29 June 2010 by kathleen.

I love to wear red!  Pink is OK, and rose, and burgundy — but red!

We old ladies can wear bright red lipstick.  Gray hair and red lipstick, what a combination!

Not a great picture, I know. It took it at lunchtime with the camera on my desktop. I choose not to resist wearing a red lipstick with a bright red blouse, slacks, or skirt (no, not all 3 at once, dear).  Today it was a tomato-red blouse with white denim capris and red sandals.

Part of my growth as a woman was to become confident enough to wear bright colors — especially bright red lipstick.  There’s something about bright red lipstick that shouts, “Look at me!”  How many decades I hoped no one would look at me while I was wearing lipstick!  I hid behind sophisticated mauves and subtlest shades of pink.  Gradually I tried brighter and more saturated lipsticks.

Born women went through this, probably, in their teens, and are over it.  How lucky you are.

Posted in AutoBiog | 1 Comment »

27 June 2010 by kathleen.

I am transgendered.   This is a fundamental characteristic of my existence.

When I transitioned in December, 2007, I made a public statement about who I am and what I am.  Before I did so, I was only talking about it: now I am being it.

To say “I am…” is to assert some aspect of my essence as a living being:  “being” — v. the act of be-ing or existing, also, n. one who is or exists. I hid my be-ing for 60 years; I hid the nature of my existence.

I’ve blogged so much about telling that you’d think it really mattered.  Duh!  It does matter.

In church this morning we sang,

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine,
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

I hide my little light when I fail to reveal who I am.  Sometimes I must delay the revelation, but I must not avoid it.

For me, my transition was also letting my light shine to those around me at work and in the neighborhood.  I have blossomed.  I am alive and lively.

I don’t regret not coming out earlier, because I know I wasn’t in that space of loving myself that enabled me to let my light shine.  I wonder, though, how my life would have been different if I had transitioned at 50 instead of 60.

Posted in AutoBiog | 1 Comment »

23 June 2010 by kathleen.

We bloggers may walk a fine line when we write about specific other people.  Intentionally or not, we may out someone by discussing his or her situation.

There is currently an evolving drama involving WikiLeaks and one of the better-known tech blogs.   Some of the language in the original source reported by the blog seemed to contain unusual lexical construction.  It was only upon closer inspection that the blogger realized that the source was referring to events characteristic of a transgendered person.  Too late: the outing was done.

I write about telling because, regardless of what we believe about ourselves, the revelation of our nature carries social implications.  When the revelation is involuntary, we call it outing.

If it didn’t matter whether or not we were transgendered, or gay, or had HIV/AIDS, or STDs (sexually-transmitted diseases) — if it didn’t matter, then neither telling nor outing would have any significance.  But outing does have significance; it matters because we live among other people, and because when those around us believe something about us, they often change how they treat us and our loved ones.

Those other people don’t matter to our essence or to our internal identity.  When we know who we are and we love who we are, then insults can roll off our backs.  Those insults and rude remarks, however, will matter very much to our loved ones if we don’t tell those loved ones who we are.  You will be kind to and respectful of your family and friends if you tell them who you are before they read it on the net, or in the newspaper, or hear it from acquaintances.

That’s another reason why we tell our families and friends.

Posted in General FtM topics, General MtF topics | 1 Comment »

20 June 2010 by kathleen.

This is yet another post on the subject of the year of real life experience (RLE), which is usually required before surgery.  My most recent prior post on this topic was Response 3.

The most terrifying moments in my RLE were dealing with men: specifically, the hardware store and the auto repair shop.

I live in Virginia, in a single-family house. The land around the house itself has things like grass and shrubbery growing; no surprise there. Because we own, not rent, the maintenance falls on us. We contract out the lawn mowing, which I always hated anyway, but there are still things like fallen leaves, clogged gutters, pruning, and so on.

And then there are the niggling little tasks like dripping faucet washers. I really hate to pay $150 for a plumber to come out and replace a 35-cent faucet washer which I could easily replace myself. The problem comes in buying it.

The big, big home repair retailers like Lowe’s or Home Depot — as well as the little hardware store on the corner — are willing to provide provide help selecting the right item. They are terrible, though, at reading minds: you have to ask someone.

Two features of my life potentially pose problems:

1. My voice itself which is acceptable for most situations, but not really all that feminine
2. My knowledge of hardware and automobiles.

I know too much.  I’ve done plumbing, electrical, roof repair, gutters, painting, even cement work — all when I was younger, of course, and long before I started taking estrogen.  Yes, of course, women can know about these things, but the ones that do are seldom as feminine as I work at being.  So here’s me, in pink, wearing lipstick and earrings, asking about faucet washers and knowing way, way more about faucet washers than a woman as feminine as I ought to know.  And I have a rough, low voice.

