Living Truthfully, Growing Spiritually

Widespread cultural acceptance of lying is a primary reason many of us will never know love. It is impossible to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth when the core of one’s being and identity is shrouded in secrecy and lies. (bell hooks, All About Love)

… i have been thinking about this quote for the past couple of days… i have been thinking about what it has to say to my trans-feminine exploration… from my point of view, my spiritual growth has been enhanced by this truth coming to the surface… i can’t say i was hiding it, lying to myself and others… i don’t feel i repressed it… rather… it was a latent part of my being that stepped forward vigorously at a moment in time that was ripe…

… as i have written before, a number of things happened that cleared the space for it… the death of my father… the current hyper intolerant conservative political scene (which my father supported)… being retired… living in a liberal community… all made space for my feminine to blossom…

… i recently discovered that some Native American tribes describe what i am experiencing as two spirited… a person who’s sense of self doesn’t match what the prevailing culture expects from people with their biological sex… two spirited people often become spiritual leaders… they are viewed as having a fuller spiritual connection because of their two spirited nature…

… i don’t want to appropriate a culture that isn’t my own… but it is a good way to get at the spiritual growth bell hooks is talking about and i am feeling… spiritual growth requires honesty with self and before the world… from a position of honesty, growth happens and one can aid others with their growth journeys… only from a position of honesty can one love themselves and those around them in the sense that bell hooks writes about…

Usually, fundamentalists, be they Christian, Muslim, or any faith, shape and interpret religious thought to make it conform to and legitimize a conservative status quo. Fundamentalist thinkers use religion to justify supporting imperialism, militarism, sexism, racism, homophobia. They deny the unifying message of love that is at the heart of every major religious tradition. (bell hooks, All About Love)

… there is, at this moment, a serious threat that Christian fundamentalists will gain control of the government in the United States… high on their agenda is the repression of LGBTQPlus communities… trans people in particular are targets of their enmity… they are enabled by power lusting politicians… there is no love in such religion and politics, as bell hooks points out…

… society does, of course, have an interest in curbing some forms of behavior… murder, rape, incest, theft, destruction of property… the list is long… people engaged in this behavior may be living out a kind of truth in themselves… they may be acting out past trauma that leaves them unable to love themselves and live truthfully… either way, these behaviors harm other people… tolerance and compassion blaze a trail for spiritual growth of self, community, and society, but stop at the threshold of harm to others…

… the difficulty is distinguishing true harm from supposed harm, or when the growth opportunity warrants an attendant harm…

It is almost ten months now since I began to manifest my feminine being to the outside world. I grew my hair longer, started wearing lipstick, began scouring women’s clothing sites and buying a new wardrobe. Then I began presenting femininely in public. I was very anxious about the pushback I expected to get and rather surprised when it didn’t happen. To be sure, there have been disapproving looks from strangers, men mostly. Most significantly, there has been pushback from the women who have known me the longest. My wife, my mother and sister. They’ve had to adjust their idea of me which has been a process for them.

The most pleasant surprise of all, however, has been the number of relative strangers who have gone out of their way to affirm my feminine forward presentation. A neighbor from a few doors up was driving by and stopped to tell me he thought I had been rocking my outfits lately. Another neighbor I often pass during early morning walks made a point of telling me how cute my outfits were. A vender in the farmer’s market told me she had been noticing me for a while and that she loved my style.

I am not naive. I know I can expect some ugly moments in the future. But for now, I am basking in the warmth of loving acceptance.

… my feminine drift is settling into womanly-man spot… the more i figure out my presentation, the more i think i am not looking to pass as a woman… i have thought about hormone therapy and hair removal by electrolysis, but don’t feel compelled to go there… shaving my face, chest and legs all the time is a little tedious, but i can live with that… i find i like my look the best when it is walking the line between masculine and feminine, but on the feminine side… i love wearing my hair long and down… i love wearing makeup and jewelry… i have built a solid wardrobe of women’s clothing that allows me to play with the yin-yang of masculine feminine in a satisfying way…

… i have some plaid flannel shirts i am trying to figure out what to do with… my wife gave them to me for birthdays and Christmases… i am reluctant to get rid of them because of that… i liked wearing them when she gave them to me… i can’t wear them now… they are like fingernails on a chalkboard to my feminine self… i can’t wear them as a “boyfriend” shirt either… i am not a lithe young woman they can wrap in cozy male comfort… i will put them away… there may come a time when my self-sense will shift back towards masculine space and i will want them… or maybe i will figure out a way to wear them femininely…

