included changing all the legal gender markers I could including a new legal name. 

Since I was newly single again following my second wife's sudden passing, I really could use the time to prepare for the final transgender transition into a new life I had been preparing for since I was born.  

Saving my Own Life

Image from Alysha Rosly 
on UnSplash
 

 
I make no secret of my Bi-Polar mental condition which went undiagnosed for a good part of my younger life. 

Ironically, it was my first gender therapist who connected the dots and determined my condition when I told her I often spent days struggling to even get myself out of bed. I just thought I was riding the waves of gender dysphoria  which kept me so depressed or elevated when I was experiencing brief moments of gender euphoria. During this time of my life, I was far from being the easiest person in the world to live with. At the least, I was prescribed medications which evened out my moods. The meds also helped me sort out my gender issues and finally figure out one mental issue had nothing to do with the other. In fact my gender dysphoria was not a mental issue at all but instead an organic one. Had I listened to my therapist, she was trying to tell me all of that but I was unwilling to listen. Primarily because at the point of my life I was in, I was still a novice transgender woman and didn't know if I could live my dream life.  There were still too many gender bridges to cross such as telling family, friends and bosses I was transgender. 

The furthest I had come at that point was telling approximately five close friends and spouses I was a transvestite. A long way from living as a transsexual with all the resultant rules I would seemingly have to follow Such as major gender operations, moving away and then starting all over again. To make matters worse, I hadn't even thought much about my sexuality. Would I suddenly desire men sexually? I was overwhelmed with all the big questions and just continued my life as a very serious cross dresser. At the least, I was able to work on my presentation as a woman and go from there.

Even though, my solution was far from perfect, I was saving my life the only way I knew how. The problem kept reappearing when I started to go out more and more behind my second wife's back. When I did, I fairly quickly began to build up a robust life as a transgender woman. Every step I took, the more natural I felt when I could never see how I could go back to living a male life. The whole process created tremendous pressure on my already fragile mental  health. I became increasingly self destructive, all the way to an unsuccessful, ill advised suicide attempt. Essentially, from the point of suicide, I purged most of my feminine belongings and even grew a beard to prove to my second wife I could do it. By doing so, I was intensely unhappy for the short time she lived until passing away from a massive heart attack. I often wonder what would have happened with us had she lived.

Following the tragedy in my life, over a short period of time, I regathered myself and refocused  on a new feminine life. I quit dwelling on death and began living a preferred life as a transgender woman. By doing so, I was all of a sudden needing to quickly learn more than I ever imagined about my new life. Throwing out or giving away all my male clothes was at once liberating and  on the other hand, very scary. I had never purged my male self my entire life and he resisted. 

Regardless, scary or not, the process of a gender transition saved my life. Over a space in time, my mental health has stabilized and with the help of gender affirming hormones, for the first time in my life, my body and mind are beginning to mesh. The entire process took me a lifetime to figure out but as I always say, it all was so worth it. 

One Gender Size does Not fit All

Image from Grae Phillips 
on Geraldo television show.

 If the truth be known, all the way back when I was a kid struggling to understand what gender I was on any given day, I would have been known as gender fluid. 

Of course, gender fluid was a term which hadn't been invented yet. Anyone who was interested in cross dressing was branded as being a transvestite and even worse labeled as being mentally ill. In the middle of my gender vacuum, even I knew well enough I was not mentally ill just because I wanted to wear makeup and dresses. I hid my desires and hoped for the best, which mostly came when I was left alone to cross dress and admire myself in the full length hallway mirror at home. Most of all, I was trapped and could do nothing about it. Keep in mind, all of this was happening in the information "dark ages" before the internet and social media. The gender underground I was interested in came mainly from the pages of Transvestia Magazine and Virginia Prince. Even I knew the pages of the "National Enquirer" and other predecessors of Faux News who sensationalized cross dressers were not to be trusted.

Then came the barrage of so called reality television talk shows including, Donahue, Springer and Raphael. All of whom seemed to be pushing the theme of cross dressing husbands Except for the impossibly beautiful and talented "Grae Phillips" who put everyone else to shame. All of these shows probably did little or no good for my gender dysphoria except for publicizing the fact there were cross dressers of transvestites of all kinds at all. All I knew was I desperately tried to watch or tape every show I knew was coming up from my "TV Guide". My wife was trying to tape her soaps and I was trying to tape my talk shows and both kept us busy. Even though I still had to watch my shows in private attempting to learn anything I could about the outside world.