That took some getting used to, and some swallowing of pride.  If you want to pull it off, you can’t argue with the advice you get, even if you know it’s dead wrong.  So if you ask for advice, but you don’t want to take the advice you’re given by someone who knows less than you, then you either give yourself away or you learn to be discrete and to smile a lot.

My state, Virginia, has annual vehicle inspections, so there was no way to avoid dealing with auto mechanics at least once a year.  In my 20’s I used to be a mechanic, and I did a lot of my own repairs even into my 40’s, so car repair is another area in which I have to finesse a conversation.

My year of RLE was my year to face those terrors.  If you’re not living full time, then you can let the hard things go till you’re in boy mode again: let your male self deal with the mechanic.  That’s exactly the sort of situation that RLE is supposed to make you confront.

Please don’t cheat yourself on your RLE.  Don’t shorten it, and don’t cheat by jumping back to boy mode to deal with a specific situation.

Posted in AutoBiog, General MtF topics | 1 Comment »

18 June 2010 by kathleen.

In Sophie’s comment to my post on telling a loved-one (or soon-to-be loved one) that you are transgendered, she mentioned shame and guilt.

There are many things to tell that have neither shame nor guilt attached; divulging these facts is an act of respect for the listener. I am thinking of

• infertility
• communicable or congenital diseases
• legal or moral entanglements (prior spouse, children)
• felony convictions

to name a few.  There need not be any shame or guilt attached to infertility — but if you know you are infertile it would be kind to share that with your parents, at least, and certainly with your lover.  There need not be any shame or guilt to being divorced, or to being transgendered.  Being either one is a fact, not an admission.

We tell our loved ones these things for many reasons — some respectful, some manipulative — but we tell them.  Several MtF transgendered have said that when they finally told their former spouse that they were transgendered, the spouse expressed betrayal: the person they thought they knew had withheld information from them.

I can share or divulge a fact about myself, but if I believe I am admitting it, the admission creates guilt.  If I was convicted of passing bad checks, for example — whether or not I actually did pass bad checks, if I was convicted of it — not telling a spouse/lover could cause some embarrassment some time in the future.  Suppose the spouse, not knowing you were convicted of the crime, nominates you for civic league treasurer.  If someone in the neighborhood discovers your record, you might be able to handle the fallout but it would likely cause your spouse great humiliation.

So, you don’t, on your first date, hand a person a stack of photocopied sheets listing the 214 people you’ve slept with since puberty.  Nor do you freely divulge your passwords and account numbers — you don’t have to tell everyone everything.

But when your relationship enters a realm of mutual trust, and you believe that the person of whom you are so fond will not likely smear your name maliciously, then to enable the relationship to grow, it becomes important for you to share some intimate details of your essential self.

There is nothing closer to your essence than your transgendered nature.  To withhold that information is to disrespect those to whom you desire to be close, and to perpetuate the hiding that so many of us have gone through.

Posted in General FtM topics, General MtF topics | 1 Comment »

16 June 2010 by kathleen.

One aspect of my new identity, and one that I enjoy, is making people feel good.  When I was growing up, that was what mommy did.

I know that I can’t really make you feel good, but I can encourage you to feel good by complimenting you, encouraging you, and praising you.  If you hurt and share your hurt with me, I will commiserate with you, I will validate your feelings of pain, and I will let you know that I care about you.

My mother was the sort of person who did those things.  I am so lucky I had her as a role model!  She used to drive me nuts, actually, especially when I was a teenage boy, when she’d starting chatting with another person in a waiting line.  “Mom, just leave that man in peace!”  No, she’d go on chatting like she’d known him or her for years.   Or she’d start chatting with a woman about her dress, or her hair style.

Thank goodness I can do that now!  That’s part of what we — you and I MtF transsexuals — it’s part of what we do, and who we are.  As women we are entitled to try to make people feel good.  Doing so is a right, and a privilege, and a duty.

Oh, yes, making men feel good in bed is part of it — but it’s only a part.  Our client base is the whole world: men, women, and children.  All day long, everywhere we go, there are people who could feel better.  We can notice them, and acknowledge them, and invite them to feel good.  When we do so, we do what men are not allowed or supposed to do.

Posted in Sex & Gender Roles, General MtF topics | 1 Comment »

14 June 2010 by kathleen.

You’ve seen the “beer belly”: a man with a belt that’s too tight, and too low, so the belly hangs over the belt.  It is a distinctive shape, whether it came from beer or from chips and sodas.

 In a similarly-overweight woman, if there is a line it bisects the stomach; the curvature of the distended stomach blends with the distended belly below the waist.  Women may corset, but they do not support their distended stomach with a belt the way men do.

Many of us are overweight.  You can look like an overweight man, or you can look like an overweight woman.  The most healthy solution is to lose the weight — but I know that’s hard.

Until you do lose the weight, buy a corset if you want, but don’t try to pull in your waist with a belt; it will slip down, so you look like the upper photo.

