A little glimpse into the mind of a Transwoman

I'm going to attempt to give you all a little bit more of a glimpse into my transgender mind :-) I do this, in an effort to humanize my experience. To help those who are curious, to better understand why, and what my thought process tends to be. I intend to eventually make videos where I talk about this stuff, but for now, like to blog about it.

I have learned that just as gender and sexuality are on a spectrum, with every variation of gender identity, expression, and sexuality in between, there is also an entire spectrum just within the Transgender definition.

Just because you are Transgender, does not mean that you were born a boy, but want to look and act like a girl all the time. I personally do, but there are many differing levels of dysphoria that transgender people experience. Some of us are completely repulsed by anything to do with men or the male side of the spectrum, and see nothing but a full surgical transition as possible, while other transgender people are fine with their sex organs staying the same, and just "presenting" as the gender they identify with. I am most definitely of the crowd that feels like anything less than all the way, is just not going to satisfy me.

Lately I have found myself listening to a lot of the music that was popular around 1996-2002 while I'm sitting at home working. This was a very important time in my life. I was a home schooled Mormon in the country. Just figuring life out. I was 16 in 1996 and got my first car, which my parents lovingly put a giant "Happy Sweet 16" banner on when they gave it to me. ha ha.

If only they had known that simple act would result in this! Just kidding! But some people do tend to look for things like that to blame.

But anyway, here I was, just starting to figure life out and my place in it. I always knew that I was very much drawn toward more girly things. At that time I was a huge fan of Britney Spears and Mandy Moore, and N*Sync and Backstreet boys and all that typical teenage girl stuff. I did not know yet that I was "transgender", so these feelings confused the heck out of me. Imagine trying to live your entire life where you are constantly feeling one thing, but everyone around you is telling you something different, or making you feel like you are some sort of freak. So you get really good at hiding it.

Eventually, you actually start hiding it behind more and more masculine things. Not because you are a man, and are doing those things because that's just what men do. But instead, you are doing them because society is telling you that you are a man, and that's what men do. So you go through years and years of life, playing this game. Hiding from reality. I owned multiple logging trucks, and hauled logs from the woods into lumber mills for about 15 years of my life.

I bought, restored, and sold quite a few former military trucks. I got my commercial helicopter pilots license.

But.....everyone around you, perceives that as reality. It's what they see, and what they get used to. And so one day, you finally reach a point in life where you realize you just can't do it anymore. Can't continue to hide and live the lie anymore, so with help from your therapist and supportive loved ones, you make the decision to finally attempt to navigate the shark infested waters that is gender identity in our world. But.....because you have put on this male persona for so many years, and have done so many "Manly" things, it throws people for a loop. They can't comprehend how it is possible that you are telling them that you are someone entirely different than who they have known for so many years.

As is the case in any situation, over time you learn survival tricks. You learn what people can and cannot handle. You learn that the self consciousness of feeling weird dressing as your "true self" sometimes outweighs the amazing feeling of getting to do it, and you end up continuing to suppress it. It's a very very difficult thing to have to live with. And so many people just do not understand the struggle. They come back with "But you were born with a penis, of course you are a man." Or "Your gender is defined by your biology, and your biology says you were born male, so deal with it." These are some very close minded and hurtful mindsets to have. Even if you do feel that way......what does it hurt you for me to be happy and live the way I want and need to? I am so thankful to live someplace where I have acquired many open minded supportive friends who make it clear they are supportive. Whereas the majority of my conservative friends from the past, would be of the "you were born with a penis, you are a man" crowd. Even if that is correct biologically, my biology formed my brain to think it is a girl brain. That is not just me thinking that. If I could just live my life and be happy as a man, believe me! I would be all over that! It would be so nice to have my body match my brain and not have to go through all of the hell we have to go through.

The reason transition becomes important, is because the psychological effects of depression from trying to be something you are not, eventually gets to a person, and makes it necessary in many cases, in order to save their life. So again.....I ask....isn't it better to have a person be happy and healthy, but maybe look a little different, or do you really think it is such a terrible thing that transgender people should just die?

What triggered this post, is I was watching Jessica Simpson's music video to her song from 2001 called "Irresistible".

It immediately brought me back in time to the beginning of 2001. I was 20 years old. I happened to be in Quincy California because I was half way through serving a 2 year mission for my church. The Mormon church which I was born and raised in, and fully believed in for most of my life, but which I have since left and no longer believe in. So, I was serving a mission for the church in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. Half way through my mission, my gall bladder gave out on me, and I had to go home to California to have it taken out. I'm in the top left row, second from the left.