… i have been reading the biographies of two trans-women… Lucy Santé and Candy Darling… i haven’t been into biographies much before, but i inhaled Lucy’s and am avidly working my way through Candy’s… it’s not surprising… it’s part of putting myself in context… both stories unfold, at least in part, during the 60s and were directly (Candy’s) or tangentially (Lucy’s) related to the Warhol scene… both very much wanted (Candy) or want (Lucy) to be women… Candy didn’t have the resources for more than hormone therapy… she was fortunate to have very feminine characteristics already… she only had to deal with hair removal… Lucy does have resources and has done everything available other than bottom surgery… both are cases of gender dysphoria… i am envious of women’s breasts, which hormone therapy might give me, along with a more womanly frame, but not so much that i want to mess with my hormones at this late stage in life… i think there is room for an AMAB (assigned male at birth) to pursue feminine presentation without needing to be a woman… i intend to engage the world through feminine sensibilities… i want the world to engage me through those same feminine sensibilities… so i am presenting femininely…

… i have been reading bell hooks… she has become my favorite feminist writer…

… both Feminist Theory: From Margins to Center and All About Love have been a revelation to me… she posits feminism as a way of engaging the world that is not entirely located in the sex of the body… as such, both men and women can embrace and personify feminist values…

… when my mom first learned out about my trans-feminine exploration, i think she was picturing me as a drag queen, an over-the-top caricature of Marilyn Monroe… i assured her that wasn’t the case…

… most of the dresses i have can be read as “tunics” when worn over jeans… tunics are not common male attire, but they are not unheard of male attire… when i wear a dress/tunic over jeans, or leggings for that matter, it allows men and women to read me still as masculine… and that is their general preference as it fits with the western patriarchal world view we are all steeped in… of course, when my nails are colorfully polished, my eyes are shadowed, my lips are painted, and my body is bejeweled, that “out” gets harder to maintain… still, i view myself as a man who wears lipstick, jewelry, eye makeup and dresses… i have a divine she that wants and gets expression…

… the fifth edition of _The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language_ defines effeminate as:

1. Having or showing qualities or characteristics more often associated with females than males; unmanly.
2. Having some characteristics of a woman, as delicacy, luxuriousness, etc.; soft or delicate in an unmanly degree; womanish; weak.
3. Womanlike; womanly; tender; - in a good sense

… i am fine being unmanly or un-Marlboro Man… this perniciously destructive vision of manhood is all too prevalent in the world today, especially in the United States… i am not weak… try being unmistakably a man dressed in women’s clothing walking down the street… there is courage in that… i seek to be womanlike in a good sense… with bell hooks as my feminist sensei, i set out to help all that is feminine subdue the patriarchy… it needs to be subdued… now… in this moment… it needs to be subdued…

I had a brief text conversation with a family member yesterday. My trans-feminine explorations are not sitting well with them. They haven’t exactly disapproved, but it is clear it makes them uncomfortable. I think anything outside the box gender/sexual makes them uncomfortable. They indicated that, as a woman, they aren’t interested in makeup or getting their nails done. They can’t relate to my interest in them as symbols of the feminine. Furthermore, they feel that feminine comes from within. It surprised me that they seemed to lack the very feminine quality of empathy, the ability to see things from another’s perspective. I told them I had strong feminine currents inside me and that the outward expression of feminine through nail polish, lipstick, jewelry, etc. was a way to connect what I feel inside with the outside world and reflect it back to myself.

…

Last week, I attended a literary event featuring Lucy Sante. I bought and have been reading Lucy’s autobiographical account of her transition, which she undertook at age 65. I was 68 when it started to surface that I wanted to present femininely. I am a few months into my 69th year now. She seems to have been more fraught about it than I have been. She also seems to have experienced full-blown gender dysphoria. She is doing hormone therapy. I don’t know anything about the changes that one can expect from hormone therapy, but Lucy looked to me largely like I look to myself. A man presenting femininely.

Hormone therapy, so far, doesn’t appeal to me. My body will have enough challenges coping with getting old. I don’t think adding hormone engineering to the mix would be doing my body any favors, and my psychological health around my feminine emergence is just fine. I am content with feminizing my body with clothing, accessories, makeup, etc. As much as I would like to have woman breasts, and I would, I don’t feel the need to fake them or get surgery. Getting my nails done. Wearing women’s clothing. Wearing lipstick and jewelry. Whatever promotes a feminine impression to the outside world and, most importantly, to myself, is where I am at. Basically, I am a cross dresser. It’s ok if the world sees me as a womanly man and not a woman. Of course, I don’t mind it if anyone wants to acknowledge my womanly presentation with a “mam.”

