Unlearning LIfe

 

JJ Hart

Over time, I spent so much time and effort unleashing my male past, I cannot remember it all.

As soon as I could think about myself, I knew something was wrong. I just did not know what. Primarily, I did not know I was trying my best to survive in a male world I wanted very little to do with. Perhaps the biggest problem came when it was time to unlearn all the male life I was forced into. I was the proverbial round peg in the square hole, and I did not like it, even though I was rewarded with white male privilege when I was successful.

By choice or not, it seemed I was always fighting myself or the world for my gender dreams or goals. Very early I knew somehow, I wanted to be a woman someday, a deep dark secret I needed to keep to myself. Overall, I was deeply conflicted about where my life would end up because it seemed as if I was on a runaway gender train I could not get off.

A prime example was when I entered male puberty. I watched in shock as my body grew angles, and I needed to walk like a man. I am sure I was a comical sight, but I tried. I did not want to be referred to as a sissy and bullied in school and I was successful. Until it was time to reverse it all. When I left the cross-dressing mirror and entered the world as a novice transgender woman, there was so much to do as I was busy unlearning my male life. First of all, there was that male walk I needed to get rid of. There was no way I could overcome the positive feminine presentation I had succeeded at doing, if I was going to continue to walk like a man. Plus, I had the challenge of doing it in heels.

When I learned to walk in heels, I learned the inherent power of female privilege. Suddenly, my legs looked better, and men paid closer attention to the clicking of my heels. I just needed to match the rest of my fashion to blend in with my shoes. Since I loved my boots, the first thing that I did was try to save up for a pair of nice, heeled boots and find them in my size. Thank goodness for Payless Shoes. For the most part, I did good in my heels except for the time I got a heel stuck in a sidewalk crack in a mall I was walking in and the time I fell on a wet spot in one of my regular venues I was in. I survived and learned I needed to be more comfortable.

Another major gender response I needed to unlearn was to always look another woman in the eye when I talked to her, especially in bathroom situations. Eye to eye contact was normal in women’s rooms and totally not in men’s rooms. The new rules of the “room” I needed to unlearn and relearn if I was to survive as a transfeminine person.

Another major point of contention I write about often, is the difference between male and female aggression. I needed to unlearn the old male aggressive ways of coming right at you. On the other hand, I was clawed many times when I failed to recognize the passive aggressive intentions of a woman I was dealing with. Often behind that smile was a sharp pair of claws waiting to take a shot at my back. I needed to keep my head on a swivel and always be careful when I was dealing with other women in the girl’s sandbox. Lesson learned and I moved on as a better transgender woman.

Finally, all these lessons began to come together in my life, and I started to become a whole human being again. But this time, a human I wanted to be. No more unwanted male who I still needed to fall back on in times of duress. Afterall, I had to live with him for nearly fifty years, so there was some good to remember. I found I could relate to both binary genders better and understand where they were coming from. Of course, men were the simpler of the two genders as I suspected and women were more complex, and they led more layered lives.

None of it mattered to me as my world opened in ways I never imagined. Going to the extreme of unlearning my old life was radical but then again, I was able to make it work in my own way. If you are searching, just be aware everyone’s journey is different but maybe you can make it too if you are careful. There are huge inherent problems when you decide to forsake your male privileges and enter a new gender world.

 

 

Painting Myself into a Corner

 

Image from UnSplash.

I was always an adequate house painter and not much more.

Possibly my biggest problem was ever finishing a project. Every time I would start, I got bored and quit before the project was done. There were even times when I would unknowingly paint my way into corners. Little did I know, all of this would carry into my life as a cross dresser and later a transgender woman.

Like many of you, I started experimenting with my mom’s clothes which I became attracted to at a young age. It was most likely a carryover from watching mom (and admiring) put on her “face” or makeup as she called it. I wanted to see how the whole girl package worked for me. At that point, I began to place myself in danger of painting myself in a corner I could not get out of. The corner I am referring to is being caught and facing irreplaceable damage to my life as I knew it in a male dominated family. As the oldest son, I was expected to carry on a macho tradition.