As a missionary, you are not supposed to listen to anything but church approved church music. But music was such a huge part of my life, there's no way I could stick to that ridiculous rule. So this song, Irresistible came out right when I was home for my gall bladder surgery. At that time in my life, 20 years old, I still had not really hit puberty yet. My voice was still kind of high, I couldn't grow facial hair to save my life, and for the most part, I didn't really think of myself as male or female. Obviously I knew I was physically "male" but because none of the typical male characteristics had set in yet, I was still not feeling any real strong draws toward changing anything. It wasn't til my mid to late 20's that puberty finally happened for me, and when it did......all of a sudden my body started to tremendously betray my mind. Here I am drawn to more feminine things and wanting to be a beautiful, soft, girl with long hair, and able to wear cute skirts and dresses and things, and that felt like that should be a normal thing, but my body was developing all of this nasty thick body hair, and my voice dropped, and I went bald on my head, and my shoulders became more broad. All of the typical side effects of testosterone pumping through ones body. And it was NOT good!

Myself and my parents at the Oakland California LDS Temple early 2000.

It was at this time in my life that I found myself getting more and more increasingly uncomfortable in my own skin. And it wasn't making any sense to me. I did not know that being transgender was even a thing! Sure I had seen Rocky Horror Picture Show, and had seen plenty of men dressed as women, but I had no idea that I had an actual legitimate thing I was living with, and that I was not at all alone! I knew that I didn't think I aligned with what it meant to be a cross dresser, since I did not ever desire to take the clothes off. I wanted to remain that way all the time. If you were to go back then and look up my search engine search terms, you would find a LOT of searches for "Why do I feel like a girl?" Or "I am a boy, but I feel like I'm a girl." And about every variation of that search query you can possibly think of, because I was desperate for answers! Desperate to figure out what was going on with me. What sense does this make that I was born a boy, but I spend every minute of every day feeling completely wrong about the life I'm living? It was very confusing to me! And I still to this day cannot believe that none of those search terms ever gave me any actual answers. All I found was stuff about cross dressing, and internet forums about cross dressing. So I thought "Okay, maybe I am just a cross dresser." But....what I discovered, is that, no, it is not just about the clothes. It is not about having fun dressing that way, and then going back to my male life. I never wanted to go back to the male life. I knew there was something different. That not only did I desire to wear the clothes, but to actually be the girl on the outside all the time, that I felt I was on the inside. So I would spend hours searching the internet for clues and understanding, and somehow had an incredibly hard time finding anything.

It wasn't til I was in my late 20's, like 28 or 29, which was only about 9 years ago, that I finally happened to stumble upon this term

and a definition of what it meant.

So here I am almost 30 years old, and FINALLY I have an answer as to what I have been living with and feeling, and struggling with my entire life! However..........now the struggle is, my own hormones have created a serious problem. Because I did not know what was going on with me, I also did not know that there was anything that could be done about it. I did not know the option even existed to take "female" hormones and testosterone blockers in order to medically manipulate my body to more closely match the way my brain felt.

So.....the testosterone did it's thing, and over years, made my body very masculine. And by the time I realized anything could be done, the damage was already done. Irreversible changes had already occurred to my body, leaving me even further into this state of feeling so wrong and out of place.

There are many incredibly fortunate transgender kids who have parents who are open minded, and seek the help they need early on, so that they are able to get the hormone treatment they need early on so they don't end up in the position I am now in. I have very little understanding or compassion for those who say it is child abuse to give trans kids hormones. Because this is not something that is just going to go away. Yes there are kids who experiment, and may sway either way before they settle into their own bodies. And of course you would not want to be giving those kids hormones. But the ones like me, who know without a doubt that their body betrays what they feel in their head and heart, that is never going to change. It is never going to go away. So either we can continue to make them feel sad and lonely, and depressed as their true self continues to be crushed into male dominated submission......Or.......we can use modern science and research and medicine, to give them the help their really need in order to achieve the highest level of happiness.

Jazz Jennings is one of the more well known transgender kids. Because she got on the proper hormones early enough in her life, you would never guess that she was not born female.

Back in my teenage years, and early 20's, when I was in this state of just discovering myself in the world, and figuring out that there was something seriously different about me, I would watch these music videos by Mandy Moore and Jessica Simpson and Britney Spears, and all of the other pop teen girl music that was popular in the late 90's and early 2000's, and I found myself watching these girls with a certain level of "envy." Envy which at the time, I sometimes confused with "attraction". I didn't find them attractive nearly as much as I just wanted to "Be them." I had a few posters of Britney Spears hanging on my bedroom wall, and people would harass me about my "crush". But I didn't actually have a "crush" on her. I wanted to be her. I had those posters on my wall, because I liked looking at what I wished I was. Not because I liked looking at what I wish I "had" like so many people assumed. But I could never tell that secret. A boy that thinks he's really a girl in the wrong body? What kind of evil sorcery is that?!?!!?

