30 December 2011 by kathleen.

I want to have relationships with women.  Woman-to-woman talk isn’t the same as woman-to-man talk.  Some topics are off limits in mixed company.  If you appear to be not-a-woman, women will clam up about those topics when you are around.

Furthermore, there are different rules for social engagement in mixed company.  The traditional role is for women to be silent when men are speaking. Yes, yes, of course there are a lot of strong women who won’t defer to a man just because of what’s between his legs.  I know that.  And it’s especially important in work settings that women learn to speak up and to assert themselves regardless of the mix of genders in the conversation.

In a general social setting, however, the situation is different.  I’m talking about casual gatherings at a party, a restaurant, or after church — something with no financial motivation one way or the other.  When there is nothing to gain and nothing to assert, women will usually defer.  The tone of the conversation will change if a man joins a circle of women, and it will change again when all the men have left.

That’s why I want to pass.  I am not hunting for a man.  I am not seeking approval.  I am not a better person — or a better transperson — because I pass well.  Passing is something I choose to do, and something I choose to work at daily.

Posted in Passing, Sex & Gender Roles | 1 Comment »

26 December 2011 by kathleen.

For the past few years, I’ve had considerable problems with my fingernails splitting horizontally, like the layers were separating.  I used to have thick, tough nails — almost all my life.  I don’t know for sure what caused the change, but I suspect the estrogen was the culprit.

I tried wearing rubber gloves when I washed dishes.  I tried a dozen different nail finishes, and different combinations of those finishes, like hardener on the bottom, then bonder; hardener on top; bonder over bare nails, two coats of polish and a sealer on top.  Et cetera.  You can imagine all the permutations.  Then I tried using a cut-steel nail file instead of an emery board, but that didn’t solve the problem either.

During the months and months I was experimenting, I noticed that Sally Hansen sold not just nail finishes, but nail vitamins as well. I thought it must be a fantasy that a vitamin pill could make any difference.

I can’t remember why — probably I thought of it in desperation — late last year I started taking food supplements for my nails. At first I tried just biotin, but after a few months I saw no change at all. I guessed that maybe biotin by itself wasn’t enough.

I started looking for a different combination of supplements, and I found a reasonably-priced jar at The Vitamin Shoppe. It took at least four months before I saw any change at all. I kept imagining the splitting had stopped, but I wasn’t sure.  Now, after taking the supplement for about six months, I’m sure.   I think it takes months and months because fingernails grow so slowly.

If you’re having problems with your nails, find a supplement for hair, nails, and skin and give it a try. There are dozens of formulations at your local grocery, pharmacy, or health food store. But if you give it a try, please be patient. Stick with just one brand and wait a good long time for the enlived tissue to show itself in the visible nail tissue.

Food supplements aren’t the cure for everything, but they may work when nothing else does.

Posted in General MtF topics | 1 Comment »

23 December 2011 by kathleen.

It’s time for a Christmas blog post.  I had a good family growing up — except at Christmas.  By the time I was in college, I needed bourbon to get through the family gift exchange.

I told my mother that I liked to wear women’s clothes during the summer of 1966.  During the  family gift exchange Christmas a year and a half later, I unwrapped a clothing-shaped box (you know, about 2 inches by 12 inches by 18 inches).  The box was printed with the name of a prominent women’s apparel store in my hometown.

My guilt flared.  Would mom have gotten a nightie or something?  What could she get me at that store that wouldn’t embarrass me?  In my bourbon-infused state, my mind raced over the possibilities, and my face reddened alarmingly.

Let me just tell you about mom’s sense of humor.  Back in the sixth grade, mom had packed me a school breakfast (Catholic school….. Breakfast after communion at mass before classes).  This particular day happened to be April 1, 1959.  I bit into my peanut butter and jelly sandwich to find an April Fool trick from mom: she’d placed a piece of thin cardboard in the middle of my sandwich!

The teacher didn’t think it was funny when I burst out laughing, and so did the kids around me.  This was a loving mother, but one that was capable of a harmless trick now and then.

And this Christmas it was a trick that I got in the apparel box: a man’s shirt.  When I opened it and saw it was just a shirt, I laughed and laughed, but mom was the only one who knew why I was laughing. Mom wouldn’t have embarrassed me that way in front of all the family; that was clear when I looked back over the incident.  My own internalized guilt and my intoxication joined with mom’s playfulness to spark my imagination and my fantasies.