…

An important realization for my wife in all of this was that, fundamentally, I am still the same person I have always been. Yes, I am presenting femininely. Yes, this exploration has made me a little more feminine on the inside, too. But I have always had feminine inside me and have never presented as anything close to macho masculine.

Lucy Sante talks about coming out to her partner who felt betrayed, lied to. Lucy had been so repressed for so long, that she actually was living a lie and the breakage of trust was a real thing. My wife had a similar reaction initially. I explained to her that I hadn’t been hiding anything from her. That I had shared it with her as soon as I started feeling it. Which was true. In a series of blog posts that turned out to be precursors to the “cracking of my egg,” as the trans community seems to call it, I wrote about what was emerging, though I didn’t realize it when I wrote the posts. I shared all of them with my wife before publishing. I was preparing both of us.

I have, to this day, a collection of beaded purses and hat pins that I developed during my first marriage. My wife carried one of the purses when we got married. She acknowledges there were indications of my feminine nature back then and that was probably part of what she fell in love with. I didn’t present femininely back then. I didn’t present femininely at all until it began to surface last year. So I can truly say to my wife, I didn’t lie or hide anything from you and I started letting you know as soon as I began to know, before I was conscious anything was going on.

Lucy seems to have burst out in a big gush. I am blossoming in a steady flow. Taking careful steps. Testing each new escalation carefully. I am now fully rolled out to family, most friends, and the public. I am pleased about it.

Just now, I read a section in which Lucy talked about dealing with her fascial hair. Laser removal wasn’t available as her beard was gray, and the machine can’t find the gray hairs. She had to do electrolysis, which took a year of weekly sessions in which each individual hair was pulled and the follicle cauterized. That is a kind of dedication and expense that I am not up for.

On my way home from the coffee shop where I was refining and adding to this post, I ran into a friend I haven’t seen in a while. I was in full feminine mode, which they hadn’t seen before. Even a few weeks ago, this encounter would have made me tense. I am much more confident and relaxed now. I opened up the space for him to ask about it by saying it was ok to ask about my feminine presentation. We chatted about various things, and he did circle back to ask me about it. He gave me a hug as we parted.

I have come a long way.

… i continue to grow my feminine out into the world… my rollout has been measured… i think carefully about each step and work out half steps if any step seems too scary… each step is marked by a question, “do i have the courage to do this?”

… last weekend i came out to my family… i had been thinking about it for a while… waiting for the right moment… i sent them a link to a post i wrote in January of this year, saying i had been going through some changes and i’d been wanting to share it with them for a while… they all read it… they were pretty cool with it… i talked with my mom about it the other day… it turned out she was imagining me as a drag queen… i had a good chuckle about that… “no mom, it’s not like that… in fact, i wore a sweater dress the last time i visited… just add lipstick and some jewelry to that memory”…

… becoming a person who expresses themselves differently from most of the people around me is fraught with fear of rejection… i am aware that there are places i probably shouldn’t go in full feminine bloom… i choose carefully when and where to present my femininity… i am finding acceptance for the most part… people i know are curious, i can tell by the way they look at me when they see me in feminine mode for the first time… they are reluctant to ask me about it… they don’t realize i want to be asked, so i have decided to state the obvious so we can talk about it…

… the other day, my wife and i went shopping for cosmetics at Sephora… i wanted to start experimenting with eye shadow and she wanted to find a new blush and lipstick… i suggested the joint adventure… she was all in… i know it can be weird for her sometimes… but she has been way more supportive than i have any right to expect…

… as with each of my steps forward into feminine presentation, i will start subtilely with the eyeshadow… i wore it for the first time the day after i bought it… i barely noticed it when i looked in a mirror… i doubt anyone else did either… i will slowly work up to bolder shadow statements… i am hot to try shiny metallic shadows… Shye, the saleswoman who indulged and educated me at Sephora, showed me a wonderful color pallet from Danessa Myricks… it’s on my want list… but first, the basics…

… the day i started writing this i wore a black linen mini dress from Everlane… it stops a few inches above my knees… for the first time i wore no leggings underneath… leggings, even though worn mostly by women, give the left brains of people who see me an out… “oh, he’s wearing a long shirt and pants”… a mini dress and bare legs is impossible to construe as a pant and shirt combination… in the brutally hot weather we’ve been experiencing, my minidress outfit was soooo comfortable… and can i say, i have very good legs?…

… each escalation of my feminine presentation is planned carefully… i have to imagine it in detail for days… until it becomes so much a part of who i am that i have to do it…

