My Transition - Coming Out

This is continuing off my Discovering Myself post. If you haven't read it yet, click here to view it.

This time, let's focus more on how I came out of the closet. I came out first as gender fluid, but trying avoiding labels, so I didn't conform to anything in particular. This was in order to give myself free reign to figure myself out without "box" limitations.

Coming out to my mom

In my previous post I talked a little bit about how my mom found out I was wearing women's clothing. But I didn't really explain how I came out to her as trans. Considering I lived with her, and she already saw me wearing girl clothes all the time, complete with bras and silicone boobs to fill them, I figured this probably wouldn't be much of a surprise.

I guess I thought wrong, because when I sat down on the couch to talk to my mom and tell her I'm trans, it looked like it hit her by surprise. I'm going to paraphrase basically what I said to her when I sat down on the couch while she was reading:

"Hey, I want to tell you about something. Over the past 6 years or so I've been doing a lot of self discovery, and you've seen me wearing breast attachments and women's clothing a lot. Well... I've come to the conclusion that I am not gender fluid, I am transgender. I am female. I've talked to my doctor, and I'm looking to start hormone treatment. I am also changing my name and pronoun, so I'd like you to call me Josie, and refer to me as she."

My mom was visibly shaken as we talked. I didn't realize until then that she must have thought my girl stuff was some kind of phase. A phase that had lasted 6 years... I'm not sure she realized how long I'd been doing that. At first she seemed rather offended by the name change, because she really liked my old name, and she seemed to think I was changing it because I didn't like it. It wasn't that I didn't like it, it was that it was male. It was clearly a boy's name, and not the kind of name that could be used interchangeably. She repeated a few times how she named me, and how it felt like I was trying to get rid of her or something by changing my name... It was clearly not a rational reaction. As we talked I tried to have as much patience as I could, assuring her that I was not doing this to spite her or her decisions in any way, it is merely who I am.

I found it kind of irritating that in this situation, I was the one effectively supporting her, rather than her being the one supporting me. I was the one coming out, and I was the one who needed support, and yet here she was arguing against me like I was trying to attack her or something. As we continued our conversation she eventually calmed down. Once the conversation had calmed she asked what I was going to do with my middle name.

"My middle name? Oh dear, my middle name... I have no idea, I honestly completely forgot about that! I'd want it to be basically the female version of what it currently is, just like my first name."

She suggested Elli. I completely agreed, and now that's what's on my driver's license. She felt happy that at least, on this second time around, she still got to give me my middle name.

Since then, she had a learning curve as she got used to this concept of gender being dynamic, and she's read articles and things to help her understand. Since I live with her, it's been a struggle as my hormones have created teenage drama, and we've had fights, but she understands more about who I am than she ever has before, and I feel like she's fully accepted me as her daughter. We've even had some moments of girl talk, and she's started consulting me on fashion choices. 

In the same way she has fought people on women's rights issues in the past, she is now ready to jump in as a transgender ally, armed with scientific articles when people spread LGBTQ hate speech.

Coming out to my neighbors

In my previous post I talked about how I lived in a co-housing community where all my neighbors knew each other and we wave and say hi as we're walking by, and it's all friendly and nice. In this neighborhood, word spreads fast, and rumours can form quickly as a result. I was seen a few times walking around while I was wearing my breast attachments. Now surprisingly enough, few people tended to notice. But it sparked some conversation, and I felt I needed to come out. I sent everyone in the community an email to clarify what was going on. 

Here is that email:

Subject: Everybody Please Read to Minimize Questions

Hello [neighborhood name]!

There's something that I am tired of hiding, and I wanted to give everybody a heads up so I don't catch people too off guard. Starting in about a week I'm going to stop covering up the boobs and feminine clothing I've been wearing when I walk around outside. I realize this is pretty blatant, but I'm still the same [my old name] you've all known, it's merely my appearance that has been changed slightly.

To answer some questions in advance, here's a small list of the why:

• Some days I feel more feminine, others I feel more masculine. That's just the way it is and I've decided to go with it.
• I do it to make myself more comfortable on the days where I feel more feminine.
• In order to make clients more comfortable, I will not wear them during my IT visits when I come to fix your computer (unless it is specified by the client as being okay).
• No, I do not plan on doing anything permanent. That would be unfair to the part of me that still feels masculine sometimes.
• Yes, it's perfectly fine to make all the bra-wearing jokes you wish while I'm around. I make them myself, and I appreciate a good joke so long as it has a light-hearted intent.

In retrospect, this would've made an excellent April Fools email because nobody would realize I'd be telling the truth, haha. Feel free to email me if you have additional questions, and I am going to wait about a week to ensure that everyone got this email before I stop hiding it.

And thank you to everyone who already knows! You've all been great, and I'm happy to have such accepting people in my neighborhood :)

-[my old name]

My email was pretty well received. There were a few neighbors who had sticks up their butts and found my breast attachments offensive, but the supportive people helped me shut them up. Once those people realized I'm not doing it for attention, or to insult women, they seemed to back off and look at me like a human being again. It's so strange how people can twist anything into a way to be offended...

By the time I was coming out as trans, I needed to send out another email to the community, so everyone would know I was changing my name and pronouns. This was that email:

Subject: My Name/Pronoun Change

Hello, [neighborhood name]!