When I recognized the name on the box, I both hoped and dreaded that she’d bought me something feminine.  You may think mom just used that box because it fit the shirt, but I know her better than that.  She had a ton of clothing boxes from previous Christmases — there’s no doubt in my mind that she was deliberately teasing me 44 years ago.  It was a private joke between her and me, and no harm was done.  I still regret that she before I recognized myself as Kathleen, the name she gave me.

What ever your situation, I hope you can look back on at least a few pleasant memories  of your mother and father, as I have done here.

Posted in AutoBiog | 2 Comments »

20 December 2011 by kathleen.

I mentioned my Mexican vacation last time.  On our fourth day of our stay, we took a snorkeling excursion.  My partner likes to snorkel, and we bought a swim mask with underwater camera attached.

As I noted in an earlier post, I am quite bald.  I didn’t feel the turban mentioned in that post was very appropriate to an all-day sailing trip, but I needed something to keep my hairpiece on.  In case you’ve never been on a 30- or 40-foot sailing vessel, let me tell you it gets pretty windy.

I searched some of the shops in Cancun for some sort of head scarf.  I found a shaped scarf in a hideous shade of pink — a shade I believed was not one that any male would allow himself to be seen in.

What do you think? Did I pass? I think I did, because I didn’t hear any unpleasant remarks. There was no way I could snorkel — or even swim. I own a couple of rubber bathing caps, but even if I could wear them over my hairpiece (which I cannot), the piece would come off if I removed the cap. I would have had to wear the bathing cap all day.

I’ve tried this at home, you see. I take off my hairpiece, pull my own hair back with a small scrunchee, and put on the bathing cap. The cap does not seal perfectly, so my own hair gets soaked under the cap. When I take off the rubber cap, I have to blow dry my hair to get it ready to blend with the hair piece. There was no way I could do that on a boat.

I took a big risk of embarrassment. I trusted that the scarf, ugly as it was, would keep my hairpiece from blowing off, and would still look feminine enough to preserve my image. It would have been humiliating if I’d bumped my head and knocked the hairpiece off, or worse yet if I’d fallen off the boat. Taking risks is part of living; nothing provides certainty this side of the grave.

If you’re still believing that SRS will take care of all your problems, please get a grip and come back to reality.  Living life as a woman is satisfying, but it is rarely without risk.

Posted in Passing, AutoBiog | 1 Comment »

18 December 2011 by kathleen.

My partner (who has been known to comment here from time to time as The Wife) and I just returned from a one-week vacation in Mexico.  What makes this event a subject for this blog is that it was my first trip outside the USA as Kathleen.

I didn’t anticipate any legal trouble because I successfully updated my passport after my surgery in March, 2009.  I felt an increased degree of vulnerability, however, when we left the US.  Let me explain.

We went to Cancun, Mexico, a destination chosen owing to receipt of a gift certificate for a one-week stay at one of several hundred possible resorts around the world.  By the time we juggled our availability, the availability of the selected resorts, and the expiration of the certificate, we settled on a hotel in Cancun for last week.  The gift certificate was not exactly what it appeared to be; yes, we stayed a week but it wasn’t quite free.  That saga, however, is out of scope in this blog.

What is in scope is the language barrier.  You might hear someone say, “Oh, everyone there speaks English.  You won’t have any problem.”  I beg to differ.  If you can point to what you want, there is a hope of being understood; otherwise, forget it.  The only people with good English skills are the salesmen — and they are all men! — for time-share condos and for day trips to places of interest around Cancun.  Hotel clerks, waiters, shopkeepers, etc., can respond to your pointing finger but not much else.  Then when you finally think you’ve been understood, you can still get a surprise.

That’s why I felt more vulnerable than I do here.  Because of the language difference, I do not feel confident that I could explain to municipal or national police just what my status is, and just what is my relationship to The Wife.  I mean, we’re not even exactly a same-sex couple — yes, we are mostly, and I guess legally.  But trying to explain that we’re still married even though one of us changed sex… I don’t know enough Spanish to know where to begin.

The good news is that we had neither legal nor medical difficulties, and there was no need to try to explain anything.  I hate to think what might have happened if I’d had medical problems in Cancun the way Erin Vaught had them in Muncie, Indiana, in July, 2010.  That’s why I was anxious.