I did learn once again. my gender size was unique and did not fit all. In fact, I still felt out of place when I started to attend my first cross dresser - transvestite mixers here in my native Ohio. I discovered there were so many different levels of participation from transsexuals headed for gender surgeries down to the weekend cross dressing hobbyists.  For some reason, I was not part of either group and once again my gender size was not fitting in. The problem was, all of this happened before the transgender terminology was introduced. When it was and I started to have access to my first computer, I was able to research the term which was unknown to me. Suddenly I knew what had been missing my whole life, a gender size which fit me and I set out to discover more about being transgender. For me, it meant being part of a gender description which was somewhere in-between the spaces I had been in previously.

Even though my gender size did not fit all, finally I was able to locate my own niche to thrive in. Life became fulfilling, scary and exciting at the same time. I found out I was fine being who I was all along and it felt so natural. I was home. 

You got it...Now Live with It!

 

From the Archives, Club Diversity. Columbus 
Ohio.

For some unknown reason, I have been remembering more and more what my gender therapist told me so long ago, she couldn't do anything concerning me wanting to be a woman. Now I don't remember if she told me I could not do anything about it either. 

If she did and had I listened, I would have saved myself so much inner torment over the years from my gender dysphoria. At the time my male self was not even close to being ready to give up any claims to his life which at the time was becoming relatively successful. After all, he had worked long and hard to arrive at the point where he was. 

If I wanted to blame anyone but myself for not accepting my true authentic self, I would blame my home environment. I grew up in a very male dominated family. My Dad had two competitive brothers and his competitive personality filtered through to my brother and I. It seemed no one had girls in the family and if they did, they were second class citizens. How I existed was by keeping my true feminine desires a deep dark secret. I learned early the very male trait of internalizing any negative thoughts or ideas. The whole concept turned out to be very self destructive over the span of my life which included the years of being a very serious cross dresser or transvestite. The whole process nearly took my life before I finally figured out I had it, now I needed to live with it. 

All I wanted was the impossible. Give me back just a fraction of the time and effort I had wasted by trying against all odds to maintain any sort of a male life. The cruel and unusual punishment came in when the more I achieved as a guy, made it more difficult to give it all up. I had a spouse, family, friends and good job to suddenly consider. What would my daughter think? Not to mention my wife and brother. All of a sudden I needed to draw a line in my gender sand and decide which route in life I was going to take. 

Everything changed for me the night I finally decided I had put enough exploration as my feminine self to make the ultimate leap over the gender border. Needless to say, it was a huge weight off my shoulders. I had a chance to go back in life to a point where I was not so jaded by either gender and experience for myself what the future held for me. It was at this point friends jumped in and showed me the way I never thought possible. I found I had it all along. I was a transgender woman and now I had the rare opportunity to live with it. I discovered there was so much more I needed to learn when I entered the world as a trans woman. 

Plus it took a while for the overall excitement of transitioning into my dream life to wear off. Everything I did was new and different and even when I was not accepted, I learned from my mistakes and for a change, my inner stubborn streak served me well. I had it and now I was living with it. I guess if you are able to live long enough as I have, you have the opportunity to see life go full circle. I paid my dues as a guy and what he learned turned out to be beneficial in my new life as a woman.

Quoting the singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell song "Both Sides Now",  only when I was able to see the world from both sides of the binary genders, was I able to relax and enjoy my life. All along I had it and just missed out on the real possibilities of what I was missing. Living with being transgender was all that mattered.

Smiles Equal Confidence

 

Go Ahead and Smile from the
Jessie Hart Archives. 

Where ever I go in public, I try to lead with a smile to ultimately disarm any potential transphobic individuals. 

I have to remember also I look better when I soften my face which still has a tendency to go back to my old male scowl if I am not careful. A male scowl in my world always comes off as a bitchy look which I normally am never feeling. 

