Tracking at Three Years

I began on low-dose HRT (estradiol patch and spironolactone pill) in mid-July, 2019. My doctor described it as “one sixth” of the amount she would prescribe to someone in full transition. Since then, I have had four increases, and am currently at approximately 2/3 the full dose. I am posting updates now and then.

August 2022 (3 years) – The pandemic kicked my trans ass, basically shutting down all of my social advances. As such, even though I’m at 2/3 of a full dose of HRT, I’m not socially transitioned at all. I’m really not sure how much social transition I want to do, but I’m pretty certain that the lack of this aspect is part of the reason the hormones are having a somewhat muted psychological effect. I do get weepy more easily, but that’s about it. I was hoping for something more, but I don’t know exactly what.

I have had very little breast growth, but there is at least some. When I compare “now” and “before” pictures, I definitely do have breasts now. They are just really small. Most noticeable is the feminizing of my nipples, and the development of large and dark areolas. They are somewhat puffy, meaning I’m probably technically on the cusp between Tanner stage 2 and 3. When I put on a bra today (a soft, stretch bra size XXL), I noticed that there’s very little loose fabric, which is a major difference from when I began. My more traditional 44C bra is still very loose at the top, but definitely full at the bottom.

I have certainly started to feel a bit self-conscious about my breasts. Under most shirts they still look basically like moobs, but every once in a while I catch my reflection and my chest looks a little more feminine than that. I doubt that anyone has noticed, but that day could come. I’m OK with it.

One of the reasons I decided to increase the dosage was actually because I have had so little breast growth. If they were busting out, I probably would have hesitated. But my goal all along has been to get psychological changes, not physical changes. So I plan to go as high on the dosage as I can without growing big boobs. At my age (58), it’s entirely possible that I can go all the way to a full dose and not see much development. That would simultaneously be great and disappointing. I have to admit that I love looking at my areolas…

One more thing about breasts worth noting is that my nipples have not really gained any sensitivity, and are not really erogenous zones right now. Again, this is a bit disappointing, but could certainly change.

On the rest of my body, the changes are very minor. The hair on my arms and legs is finer, and my beard grows noticeably slower. When the pandemic hit I switched to shaving my face only once a week, and I have maintained that, so I get a good feel for any changes. After a week now, I have noticeably less to shave than I used to.

There are some signs of hair regrowth on my head. This is a little unexpected, but welcome. I recently read about low-dose, oral minoxidil in the New York Times, which supposedly has the potential to completely restore hair for some people. I plan to ask my doctor about that at my next appointment.

I see no appreciable difference in my face or other body shapes, with one small — and I mean small — exception: my penis has shrunk considerably! It still gets erect if I am aroused, and the erect size hasn’t actually changed all that much, though when it stretches to full length, it feels a little tight and uncomfortable. But when it’s soft, it almost completely disappears! Meanwhile, my testicles have not shrunk at all. Again, this isn’t a problem for me, just something to note. Also, if we’re going to get into the nitty gritty here, I have completely dry orgasms now. No cum whatsoever. Afterward, a little dribble of what I would call precum emerges as the shaft softens, and that’s it.

Such things are hardly worth mentioning because my libido is effectively zero. My lab work shows my T at almost zero, and my E in the mid 70s (expected to rise to about 100 in the next round of labs). Again, I’m all good with that.

But back to the psychological. I haven’t been out dressed for about two and a half years, because of what COVID did to the family’s schedule, and I miss it. The last time I went out, right before everything shut down in March, 2020, I had the most exhilarating experience and definitely wanted that to continue. I tried to describe the feeling to a friend, and the best I could do was send him this image:

I haven’t had that feeling in a while, and I think that’s inhibiting the psychological effectiveness of the HRT. I think denying my female self in this way is causing me to fight the changes that the hormones want to introduce.

I need to let go, and just be that girl. Wish me luck.

Tracking at Two Years

I began on low-dose HRT (estradiol patch and spironolactone pill) in mid-July, 2019. My doctor described it as “one sixth” of the amount she would prescribe to someone in full transition. Since then, I have had two increases, and am currently at approximately 1/3 the full dose. I am posting updates every few months, or when things are interesting.

Mid June, 2021 (1yr, 11 mos) – I had my 2-year check-up in early May. It was actually a 96-week checkup because the estrogen is prescribed in packs of 12 weeks, rather than 13, meaning the appointment will move about a month forward with each passing year.

I told my doctor that the hormones are controlling the dysphoria well, but that I remain somewhat disappointed to not be getting much in the way of emotional changes. She was totally open to going up on the estrogen, and bordered on encouraging it, but I declined. In addition to not seeing much in the way of emotional changes, I have seen essentially no physical changes (beyond slight weight gain, which could be related to the pandemic), and I’d prefer to keep it that way — mostly. I know that my body is now fully primed, and even a small increase could trigger rapid developments. Or not. I’m 57, and the chance of significant bodily feminization has always been rather low.

The doctor said that she goes with what each patient feels is right, as long as it’s safe, and that most of her patients know when to go up. I asked her how they know, and she said that they typically get to a point where they “just can’t take it anymore.” I am not there . . . yet.

In talking with my spouse afterward, she also encouraged me to consider going up if the results aren’t satisfying, and questioned why the doctor would trust patients to make that decision if the potential benefits are well-established and not dangerous. While that’s certainly a welcome response, I’m not sure she entirely appreciates the potential degree of physical changes, and that she would likely not be comfortable with them.