A little over a week ago I came out as transgender on Facebook and declared my pronoun as female and my name as Josie. It occurs to me that I have forgotten to come out to the rest of [neighborhood name]!

So hi! I'm Josie. I'm trans female. I like fixing things, playing video games, being nerdy, and being fabulous ;)

I realize that name and pronoun changes can be pretty hard to get used to, especially for those who have known me for a long time. So I want to let it be known that I understand slip ups happen. I appreciate effort more than accuracy, so just the act of catching yourself, to me, makes up for the slip up.

A brief FAQ, because I'm sure there will be questions:

• Yes, I am starting hormone replacement.
• No, I have not yet come out as trans at work. But I am coming out to my boss this Monday, and it will likely be public as of next school year, rather than during the current school year. By that point my body will have made more physical changes from the hormones to make the transition a little less awkward.
• No, the name change is not legal yet. I plan to make it legal once I'm out as trans at work.
• No, I do not have plans for surgery at this time. I'm already doing hormones, so I figure I'll take this one step at a time. But being trans does not automatically mean you need to get surgery.
• Yes, I have given a great deal of long-term thought over the past 6 years to probably everything that is currently entering your minds as you read this.
• Yes, I'm pretty excited for these changes. I also acknowledge a fear surrounding such a large change, but with any kind of change of this magnitude, there's bound to be fear in there somewhere.
• Yes, you may ask me questions about this, as long as they are questions that are asked from a place of learning rather than a place of judgement. 

I'm proud of how many unique people in this neighborhood are comfortable being who they are. It's because of that that I am able to type this email in confidence that I live in a pretty accepting and fantastic place with awesome neighbors!

Please do not go to my mother to ask questions about me. She's not the one coming out as trans, I am.

Questions about things she's still figuring out herself is not something she needs right now.

-Josie

Considering the neighborhood had already seen me dressed as female more often than not at this point, my email was pretty well received, and I think everyone was pretty much expecting it. The only thing I had to deal with was repeating questions, which ultimately led to the creation of this blog. I got a bit tired of answering the same questions over and over and decided I'd just write the experience down and send them a link.

Some people just want to live their lives and not have to answer questions about their identity all the time. But it doesn't bother me, as long as the questions are coming from a place of genuine curiosity and not from a place of judgement. I answer people's questions, but I try to make sure to add that not all trans people would want to be this open. People shouldn't jump in and ask other trans people personal questions unless told that it's okay. Asking a trans person about their transition is kind of like asking someone to recount all the dirty details of their puberty. It's kind of personal and not really any of your business. But in my case, for the sake of education, I'm letting aspects my personal life out in the open. I'm weird like that.

Coming out to my dad

My last post ended when I said I came out to my dad. I bet some people are wondering how I went about doing that, especially because I talked about how he came from a Christian background. No offense to Christians, of course, I just mean to say that most who come from a Christian background tend not to consider trans people worthy of living, so I was scared of being disowned. It's depressingly common for dads to disown their children when they come out.

Just a reminder to those who've forgotten, my parents are divorced, and I don't live with my dad, so when I see him it's when I'm visiting him. Years before coming out to him as trans, I told him, albeit awkwardly, that I sometimes wear girl clothes, without including the word "gender" in my explanation. His initial reaction was this:

"Well, that.... Doesn't... Change the fact that I love you. Actually, wait a sec... Nope, still love you."

Yep, that's my dad... He cracked me up a little with that one. Considering his sense of humor, I'd say we're probably related. 

He seemed confused, but ultimately intending to be supportive, which was a relief. There were some uncomfortable silences that probably only lasted a few seconds, but to me felt like a few minutes. The bra thing weirded him out a little, I could tell... After that conversation, I proceeded to never wear girl clothing in front of him. I was too nervous. As the years went by, I'm sure he forgot our conversation. I was still scared of him seeing me that way, especially since I didn't really know how to explain myself to answer his inevitable questions.

For a trans girl, coming out to your dad is terrifying. Your dad is the symbol of masculinity in your life, and statistically speaking, the dad is the one who's going to have a harder time understanding any of it. He's more likely to be the one outraged by it, because of his lack of understanding. It's very easy for him to screw it up and crush you with hurtful words. 

When I came out to my dad a second time, this time knowing more about who I am and completely coming out as trans, I was too scared of talking to him directly. So I sent him an email. This was probably for the best anyway, because it meant he wasn't going to respond with his emotional reaction, and instead he'd have more time to mull it over before replying. 

Here's the email I sent to him:

Subject: Who I Am

I have something I feel I should talk about. Do you remember that time a few years ago when I told you I wear girl clothes? I'm realizing you've been on my Facebook page at this point, so chances are you've probably seen a picture of me dressed that way at this point.

I never dressed that way in front of you because I was nervous about your reaction. It can be strange to those who haven't been exposed to this at all in their lives, especially if it involves their children. Mom certainly had an undesirable reaction when she first saw it, but she was caught by surprise without an explanation. It's a side of me I wasn't sure you would be able to accept. So I told you about it, and then I left it at that, never bringing it up again, and not even giving you the chance to see what I'm talking about. I was afraid, and I felt like having told you once was enough, and it would be okay to just let you forget. That was wrong of me.