Posted in General MtF topics | 1 Comment »

12 June 2010 by kathleen.

Whether you are FtM or MtF, your nature will not change because you have a new partner.  Your behavior might change (at least temporarily) but your nature will not.  Furthermore, it is dishonest to reveal yourself with the purpose of coercing your listener to do something for you.

Has that ever happened in the history of the world?  Oh, yes.  I might even have done it myself once or twice.

Men and women, both, are tempted to believe that if only they can give you wonderful, mind-blowing sex, all fantasies you have of changing gender will evaporate.  If your transgender experience were simply a behavioral response to sexual stimulation (or lack of it), then the temptation might be fulfilled.  For some people reading this post, that will in fact be the case.  For others — those who are transgendered by nature, not by behavior — it will not.

It is yours to discover which you are: transgendered by behavior or transgendered by nature.

Posted in General FtM topics, General MtF topics | 1 Comment »

9 June 2010 by kathleen.

This is yet another post in my followup to the discussion of the year of real life experience (RLE).

What about my own year of RLE (which was in fact about 15 months).  Did I find it useful?  What did I learn?  Did the year change anything in me?  If so, how did I change?  What did I get out of my year of RLE?

I’ve been pretty passable for a long time, as I mentioned once before.  For that reason, I didn’t need a year of “practice” living as a woman to get it right. Furthermore, I transitioned on the job, a job I still have (thank God!).  So for me the year was very useful: I was immersed in people every waking hour.

The first couple of months after the transition date were probably more of a challenge for my partner than they were for me.  Neither of us has any relatives in the area, so we didn’t have family to deal with, but we did have to deal with chance encounters with people who were not close friends, but who knew either one or both of us from work or from around the neighborhood.  Does one need to explain to these acquaintances?  Ignore them?  Make up a story?  That first year was a time of social adjustment.

What haunted me for the first three or four months was the occasional awareness that I was not really a woman — that I was still a man impersonating a woman.  There was no specific occasion on which this occurred.  The awareness would come upon me anywhere: climbing the stairs, ordering lunch, shopping for groceries, passing a mother and child on the street.  What I had to learn, and what I did learn, is that it didn’t matter that I wasn’t really a woman.  I was meeting the expectations that accompanied my appearance, and that was all that mattered.

During RLE, and even beyond, I was working at being a woman, but between the start of my transition and now I stopped working at and began just living.  That was a subtle change — I can’t give you an exact date when it occurred — but it was a definite internal change.

The biggest surprise for me — and the biggest challenge — was taking care of my hair.  As a man, I had short hair all my life.  It was normal for me to shower and wash my hair every evening before bed, winter and summer.  Not any more!  In order to retain some semblance of shape in my hair, I need to blow-dry it after I get out of the shower and before I go to bed.

The thought of going back to being male actually did cross my mind a dozen times or so that first year.  Every time I thought of it, though, the revulsion at the thought of living as male again drove me to reaffirm my commitment to life as a woman.  I can imagine, though, that for some people — for whatever reason — the return to living as a male might become appealing after a few months.

In short, what I learned is: for me, yes, living as a woman was and is the right choice for me.  That awareness enabled me to approach surgery with a lot of confidence.

Posted in AutoBiog, General MtF topics | 1 Comment »

7 June 2010 by kathleen.

The other day, I wrote about courting a partner, but I danced around what to say and exactly when to say it. There isn’t much advice on how to tell someone, but I can think of some things to avoid.

First, there remains in many peoples’ minds the equation of men-dressing-as-women (or women-dressing as men) with homosexuality.  Right or wrong, that will likely be someone’s first thought.  I hope it’s clear in your own mind just where you are with respect to that equation.

Sexual preference and gender expression are on unrelated axes.  You can express your essence as male, and prefer to have sex with men, or prefer to have sex with women (or both, of course).  You can express as female, and prefer to have sex with men, or sex with women, or both.  Or neither, for that matter: that’s a possible choice, too.

Please do not hear a judgment in the previous statement.  Wherever you are, it’s OK — but you need to be willing to admit to yourself what you want.

Whichever of the above cases is yours, you need to know in your own mind what you are and what you want.  You will confuse your parent/sibling/friend if you don’t know what you want.

Second, please remember that whether you are FtM or MtF, your nature will not change because you have a new partner.  Furthermore, it is dishonest to reveal yourself with the purpose of coercing your listener to do something for you.

Third, whatever you do, don’t rush them.  If you’re coming out to someone who’s known you since birth, or who’s known you for 5 years, or for 20, give them time.  Don’t announce yourself on Tuesday, and expect to show up in your new presentation at Sunday dinner.  Give them a few weeks, maybe a few months, to digest what you’ve said.

Posted in General FtM topics, General MtF topics | 2 Comments »