But as I have processed these conversations, and my own desire to experience more psychological benefits, I am becoming more willing to risk the physical in service to the emotional. With another follow-up appointment already scheduled for November, my doctor made it clear that I could contact her before that to request an increase and she would grant it without hesitation. That would likely take me up to something approaching 1/2 of a full dose.

If I’m honest with myself, I realize that I really would like to be at a full dose someday, say, by the time I turn 60 in the summer of 2023. If I plot that out, it looks something like this:

Actual
July 2019: 16%
Dec 2019: 25%
July 2020: 33%

Goal(?)
July 2021: 50%
July 2022: 66%
July 2023: 100%

I may have to live with physical changes — which I very much don’t want, but also very much do still dream of. Perhaps I am actually nearing a point where I just “can’t take it” — the ambiguity, the waiting, the hoping, the anticipating, the need to shirk off one gender and reveal the other. I may very well need/want to take the next baby step.

Tracking

I began on low-dose HRT (estradiol patch and spironolactone pill) in mid-July, 2019. My ENDO described it as “one sixth” of the amount she would prescribe to someone in full transition. I will update this post with my observations of the effects.

• Late February, 2021 (1 yr, 8 mos) – Updating without much to say. My dysphoria remains almost totally controlled at my current level of hormones (roughly 1/3 to 1/4 of a standard HRT dose). The pandemic has resulted in my kids distance learning all day every day from home, so I have had no choice but to tuck all transition thoughts into the deep background — aided, I think, by the hormones. My therapist has switched to online appointments only and given up her office space, meaning she is unlikely to go back into in-person practice even when COVID restrictions ease. That may mean I will need a new therapist, though I must admit that I don’t have much to talk about right now. I suppose things being in a form of stasis is probably good. Fingers crossed.
• Mid September, 2020 (1 yr, 3 mos) – Went up another notch on estradiol after feeling almost nothing from the recent increase. Now at about one-third the full dose (spiro did not change). My doc is great, and was willing to go even higher, but I decided to continue moving very slowly. So far, no real changes from this increase either. Breast tenderness is essentially gone, and I don’t think they’ve changed size or shape at all. I am a little disappointed, of course, and really not sure what to do if I get nothing from this dosage either. The next notch up is to 50% the full dose of estradiol, and that would probably come with more significant physical changes — which I’m not trying to avoid altogether, but minimize. The real reason to increase is a basic lack of much in the way of emotional changes — the whole goal here.
• Mid July, 2020 (1 year) – A month already on the new HRT levels and no appreciable change. Breasts have remained tender, but no real growth of any kind. In fact, now a year in and breast tenderness with low libido remain the only real effects of the HRT. Coupled with a reasonable reduction in dysphoria, I guess I have gotten more or less what I was hoping for, though it is a little disappointing that, despite not feeling quite as “bad,” I don’t really feel any more “good.” In a possible sign of good things, I have noticed that orgasm feels sort of different, like deeper, sort of filling my pelvic area more. Can’t explain it much beyond that, but perhaps it bodes well for more subtle changes, though I really am looking for them in emotional capacity more than anything else. Not much there so far. (I’m remembering that the first changes didn’t really kick in until I had been on HRT for two months, so more time may be necessary to measure the effects.)
• Mid June, 2020 (11 months) – Feels a bit like pandemic has put transition on hold. The last time I went out en femme was in February…and it was utterly amazing, the best experience yet. *sigh* My therapist decided not to offer in-person sessions anymore (even after the pandemic ends), and with kids home, there’s no way for me to make Zoom therapy work, so I have had to discontinue for now. But I did see my HRT doc again on schedule and even in person (with mask, presenting male there for the first time because it was my only option). She gave me a breast exam (my first ever!) but described them as “still at baseline.” I expressed that I was still not getting much emotional benefit, and having not seen any negative side effects, she agreed to an increase without any hesitation. So I went from 1/6 the full dose to 1/4. We will see if anything changes.

Pandemic – I have to admit that the pandemic has brought about feelings that I need to be strong, steady, masculine for my family until this all passes. Admittedly, this is a bit irrational — I might actually be stronger if I could be more feminine — but this type of high/perpetual stress does tend to induce such irrationality. I am merely biding my time, making no medication changes for now, and looking for this to all pass eventually…

• Mid January, 2020 (6 months) – Might be experiencing moodiness. Breasts still tender, though the feeling is evolving. They might be growing slightly, or I might just be noticing them more. Time spent dressed and out feels very different now — easy, natural, inevitable. I think the hair on my arms might be getting lighter in color, though not really in coverage. Physical changes are really minimal overall; same with mental/emotional. Libido remains down, but not gone completely, and sexual function is unchanged, beyond less and more watery ejaculate. At this point, dysphoria is manageable, which was a goal going in. Baby steps.
• Mid December, 2019 (5 months) – Definite increased sensitivity to scents. Not anything particular, but noticing things other people don’t seem to. Crossdressing desire has returned, but with a different feel. Now it is about just going out and being myself in the world — that is, trying to integrate it more into everyday life when possible. Also, I seem to be having more vivid dreams, and I am more likely to remember them. (Could be unrelated to the HRT, of course.)
• Mid November, 2019 (4 months) – Unexpected change in social interactions, which have become easier and more natural. Reduction of overall self-consciousness.
• Mid October, 2019 (3 months) – Realization that gender dysphoria has moved from a foreground problem to a background problem, with long periods in which it does not cross my mind.
• Mid September, 2019 (2 months) – Pain in nipples, and sensitivity in both breasts, but no visible growth or other change.
• Early September, 2019 (1.5 months) – Blood work and check-up with HRT doc. Decided not to change dosage levels, though she was willing to increase them.
• Mid August, 2019 (1 month) – Loss of all desire to crossdress.
• Late July, 2019 (2 weeks) – Significantly reduced libido, but no change to sexual function.