The problem was of course I did not want anything to do with male tradition because I was enjoying my alone time cross dressing as a girl so much. I worked onward on my feminine artwork, as I sought to buy my own makeup and pantyhose from my allowance and newspaper route money. Then I experimented with my limited time until I became a little bit better and did not look like a clown in drag. I was slowly finding my voice as a transfeminine woman.

The more I discovered, the more I risked painting myself into a corner. When I was in the corner, sometimes I paused to look around for a reality check. An example was the night I was in one of my regular venues dressed to fashionably blend in with the rest of the women and I needed to discover if I wanted to escape the corner I was in at all. It turned out I loved the real me and wanted more time out of my closet. I was beginning to learn who I really was, but it turned out I would have many more corners to paint myself into. Such as settling into one new person and not changing each time I went out into the public. I was shocked how quickly people remembered me; I needed to wear the same wig as a start to solidify my future in the world as a transgender woman. In a way, the experience was boring because I was always enjoying my newfound ability to shop in wig stores for the so-called perfect hair after waiting all those years to do it.

Another of the major corners I painted myself into was how I ended up just pursuing the basics of communicating with an all-new world. I never expected people (particularly other women) would ever want to talk to me as a woman because they rarely wanted to as a man. My guess is the women were just curious about me wanting to be in their world, or just I did not threaten them anymore when they let me behind their gender curtain.

In many ways, my decision to undertake gender affirming hormones was me painting myself into a corner was the biggest risk I had ever taken. Undertaking HRT was my own ride or die. Either I made it as a transgender woman with the help of hormones would preclude me ever going back to a male life I never asked for, or I would have to find another way out. Spoiler alert: I was fortunate when I cleared the medical screening, I needed to begin what I considered to be lifesaving hormones, and I flourished. My decision could be compared to a gender insurance policy. I was making sure I was successful when I finally synced up my inner and outer selves.

Today, I have put down my paint brush and concentrated on living my life as a supported transfeminine person. Sure, I confuse some people with how to refer to me, but that is their problem not mine. They need to be educated to the world anyhow. Transgender women and transgender men are not their enemy, but their ignorance is. I filled my world with acceptance from a loving world and watched many other people paint themselves into their own corners. I took many risks along the way to do it and out of sheer will power to do it.

I have felt the depths of loneliness, all the way to having a new family all my own (except my daughter of course, she was always there). I don’t think I would recommend such a unique human journey to anyone else, but it was anything but boring.  As a painter, I have finally come close to finishing a project.

 

 

 

 

Did I think Life Would Turn Out this Way

 

JJ Hart.

Did I think life would turn out to be this way, I would have said NO!

In the earliest days of just exploring my mom’s clothes and admiring myself in the mirror, I never thought life would have become as complex as it did. For years, I thought my cross-dressing urges were an innocent hobby which hurts no one. I was entertained and it was all that mattered in my selfish world.

Little did I know, all I was going through was just the beginning of my life I would have to adjust to if I was going to survive. I was embarking on what turned out to be a very unique life as I had the opportunity to live life in two of the main binary genders.

To put it all together on a timeline, I was in my thirties when I first read the term transgender for the first time, and I thought I had finally found a term which described me. Or, at least put words to my gender dream of possibly living a transfeminine life. Up to that point, I had only experienced the other gender variant people I met at various mixers I went to. When I attended the mixers, I met everyone from cross dressers in cowboy hats barely covering their masculinity all the way to impossibly feminine transgender women who were on their way to surgery. I certainly did not think the mixer I went to would turn out that way. I was expecting to attend, meet people like me and come away with new answers about myself. Of course, it did not turn out that way, and I came away with more questions than answers afterwards.

Primarily, I found myself on a sort of a gender balance beam. I was very clumsy and became well versed in playing both sides of the gender spectrum. At times I was good at my games and at times I was very bad, and I suffered. Through the bad times I needed to keep my eye on my gender dreams, be selfish and do the best I could. Perhaps the worst part was, I still did not know how any of it would turn out.