I was referring to myself as "gender fluid" back when I first mentioned this to you, because some days I felt more masculine and other days I felt more feminine. I would dress according to how I felt, and somehow dressing the way I felt made me feel a lot more comfortable and happy. It even helped relieve a lot of my anxiety and depression issues. Eventually it even made me feel more confident.

Gradually over time I felt the need to dress female more often. The days where I felt masculine were fewer than the days where I felt feminine. I began to feel like I was wearing a costume when I wore male clothes. This made me take another look at myself to ask myself who I really am.

It has been 6 years now since I started wearing girl clothes. 6 years of asking myself so many questions I never before even thought to ask. 6 years of significant self discovery, and of learning to accept a side of myself I have kept extremely secret for as long as I can remember.

So I have a whopper of a confession for you. I am transitioning to be female. I am transgender, and I have been responding to Josephia (Josie for short) and "she/her" pronouns. Mom seems to have been in denial about this and I don't think she's really accepted it yet, even though she's seen my development for the past 5 years. I think she thought it was some kind of phase. Keeping you in the dark has been wrong, and I believe the next time I see you I should present myself as I normally do, rather than disguise myself as a guy for you.

I'm sorry I waited so long to really tell you what's going on. It's hard to talk about and I was uncertain what was happening myself, so I felt I had to wait until I had solid answers to give.

You don't have to reply immediately; by all means take your time to process this information. You can talk about it with [my dad's girlfriend's name] if that helps you process it. Just know that I'm still your child, I still have a major knack for technology, I still love you, and this is mostly just my exterior that's changing, really. You are welcome to ask questions if you want, whenever you're ready.

-Josie

And here was his reply:

Dear Josie;

I took your suggestion and took some time to respond to your email. This is not a complete surprise because, as you said, I have been checking Facebook occasionally.

First and foremost, and above all, I will always love and support you. Having said that, I know you will understand that this is going to be a process for me.

I named you, gave you your first bath, and you have been my son for almost 27 years. I don't pretend to understand this, but I'm trying to learn. I want to learn about what you're going through, and how you feel. I know it took a lot of courage for you to write this email to me. I'm glad that you were so honest with me and let me know this is who you are and it's permanent.

I know it will be awkward and uncomfortable the next few times we are together. I understand you're the same person but in a sense this will be like meeting a stranger and  losing my son. Please have patience with me as we go through this transition because it's unfamiliar to me and it's huge and I am me.

You are my child. I will always love you and will do my best.

Love, Dad

This reply made my cry as I read it... My dad has been emotionally distant for most of my life, so seeing him open up his feelings toward me was very... I dunno, I can't think of a word for it. 

My dad saw me next at my 27th birthday, by which time I had been on hormone treatment for 1 month, and I was presenting as completely female 100% of the time without disguises. I even wore makeup to the party. We hugged, and we talked for a bit, but he never questioned me appearance and my being trans was never actually brought up. He treated me like the same person he's always known. And that's the way it's done.

Coming out to my brother:

Back before hormone treatment, when I was still figuring out why I liked wearing bras, I came out to my various friends in different ways. First I came out to my brother and his girlfriend when I stayed overnight at their house. This happened kind of on accident. I wore my bra to their house with a loose shirt, which worked well to cover up my chest. You'd be surprised how many people didn't notice I was wearing a bra. But I didn't fully intend to stay the night, so I had nothing to really change into. In the night I took off my shirt, revealing the tank top and bra that was underneath. My brother came out of his room the following morning, and I was just waking up on the couch as he was getting up. As I got up I realized I had taken my shirt off, and I became very self-conscious. I saw my brother's eyes dart down at my chest and back to my eyes, but his expression did not change in the slightest, and he proceeded to say:

"What you want for breakfast?"

Taken by surprise at his lack of reaction, I answer his question, and his girlfriend comes out of the room and sees me as he goes to the kitchen. She sees the bra and boobs and says something along the lines of, 

"Are you wearing a bra?"

I just reply something like,

"Er, yeah. It was Rae's."

And she proceeds to smile and exclaims,

"Ooh, I have some fancy sparkly stuff you should try on! Hang on, I'll go get it."

My brother, to this day, has never asked me a single question about my gender, and has never shown any form of emotional expression reaction from my physical change, unless prompted to by me pointing directly to my homegrown cleavage. Honestly, its rather odd, but also kind of refreshing. It just felt like blind matter-of-fact acceptance, and I wish more people in the world were like that. I'm just surprised that, over the course of 7 years now, he hasn't had any questions at all. The only issue with him has been his occasional slipping up on my pronouns after I changed them.

Coming out to a close male friend:

I came out as gender fluid to one of my closest friends and his family by showing up at their house wearing a tight shirt and bra. He wasn't home yet, but was expected any moment. My friend's dad noticed first, did a slow moving double-take, and stated while smiling, 

"I'm just gonna keep my mouth shut."

His mom clearly noticed, but said nothing while clearly forming questions in her head, probably trying to figure out the least offensive way to ask me why I had boobs. We had a nice visit in the meantime, regardless. When my friend showed up, his reaction was to look at me for a moment, give me his signature smile, and say 

"Nice rack."