To be continued…

The Threshold

Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher, first described what has come to be known as ‘threshold anxiety’. He describes the feelings of a young transwoman who is about to come out to the world to begin her transition. As she stands on the threshold of revelation, about to speak her truth, she feels that she’s turning her back on everything that is warm, familiar, and secure — what she has known all her life. Beyond the threshold lies the world, filled with all that is unknown and strange. If the young transwoman turns back at this point, she is lost. If, however, she can take the fear of the unknown and turn it into the excitement of the unlimited possibilities which are open before her in her new gender, she grows in the moment and is alive, as never before.

– Mildred Newmand and Dr. Bernard Berkowitz
How to Take Charge of Your Life, alt.

A realtor once told me that as soon as you decide to sell your house, it isn’t your house anymore. The decision changes your relationship to the house fundamentally, and now all actions, great and small, are in service to finding the next owner. Effectively, the decision to sell is the moment when the house belongs to the next owner, come what may.

The corollary for the transgendered is that as soon as you decide to transition, you aren’t your birth gender anymore. The decision changes your relationship to your life fundamentally, and now all actions, great and small, are in service to revealing, fulfilling and becoming your true self. Effectively, the decision to transition is the moment when you change genders, come what may.

I am standing at that moment. I have made my decision. And therefore, I am female.

God of Mystery, you have called your servants
to ventures of which we cannot see the ending,
by paths as yet untrod, through perils unknown.

Give us faith to go out with courage,
not knowing where we go,
but only that your hand is leading us
and your love supporting us. Amen

Bra Talk (A Fantasy)

This morning, shortly after I got out of the shower, my old friend, who recently became my husband, snuck up behind me in the bedroom. I had just put my arms through my bra straps, but his hands snaked around me and cupped my breasts. Almost immediately I could feel his warm breath, and then his lips, on my neck, and then his manhood pressed against my naked back.

If it had been even a little later, or if I had been a little farther along in getting ready, I might have laughed it off. But the timing was perfect, and without a word we had the most delightful quickie ever. He left me feeling warm and satisfied and safe and loved.

As I got out of bed again, he looked at my breasts.

“They seem bigger.”

“I think they are. My bras are fitting tight again.”

He got a strange look on his face. “Do you still like all that?”

“What? Having a tight bra?”

“No, just having breasts. I mean, wearing a bra. Every day.”

It was a funny question, and took me all the way back to the time before I had started hormones.

I remember that wearing a bra was one of the most exciting things I ever did. Sometimes I stuffed socks into the cups, and eventually I created a set of falsies for myself out of old socks filled with popcorn seeds. But sometimes I just wore them without any fake boobs, and enjoyed the feeling of the fabric against my skin, and the straps surrounding me like an all-day hug.

Shortly after I started hormones, and my breasts started to grow, I started needing to wear a bra every day, mostly to deal with sensitive nipples at first, but eventually to support my girls, which came in nicely after a fashion.

Even now, though I wasn’t especially big, the act of putting on a bra had become so routine that I almost couldn’t remember why it had ever seemed like a thrill. It seemed like just a piece of underwear now, one that I sometimes cursed a little under my breath.

“I love having breasts. You know that.”

“Right. And I love that you have them, too. The bigger the better!”

Such a boy. My bra was on now — flesh-toned lycra, with a touch of lace along the tops of the cups, and a bow at the center where they meet. He was still looking at them with that look.

“Cut it out! You already got some today!”

“But they look so great. C’mere. Let me have another little squeeze.”

I had to be getting to work, so this time I did shut him down. Well, I gave him a little peck, and made sure he could get in one last caress. Even through the fabric of my bra, his hand touching my breast felt amazing. As I pulled away to button my blouse, I made sure he got a good view until the very last second.

“I love needing a bra, and I love wearing one. There. Are you happy?”

“Oh, yeah,” he leered.

I carried the memory of that gaze with me all day, and felt a new appreciation for something which had become routine. For the first time in a long time, all day long I felt like I was embraced again in an all-day hug.

When I got home, he was already there. He got up and greeted me not just with a kiss, but with a hand on my left breast. I would love to tell you what happened next, but a girl has to keep some things to herself, doesn’t she?

Girl in the Boat

Please consider this excerpt from The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown (pages 289-290):

Sudden revelation paid Bobby Moch a visit as well. His came as he sat, in the shade under a tree in a wide-open field on Travers Island, opening an envelope. The envelope contained a letter from his father, the letter Bobby had requested, listing the addresses of the relatives he hoped to visit in Europe. but the envelope also contained a second, sealed, enveloped labeled, “Read this in a private place.” Now, alarmed, sitting under the tree, Moch opened the second envelope and read its contents. By the time he had finished reading, tears were running down his face.

The news was innocuous enough by twenty-first-century standards, but in the context of social attitudes in America in the 1930s it came as a profound shock. When he met his relatives in Europe, Gaston Moch told his son, he was going to learn for the first time that he and his family were Jewish.

Bobby sat under the tree, brooding for a long while, not because he suddenly found himself a member of what was then still a much discriminated against minority, but because as he absorbed the news he realized for the first time the terrible pain his father must have carried silently within him for so many years. For decades, his father had felt that in order to make it in America it was necessary to conceal an essential element of his identity from his friends, his neighbors, and even his own children. Bobby had been brought up to believe that everyone should be treated according to his actions and his character, not according to stereotypes. It was his father himself who had taught him that. Now it came as a searing revelation that his father had not felt safe enough to live by that same simple proposition, that he had kept his heritage hidden painfully away, a secret to be ashamed of, even in America, even from his own beloved son.