It was only when I managed to escape my dark, lonely gender closet and explore to learn if my future transgender dreams were possible at all. I was in a long-term marriage with a woman I loved, in a successful job and outwardly living a good male life. Why would I want to sacrifice any of the white male privileges I had earned. I did not think on occasion that I ever could.

What changed everything for me was the further I went on my journey, the more natural I felt. I began to think more about my life was meant to be this way. When I was selfish in my gender choices and I did my best to be a chameleon with my life. These days, I would be known as being gender fluid. Another term not known in those days, instead I thought of myself as an androgynous person. Especially when I started gender affirming hormones or HRT. What happened was, I really started to play with fire then. I had given myself a loose timetable until I made the final transition from male to female but could not keep it when the changes to my body became much more noticeable than I had ever imagined.

I never had thought in a million years, my life would turn out this way and I needed to arrive at a point where I needed to be selfish again and give up on my male self. My longer hair, softer skin and budding breasts were giving me away. It was time for a change. In fact, way past time for me to face the inevitable, I should have been living a transfeminine life all along.

All the torment and balancing acts I put myself through were no more than tormenting myself needlessly. Perhaps the final clue was how quickly my body took to the new feminine hormones. There was no negative to the process at all and the calm I suddenly felt led me to feel I was in the right place.

So, no, I never thought I would be in the spot I am in today. I am living as a transgender woman with a wife who supports me totally. The only slice of life I lost was my brother’s acceptance which was overcome by my daughter’s. It has been over a decade since I have spoken to him and truthfully, I haven’t missed our interaction. I am sure I had a few lucky breaks along the way, but for the most part, I think destiny was leading the way. Along with my stubbornness to continue my journey. It does not matter as it all worked out.

 

 

It's Just Life...Not a Joke

 

Image from Engin Akyurt on UnSplash.

It took me awhile before I finally came to the point in my gender transition when I gave up and thought the whole process was just life and not some sort of an evil joke.

I had struggled enough through the years when my male self-put up quite the struggle to exist at all. It was as if he was on a slippery slope towards losing his life altogether. To make matters worse as I always point out, my male side’s life was not always that bad. I had a long-term marriage, close friends and a good job to fall back on when I needed it.

Through it all, I thought it was only the draw of the feminine clothes which kept me longing for another trip to the mirror. I did not realize my feelings went much deeper than that. I was feeling life itself. It took me many years and even decades traveling a very curvy and bumpy gender path to realize where I was. Plus, many times, when I realized where I was, I became scared of losing everything. Falling off a gender cliff became a real possibility.

No matter how frightened I became, somehow, I kept on moving forward thanks mostly to the brief moments of gender euphoria I was feeling. The interludes helped me to determine if my dream goal of living a transfeminine life was possible at all. Back in those days, I was immersed in the struggle to present well as a woman and not much else. In fact, when I go back and read my earliest blog posts, I cannot believe how much they emphasize fashion and makeup. It all happened long before I needed to learn the layers of life a woman goes through to live her life. It was like my wife told me be man enough to be a woman. In those days I was not as I made weak attempts to live in both main binary genders.

In the short term, I did not understand what my wife meant as I became semi successful in presenting well in the world as a woman, but I had not paid my dues. I found I would have to wait until my wife had passed away before I could earn my way behind the feminine gender curtain to be allowed in by the ciswoman gatekeepers. It was about that time too when I began to understand my dream of ever becoming a fulltime transgender woman could be possible. It was much more than a hobby or part-time profession; it was my life. Then my realization led me to understand what my wife was talking about. I needed to set off on an all-out journey to live my best life as a transfeminine person. I even needed to understand questions about my own long held sexuality. If I lived as a woman, would I suddenly have to like men sexually? I just didn’t know until I set off to experiment.

Along the way, I did manage a couple dates with men which led to kissing but not much else and I did not feel much of a spark of any kind. On the other hand, I was surrounded by curious ciswomen (including lesbians) who wanted to socialize with me, so I was happy, I had always been a contradiction in terms socially, meaning I always enjoyed company even though I was shy and I could continue to feel that way. My life was beginning to come together in ways that I never imagined possible.

