How did I know I was trans?

For years I did not know I was transgender, never had even heard the term until a few years ago. I just knew I was different. My desires didn't match who I was suppose to be. I wanted to wear things girls got to wear. But didn't think that made me a girl.

When puberty hit, my sexual preferences seemed to line up correctly, I was attracted to girls. This helped to re-enforce that I was not a girl, after all girls did not like girls. (this was a bit before LGBT was common knowledge, at least in small town East Texas)

My desires never went away. I would dream up scenarios that put me in women's clothes. Elaborate fantasies- witness protection program where I had to be disguised for my own protection - government spy, my cover was as a woman. There were more, always in my thoughts. I can not think of a time when the scenarios were not running in my head, reasons I should be presenting as female.

Eventually I learned about transgender, and I learned that your gender identity had nothing to do with your sexual orientation. I began dressing in public, and it was amazing. But like an addictive drug I needed it more and more, until just dressing seemed shallow. I felt that I was just pretending, playing at a role.

I wanted it on the inside, not just something I put on the outside. After discussions with my wife, I started HRT, to make my insides feel more aligned.

And now, I feel right, I feel like me.

That's How I know.

Comfort zone

One of the hardest adjustments a transgender has to make is in our comfort zone.  Where we can go, who we can be around, etc., and still feel comfortable. 

Human nature tells us to seek out places of comfort, so that's what we try to do. We look for situations where we are comfortable.

This is the wrong way to look at it. Instead of changing what we are comfortable with, we simply look for situations that match how we already feel. 

Transgenders following this behavior pattern are headed down a dead end street. You will find that the more you express yourself, the fewer comfortable situations there are. You end up shrinking your world when you intended to expand it. 

You need to learn to be comfortable with things that used to make you uncomfortable. Don't try to make the situation fit you, learn to fit the situation.

For me, it once was intolerably uncomfortable for strangers to see me and know I was trans. But one day I looked at myself from a strangers point of view. I saw a pleasant, polite, obviously trans person trying hard to be herself. I decided I could live with that assessment, even with the 'obviously trans' part. I was no longer uncomfortable, I expanded my zone. 

Izza and I were having our afternoon coffee in a crowded Starbucks. Every tightly spaced chair and table was filled. We were engrossed in conversation when She casually uttered a phrase that I would only say to close friends or family. "Because I want to be pretty" , a phrase I have stated countless times, but never in public. She said it aloud in public where strangers could hear. Panic begins to invade me, I was out of my comfort zone. As I sat there I began looking at us from a 3rd person view, as if I was someone else in the crowd.

I saw us not as she and I, but as two trans women, talking to each other as friends, about things in their lives. Happy, normal, friends. And that was all it took, I was comfortable again. I could be happy being one of those friends..

So my zone just got a little bigger, ...again.

Look around you.

Yee-haw! I live in cowboy kuntry, gun tott'n, right wing Texas. A place where everything is 'all good' as long as you are a straight white male. That's what most people think about Texas.

I understand this prejudice. Where I grew up there was a sign across the main road into town that read 'Welcome to Greenville, the Blackest Land, the Whitest People'. When I went to school, there were no gays, their existence was vehemently denied. Women were housewives, not police officers or firemen. Nurses, not Doctors. We had Hispanics, but you rarely saw them in public spaces.

Last night my wife, daughter, son-in-law and I went to a local English pub style bar. A popular night spot, it was full. I have been going here for years, a few months ago I introduced them to my female self. I'm always treated like gold and last night was no exception.

  Midway through the evening I took a long look around the room. There was at least one guy in a cowboy hat, a lesbian couple, a large hispanic family, an interracial couple, two tables of gay men, several mid-twenty girls dancing by the bar, and scattered couples of various ages.

So how had I gotten here? Star Trek transporter? Tear in the time space continuum? No, I was still in Texas, it's just that Texas is not THAT Texas anymore. At least not in cities like DFW or Austin.

Every day, small changes in society happen. Small enough we rarely notice. But when you go back and compare then to now, well Wow! Society has changed tremendously since I was a child, and I'm grateful.