What the Jews have faced over the centuries is hideous and inexcusable. The scale is beyond comprehension, and anti-Semitic sentiments have regrettably lingered. I am not Jewish, and cannot know what that is like.

But this excerpt also describes how it feels to be trans, to realize that I am someone who feels it “necessary to conceal an essential element of his identity from his friends, his neighbors, and even his own children.” I recoil at the certainty that my children will one day be faced with finding out “the terrible pain [their] father must have carried silently within him for so many years.”

Sugar? Caffeine? Porn? Trans?

Short Definition of Addiction:

Addiction is a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry. Dysfunction in these circuits leads to characteristic biological, psychological, social and spiritual manifestations. This is reflected in an individual pathologically pursuing reward and/or relief by substance use and other behaviors.

Addiction is characterized by inability to consistently abstain, impairment in behavioral control, craving, diminished recognition of significant problems with one’s behaviors and interpersonal relationships, and a dysfunctional emotional response. Like other chronic diseases, addiction often involves cycles of relapse and remission. Without treatment or engagement in recovery activities, addiction is progressive and can result in disability or premature death.

What are we addicted to? What is addiction? Which addictions do we need to break? Are there any which are OK?

And what if making what seems like a reasonable, albeit rather extreme, decision about one’s life is just based on some sort of addiction?

When I want something, how can I determine whether I’m reacting to addiction, compulsion, pre-disposition, natural biology, biological divergence or mutation, Pavlovian conditioning, brain wiring error, hormonal imbalance, or what have you?

I’m writing this because I need to know if I’m just addicted to thoughts of becoming a woman.

But let’s not start there. Let’s do a little contemplation first.

I love sugar. I eat sugar every day. I sometimes crave it. Sometimes I go out of my way to get some M&Ms or a donut.

Am I addicted to sugar? Can you be addicted to something (say, a food) that you need to survive? Sugar, for example, is fuel for life. And while there are certainly other fuels, many (most? all?) foods are immediately broken down into sugar by the body. Sugar (in moderation) isn’t inherently bad. If I eat too much processed sugar, that can be bad, but does that constitute addiction? What if I crave it? Where’s the line? How do I tell the difference? Is just craving a little bit of chocolate now and then a sign of addiction? How about eating a bowl of sugary cereal once a day?

I drink caffeine every day. Not in coffee (which I hate) but in soda — roughly 50 milligrams per can, or about 150-200 milligrams spread throughout the day. (That’s about the same amount as in a single cup of coffee.) Is that too much? Does the fact that I do it every day mean that I am hooked? When I don’t have caffeine for a couple of days I get a little grumpy. But it passes. I can go without, and sometimes do. Sometimes I drink more than usual, and I usually feel pretty happy and contented when I do.

But I often start my day with some caffeine, and I go out of my way to make sure I never run out. I may not always drink it, but I always at least want the option. Am I addicted to it?

I started wondering about this subject because of a web site called Your Brain on Porn. It argues that modern porn overwhelms our natural biological responses, hyper-charges male sexuality, and puts men on a very bad path. The arguments are compelling enough to consider (despite possibly being impurely motivated).

And I do sometimes watch porn.

But I don’t like porn very much, and not straight porn at all. I sometimes enjoy trans porn, and it’s pretty much the only kind that I could ever get anything from. Just short clips, once in a while. I don’t see a problem with that, and I wouldn’t want to stop watching such things, but am I addicted? I don’t think so, but I wonder where the line is.

I admit that I can only become aroused by trans thoughts. I haven’t had a “straight” fantasy (imagining sex, as a man, with a woman) for a very long time. And even though my fantasies evolve, the common theme is and has always been that every single one involves me becoming or being or acting like or dressing like or being seen as female. It makes me wonder: Am I addicted to trans-thinking? Trans-dreaming? Trans-planning? Trans-everything?

Reading about addiction to porn, I’ve tried to substitute my trans feelings in the same equation to see if things line up. Often (but not always) they do.

I’ve asked myself this question before: Is all of my trans-life just the byproduct of some totally random stimulus when I was three or four years old that produced a “high” of some sort, then leading me to seek it out again and again? Have I just needed progressively more of that stimulus in the way that a drug user becomes immune?

At a very young age, I had a teddy bear on my bed that had a sheer black, decorative scarf. One night, for reasons I really don’t remember and can’t imagine, I tied my wrists together behind my back with that scarf. All I remember is sort of liking the feel of the fabric, and having a sort of abstract curiosity about the feeling of tightness and immobility. The act was arousing, but in a rather pre-sexual way.

Around that same time, I remember seeing pantyhose drying in the bathroom. Again, the sheerness was attractive, in the same way that the scarf had been. I remember touching them, feeling them, and being overcome by curiosity of what it would be like to wear them. I remember sticking my arm in as far as I could, and of course I eventually closed and locked the bathroom door and tried them on.

From that moment (at least), I knew something was different about me, and my relationship with being a boy was never the same. I wanted out. I was trans without even knowing what that meant.

If some sort of gender mismatch existed inside me before doing these two things, I will never know. But from there, the feelings grew, and they have never gone away. Of course, how my child brain made the leap from sheer to female isn’t that hard to figure out, given the presence of so many images reinforcing that idea in the culture of the time.