… i was nervous walking down Main Street in my minidress with bare legs… especially when i passed men… i am anxious when i pass men in a way i never was before… most mornings i pass the entry to a martial arts studio… often, there are a number of pickup trucks parked on the street outside… samurai war lords loiter on the sidewalk after class yakking… i haven’t walked past them in full feminine bloom… i think i will avoid that…

… it is strange to be so anxious about what men might do… i fear their potential to be violent… women, i think many of you know this anxiety well…

… i have had a couple of close calls with cars at a particular intersection… both involved male drivers… one was definitely being aggressive… the other… hard to know… It’s not impossible that it was distracted driving…

… the other night my wife and i met a friend at an event featuring Lucy Sante… Lucy transitioned to feminine presentation late in life, as i have… in fact, we are about the same age and her transition happened only a few years ago… during the event, she described true gender dysphoria which she had been experiencing since childhood… i have been aware of the strong feminine currents of my being for a long time… i have always been comfortable with them, though i don’t think they ever rose to the level of true gender dysphoria…

… at the end of the program i walked up to Lucy and told her i was in the process of finding my feminine and that it helped me to see another trans woman who has undertaken a similar journey… i thanked her for being public and frank about that experience… she thanked me and wished me luck with my journey… i bought her book and look forward to reading it…

Last night was my friend’s birthday party. I went with my wife in full feminine mode. As I wrote last week, I was both excited and anxious about this party. Even though I have been presenting my feminine self for eight months now, it was the first time we have socialized with our friends with me in full feminine mode. I wasn’t sure how this would be for my wife or how it would be received by heterosexual friends. I think my wife might have been a little anxious too. We quickly relaxed once there. I came home feeling it had been a successful evening, and my wife said she thought so too.

The photo above was my look for the evening, though I did change my lipstick to something more subtle and peachy. My garment is a black cotton shirtdress. I also wore dark gray leggings, black leather sandals from Banana Republic, a buffalo horn bracelet on my left wrist and a guitar string bracelet on my right wrist.

I chose this party for coming out to a larger circle of friends and acquaintances because my friend is lesbian. I figured the crowd would be a mixture of straight, gay, and lesbian people. That is, it would be a friendly audience. I also expected there would be a few people that we have socialized with over the years, before I began presenting femininely or even knew I wanted to. I was right. A woman my wife regularly goes to the gym with was there. She was the first person I talked to at any length. She took feminine me in stride. If she missed a beat, I didn’t see it. I was glad she was there. Last fall, when my feminine presenting self began emerging, my wife told me she had no one she could talk to about it. Hopefully, my wife now has at least one friend in on my changes and can talk to her about it.

A heterosexual couple we have known for some time came too. I spent a good amount of time talking to the husband, and my wife did the same with his wife. They didn’t miss a beat either.

A woman artist friend rounded out the people we saw who knew me in the pre trans feminine days and hadn’t seen me present femininely before. Several years ago, she and her husband divorced. At a party about a year ago, she showed up with a new girlfriend and last night she told us they were getting married.

At the end of the night, my artist friend’s fiancé and I had a conversation about an article I had read that morning making the case for lesbian separatism. It suggested it was good for lesbians to form lesbian only communities, separate from the dominant, hetero-patriarchal society, to be in a safe place free of its oppression and thus be unfettered in establishing their lesbian identity. We mutually agreed that we preferred the stance of being who we are within the context of the dominant culture as a means of holding space for that self. I certainly have no desire to spend my time only with other trans-feminine people. I have carefully and deliberately been weaving my feminine self into my community with the hope that I will be embraced, appreciated and loved for who I am. I also want to exist as a demonstration that there are other ways of configuring one’s self. I intend to help smash the patriarchy.

As we were leaving, my artist friend’s fiancé asked me what I planned to do for pride month. I told her I hadn’t thought about it, but that now I would. It was only a little while ago that I came home and realized that the pride flag we have been flying for years supporting the LGBTQ+ community was now flying for me as well. I’m not sure if I can join a parade yet. I am still a work in progress and still rolling it out to my friends and acquaintances. But I will find a way to quietly celebrate my entry into this community and to honor those who came before me and created the space for this new me to be.

PS: I have decided two things to do in celebration of Pride Month. I want to bake some sort of pride cake and have some friends over to help me eat it. And, I would like to come completely out to my family, which is my Mother, my brother and my sister at this point. I don’t think it will come as a total shock to them. On my last couple of visits, I have worn “sweater tunics,” aka sweater dresses, and other casual tops purchased from women’s clothing sources, as well as wearing my hair in more feminine ways. There has also been an essay or two shared with them which certainly pointed at it.