PseudoScience

I’m seeing a lot of ‘It's miserable to be Trans’ Facebook posts lately. ‘Being trans is a curse’, ‘Why am I this way?’ et al. 

One even stating they were trans because of some chemical introduced to their mother during pregnancy. This was followed by comments full of anecdotal logical fallacies. People love science, it’s a shame most can’t tell pseudoscience from the real thing.

Your anecdotal personal experiences are no substitute for controlled, double blinded properly documented experiments. You cannot have an idea of what the answer is and try to find events to prove your assumption. That is not real science, but it how we all fool ourselves into believing so many falsehoods.

I’m not saying these people have not had problems, but I don’t think blaming being trans is correct. What about those who not only enjoy being trans, but embrace it?

I hear phrases like ‘ People made me feel bad’ or ‘society made me feel like a loser’. Society didn’t make them feel. No person can MAKE you feel anything. They can influence your thought process, Only your brain can make you feel.

 They felt this way because they allowed themselves to feel this way. I know this seems harsh but it’s the truth. If you know anything about neuroscience you know this. Our brain never hears, sees, feels or smells anything. It just interprets signals from our biological sensors and determines what to do with that data.

This explains why you see people in every aspect of life that either are always happy/positive and others are always mad/sad/negative. It’s how we choose to interpret our surroundings.

Mainstream media is not immune from pseudoscience either, they tell us how dangerous it is to be trans, how much we suffer. How high suicide rates are among transgender, how high our murder rate is.

 Are Transgender more likely to commit suicide than average? Are we at a higher risk of attack? The real answer is we don’t know. The facts are not there.

You can not state a percentage of anything unless you know the size of the data set in question. In a group of five, if one dies, it’s one in five, or 20%. But if there are 1000 in the group, it’s one in one thousand or 0.1%.  No one knows how many of us there are. Numbers range from .03 to 20% of the US population, big difference.

I want to see more positive stories posted. or at least full disclosure of the real facts, not just link bait speculation. I’m tired of the world believing that to be trans means pain, agony and increased risk of murder/suicide.

I know there are people in the trans community that suffer, but being Trans is not the cause.

My tag is showing

I have a friend who is very influential in the local Transgender community. She often will say that we don’t want any labels. Labels are bad and we should not use them. I disagree.

 Humans are wonderful thinking machines. And we are born with a need for labels

Most parents will remember when their young children seem to say nothing except ‘What’s that?’. They can wear you out just pointing at things, asking the question. They want to give everything a name so they can identify it. 

Adults do the same. When we see something, like say a ‘Bear’. We have know things about it. It’s dangerous, furry, hibernates in the winter. If we are interested in bears we may also know the species, indigenous regions it lives, what it likes to eat, etc.

 We do this with humans as well. We recognize the approximate age of a person and apply facts to them. Are they old enough to have watched ‘All in the Family’ when it was new. Could they have fought in a war?

 We also use this to help us understand how to act around someone and how they are most likely going to act around us. If we see someone with a red face, breathing hard, scowl across their mouth, our brains label them ‘upset’. We immediately change our actions in response.

 Having lived in the trans community for several years now, I have come to understand that transgender is not the end all term. We are all different. Our goals, orientation, comfort levels, experiences are all vastly different. 

 I use the label ‘bi-gender’ because it best describes how I feel. It lets anyone else who understand the label know more about me quickly.

This is when labels are good.

The words, Bear and Adult are labels. So are American, tall, married and blonde. Nobody takes exception to these kinds of labels. Unless they don’t apply. Someone from the UK will almost always dislike being called Australian. It’s not labels that are bad, it when they are incorrectly applied that makes then wrong

 I came across this chart today on Facebook, and think it is definitely in the right direction.

(source -‘Transgender is Normal’ via Blaine Santos)

Attitude

 'You need an attitude adjustment, young man!' That's what my dad would say to me growing up.

At the time, I never really understood what he meant, now I do.

Fear of being exposed is something that every transgender experiences at some point. First we are scared of anybody finding out. we are afraid of what they will think of us. I think we don't yet know what to think of ourselves.

When I started going it was scary. I was still afraid of what people thought.