Anytime I would walk down the sidewalk and see a girl walking, the other guys around me would make some sexual remark about her. But I NEVER thought of her in that way. I was admiring her clothing, or her cute shoes, or purse. I was not even remotely thinking anything sexual about her, other than imagining myself in her body. And this tripped me out for so many years. I just had no idea what was going on, and why I felt like I was a girl, and wanted all of the same things the other girls wanted, but here I was clearly a boy! It was so psychologically confusing!!! Watching Jessica Simpson in her cute clothes on these music videos. It never did "turn me on" like I knew it was supposed to. Instead, I found myself watching her music videos just like any other girl in her late teens, early 20's would have. With the added "envy" aspect of wishing so bad I looked like her, and could dress like that.

So now, here I am 37 years old. Have been taking female hormones and testosterone blockers for 7 months now. Last year, it finally just got to be too much for me. I just couldn't survive any longer living the male life and hiding my true self. So, I came out to my wife, and my family, and kind of accidentally ended up coming out to all of my almost 500 facebook friends at the time. And as I was afraid of, sure enough, it was too much for some people to take. So many people will just blindly believe and follow everything their religion tells them, even to the point of invalidating and trivializing something like a persons gender identity. It is not a joke. It is a very serious thing. Those of us who are transgender get used to peoples comments and strange uber personal questions that no one would ever even think to ask another straight cis person. What I have between my legs, and what I plan to do with that which is between my legs is absolutely no ones business, yet for some reason people think it is. As if the fact that you are transgender, removes all rights to privacy. So we develop a certain cynical, or sarcastic sense of humor over time. But our gender identity is actually a very serious matter, which those of us who NEED to make the transition for our own well being and happiness, have to go through a whole nightmare of procedures and things. It's not "fun". It's not like we just decided one day "Oh, I think I would like to be a woman, I hear they can do a surgery for that. " No no. For some of us, it requires months of meeting with a licensed therapist who helps to figure out, "Yes, indeed, you are about as transgender as they come" and they then write a letter confirming that you do indeed suffer from gender dysphoria (not identifying with the parts you have basically) and you are transgender, and then you can be prescribed hormones. So you start taking them, but the changes they have on the body are super slow. You begin to develop small breasts, other body fat starts to distribute to more feminine places of your body. Your body hair starts to thin, and eventually you have no more hair growing on your chest and back. I had a TON and I am so so very happy that it is mostly all gone now. Your face starts to change, and look more and more feminine over time. This is something that always freaks me out when I look at other transgender people who have been on hormones for a year or so.

Their eyes always look very feminine. Even if the rest of their body doesn't cooperate so well, their eyes are unmistakable for "girls" eyes. It's so amazing! So, the hormones make wonderful changes in a persons body, but then there is the voice. Do you have vocal surgery, or just go for vocal therapy? Because showing up somewhere looking like Princess Leia, but opening your mouth and sounding like Darth Vader, often makes people a little uncomfortable for some reason. Then there is the fact that your body is male, and you've been working your entire life in male dominated industries such as logging, and log trucking, and you now "walk" and carry yourself like a man too. So not only do you look and sound like a man, but the way you walk and carry yourself screams "I AM A MAN" as well. So you have to learn how to walk, and how to talk, and how to carry yourself.

Then there are the kids.... You dress up in all your girl clothes, put your wig on, and go out feeling good and happy, and your daughter goes right along with it as if it is all normal, but then your daughter continues to yell "Daddy!" to you across the store or playground. Now, she has an amazingly understanding heart. She knows that "daddy" is actually a girl who just looks like a boy. And she will tell anyone who asks her that. She just knows this is the case, and it's amazing to see a child just understand and accept it like that. I wish so bad that the rest of the world would look at things the way she does sometimes. She has started to correct herself and call me "She" when referring to me. We never told her to do this. We never told her to call me she, or anything else. She is 5 and a half years old, and has just figured this out on her own from what she has observed. And it is amazing! But.........we still struggle with what she should call me when we are out in public when I feel up to dressing as the real me. Things like this, I think many people don't realize we have to deal with on a daily basis. It is not at all an easy road to go down. So why would I want to do it then? Why would I want to put myself, and all of those around me through so much stress and hell? Because happiness. Happiness comes from feeling okay with ones self. Happiness comes from others loving you for who you are, not what they wish you were. Happiness comes from getting to experience the beautiful things in life in the ways that you have always wanted to. All of these things, far outweigh the negative aspects of taking this transgender journey. They are a struggle for sure, but in the end, when I can stand there feeling good about myself, and having those I love around me, still loving me for the person I always was on the inside.......That, is true happiness. I am not trying to be something I am not. But instead doing what I have to be, to be the happy person I have always been hidden under all that body and facial hair, and manly aspirations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ENuA0DAngE