But the mechanism which started then has continued. When I think about trans stuff, I get a shot of pleasant brain juices. Just the release of pleasant brain juices is enough to fuel addiction. But pleasant brain juices are just part of life, right? When we humans discover something that gives us pleasant brain juices, the mechanism of our reward system causes us to seek that stimulus out again. Is that addiction?

I like looking at pictures of beautiful women, but mostly because of their clothing, and hair, and general femininity. Does the simple act of enjoying such things constitute addiction? Where does interest cross into obsession?  Where does enjoyment cross over into addiction?

If it is an addition, and I were in rehab trying to recondition my reward centers, what would I need to do? A return to some sort of straightness? (Wait, it couldn’t be a “return” because I never was there.) I might try that, but it would sure seem weird.

Could I somehow disentangle trans thinking from sexual arousal? Doubt it.

If I were to start hormones, who is to say that a positive effect might not simply be the result of reducing arousal desires? A little bit of E could be just the thing to break the arousal problem. But then what?

There’s so much here, and it seems appropriate, but clearly there is no method of separating all of these things into their component parts. It’s all one big soup.

For example, if it is an addition, wouldn’t transition be the ultimate cure? It just might. That might be a Very Good Thing. But if it didn’t, that would certainly be a Very Bad Thing. No way of knowing without doing.

What next?

In the final analysis, if I were to determine that I have an addiction, it could only be to wishing I was female. I wish it all the time, and I can’t stop wishing it. I’ve wished it enough that I really want to make it a reality, and I can see how that might be possible, even inevitable.

Can you be addicted to a wish? Is that dangerous? Is that the type of addiction which should be broken?

How do you break an addiction to a wish to be female?

Transition, of course.

I, Flirt (A Fantasy)

The following is a prequel to my earlier post, A Fantasy.

When I first told my best friend that I might become a woman, he did not freak out. At least, he didn’t look like he was freaking out. If he was freaking out inside, he covered it perfectly. He seemed completely calm.

In our earliest conversations on the subject, he mostly found the whole idea confusing. He obviously didn’t share any similar feelings of gender uncertainty, so I had to sort of explain things from the ground up. Even though he isn’t really a “guy’s guy” in any way, he’s still a guy, and the idea of someone not wanting to be a guy didn’t seem to quite make sense to him. But he stuck with me, asked questions, and was totally nonjudgmental.

Better still, he was willing to talk whenever I needed it, and I found those conversations to be immensely helpful, because I suddenly felt known and not rejected. It was a great relief to no longer be hiding this from him.

He’s on the more sensitive end of the guy scale, and over time, I started to think that he found the whole concept more provocative than he first let on.

Because we hang out together regularly, and sometimes do things you might see a gay couple doing (such as sightseeing or just walking together and talking), he gets a little freaked out sometimes. So we have a running gag where he says, “All the people here think we’re gay,” to which I respond, “So what? Who cares?”

But there was a moment, years before I came out to him, when he was especially vulnerable due to certain life circumstances. We had had a memorable conversation in which he confided that, of all his friends, I was the only one that he could imagine cuddling with on a couch. It was a sort of weird thing to say, and it came out of the blue. Given the circumstances, I knew that he was trying to communicate that he felt safe with me, and close to me, that he appreciated our long friendship, and that it was unlike any other that he has had.

After he said it, he had paused to gauge my reaction. Back then, I wasn’t thinking about coming out to anyone, but I didn’t want to mock him or dishonor his vulnerability. My reaction was only to say that I appreciated his feelings, and I didn’t comment at all on whether something like that could ever happen.

He quickly said that it wasn’t a gay thing, and I told him that I understood completely. I’ve known him long enough to realize that, if he has any gay tendencies (like his older brother), they are pretty weak. I’ve never really sensed anything that made me think he was hiding it, or interested in men at all. I could be wrong, of course. People hide things like that all the time — like me and my gender identity. But I don’t think I’m wrong on that count. He wasn’t gay, but he felt close to me, and our relationship was mature enough that he could tell me. I took that as a compliment, and have cherished it ever since.

Practically, I had to sort of stick that little moment in the back of my mind, but as time passed after I came out to him, it popped into my head more and more. And though he never said it, I think it was going through his mind as well. It became clear to me (and probably to him) that he had sensed my femininity, without knowing exactly what it was about, long before I ever said anything to him. And though I had no reason to think he was having fantasies about me, the reverse was a different matter.

The truth is that, at some point, I had started to have sexual fantasies about him — well not exactly about him, but which included him. Like many transwomen, I had fantasies about being sexual with men, but they were always faceless men, and the acts were merely physical things which allowed me to experience myself sexually as a woman.

But over time, my faceless man got a face, and to my great surprise, it was his. And the sexual acts, rather than being the whole of the fantasy, started to give way to just thinking about kissing, and hugging, and flirting, and eventually, yes, just cuddling with him on a couch!

It was a weird, sort of backwards progression, from the highly sexual, to the highly social. Eventually, the fantasy sex became the culmination of fantasy dates, until the idea of the date became more exciting than the physicality in which it might culminate. I was shocked to realize one day that I was more aroused by the idea of an honest emotional encounter with him than a purely physical one.

I began to fantasize about us traveling together, me as an out transwoman, presenting ourselves as a romantic couple everywhere we went, and then enjoying each other romantically before falling asleep together in big hotel beds. I fantasized about just being held, or kissed, or treated like someone that he considered special. I fantasized about being his date to his company Christmas party, and attending family picnics with his grown kids and ex-wife (who he has maintained a healthy and positive relationship with). I fantasized about dressing for him, and trying out perfumes until I found one that he really liked. I fantasized about pajamas, and nightgowns, and waking up with him pressed against me. I fantasized about mornings where I got dressed for work at his house, selecting from a closet full of women’s clothes that he let me keep there, then kissing him goodbye as we each went off to work.