I think I heard his mom in the kitchen almost do a spit take as that was being said. I explained how I was questioning my identity and everything, and once I started openly talking about it, everyone listened and was very supportive. None of them knew what they were doing in their attempts to be supportive, but I didn't know anything either, so we were all in the same boat.

When I came out to them as trans, I'm pretty sure they all totally saw it coming. It has taken them some getting used to using my new name and pronoun, but they have all been wonderfully supportive. The nature of my friendship with this friend has changed a little, but I think it's no less than it was before. And I think the good times we've had since I came out have been better for it, especially now that he's had time to process the concept of me being a girl.

Coming out to close female friend

I came out as gender fluid to another close friend one day as I was giving her and Rae a ride somewhere. I wore my bra into the car and waited until she noticed.

She never noticed...

Rae and I eventually started to mumble about how we were surprised she didn't notice yet, and then she asked what we were talking about. Rae blurted out:

"[My old name] is wearing a bra! You really don't see it? The seat belt clearly shows he's got boobs!"

I just burst out laughing as my friend looks over at me and sees what we're talking about. She looks at my chest, up at my face, glances again at my chest, and looks back out the windshield with a big supportive smile saying,

"I love you."

That pretty much summed up her whole reaction. She's been wonderfully supportive and nonjudgmental every step of the way. I suspect it helped that she had LGBTQ friends, and was part of that community herself.

Coming out to a close non-binary friend

Another of my close friends at the time declared that they wanted people to use they/them pronouns, which was an entirely new world to me. But I tried my best to respect their wishes, even if I didn't understand them, and didn't get any kind of explanation. 

I came out as gender fluid to this friend over text and they replied, 

"It's about time!"

Needless to say, this friend has been 100% supportive. Having seen that I wasn't cisgender from the beginning, they actually thought of me as being female long before I knew it myself.

I think that's about all the significant coming out stories I've got, not counting the workplace. But I'm saving that for another post... I apologize to those friends not listed here, but the rest of you just didn't make a funny enough story for me to tell, what with your blanket awesomeness and blatant acceptance. How dare you all be so nonchalant about it ;)

My advice about coming out...

I think that some of my experiences with coming out could have gone much worse had I not approached it from a place of understanding and patience. I fully expected some of these experiences to not go as well as they did, particularly the ones with my parents. And they would have gone far worse had I not had the patience to endure my mother's behaviour, and had I not told my dad to wait a while to process his feelings before responding. 

If I took their reactions at face value and responded with frustration and anger, it would just make them more frustrated and angry. I couldn't expect them to know exactly what to do, or even what the right reaction is. I can't expect them to get my pronouns and name correct 100% of the time immediately after our conversation any more than I could expect one of my students to get the material right on the homework after only being told the material once with not so much as a handout. 

They've never been through this, and they had no idea what it meant, felt like, or in my dad's case, even what it looked like. I had time to think it over, but it hit them all at once like a truck. Our mainstream TV media doesn't tell people how to properly respond to these kinds of situations, and my parents had never knowingly seen a trans person before, let alone spoken to one. Zero exposure means not knowing anything about it, and people are afraid of what they don't know. Fear is often met with anger and frustration.

It sucks. It's just one more issue in which the trans person has to be the bigger person. But one of us had to be the bigger person, and I was the only one among us who knew how to be the bigger person in this context. Therefore, I needed to have patience, and I needed to expect them to screw up, because they had no idea what they were doing. It's whether they continue to regularly screw up months after coming out... That's what determines if we have a problem. I always tell them that correcting themselves when using the wrong pronoun makes up for the slip-up, because it shows that an effort is being made. If I see no effort being made, it creates a rift between us, slowly destroying our relationship.

I guess that's all the advice I really have on that subject... Where it goes from there is up to them, because if you've been patient and understanding with them, you've kind of done all you can. It's their responsibility from there to approach the situation from a place of love. They might need reminding of that. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, there is no guaranteed way to get acceptance from these situations... I wish there was. I deeply wish that people could find it in their hearts to love their children unconditionally.

Privilege check:

I fully realize how lucky I am that so many of my friends and family have been so supportive of me. I try not to take any of this for granted... It's hard to remember sometimes how lucky I am.

This is a reminder that anything I say on this subject comes from a place of privilege. I have not had to endure the experience of being kicked out of my house, or disowned by my family. I also recognize that everything I've ever said on my blog comes from another place of privilege, due to my being white. I know nothing about what this experience must be like for trans women of color, and I don't think there's any way I can know that experience. I don't pretend to fully understand what it must be like. People of color speaking about their personal experiences with trans issues, racism, or whatever, should be wholly listened to. It's not up to me to decide what this experience is like for them.

My Transition - Discovering Myself

Trivial Sexual Content!

I talk a little about when I began to explore my sexuality in this post. There's some minor sexual content in some of my descriptions, but nothing significantly graphic.

Trigger warning:

This post describes the hardships of rediscovering myself, and it describes the mental breakdown I had following it. Just be wary, and if you feel a PTSD reaction, please stop reading and practice self care.

Considering I'm now at the point where I've been on hormones for over a year, I think I should post a little something extra! The Month 12 post will be up after I finish experiencing it, but until then...

I'm going to talk about how I first came to question my gender identity, and how it affected my life. To the best of my memory, of course.

In the beginning...