The whole process goes all the way back to the days when I was cross dressing my way to the front of the mirror. Since all the ups and downs which followed, I needed to learn to put my feminine image in motion if I was to succeed in following my transgender dreams. Since recently I have been getting out into the public's eye more and more again, I have needed to reinforce wearing a smile to boost my confidence as a senior trans woman. This morning was no different when I went with my wife Liz to her eye doctor visit. 

After I applied a light amount of makeup to go with my casual outfit, I thought for once I looked presentable for the world. I even tripped off my gender euphoria for a brief second. My euphoria lasted until I went through the door into the doctor's waiting room. For the briefest of time the two receptionists just stared at me and finally said how could they help me. Not the friendliest of greetings and I became worried about my presentation. Since I had quite a while to ponder the situation, I came up with the problem and it was all me.

I had forgotten the most important part of my presentation which is my smile. For the greatest majority of the public I face, a smile disarms them and allows me to communicate with them on a one on one basis. Plus when I am smiling, I am showing the confidence I need to enable the people in my world to be more friendly also. Most importantly, a smile is my best accessory when I use it properly. Not using it at all takes me back to the day when I was shopping for clothes and suddenly nearly ran into a girl child who was darting between the clothing racks. When she stopped and saw me, she exclaimed to her Mother "Look at the BIG woman." I had long enough to consider the kid at least called me a woman. Then she ruined the feeling by calling me a "BIG Mean woman." From then on I resolved to try to put a nicer look on my face and not scare the public with my bitchy look. 

After living a long unwanted life trying to exist in a male world, some habits are still hard to erase. Putting a smile on my face shouldn't be such a big deal but it is. So big, the whole process is as big as makeup, fashion and hair. Putting the whole image into motion is what counts for me to be truly successful as a full time transgender woman.  

Tenacity of the Transgender Tribe

From the Jessie Hart Archives. I am
in the middle of two friends.

It's no wonder so many women don't trust a transgender woman's desire to play in their sandbox. In my case, it took me years to understand what my second wife was trying to tell me about being accepted as a woman in any form. It took more than just appearing convincingly as a woman to come closer to being one. I was far away from paying my dues and for the most part, she was against me doing it. So, I needed to step out on my own to discover the world on my own. Thanks to all the years of practice in front of the mirror with my makeup and fashion, I had a fairly good basis to work from as far as my appearance was concerned. The only real problem I had was living through my faux fashion adolescence when I tried and failed to dress as a teen girl. Once I made it through that point, I was able to blend in with other women  my age and discovered I had an easier time in the world.

The more I explored, I found I needed more and more tenacity to reach my goal of learning what living the life of a transgender woman could or would be like. At this point the true struggle began. Just learning how to communicate with other women on their level turned out to be the main problem. I learned the hard way women communicate on more levels than verbal ones and often say things of a passive aggressive nature such as, you look good...for a man dressed as a woman. Or they were just trying to find out what you were doing in their world. On too many occasions as I was learning my way around the sandbox, I ended up suffering serious claw marks up my back. Another way to put it might be to equate the acceptance process with trying to jump on a moving merry-go-round and claim the prize without doing any of the work such as having periods. Rejection was not rare. 

It was on nights such as those, I went home in tears wondering if my whole transgender dream was worth it. On those occasions, something told me it was and my tenacity kicked in. Even with more explorations to do. I just had to continue until I got it right. Finally I did and I moved along to adding gender affirming hormones or HRT to my list of exploring ways to better femininize myself. Perhaps then and only then did other women see I was paying my dues to be admitted to their world. I had the tenacity. 

As I reach the age of seventy five, I think now, more than ever before in recent history the tenacity of the transgender tribe of women and men is being tested. Here in my native Ohio, the gender bigots in the state legislature are once again trying to push anti-transgender restroom bills in the statehouse. Hopefully, once again, more rational minds will rise up and reject the measure. If not, I wonder how the whole law will affect me using the restroom which matches my transgender status in the future. Needless to say, I am scared.  I mean how will such a law even be enforced if I am just trying to go to the bathroom. I don't want to even know. All I do know is I won't go back to using men's bath rooms after more than a decade using the women's room. 

Finally, what the bigots don't realize is, the trans tribe has been around forever and is not going away. We just need to move forward as a group to fight. Once the bigots see we are not going away, they will have to find someone else to harass and our tenacity will prevail.