By the time I came out to him, he was the subject of my every sexual fantasy, and many of them didn’t even involve sex (although that remained on the spectrum of fantasies).

I have never been attracted to him physically, and I’m still not. But the idea of the emotional intimacy made me want, in my fantasies, to offer him that physical intimacy, which I then imagined enjoying quite a bit. Not being gay, and literally never having been physically attracted to a man, this whole idea actually freaked me out a bit.

Being something new to my trans experience, I told my therapist all about it. She confirmed that it’s quite common for her clients to have such fantasies. But she could tell that the idea of being a straight woman was an unfamiliar one and scary for me, so she tried to reassure me that most of her male-to-female clients identified as lesbian, or occasionally bi, after transition. She said that, in her many years of experience, it was pretty rare to find someone’s sexuality flipped by the hormones.

But I knew in my heart that I was already, even before hormones, on a path to female heterosexuality. And I actually adjusted to the idea fairly quickly because, in my fantasies, I was overjoyed to feel safe, and loved, and cared for, and known as wholly female. It was entirely surprising to me that the presence of a man might have this effect, but my imagination was, I think, just extrapolating from where I was going as a transwoman.

And then came the most powerful fantasy I’ve ever had: That he wanted to marry me. It wasn’t a fantasy that I sought, but it just sort of tumbled into my mind one day. We were on a date, only he was more dressed up than usual, obviously nervous, and took me to a very nice restaurant. About halfway through the meal, he started stuttering and stammering, and I suddenly knew what was coming. The subject had come up casually before, so it was easy to say yes. Then my fantasy would shift immediately to the Justice of the Peace, with his daughter as my Maid of Honor, and his son as his Best Man, and then he was kissing the bride — me! — as we became husband and wife.

This quickly became my dominant fantasy, to the point of excluding almost everything else. The details varied each time. Sometimes I was post-op when we married, and sometimes I was completely pre-transition. Sometimes I imagined a small church, and other times a judge’s chambers. Sometimes I imagined myself in a full white wedding gown, and others a simple off-white, satin, tea length dress (but always dressed in women’s clothing). Sometimes I saw him in a tux, other times a suit, and still other times I couldn’t see anything but his face. Sometimes I imagined the honeymoon, or just the wedding night, or even our celebration in bed right after getting engaged.

It was the imagination of these “celebrations” which actually motivated me to visit my local adult fantasy store. I’m hesitating to say what I bought, but I will admit that I bought it because I wanted to be prepared (i.e. sufficiently accommodating) in the event that someday he wanted to make love to me before I had a proper vagina (which I may never have). Subsequently, my use of that item made the fantasies even more intense, though also more emotional. I regularly began to cry while imagining him wanting me to be his wife, in every sense of that word.

In short, I kind of got “bride brain,” another very new experience for me.

The fantasies were incredibly powerful, and changed me profoundly. I realized that being dressed as a woman caused me to think in different ways, and consider things that I would never consider any other time. I already knew I was trans, but now I also knew exactly where I was headed. It brought me great joy, and not a little bit of terror. I wanted to admit this all to him, but had a hard time even imagining the words I might use. The possibility of rejection was simply too great.

As time passed after I came out to him, our friendship remained stable, essentially unchanged by the revelation. Well, unchanged in most ways, but I saw a new tenderness in him whenever the subject came up. He didn’t want to talk about it all the time, though he never shied away from the subject when I brought it up. He asked questions, and even gave advice. He quickly accepted that transition was inevitable for me, and started to get used to that idea. It was the sweetest approach I could have hoped for.

And then one day, in real life, and much to my own surprise, I actually did start to flirt with him. A little. Tentatively. Playfully. And he was willing to come along for that ride.

When I told him that starting hormones might mean growing boobs, he asked if he’d ever get to touch them. “Maybe if you buy me a drink!” I answered.

When I mentioned that I had pictures of myself dressed, he was excited to see them, and his eyes grew wide as he told me how cute I looked.

“That was a while ago,” I admitted. “I’m not exactly that sweet young thing anymore…” He smiled.

When I told him that I was afraid I’d be an ugly woman, he said, “So what? Just be who you are.”

When he asked if I thought I would ever become attracted to men, I said that I didn’t know, but I could imagine it. He seemed intrigued.

When I told him that my wardrobe of female clothing was pretty tame — much like that of any other woman — he replied by saying, “You should show me sometime.”

Then he asked if I had any stilettos, and I said that of course I did.

He asked if I was blonde or brunette, and I said that he could choose!

Suddenly, my hopes of him actually being into this grew until they were almost overwhelming. So I packed a bag full of girl clothes that I could take with whenever I knew I’d see him alone. The first time I brought it with, I left it in the trunk of my car, but I told him it was there. He said, “Bring it out! Let’s see you!”

Unfortunately, the timing wasn’t right that night. His roommate was due back, and neither of us wanted to have to explain ourselves. But I had begun flirting with him, and he flirted back. Heaven!

But from that moment, I — well, actually, we, I think — began looking for opportunities for me to dress up for him, and show him what I looked like as a girl in real life. I couldn’t really tell at first whether he actually wanted to see me that way, or was just humoring me because he could tell that I wanted it. He played his cards pretty close to the vest. But I started to imagine that he was fantasizing about that happening just as much as I was.