I've always been a little "flowery," kind of like a fairy. As a small child of around 4 I remember bringing blankets out on the front lawn and having tea party picnics with my stuffed animals. I had pretty easily hurt feelings and, not knowing how to properly handle my emotions, I was like an extremely delicate flower that would fall apart if poked wrong. I would prance and hop when I ran, rather than a forceful run. I was very soft-spoken, I liked having longer hair, my voice was high (wish it stayed that way), I was quite short, and when I got older, I really did not like puberty... The body hair, the voice drop, the greasy skin, my adam's apple, none of it... I could list a good amount of qualities that could have been telling signs that maybe, just maybe, I wasn't a very masculine person.

But I wasn't exposed to anything trans-related growing up. The closest I had was Bugs Bunny's crossdressing and the movie Mrs. Doubtfire (which I absolutely loved). Neither of those examples put transgender people in the most positive light, since they were used as the butt of a joke. Laughing at someone because they're wearing a dress does not help a trans person come out. It builds up the idea that it's funny, and that you'll be laughed at and ridiculed if you do the same. Also, none of those examples were truly about trans people, because crossdressing does not make you trans. You can be a cisgender man dressed like a woman, but if he's still saying he's a man, then that's crossdressing, not transgender. Transgender is when you ARE a woman, not necessarily when you're DRESSED like a woman. Does that make sense? I hope so, because I never get any comments on this blog, so I can't hear your feedback.

My parents, when I was young, were Christian. My parents split up when I was around 5 resulting in a divorce, and my mom started to lean away from Christianity to figure out her own path. My dad stuck with Christianity for a long time, largely influenced by his second wife. But following his second divorce, and his heart surgery, I get the feeling something changed about that. I have yet to ask him if he still considers himself Christian, but he certainly doesn't act as much like a stereotypical one anymore. Especially considering he's accepted me as his daughter. 

I had a very conservative experience with Christianity, so pardon my bias. I understand that not all Christians are bigoted against the LGBTQ community. It's just that a large majority of the ones I've met in my life have been. For more on that, you can read my Thoughts About Christianity post.

So I had this negative image of crossdressing built up in my mind, from the media we're all exposed to, and from my Christian background. I knew nothing about anything with this stuff, so I thought crossdressing was just something all gay people do, and I categorized everything relating to LGBTQ stuff as "being gay." Cartoons showing male characters kissing other male characters as part of a punchline taught me that being gay is funny/wrong, reinforcing the teachings the church tried to drill into me about god hating gay people. Somehow, through all of that, it never made sense to me to hate someone for those reasons, so I never truly believed it. It just seemed like such a silly reason to hate someone.

This is why it took me so long to come out, or to even question it. I was called gay all the time in a derogatory way, but being called gay in that manner doesn't cause you to question it, it causes you to receive it as an insult, giving you the gut instinct to fight back and deny it. So here I was, constantly being called gay, and constantly denying it, never once truly questioning myself. Just reacting, not thinking.

I'll probably do a more in-depth post about this someday, but long story short I had to deal with anti-gay Christian teachings at my dad's, public/private school anti-gay bullies at school, and an abusive anti-gay asshole at my mom's. I lived at my mom's primarily, so that abusive asshole was the one who called me gay all the time as an insult and ridiculed me at every turn. Because of this, had I come out at an earlier age, I may not have survived. My mom said when I was around 10 I threatened to jump out the window of my room. I have no memory of that, but I do know that I had suicidal thoughts starting at the age of 7. At least, those are the earliest ones I remember. But that's another story...

My point is that between all this crap, and the stuff I haven't even written about, it was pushed pretty deep in my mind that because being gay was "wrong," there's no way I could be gay. Right? Right.

Hah! Wow, how cute. I was so wrong on so many levels...

Finding representation

So amidst all of this, how the heck did I ever discover myself? Well, I got to go to some parent-partnership homeschool centers where the teachers were nurturing to me. I considered school to be my home, and we lived a literal block away from one of them, so I went there often, even when I had no classes that day. My crush's mom was bisexual, which I thought was interesting, but didn't really give the idea any real thought. I was taught that being gay was controversial, so I figured,

"Well, she's bi, so obviously there's nothing controversial about that because she still likes men too, right?"

I guess I didn't categorize being bi as being gay, even though I recognized that it meant she likes women too. This is probably because I wasn't told how to think about that concept, so I made up my own idea of what to think about it:

"Cool. I've never heard of that. Interesting. What's for dinner?"

Then some years later, when I was 12, my mom and I moved to a wonderful co-housing community, and shortly afterward the asshole left us, leaving us in the hands of a supportive community.

If you don't know what co-housing means, please click here, because I don't want to explain it myself.

In this co-housing community I met and got to know a more diverse and accepting group of people. One of the families had two moms. When I found this out, I was nervous that I was going to hear more hate crap about gay people, but the community was supportive of this family, so I didn't feel like I'd be ridiculed for associating with them. Over the years more people came and went, and I made some real lasting friendships. Some of my closer friends started calling me part girl, and nicknamed me Josephia. At first I felt weird about it, but they explained that they didn't mean it in a negative way, so it grew on me, and I totally rolled with it as an excuse to hang out with the girls.