The first time I went through a fast food drive-through it was terrifying. First time to a store I almost turned around and left before entering.

But time passed, and so did my fear.

Today I went to the hospital for a X-ray. The admissions clerk looked at my paperwork, looked up at me and aid 'oh!' (All my legal docs are in my male name)

She was sweet and obviously a bit curious, so I offered to answer any questions. She was really happy and asked away.

Next I sat in the waiting room, waiting to be called in. Soon I see a technician, looking at her chart and scanning the waiting room. When I made eye contact, she mouthed my male name with a questioning look. I followed her and got the X-ray. She was pleasant and chatty.

Upon leaving the hospital, the admissions clerk, stood up and leaned out of her cubical and shouted 'Goodbye Jess!' , big smile on her face.

It's not these people that needed an attitude adjustment, I was me.

I the past, I would have been afraid of what they would think of me.

Now I view every encounter as just plain fun. I love the reactions I get and look forward to them.

Evolving

Gender expression defines those of us who are transgender.

Some of us will never fully express our true selves for more than a few minutes or hours at a time. Sometimes going months or years between that expression. Often living their entire life without ever leaving the house as their true selves.

A few will manage to change very early. The stories I read about 6 and even 4 year old kids telling their parents who they really are, and getting support, gives me tremendous joy.

It was not that way for me, or for virtually every trans I know.

I knew I wanted something different from around 3 or 4 years old. I would express myself until someone would tell me to stop, tell me it was wrong.

I would wait several years and try again, with the same results. This pattern repeated itself through my life, but as I grew older, I did not need anyone to tell me it was wrong. I had become very good at doing that myself.

 We learn behavior from the comments, actions and expressions of those around us as we grow up. I learned that I was wrong to express myself.

 The internet came about and I learned that there were others like me, lots of others. The logic of me being wrong began to unravel.

 When I again began to express myself, something was different this time, no one told me I was wrong, even my own inner voice began to fade. People began to tell me I was right, that I was brave. As time went on, my inner voice changed fromrestraint, to encouragement. I spent more and more time expressing myself, pushing to see where the limits were. I have not found any. 

After I spend 4 or 5 days as Jess, the day or so in-between is becoming more and more uncomfortable. I am now beginning to see, just a little, the dysphoria that so many transgender people report.

The amount of time I can spend comfortably not expressing myself is getting shorter and shorter. When I was young I went years, now two or 3 days is a stretch .

I see this like the pattern of an object circling a drain. The water spins it around and around the drain, with every rotation it gets closer and closer.

 I think I am getting very close to going down the drain.

Who and What

A few years ago I sat each of my two brothers down individually and explained that I was trans. One brother shrugged and said, “ You are still the same person ”. The other took it all in and went away to digest it. The next day he called to say he had done some research and that I was not trans, just a crossdresser. This was impressive, depressing and infuriating al at the same time.

 Impressive that he took the time to try and research it, depressing in the he applied a title to me that I attempt to distance myself from, and infuriating that he thought he was in a position to tell me who and what I was.

 Defining who and what we are is a real problem. A lot of lip service is given to the idea that transgender is a spectrum. But really not much is understood, certainly there is little definitive information to be found even with the best google searches.

 One of the best things to come out of the 2015 Transgender media explosion is the understanding that gender identity is completely separate from sexual orientation.

 I have come to understand that our spectrum is more diverse than just a simple gender identity and sexual orientation combination. There are many other factors, probably a large number. Humans are complex things.  

 For example I have noticed a wide range of attitude in just how much female expression is enough. I know girls who want nothing short but a complete change, HRT*, GCS**, the works. The other end of this spectrum involves those that dress in private briefly. The former is accompanied by tremendous distress in male mode, the latter is often followed by bouts of shame because of the female expression. These are extreme ends of the scale, but I think they describe at least one aspect of the transgender experience.

 I plan on exploring these and other aspect in coming blogs as I continue to understand just who and what I really am.

*HRT - Hormone replacement therapy

** GCD - Gender confirmation surgery, formerly GRS, gender reassignment surgery, formerly SRS, sexual reassignment surgery.