And that is when I became obsessed with finding some way to experience at least a little of this in real life. Knowing that fantasy and reality often diverge in significant ways, I never assumed that this was something he would ever want or even consider. But I began to concoct a plan to get him into a bridal photo session, with me as his bride, just to see what might happen.

To get to that point, however, I knew that I would have to lay some more groundwork with him, so that’s what I put my mind to, and that’s exactly what happened.

To be continued…

Gender? Dysphoria?

So many transwomen say that they “just feel” like a woman inside, and that’s so not my experience.

When I really think about it, I don’t experience any gender whatsoever in my deepest inner core. It’s a significant enough feeling that I wonder if it may not be universal, even though our socialization clouds this fact from the very beginning.

More specifically, in my deepest self I do not feel like a woman, or a man, or anything in between. My deepest self is utterly without gender. Everything related to gender feels superimposed onto this genderless core — in the way that a white light looks blue through a blue lampshade.

I was socialized as a male because I was born with a penis, and the soup of male hormones has shaped the rest of my body. But that identity was not there in the beginning. It was imposed on my genderless self by the social environment that I was born into.

As proof, let me offer that different cultures have different norms and expectations of males. If I had been born in a different place or into a different tribe, my socialization as male would have likely been very different. And there is the possibility that such an alternate socialization would not have been a problem for me. In other words, I think there’s at least the possibility that I would not be trans if I had been born in a different culture.

Indeed, when I distill my own “trans-ness,” it comes down to a simple desire to reject the male socialization that I received, and adopt instead the female socialization that I have observed. And the reason for this is that I think the male socialization I received has instilled hard limits on my emotional availability where I see considerably less limits in the female socialization that I have observed.

It’s tempting to claim that I felt this way all along, but I don’t think that’s the case. My earliest cross-gender desires were about clothing. I liked the pretty clothes that I saw girls wearing and which were simply not available to me. I wanted to wear skirts and tights and do my hair and be pretty and smile.

To this child, that’s what constituted girlness. But at its heart, even in my earliest longings, was a degree of vulnerability and self-care that I simply couldn’t allow myself given the rules I was conditioned with (by whatever mechanism). There was an attractive softness to being a girl which I had no way of accessing or expressing. Part of that was provided by the clothes and other trappings, I’m sure.

It’s not that expressing emotions was disallowed, but that my early expression of emotions was met by something (as yet undefinable) which discouraged me from that. It may have been something which came from my family of origin, or the culture of where I grew up, or something even larger.

But my point is that the expectations were imposed on me, and I could not find a way to be the whole me within those constructs. That is at the heart of my dysphoria.

I do not claim to be female inside, but rather that my genderless self could meet the world in a much more authentic way if it could do so without the restrictions of “maleness” and within the framework I have observed of “femaleness.”

As they always say, YMMV. But I am beginning to wonder if this is a more useful way to understand gender, and to understand and react to the transgender instinct. This is something at least worth considering.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Thinking too much is dangerous. I did that today.

I started wondering about my first ever experiences with images of femininity, and how they may have laid the foundation for my transgender feelings. Specifically, I thought about The Bugaloos (Caroline Ellis), Marcia Brady (Maureen McCormick), and Yeoman Rand (Grace Lee Whitney). These three famous women, each in her own way a concentrated expression of overt femininity, made deep impressions on me just as I was beginning to seriously wonder about myself.

Those images came through the media, but I had causes for thinking within the real world as well. I remember a Mother-Daughter banquet at our church. My mom had only sons, but our neighbors had a daughter just about my age. She got all dressed up and went with my mom as a stand-in daughter. I was confused at my own reaction, because I so wished it had been me getting all dressed up and going along. (I may have even asked if I could — probably to laughs.)

My fascination with women’s clothing also started very early. I remember seeing pantyhose drying on the towel rack in the bathroom and, confusingly, wanting — no, longing — to try them on. I don’t know how long I held out, but it probably wasn’t very long. And I have a vivid memory of the first time I did it. The memory isn’t about the feeling of the fabric on my legs (perhaps because that’s become something of a familiar feeling since then), but of my heart pounding with the excitement of trying on femininity, of doing something that only girls do, and that made me feel amazingly good beyond even what I had imagined. (My heart is pounding right now as I recall the experience).

That was when I was probably about six years old, maybe seven. But by then I’d been daydreaming about becoming a girl for quite some time. I think Marcia Brady really got me started.

I had a long-term fantasy that I had auditioned for a role on the show, and been cast as Marcia because they thought they could make me into a pretty little girl. After a year in the part, and after proving that I could fully be the pretty little girl they had imagined, I was overjoyed when they told me there was a way to make it so that I could stay a girl forever. I agreed immediately.

Thinking about this today is an attempt to parse what I initially felt about Marcia, which actually seems pretty obvious now that I’ve described it. I know that it wasn’t a desire to kiss her, or date her. After all, I was only six when the show premiered! But I remember that I couldn’t take my eyes off of her, and all I really wanted was to be close to her — but also to look like her, and be treated like her, and wear the things she wore. In short, I wanted what a lot of other little girls wanted when they saw Marcia, and nothing like what little boys wanted (who wouldn’t even notice her until she became a bit more curvy after a couple of seasons).

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!

Around that same time I saw Star Trek for the first time. To this day I love that show (the original, of course). And I loved a lot of things about it, but one of those was the miniskirts. And the pantyhose. And the boots. I dreamed of being a female crew member of the Enterprise and spending my days dressed like them. My favorite was Yeoman Rand, who had a femininity that I just wanted to be more than anything else.