For example, I never imagined I would have been able to enjoy a small closely knit group of women friends who taught me more about life than they ever knew. Without any pressure, I was able to sit back and live vicariously through them and primarily how they lived their lives without the validation of men. It was not too long until they began to invite me along to their lesbian mixers, which I loved. I was even approached by other women and kissed. Which provided me with a huge amount of validation.

With my sexuality and life coming together, I could concentrate on enjoying my life on my new gender affirming hormones or HRT. The hormones went a long way in syncing up my internal and external self. Along with softening my skin and facial lines, my whole world was changing too. My emotions heightened as well as my senses as the world around me was softening. A perfect match to my rapidly expanding social life.

I will never know if waiting so long to transition into a feminine world was worth it or not because I had so many excuses why I never had done it. All I really know is, I did it before it was too late and have never looked back. That’s life.

 

 

At the Gender Crossroads

 

Image from Timelord on UnSplash

Many times, in my life, I have found myself at a gender crossroads.

Of course, like most of you, I learned from the situations I put myself into. As I always mention, the first one was when I needed to leave the comfort zone I had created with the mirror and attempt to live in the world as a transfeminine person. Initially, I was slapped down as people laughed and smirked at me. Until I learned to own who I was, which was a huge crossroad to negotiate.

Over the years, I began to think I had seen everything, but I had not. My main problem was I needed to make the final decision on which way I would go if I was faced with a making a final decision on which gender I would ever live as. Plus, I did not know if I even could live as a transgender woman. I kept searching and learning until I found I was not a man cross dressing as a woman; I was a woman cross dressing as a man.

I discovered also, I would need to transition more than once if I would ever try to make it to my dream life. Primarily when I learned it on the night I finally decided I would quit going out as a cross dresser and change my inner thought pattern. I was fed up with just trying to look like a woman and wanted to feel like one and see as if I could mingle with a group of ciswomen with no issues. I did make it with the other women and crossed another road I knew I could never go back. I mingled and socialized with other women and even used the women’s room with no pushback at all. It was amazing.

The next transition I need to make was when I needed to begin communicating with other women. It was never easy and a complete learning process. It does not take a genius to know women and men communicate on a different level. I knew well how to do it as a man, but I was a total novice as a woman. The first lesson I learned was I had to pause and listen to the other woman I was talking to. As a man, I could often make the first move and hope for the best. With women, I never did and often waited for a passive aggressive response. The real intent behind the smile often startled me until I caught on to the game.

All of it led me to the success I needed to this day to be successful with other women who indirectly try to bully me in their own way. An example was the ciswoman I wrote about in a recent post when she could not adjust to me being a parent not a dad to my daughter. In fact, I had a reader (Michelle) who responded to the woman and my return comment: “You handled it with so much more grace than I probably would’ve. And Liz’s quick response? Perfection. I’m so glad you still got to connect with your daughter and your grandchild, that’s what really matters. The rest is just noise.” Thanks for the comment! The woman was very noisy and was trying to bully me in her own way.

I was just fortunate that both Liz and I had been through similar situations, so we were ready. Somehow, the woman thought she had me over a gender barrel with the dad comment and that was when Liz took over. The woman asked Liz who I was to her and Liz said wife and the woman shut up.

My point it, both Liz and I had been through situations with other women such as her before, so we were able to handle the noise and go across yet another crossroad. By this time, I think there always will be another road to cross as I see my gender dream come together.

As Michelle said, the world is full of noise, and we must separate it into genders to make sense of it. Which would be another blog post altogether. In the meantime, for all of you approaching your own crossroads, try to feel secure on your journey and be careful. Especially these days when depending upon where you live transgender rights of any kind are in danger.

 

 

Just a Gender Detour

 

Image from Belinda Fewings
on UnSplash

After many years of looking back at my life, I began to think of my transgender experience as merely a detour in my life.

The problem was, there are many types of detours ranging from major closures to small delays. I found I needed to be careful with my navigation quite early when I was in the exploration stage of my mom’s clothes. One speed bump could lead me to an impromptu visit with a psychiatrist who knew nothing about gender issues and wanted to pronounce me mentally ill. Even back then, I knew I was not crazy for wanting to be a girl.

