Member-only story
No matter where you find yourself in the coming out process, I am fairly sure along the way you may have encountered some resistance to changing genders. Mine came years ago when I was called a pervert in a women’s room I was using. Later on that same evening I was asked to leave the venue all together. From other happenings similar to that, I developed what I call “Transgender PTSD”.(Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) On occasion, I still experience it today.
How did I survive? Basically, everytime I had to go through extremely negative experiences, I shed tears and went back to the drawing board and tried to improve my exterior self to match my feminine interior self. It was tough for me because I had very few feminine traits to build on after spending decades perfecting my macho act. Along the way, I still lived in fear of hearing the dreaded “Hey! That’s a man in a dress.”
Gradually I did improve my appearance as I learned to dress for other women and to blend into where ever I was going. An example? If I was going to one of the upscale pub/restaurants I went to socialize I would wear a fancier outfit which would indicate I was a professional woman of some sort. On the other hand, if I was going to meet my lesbian friends at a sports bar we normally went to, I would wear a nice pair of jeans and top. All of a sudden, my life in the cis-world became easier.
When my life really became easier was when I started hormone replacement therapy (HRT). All of a sudden I went to the tipping point of no…