I was a geeky enough fan that I actually bought a copy of the Star Fleet Technical Manual, but largely because it contained this amazing image, which I could — and did — stare at for hours:

I wasn’t attracted to the woman, specifically. I thought it was the clothing, or the legs, or the boots with high heels. But I know now that it was the whole package. I wanted to travel the galaxy in a starship, but I wanted to do it as a female.

The Bugaloos was a morning show which I saw sometimes before going to school. I know there were four main characters, but I couldn’t pick the other three (males) out of a line-up. It was the one in the pink skirt that I loved to watch. I didn’t see anything else. I loved the idea of wearing something like that and showing off my legs (in pantyhose, of course). Watching the show was complicated because I didn’t want to give away my real reason for watching, and it happened to air just before my school bus was scheduled to arrive. Often I would push my departure from home to the very last second so I could see as much of her as possible without missing my bus. Somehow I knew that she was in some way who I really wanted to be.

If I had met Yeoman Rand, the only thing I would have wanted to do was rub my hands on her legs. If I met Marcia Brady, I would have wanted to try on one of her dresses. If I had met Caroline Ellis, I would have wanted to feel the fabric of her skimpy pink costume.

These three came to mind when I started thinking about this subject, but there were plenty more. Here’s a quick line-up of TV women who had serious impacts on my gender identity. (See if you can spot the theme.)

I didn’t understand these feelings then, and I don’t understand them now. Was I reacting in a pre-sexual way? Even though I didn’t want to kiss these women, was I feeling sexual attraction but not knowing what that meant? Did I not know what to do with that sexual energy and simply misplaced it?

Was I simply reacting (predictably, in a male way) to media images of highly concentrated femininity? Did the era, with its miniskirts and go-go boots and soft feminine hair and clothing, set me up and condition me to want something I might not have otherwise wanted? Did the TV producers, who likely just wanted me to keep watching their show, actually trigger some reward system in my brain that set me on the path to gender identity confusion?

On the one hand, I’d love to be able to blame TV producers or advertising executives for my condition, but the fact is that whatever role they played, I was probably predisposed to react to it as I did. If they did anything, it was only to reinforce something that I probably already had inside me. (At least, that’s what I’m going with these days…)

In a very important way, the reasons behind these feelings don’t matter. The feelings were real, and I felt them. The reasons were a mystery, and will always be. Even if I come up with a theory, it’s the actual feelings that matter.

So the deep down truth is just that I wanted to be near femininity. It’s the same reason that I had a girlfriend in first grade — and the girliest girl in the class! If I couldn’t be a girl, I wanted to be near a girl, and as close as I could get.

The real reason I’m asking myself these questions today is that I went to a meeting the other night, and for a large portion of the evening I was the only male in a room with nine women, working on a task that some might consider to be a feminine task (related to education). I thought, How would this be different if they knew I was was also a woman? And then I thought, How would this be different if I were out to them and presenting as a transwoman?

I looked at these women closely. Some of them made me long to switch places. Some of them not. The more girly, the more my dysphoria was triggered. The less girly women did not have this effect on me. And by “less girly” I only mean the degree of overt femininity they expressed.

Directly across the table from me was a woman about my age, with shoulder-length straight brown hair. She wore dangly earrings, and a patterned tunic top long enough to be a dress, but worn over jeans. She wore no make-up, but a lovely purple scarf around her neck. I do not think many men would find her attractive. Nothing in her figure or face would set her apart from a random group of average-looking middle-aged women.

But I was riveted. She showed femininity in her eyes and gestures — all of the little things about her. She was also smart and confident, making her very attractive to me — but not to me as a man. She was attractive in the same way as Marcia Brady. I wanted to be near her, or become her.

To my left was a nice but rather unattractive woman with short brown hair, and a sort of sense of uncertainty about her. I cannot remember what she wore, but when I looked at her I felt no need to become more like her. Indeed, I felt sort of the opposite, as if becoming a woman like her — a person like her — with almost no outward nods to femininity, would be without a point. More than that, I do not have much respect for her.

Directly across from the second woman was one who appeared to have made no concessions to her own femininity. Her hair was stringy and pulled back into a utilitarian pony tail, without any sense of intention. She spoke in cliches, with simplistic ideas. There was nothing about her which tweaked my dysphoria, and I felt no interest in getting closer in any way.

To her right was another woman about my age, wearing another scarf, knitted and tied loosely around her neck, falling into her lap. She wore a black skirt and boots, and a pale pink sweater. Her hair is unnaturally blonde, but it looks nice. When she smiles, it is a delightful sight, but when she does not, her face could be described as somewhat stern. Still, she smiles much more than not. Her attention to detail, and her distinct feminine aura, brought my dysphoria to the forefront as I looked at her.

I could continue. The rest of the women mostly did nothing to trigger me. You can understand why I might wonder if I’m really transgender. If I knew I would be unattractive, or unable/unwilling to revel in the details of femininity — to present myself as fully female and be perceived as inherently feminine — transition might be a mistake.

The difference between the women who triggered me and those who did not was the surfacing of their femininity. It was not beauty, specifically, but the priority that each had placed on exposing that inner part of her identity to the world. The others did not seem to revel in, or even acknowledge, their femininity, despite being inherently feminine. It is this revelry which has always determined who I was attracted to — and who made me paralyzingly nervous.

I’m attracted to, and unnerved by, women whose behavior and appearance say to the world, I am a woman!

And I think it’s because that is who I want to be.