As the years progressed, I became increasingly skilled at sneaking around and dodging the detours in my life. Especially, the major ones such as becoming a parent. Even though the whole experience made me extremely proud, it still changed my life profoundly. I remember thinking at the time if it would affect my desire to be a woman but if anything, the birth process enhanced it. I was still in my detour mode, drinking heavily as I tried to find the nearest exit to help me.

To make up for the detours, I began to leave my closet and explore the world increasingly as a transfeminine person. The entire process meant taking chances such as leaving the house dressed as a woman and dodging many speed bumps along the way. It took me many more years before my path began to smooth out and I could see a clear road ahead. However, I still needed to be very careful with what I was doing. I had a long-term marriage and good job to protect among other male privileges. I was stuck between a giant rock and a hard place I needed to detour around. The rock was the better I did with my male life, and the hard place was my female side resented any incursion into her existence. To be sure, a very difficult place to be.

Then there were the times I crashed with my wife and was caught coming home late from one of my nightly gender adventures. A prime example was the night a lesbian was flirting with me and bought me a beer and said she should take me home with her. I was flattered and ended up staying too long and arriving home late. The ensuing fight lasted days after I hit that speed bump. Sadly, there were other times when I crashed on my own by driving an old sports car, which I bought that had the habit of suddenly not starting on occasion. Of course, one night when I was at a gay venue approximately twenty minutes from home, the car would not start. Fortunately, I had planned and left me enough time to call a tow truck and arrive home before my wife did. I had survived yet another close call.

My gender detours did not begin to go away until I started to really be allowed behind the gender curtain. It was after I had placed the gay venues firmly behind me in my rearview mirror and started to prove a fulltime life as a transgender woman was possible for me. The only problem was how fast I should dare to go. In those days, I still had my wife, family and job to worry about. As it turned out, destiny stepped in and showed me the way. Tragically my wife and several dear friends passed away leaving me alone to decide my future.  In addition, my road crew removed other detours such as employment when I discovered I could take my Social Security early and sell collectibles to make ends meet. My final indication I had a clear path ahead was when the Veterans’ Administration health care program approved gender affirming hormones for qualifying veterans. I was qualified and made a big jump towards my gender transition.

By this time, even I could see my detours towards living my dream were coming down, and I was in a now or never situation. I was sixty and had put up with my gender indecisions long enough. I went into a double retirement by quitting a job that I hated and gave away all my male clothes to charity.

Looking back, if I had known all the detours, I would have to take in my life just to survive, I wonder if I would have taken a different path. On the other hand, I was locked into a route I was taking and had no choice. Sure, I would have tried other ways around to get to where I was going. Such as attempting to come out quicker than I did and stop lying to myself. One way or another it is too late now to cry over spilled makeup.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Being OK was not Good Enough

 

JJ Hart and wife Liz on right at Picnic.

I grew up in Ohio raised by greatest generation parents who lived through WWII and the great depression. Often, they were long on material support and short on emotional backing.

The main thing I remember from my childhood was, nothing was ever good enough. Take school for an example, while I excelled at subjects such as History and English, I really struggled with the Math and Sciences. Even still, I was expected to bring home straight A’s on my grade card every year. I had no excuses, especially when I went to high school where my mom was a teacher. She was pushing me hard for good grades to make it possible to get accepted by a good university.

I guess I became used to the pushing and figured nothing was ever good enough for myself and it carried over into my gender issues. Every time the mirror lied to me and said I was an attractive girl, I did not believe it and had to discover another way to prove it. Very quickly I learned I needed to replace the mirror with the public. Leaving my dark, lonely closet was the only way I could learn if I could ever achieve my dream of living a transfeminine life. It took every bit of courage I could muster to do it but if OK was not enough (by just standing in front of the mirror), I had to force myself into the world.

When I did force myself, it was like I was getting adjusted to a new pair of shoes. At first, I was tight and uncomfortable before I started to relax and began the basics of enjoying myself. I say I began the basics, because at every turn on my gender path, it seemed I was hitting a wall. Those were the times I needed to step back and decide if I was doing the right thing.