Posted in AutoBiog | 1 Comment »

7 December 2011 by kathleen.

Suppose you were in a vegetative state: you would have no communication at all.  You would survive in your world, closed as it is; no one would know if you were aware or not.  There’s not much chance to develop a personality in that situation.

I was not quite vegetative as Kathleen for most of my life, but pretty close.  I got made-up and dressed on Saturday night, turned on a movie (it was VHS or Beta back then, not DVD), chain-smoked cigarettes, and drank; when the movie was over, I clean up and went to bed.  There wasn’t much opportunity to develop a personality that way, either.

I did a little better when, for a year or so, I dressed and went to some bars in downtown Cleveland on Saturday night, but that didn’t work on a long-term basis.

It wasn’t until December, 2005, when I started going to church regularly that I began to develop a personality as Kathleen.  I started with Sunday services, then I added to bible study during the week, then church social events on the weekend — all as Kathleen.  The magic here wasn’t the church as house of God, but church as opportunity to exist and to interact with people as Kathleen.  Once I developed my Kathleen personality and identity, the next steps flowed naturally: to transition, then to have surgery.

If you are sitting home alone, dressed and maybe drinking, how can you begin to develop your personality?  You need a protective and supportive environment, because the expression of your new self will at first be clumsy and shallow.  Like fine wine, it takes time and the right environment for the depths of your capacities to mature; for the shining light of your nature to incandesce.

It could happen if you had a supportive family, I suppose, but it would be difficult because of the history of your birth gender within that family.  As you attempt to explore and express your chosen gender, your parents and siblings will unintentionally entice you to behave as you did in your birth gender.  If they do, it is not because they want to obstruct your transition, but because they simply don’t yet know who you will become; you can’t explain your new self to them, because your haven’t yet become that person.

A community of transgender peers is better than your family for exploring your personality, but the homogeneity of that community, too, may limit your growth.

You need a (probably small) group of unrelated, tolerant, good-hearted and non-judgmental people to provide a community in which you can learn to interact in your chosen gender.  You need to interact in many different ways, over a period of time.  You need to learn in a safe environment how you can change the ways you express yourself, and how you can apply yourself.

A church is a good place to look.  For me it was Metropolitan Community Church. For you it might be United Church of Christ, an Episcopal church, or a Unitarian Universalist congregation. If there were something better than a church, it would be a job with protective, non-judgmental people.

Where ever it is, the community must demand that you do something, contribute somehow, and not just sit in a corner. You must rub your personality against other personalities to polish it, the way the waves breaking on a beach round and polish small stones and pieces of glass.

You cannot wait until you get a new personality before you express yourself, for it is only in the expression of your essence that you discover what you have to give.

Posted in Passing | 1 Comment »

4 December 2011 by kathleen.

One transgender friend spoke wistfully of wanting to go to the monthly poker games in his femme self.  His male self knew that wasn’t possible, but some transpeople are not as wise.

I wrote earlier about the different behaviors men and women engage in to bond with their peers. Female bonding behavior is not likely to work at a poker game: poker is competitive.   Women compete, but that’s not the primary way women bond.

You may have some friends from your previous peer gender, and you can trust that they will remain your friends.   If you’re MtF, you might be able to pull off a hunting trip or drinking bout in your female role with your old male buddies.   Good luck; I wouldn’t try it.  I think you will have much more success maintaining your friendships in gender-neutral pastimes.

You also need to learn new behaviors in order to form new friendships in your chosen gender. The socializing and bonding behaviors are different.   You can learn and grow into your new gender.  Making a conscious choice to do so, and working at it, will help.

Posted in Sex & Gender Roles | 1 Comment »

1 December 2011 by kathleen.

Last year on this date I pledged to be tested for HIV/AIDS before World AIDS Day, 2011. I met my pledge in October of this year, during Fantasia Fair.

I was tested by the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod in Provincetown, Massachusetts. I was amazed by the total anonymity of the testing. I mean, I’d heard it was anonymous, but they didn’t even take my name. Had the screening test been positive, I understand there would have been a follow-up test to confirm the condition. Because my screening was negative, I cannot tell you how much longer the anonymity would have been maintained.

If you have had unprotected sex or shared a needle, you need to get tested. You know that. You can be a big girl and just do it.

Many thanks to Jennifer Barge, director of TransHealth Coordinators in the preparation of this post. Jennifer is a wonderful person, and has a long history of service to the transgender community.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »