My Perspective (I'm the the redheaded sarcastic wife) Part I

My wife (she's the trans woman - in a marriage of two women, reading our story can get confusing) was struggling with some issues after being evaluated for PTSD.  We discovered some things that were, well, odd, and some that seemed out of place.

She continued to experience things that caused us concern, and we knew some things weren't typical, about her experience. When things started to seem more heavily piled on, she called and left a message to a therapist that she had a card for.  Although we didn't know it, this person turned out to be the LGBT coordinator for the VA.  The therapist set up an appointment for us to sit down and talk with her.  I knew something was bothering my wife.  I know her very well.  I am usually able to tell her what is going on within themselves before she even realizes it.  We met with the therapist and started talking about how my wife felt like they were going crazy.  She talked about not feeling right in her own skin.  The more we talked and the more we learned about Gender Dysphoria and trans-gender stuff the more the pieces of the puzzle, so to speak, fell into place.

We realized that my husband wasn't really my husband but my partner/wife.  At that time my wife felt she might be Non-Binary Transgender.  I was skeptical of this because of the way she would react with certain things.  I felt she was not non-binary, but rather female. She was much more girly than she realized. Her face would light up if she saw a piece of clothing that was pink. She was, and is, drawn big time to anything pink.  It was fun teasing her about this. She exhibited a lot of feminine characteristics, and the only remotely masculine thing I saw was her body, and even then, she was pretty feminine. Her gestures were feminine, and the way she talked and the things she was interested in were not typical for a man.

One thing I noticed right away was that as we talked more and more, over the next few months, and she began to understand things about herself that she hadn't before, she was so much more relaxed than ever before.  I was glad to see this.

We moved forward, making sure that we met regularly with our therapist.  It was important to both of us that our marriage, which has always been good, remained strong.  It made sense to us that if we were moving forward together, then the transition, whatever that ended up looking like, would be much more smooth.

At this time we felt we should tell our daughters what was going on with "Dad".  Thus my wife wrote letters to the girls telling them about the real person she was.  There were a lot of tears.  If you have read the post about telling your children, you know that it wasn't easy for her to do this.  One thing that really stood out though was that after they knew, the girls said they loved their Optimus Beyonce Dad and that she was more millennial than they were.  It was pretty funny, that the girls came up with that name.

One big concern that the girls had was how is Mom handling this.  Am I okay? Are we, my wife and I, okay within our relationship?  The girls were very concerned that we might be going to divorce because when you read stories online, that is the typical result.  I made sure to reassure them that I was okay with this and that I was on this journey with their Dad.

To be Continued

Compliment at Church

2017

As I grew more confident in how I was expressing my gender identity, I began dressing in a much more androgynous fashion at church. Now, this was a huge step for me, because the church we attended at the time was very conservative. I had not, to this point, dressed in anything remotely approaching "non-dude".

One Sunday, I was wearing an outfit that I felt good in. First, we had been allowing my hair to grow out. This was very unusual for me because I was still in the Army Reserve. But recently, haircut regulations had eased considerably, so there was some leeway. Though I had known that for a while, I hadn’t considered growing my hair out. But by this point in my life, my wife and I had decided to let it grow. At this point, my hair was so much longer than people I had been going to church with for years didn’t recognize me at first.

So, my hair was much longer, though still relatively masculine in appearance. My eyebrows were waxed as well. I had on a pair of tight khaki pants that had straight legs, with no pleats or cuffs. I had on a purple and white checkered shirt with very small squares, and a pair of brown women’s boots that looked fairly androgynous. Overall, I was dressed as femininely as possible, while remaining clothed just masculine enough to get by. I felt both nervous and at the same time, happy because I felt much better in these clothes! There is enormous freedom in putting on clothing that makes you feel more like “you”.

As I walked through the church building, I turned a corner, and there was a very conservative woman who I had known for a few years. She is a nice person, but also, not someone who would likely accept me for who I am. She looked up as I approached, looked me over from head to toe, saw the clothes without it registering who I was (I think), and said “Hi! You look really cute today!”

I was completely surprised. I could tell from her expression and the way she continued conversing with the person she had been talking with, that she didn’t even realize what she had said. The other person in that conversation, a wonderful friend of mine who knows the truth about me, just started chuckling and gave me a hug.

It really shouldn’t matter. I know it shouldn’t. But wow, did it feel good, hearing those words spoken to me by a woman, at the sight of me in the same way she might have told any woman. 

He, They, She

2018

As we progressed through the transition, many things have changed, and to us, changed for the better. But along the way, there have been hiccups, speed bumps, and odd moments.

Recently, I noticed something that I thought was pretty funny. My wife, a super strong supporter of me, was all over the place in how she referred to me in conversation. I would say that the funniest thing was when I heard her refer to me as "he", "they", and "she", all in the same sentence.

She is trying really hard, and to be honest, changing from three decades of calling me "he", to calling me "she", is not an easy thing to do at all. She is sincere and means well, and she knows what reality is, but sometimes, habit takes over for a moment. who knows? She might well be messing it up off and on for years to come. You know what? That's okay!

Caitlyn Jenner

2015

Caitlyn Jenner Horrified Me

Caitlyn Jenner horrified me. But not for the same reasons she horrified most people. In 2015, Caitlyn Jenner burst upon the world. She was previously known as Bruce Jenner, an athlete known in pretty much every home in America, and many across the world. Jenner’s coming out as a trans woman shocked people from coast to coast, and caused some others to stand and applaud. As in any other dramatic change, some people were thrilled, some people were offended, and most others had no idea how to react.

I had a strong reaction. I was horrified. Not because of some sort of religious objection, though that appeared quickly, and just as quickly was discounted, because the honest reaction was something much more visceral. Fear. Horror. Abjectly uncomfortable distress. While I knew this sort of thing had been done in other people’s lives, I had managed to ignore it. But now, for the first time, I was honestly confronted with the unavoidable reality that a man had become a woman.

Parts Is Parts

Caitlyn was born as a man. Caitlyn had “man parts”, looked like a man, had competed in sporting events as a man. Good grief, Jenner was one of the most athletic men in the world! If even that man could have this happen to him, what did that say about me, and my concerns? Caitlyn Jenner represented everything that scared me about gender!

I was vocally against Jenner. We had conversations about her at church, and at home, and I firmly denounced what she was experiencing. People shared jokes on Facebook making fun of her, and I laughed. I insisted on calling Jenner “he”. Doing so made a lie out of what she was saying, and doing. I desperately needed Caitlyn Jenner to be a lie. I honestly didn't even grasp how very badly I needed it to be a lie.

It Wasn't True. Was It?

It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be real. Jenner was certainly making the whole thing up. So, that made it safer. If she wasn’t real, then all the stuff I had been feeling and thinking and experiencing wasn’t real either. If Jenner was pretending, lying, still a man, then I was still a man. Right? I WAS a man, darn it! Thus, she was clearly lying.

Once you make up your mind about something, it is much easier to deal with it. So, Caitlyn became a non-entity to me. Why? Because Jenner was lying. The problem is, as discussed elsewhere, pushing away your problems doesn’t really get rid of them. It didn’t change anything about the reality of my life, and me as a person. It was a band-aid, something that made me feel better for a time. I was able to convince myself, primarily from the strong negative reactions of people around me, that Caitlyn Jenner was a fraud. But in reality, nothing  had changed. It just got swept under the rug, for a time. It was hidden, even from myself.

But now the clock was ticking. There would come a time I would realize that she was telling the truth.

The Rhythmettes

5th Grade, 1979

My elementary school had a gym teacher that was a bit of an unusual person. No one really knew how to take him, but everyone seemed to like him. His name was Mr. Legg, which I admit, was a name that made me smile every time I heard it. He was the sort of teacher that students opened up to.

Mr. Legg created a program at the school called The Rhythmettes. It was a girls dance team and was only open to 5th-grade girls. Being on that dance team was the ultimate status symbol in the school, for the girls. They had cool looking uniforms that resembled cheerleader uniforms of royal purple and white. They were the popular girls. These girls were in the position in elementary school that varsity cheerleaders are in high school. The Rhythmettes performed at school functions.

When I became a 5^th grader, there was a boy who joined The Rhythmettes. I can’t recall his name, but he was short for a 5^th grader. There had never been a boy on The Rythmettes before, but Mr. Legg allowed it and got him a uniform of purple shirt, and bell bottom white pants, and white shoes. The boys made fun of him, and so did many of the girls. He was actually a pretty good dancer, though, for elementary school.

Toward the end of my 5th-grade year, we were out in the school yard doing a sports and activity day. We had a “picnic”, which was really just eating the school food outside. At one point, we were standing in a circle, around The Rhythmettes as they performed. The boy was out there with them, of course, and I remember there were two boys near me making fun of him. They were saying he looked like an idiot, and they were really being cruel, and suddenly I was horrified to hear myself say “I don’t know, he looks pretty happy. Sure, he’s dressed like a girl, but it might be fun.”

The boys weren’t sure they had heard me right. There was a shocked silence. “What did you just say?!?” they asked. I mumbled something, and turned away, and walked to another part of the circle, glad they hadn’t heard me well enough to be sure. But that boy looked like the happiest person in school.

A Painful Lesson

6^th grade, 1979

I moved out of the path of an 8th-grade cheerleader. She was one of the richest girls in school, pretty and built (for being an 8^th grader) and knew it, and I admired her for her beauty and disliked her for it at the same time. She walked arrogantly down the hallway, right down the middle like a Coast Guard cutter slicing through the sea. The hallway was crowded, and I had to move back to the right side. The middle school hallways always seemed to follow the same sort of rules as the roads in town did. Traffic stayed to the right, unless you were important, or at least felt that you were. 

The boy’s restroom sign came into view, and honestly, none too soon, as I had needed to use the restroom all the way through math. I had several minutes before my next class, which was right down the hall. I veered into the restroom and headed toward a urinal.

Without warning, there was a hard blow on my back, propelling me into a wall, one of those cinder block wall types. I rebounded like a basketball and was grabbed and spun around. He pushed me against the wall and gripped me by the front of the neck. I was a small kid, one of the youngest in my 6th-grade class, short and thin. The boy facing me was much larger, an 8th-grade football player, and naturally, because these sorts of things never involve one boy, he had three of his friends with him, to cheer him on. He was much larger than me and crazy strong, and I remember thinking how big his arms were.  He was wearing a black and white school shirt. Northwood Panthers. I didn’t recall his name, though I recognized him, and oddly, my brain locked onto trying to recall his name. Instinctively, I pulled my books tighter against my chest, close to my body. I remember that he smelled like sweat.

He said something that I didn’t hear because I was still working on figuring out his name. Then he grabbed my books out of my arms and threw them into the trash can. Spinning around, he grabbed me by the front of my shirt, and demanded to know what “a fag like me was doing in the boy’s bathroom”. I protested that I wasn’t a fag, and he demanded to know why I carry my books like a girl. You might recall that middle school kids will seize on any little thing to belittle someone else, and thus elevate their own status. Meanwhile, all boys knew that being labeled a “fag” (homosexual) was essentially the kiss of death.

Suddenly, I was confronted with what I hadn’t ever realized. I typically carried my books in my arm, against my chest, just like that aforementioned cheerleader did. Like girls all over school did. There was an unwritten rule, you see, that boys carried their books down at their side, and girls carried their books against their chest, tilting them out as if they had breasts, trying to look like the high school girls did. So now I’m being confronted by this football player, who is literally yelling at me, and all my brain can do now is wonder why in the world I was carrying my books like that, and why it mattered at all. Until this moment, I hadn’t realized, believe it or not, that I carried my books like that. I just carried them how it felt comfortable to me. But that was the wrong way to do it. Right? So, I’m now focusing on the way, and have forgotten the search for his name.