Those examples and failures proved to me I needed to keep going. Mainly because I felt so natural when I was pushing the envelope to leave my male self behind and live more and more as a transgender woman.

On occasion, proving OK was not enough and trashing the envelope almost got me into trouble. Mainly when I began to walk the fine line when I lost my male privileges. The most important being personal security. I was out and out lucky and escaped personal harm by men in the world. I wasn’t smart enough or experienced enough to sense the danger zones women are raised around. I learned quickly to park in well-lit areas or to ask for friends to walk me to my car. I did not want to be a statistic.

As I went through the process of living within the same parameter’s cisgender women have to face, I became a sponge of sorts. Nothing I did as I transitioned was ever good enough as my parents’ lessons oddly came back to help me. I was especially attentive when I went out to socialize with my women friends. They never realized what they did for me as I formed my own version of womanhood. In many ways I became a gender hybrid. It was impossible for me to leave decades of living an impacted male existence behind me, so I tried to take the good with me. For example, I was fortunate to have worked around women in the restaurant business for most of my life and I knew the trials and tribulations cisgender women faced in the world.

To this day, I have not shaken the idea of just being OK is just OK. I must be better just to be successful in the competitive world of women. I knew they could be competitive but not as much as I discovered when I finally had the chance to play in the girl’s sandbox. The whole process made me a better person in the long run, but it was surely difficult at times. Often brief moments of gender euphoria kept me going in my darkest gender hours. That was when I needed to provide electricity in my closet to give me the ability to see right from wrong.

Since my parents were my driving force behind my personality, I never had the chance to thank them for what they did. My Mom knew about my gender issues and chose to ignore them, and my dad never knew so I doubt if either would be pleased about their child raising outcome. They never knew how well OK was never enough worked out for me in my life.

 

 

Trans Girl on the "Down Low"

 

Image from Josh Withers
on UnSplash.

According to Wikipedia, down low is basically an African American term for gay cruising of other men. For this post, I am going to use it in another sense.

First of all, I need to take you all back to when I first considered my down low to be as I cheated on my wife. But I was doing it by cheating on her with another woman, which happened to be me. Of course, nothing made what I was doing right but I could not stop doing it as it had a powerful draw on me. Those were the exciting days of leaving the gay bar scene behind me and begin exploring the world of straight bars as well as lesbian venues.

Very soon, my success turned to failure as I began to feel guilty about lying to my wife about what I was doing. I tried my best to rationalize my thoughts because after all, I was having no physical contact with anyone. Male or female so I could not be accused of cheating, but I still was. The reason was, I had made an agreement with her that I could go out in public several days a week. Providing I never left the house cross-dressed. It was a sacred promise she never forgot and one I could not keep once I began to develop a transfeminine life.

Very soon, I felt as if I was still on the down low every time I snuck out of the house dressed as a woman. As I was basically doing as much as possible. The reason was, I was learning so much about the feminine world I had always dreamed about, I could never turn around and go back to my male life.

It was more exciting to stay on the down low until I could figure out what to do about the life I was leading. In fact, I because the more I experienced the new world, the more natural I began to feel as I was able to put the image I always saw in the mirror into motion. In many ways, I began to feel so natural as a transgender woman, it was difficult to ever return to being a man at all. I had to consciously tell myself I still was a part time man when I worked. So much so, I was beginning to be called ma’am when sir would have worked for the occasion. Still, I was secretly overjoyed when it happened.

Sadly, through it all, my marriage really suffered. Mostly because I was and am a very honest person and hated lying to my wife about what was really going on with me. Often, I learned when I lied one small time, I would have to lie more often to make up for it. An example was one year when we took a week for vacation and headed north to try to escape the heat. About two days into the vacation, I became increasingly mean and irritable because I really wanted to be spending my time traveling as a woman. Finally, my poor wife had had enough and asked me what was wrong. I lied again and internalized my feelings enough to get by, and we could eventually enjoy ourselves. Deep down, I hated myself for it.