My first relationships

When I was around 18, my first actual girlfriend and I were playing around one night, and I put on one of her bras as a joke. When she got out her phone and took a picture of me, I became extremely self-conscious, took off the bra, made her delete it, and told her never to speak of this again. Not once did I question why I tried on the bra in the first place, and not once was it really questioned that I took up the feminine role in our relationship.

Years later, the family with two moms became like a second family to me after I started dating their daughter. And this is where I finally start to question myself... If you've read my "The Other Life I Lived" post, then you'll recognize this girlfriend's name. I'm calling her Rae.

An unexpected realization

One day, I believe it was 2011, Rae and I were casually hanging out in her room while she was going through clothes. I was sitting on the bed as she found an old bra she was going to throw out. Rae walks out of the room. Without questioning myself, I grab the bra and put it on, curious to see what it would look like under my shirt. For some reason I was curious what I would look like with boobs. I also thought it'd be funny to surprise her when she got back.

She got back, saw me, and a smile came over her face as she said, 

"Hang on, it doesn't look quite right. I'll find something to stuff it."

So I was sitting there in her bra, completely beet red, but actually a little excited to see what this is going to look like when we stuffed it.

Rae got back with some toilet paper and tiny socks and began stuffing my bra and adjusting the straps and stuff. We lowered my shirt down, pulled my shirt back to look tighter, and she positioned me in front of a mirror. I looked back at myself, uncontrollably smiling, laughing, and tears started to form in my eyes. When I saw myself, I thought, 

"You know, I... I don't hate this. I like this? What does that mean?"

I started to feel dizzy and out of breath, so I sat down on the bed. I don't remember anything that happened around me, I just remember being so overwhelmed with my own thoughts, having genuinely questioned my gender and my sexuality for the first time. I began to ask so many questions, realizing that I didn't have any answers:

"Am I gay? Am I bi? Am I male? Why have I never questioned this before? I'm definitely attracted to girls. Am I attracted to guys too? I've never actually given that a try. I've always just refused it and insisted I'm not gay... What if I am? How do I know unless I experience it for myself? How much else do I not know about myself? Do I even know myself? Who and what am I?"

It was overwhelming, but the dizziness started to fade after a bit and I was able to speak again. I kept the bra on. Rae said her mom needed to see, and she took me downstairs. Her mom smiled and said the size wasn't quite right for my frame, but otherwise I looked good. Rae wanted to get me to try on some other clothes, but I was very nervous and said no, intending to pace myself. Rae gave me the bra. I kept it on until I had to go home, and I folded it up and hid it in my shirt as I came inside. After hiding the bra in my room, I tried it on again in private and began finding ways to stuff in as efficient and economic a way as possible.

Exploring myself

This bra wearing became something I did in private, and other people didn't find out until about a month later, when my mom saw me. I slept in this stuffed bra with a tank top sometimes, and I left my room to use the bathroom without taking the bra off. My mom saw me as I left the bathroom. We had an exchange that ended with me in tears as I ran back to my room... Her initial reaction left a lot to be desired, and I had no idea how to answer her questions. All I wanted was support, without needing to explain myself. But that was 7 years ago. She's far more supportive now.

I didn't know what to call myself, and I didn't want to pick some label because I didn't want to conform myself to some label someone else has come up with. So I just said I was me, whatever that means. Not male, not female, not trans, not gay, just me. I finally asked myself legitimately and genuinely what I wanted, for possibly the first time in my life, and it opened up a whole new level of critical thinking for myself. I questioned everything about myself again, relearning who I was. I legitimately questioned whether I found men to be attractive, without insisting that I wouldn't know because I "wasn't gay." I refused to answer forms that asked for me to check an optional box for male or female...

Discovering my sexuality

Shortly after I started questioning my gender and sexuality, I became curious to experiment with a guy. While I was talking to a friend online, let's call him Jon, the subject of my sexuality questioning came up, and he mentioned that he was gay. I'd known him through another friend for over a year, and I had no idea. I never had a reason to ask before. This was after my relationship with Rae had changed from romantic to friends with benefits, so I was open to experimentation. He invited me to his place to watch Firefly, and during episode 2 he asked "Is this okay?" as his hand wound up on my leg. Very much appreciating that he asked, I nervously smiled and said yes. I had never had someone come onto me like this before and initiate something sexual in this way, putting me in the docile position. I really liked it, but I was very nervous, because I'd never been with a guy before. He started rubbing my leg, moving his hand up my thigh, and as he moved in closer he checked in again to make sure it was still okay. It certainly was. After my confirmation, his hand got up my shirt, and I ended up on my back. My shirt came off, and his hand moved up my leg, grazing past my loins to loosen my pants.

Wait, what am I doing? Writing a steamy sex novel? Suffice it to say, as nervous as I was, it was lots of fun, and I wish it wasn't cut short by his father coming home, or I might've had more opportunity to explore his body after he explored mine... Which is why we decided to do this again at my place, where we wouldn't be interrupted. I was so nervous and new to everything, very little really happened at my place, but it was a valuable life experience anyway. I left the situation wishing I did more, and had the guts to at least touch him. But he was very nice through everything, and said he didn't want to take anything any further than I'd feel comfortable going. 

See, guys, THIS is how to get in a girl's pants. Freaking respect and courtesy! Also Firefly... He knew that sci-fi would make me put out...