I was standing there, feeling extremely vulnerable, for some reason folding my arms across my chest. I had never felt like that in my life. He demanded to know what I was doing in the “men’s room”. Now they were men, notice. Boys a moment ago, men now.

Though I’m sure it made him feel manly, the punch to the stomach that followed wasn’t exactly a blessing, in my viewpoint. Then, punched again, I was on the floor, being punched and kicked. One. Then another kick, then a third, really hard kick, that one from another boy. One kick to the stomach, one to the side, one to the small of the back. Lots of punches. Chest, stomach, side, back, thigh. None of the blows fell on my face or arms, but only in places that wouldn’t leave marks. If I tried to cover an area, they simply shifted to a different area. I couldn’t catch my breath. Then the obligatory laughter, and one of them spit on me. I remember the feel of it, wet and disgusting, on the side of my neck. They discussed for a moment whether they should pee on me. Then, of course, the obligatory threat to never return to the men’s room, and they left.

I was in a lot of pain. I was crying at this point. Shocked. Horrified. Very, very afraid. The floor was cold. My throat hurt from where he had gripped it. My head hurt from striking the floor. My stomach, site of multiple punches, and a kick, hurt. I finally got my books out of the trash can, an act that disgusted me, because I really have never liked unsanitary areas. That’s an understatement. I went into a stall, and sat down on a toilet seat lid, but that didn’t help at all. There were no stall doors, and I was crying and shaking in the boy’s room. I had to get out of there.

 I worked desperately to stop crying, then grabbed some paper towels, and washed my face and neck. I looked in the mirror, had a realization that my eyes were red and my cheeks blotchy, and then was ashamed that I cared how my face looked.  I finally went to class, extremely late, of course. The teacher, sending me to the principal’s office for being late, assumed that my lateness was why I was upset. There, I got the “I’m disappointed in you, I thought you were a good kid” lecture, and was sent back to class. I have no idea, to this day, why I never told. The first person I ever told was my wife, 38 years later.

When I left school that day, the same boys were outside, just finishing destroying my bicycle. I unbent things as best I could, and rode home. There, my extremely conservative parents questioned me about my bicycle, announcing when I tried to explain (leaving out the bathroom incident, mind you) that there was no reason for other boys to damage my bicycle. That, naturally, comforted me not at all. Since there was no way I could tell them what happened, I was punished for lying, because I had said I didn’t do the damage, but wouldn’t give an alternate explanation. Then, I was punished for not taking care of my bicycle.

Oddly, some of the girls were nicer to me after all this happened. I didn’t know why, but I was glad someone was nice to me. I saw the boys many times, of course, after that day. They always made a point of laughing or flipping me off. Otherwise, they left me alone, probably deciding they had made their point. But I was careful, after that. I was careful when entering restrooms.  I watched outside for a minute or so, and looked carefully inside before fully entering. If someone was there, I left. If the restroom was unoccupied, I finished quickly, leaving as fast as humanly possible. I was careful how I carried my books too, making sure they were in my hand, down at my side, because that’s how the boys carried their books. I was a boy. So, do it right. Or else.

Pronouns Make Me Cry

2018

She Called Me "She"

Last night, for the first time ever, my awesome wife referred to me as "her" and "she" in conversation. It might not be the first time she did it, but it is the first time I heard her do it.

Now, this conversation wasn't something that is going to make headlines. It wasn't with anyone who is likely to repeat the conversation with someone else.  To be honest, the conversation was with our golden retriever. I was in the kitchen, and heard my partner ask the dog "Where did she go?? That was followed by the sound of a tail thumping on something. "Go get her!" The dog, who loves to play "go get them" games, cam running to look for me.

When You're Transgender, Pronouns really Do Matter

It's silly. It's no massive, groundbreaking thing. But it brought tears to the corners of my eyes. She. Her. Pronouns really do matter. I hadn't realized how very much they do until that moment.