Life began to finally slow down for me as I reached certain milestones in my transfeminine life. I was beginning to communicate with the world and started to feel much better about myself and at the same time my down low activities slowed down also. At least to a point where I could control them. It was around this time too, when my wife’s health began to really decline. It did not know it then, but she only had approximately six months to live. For some reason, I decided to go on a major purge and throw most of my feminine things away and went all the way to growing my version of a beard. It turned out, I did the best I could for the remainder of her life.

When she passed, of course I was tragically shocked and lonely, so I reached inward. The beard went away quickly, and I was able to restock my clothes and makeup. In no time at all, my inner feminine self was coming to my rescue. I began to retrace my steps I had taken as a novice transgender woman, and reestablished myself fairly quickly in the venues I was a regular in.

I was totally freed from the down low experiences from my past and could concentrate on going out to being alone. In other words, I wanted to be around other people. I just did not want them approaching me.

It worked in the short term until I began to socialize with and started to build a small circle of friends who knew nothing of my previous self. I never had had to go on the down low again.

 

 

There is always One.

 

Event Venue where party was held.

There is always one person who does not know how to or wants to keep their mouth shut around my wife Liz and me.

I am referring to my night of affirmation I referred to in yesterday’s post. Everything got off to a wonderful start as we found the venue a little early and chose a seat in the shade as we enjoyed a pre-dinner drink. Plus, I found my daughter, son-in-law and middle grandchild quite easily. So, I was ready to relax and prepare for a fun filled evening without having to explain myself and my gender choices.

It turned out that I relaxed too soon because after my mother-in-law sat down beside me to once again question my health. Even though I am not very mobile, I have been very fortunate so far to escape any major health problems. That is when things began to get very interesting in the question department. My mother-in-law’s sister promptly sat down in the empty seat beside her and started asking me questions.  That is when the “fun” started.

First, she assumed I was my daughter’s mom, I think.  My assumption of her was she was an older lesbian. It turned out assumptions are like rear ends on people; everyone has one because we were both wrong. I told her I was my daughter’s parent when she said I was her father. Then she could not shut up and waded in further into my personal life. Sitting on the other side of me was my wife Liz and the woman promptly asked Liz if I was her husband. Liz quickly said no, I was her wife. Liz handled it beautifully and the woman moved on, I thought.

By this time, I thought the woman would have learned her lesson and just shut up, but I was wrong. She was one of those people who just can’t leave well enough alone, and it seemed I was the target until she became bored. Obviously, she had no knowledge of our family’s recent history. She was ignorant of the fact that one of the quests of honor last night was also transgender and was there with their partner also.

Then, my first wife showed up and grabbed a seat at the table and I became involved with talking to her. She is the mother of my daughter and will always have that bond, plus she does have some contact with my brother’s wife who rejected me for being transgender so long ago. There was a lot to talk about so I could ignore the woman who probably see she was being ignored by them. But not all the way.

The photographer began to round up the family for pictures after dinner. To start, he asked for the men to gather. My new friend? Looked at me for a second to tell me it was my turn for pictures until I glared at her and did not move. Obviously, she had not learned, and I waited for the photographer to call for the rest of the family to come up for pictures.

Regardless of what she thought, there were pictures taken I should be able to pass along later.

All too soon, Liz and I’s evening at the celebration was over and I did get to see and talk to my transgender grandchild before they take off for their new job in Maine. That was the important part and any dealings I had with anyone else faded away. Hopefully the woman left with a new understanding of the gender spectrum and even better learning how to keep her mouth shut around us. But I doubt it.

The best part is my daughter, and I have pledged to get together more often for breakfast in the future. Without the prying negative comments of an opinionated person who does not know what she is talking about. I don’t think she was a true transphobe, just a person who did not know enough to keep her mouth shut. Obviously, I have had all the right to be called a parent instead of a father and for her to recognize it. Whether or not she ever realizes it, it will be up to her. If she does, I hope I have played a small role in helping to change someone else’s life, who really needed it. I have to say it was difficult not to be negative with her and I was not. Which put me in a transgender educational position I did not anticipate being in. As my affirmation day proved to be much more by helping the public view of transgender population having families and life’s like so many others.

Some people just can’t seem to say no when faced with discussing situations they know nothing about.