Anyway, thanks to this friend, I experienced my first threesome, and I got some very valuable experience that helped me figure myself out more. It's because of my experiences with him that I can safely say I'm pansexual. Pansexual meaning that it doesn't matter if you're male, female, non-binary, intersex, or whatever, as long as you're human, and I find you attractive, you are a viable candidate for sexy times. 

I had to break it off with Jon because I was worried he was falling in love with me, and I didn't want to pursue him only to realize later that I'm not gay, because I was still figuring myself out. I felt so bad for years, because I know I hurt him. I still feel kind of bad, but less bad now that we're friends again. 

Years later in 2017 we talked some more and had some fun again and I actually had the guts to dive in that time. That's when I found out I'm apparently quite a natural, and I'm happy to say I've tried all the stuff I had wanted to try. Unfortunately though, I became too feminine for him after undergoing hormone treatment, so we're friends without benefits now. And that's fine with me. :)

Now moving on to my mental breakdown...

Following the events from The Other Life I Lived, and following my breakups with Rae and Jon, I had a crisis. Some might call it a mid-life crisis, but I was 22, so that's hardly mid-life. Unless you add 7 years to my age, which would've put me at 29, which might be closer... Anyway, I call this my mental breakdown. 

I lost it. I felt like I couldn't be myself in my parents' house, feeling unaccepted and unknowing of what I was, I felt completely alone in my gender struggle, and I had a very intense desire to run away from everything and move out, often going out for drives in random directions just to see where I would end up.

I moved out to an apartment that a friend owned. After moving there, I had a lot of alone time, and I found myself isolated. I made up my own label for what I was: "gender transient," which is part of where the name of this blog came from. I stayed inside and rarely visited friends. At this point I had purchased some silicone breast attachments for my chest, and I had started experimenting with shaving body hair. I was pretty regularly wearing women's clothing, having gone out for the first time to buy some with my brother's girlfriend. She helped in that process immensely, and some of my favorite clothes came from that shopping spree. But wearing the breast attachments as often as I did was causing severe acne rashes to develop on my chest, and omg, the grease was so disgusting... I wished I could just have my own breasts.

My own breasts... And there's the thought train that got me looking at surgery information. I was coming to terms with the fact that I actually wanted breasts, and it was at this time that my answer was a confirmed yes, that I did. I began dressing as a girl at work, at the marketing company I worked at. My boss was accepting and supportive, and her only concern was for my own comfort and safety, which was nice. I was in no state of mind to care about my own safety, however...

I spent a lot of time in my own head asking myself more and more prying questions about my identity, repeatedly saying to myself that I had no idea who I was anymore. I was coming to terms with what it would mean if I was transgender, what it would mean to get reassignment and/or breast augmentation surgery, how society looks at me, everything. It was all so new and unknown, and terrifying. I was extremely suicidal. I lost my job and my apartment, dropped out of college, and fell into a severe depression. My mom came to my apartment and started packing up my things to bring me home. It's good she came when she did, because there were already a few instances in which I had nearly killed myself. I've never told anyone this, but I googled how to make cyanide, I googled where to buy helium, and I looked up various ways to quickly, effectively, and painlessly kill all brain activity. It was a scary time, and I'm so glad I didn't go through with any of it, because then I wouldn't be here typing this! With my own homegrown boobs. :)

When I was taken home I spent months in bed staring at the ceiling, occasionally looking at bras, silicone attachments, and googling gender stuff online with my laptop. I was so lost, and I had no idea what to do. I started seeing therapists again, and I was put on multiple medications in an attempt to find one that would just make everything better. Nothing seemed to do anything at all.

My manic comeback

One day in 2013, I woke up feeling well rested. I hadn't felt well rested in years. I needed to renew my driver's license, so I decided I was going to go do that after breakfast. I went down and cooked an actual breakfast, and as I did so, I thought I'd go pick up a few of the remaining things from my apartment that never got moved out. While I was in the area, I ended up applying for a job at Best Buy, and another job at Staples. I didn't just pick up the remaining stuff at my old apartment, I picked up everything, including the mattress, which I carried into the car myself. When I got home I carried everything into the house from the car's normal parking spot 4 houses down, including the mattress. Then I brought everything into my room and organized it all. Then I vacuumed and cleaned the whole house, kitchen, living room, upstairs bedrooms, downstairs apartment, everything. Then I cooked dinner for everyone and planned out a strategy to manipulate the managers of the Best Buy and Staples stores against one another to raise my starting wages.

Then, after I ate dinner, I collapsed on the living room couch, in awful pain, unable to move my muscles. But everything I did that day completely turned my life around. I got the job as a technician at Staples about two weeks later with a starting wage that was higher than my assistant managers. I never had a manic episode quite like that again, but the after effects of that helped keep me on my feet, and that job got me out of the house doing something that I enjoy. As I felt my self-esteem grow as I worked, I weened myself off of my medication.

Eventually I developed enough courage to wear my silicone attachments and bras as I went to work. I never said anything, I just did it. I think most people didn't notice, but those who did rarely said anything. I'd get a few dirty looks, and a few confused looks, but I did it for me, not for them. It made me feel more comfortable to have them on than to have them off. It never became a problem, and my co-workers didn't really care. Some of them were curious, but they left it alone unless I talked about it.

