Member-only story
Sadly, most transgender women or trans men experience complete darkness in their gender closet before they are able to come out and explore the world.
Of course in the pre-internet period, gender information was very difficult to come by and it wasn’t until pioneers such as Virginia Prince came around did printed material begin to surface on a regular basis. As well as the so called transvestite mixers which began to crop up in other areas except the East coast. For those of us in the Midwest and other places, finding and meeting other like minded cross dressers seemed to be the impossible dream. The light in the gender closet was dim to say the least.
Perhaps the worst part of seeing the light was determining exactly what it was. Could it be a beneficial beginning to escaping the severe gender dysphoria I was facing, or was it merely the light of a train rolling uncontrollably towards me. At any point of time, discovery of my feminine desires could lead to severe consequences to the male life I had worked so hard to survive in. It took me years and even decades to figure out the light wasn’t the train. Partly because of all the time I wasn’t sure it wasn’t the train.
Those were the dark days of my gender despair. The days of venturing out in the public’s eye only to be laughed at and rejected which led to ill-advised “purges” of my feminine wardrobe. Somehow…