By now I had discovered that other people had come up with a label called "gender fluid." I thought gender transient sounded cooler, but I just used gender fluid since other people more widely accepted that as a thing. Deep down, I still recognized that I wasn't actually gender fluid, and that this was just a label I was utilizing to satisfy other people. We do so love to define things.

And thus began my next relationship! This time, it was constructed with a foundation of my being gender fluid. In the beginning it worked out, but by the end I felt too pressured into a masculine role. As with any relationship, the problems were contributed to by both sides, but that relationship was really the point at which I realized the impact other people had on the way I expressed my gender. During this relationship I quit my job at Staples and became a technology and digital arts teacher at a local school. After that relationship ended, I felt free to explore myself with a new level of dedication.

Discovering myself

I thought a good way to proceed with my personal growth was to stay unattached, so I attempted to be happy on my own, and to not pursue another relationship. I found myself wanting physical closeness, so I decided to try out some online dating apps in an attempt to find a "friends with benefits" situation. I was looking for someone to play around with to explore my sexuality, as well as my gender. I met quite a few people, some of whom were also gender fluid, and it was interesting to hear their perspectives on things. I gradually found myself choosing to dress feminine more often than not, and every time I got home from work it became a ritual to take off my boy clothes and put on my girl clothes. The boy clothes became referred to as my work clothes.

I began to split romance and sex into two different categories, because the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it made more sense for them not to be considered the same thing. I discovered that I am romantically monogamous, though I am sexually polyamorous. This means that, as long as it is okay with all of the parties involved, I will sleep with other people that I find attractive. But I only pour my heart and soul out to my romantic partner, and I still consider kissing to be a romantic act, so I never kiss sexual partners that I am not romantically involved with.

I wasn't looking for a romantic relationship, but I ended up meeting my boyfriend online in 2016 while looking for a friend with benefits. My boyfriend is non-binary, and was referring to themself as gender fluid at the time. They use neutral they/them pronouns, but they're okay with me calling them my boyfriend. It was nice to be with someone who understood me and saw me for who I was. After a couple of dates, one thing led to another and a deeper connection developed.

My boyfriend's connections in the LGBTQ community helped immensely with various questions I had. We were (and continue to be) supportive of each other, and I felt completely at ease to be myself. I began to realize how I was more often dressing as female, and how I wasn't really that interested in being masculine, so I started questioning if I was trans. My boyfriend asked me if I wanted them to use female pronouns. I decided to try it out, and Josie became my nickname, based on the Josephia that my friends used to call me. 

As I realized how much I liked my new pronoun and nickname, I began to process what it all actually meant again. It was a lot to take in, and the idea of changing my pronoun and name sounded very intimidating. I realized that I was avoiding the idea of changing all these aspects about my life not because I didn't identify with them, but rather because it was scary. Changing my identity was scary, and it meant exposing my real self to the world. But at this point, I felt like I had the support and the mental capacity to try it.

I remember one day in late 2016 I sat down to play Stardew Valley, a computer role-playing game in which you maintain a farm and meet friends in a local town. I made a female character named Josie and modeled her to look like a more feminine version of myself. When the characters in town used my name and pronoun, something clicked in my head and I said to myself: 

"I'm trans... I'm trans female, not gender fluid. I should just be honest with myself and admit it."

I came out to my dad after that, and after coming out to him I announced my name and pronoun change on Facebook. I started looking into hormone treatment, and shortly after I started the process to legally change my name and gender.

And that's how it all began!

I do hope you enjoyed this recap of how I began my gender journey, as long a read as it may be. Some more details will be written shortly in separate posts leading up to Month 12. :)

If this was the first post you've read and you want to see the beginning of my hormone therapy journey, click here.

*Sexual Content* My Transition - Month 11

This is continuing off my introduction post. If you haven't read it yet, click here to view it.

Sexual Content Material!

I talk about body parts and their functions during sexual acts in this post. If you don't want to hear about this stuff in detail, especially within the context of my body, you best not read ahead.

Month 11 - February

There appears to be a lack of consensus in the trans community around what your hormone levels should be. Everybody seems to have a different opinion. Different doctors will tout different levels, and everyone you talk to online will either not know, or have different opinions on where you should be.

This is not helpful for anyone, especially themselves, because it creates rifts in the community. When people believe they are right and others are wrong, a barrier is put up between them, and both sides feel a lack of support. The trans community needs to have people support each other better than that... We can't all be right. We are also all different people with different biological needs and different biological responses to the hormones. One person cannot arbitrarily say that what the other person is doing is wrong without evidence to back up what they're saying.

This month is my first year mark on spironolactone, and I had my dosage changed from 100mg twice a day to 100mg once a day, because of concerns about my low blood pressure. At the same time my estradiol was increased from 2 patches per week to three per week. So far so good, after two weeks I think I'm feeling an overall feeling of better health on the new dosages.

On the new dosages, there was a surprising difference in ejaculate amount. That much hadn't come out since month 2. I wonder if that's from a potentially higher testosterone amount... If so, I'm not sure I like the implications of that. Here's hoping my testosterone didn't go up too much... I don't want this delaying my reduction of facial hair >_>

Here's a social issue I'm not sure I've talked about on here yet: the difference between transwoman and trans woman. Believe it or not, the space is important not only because it is the grammatically correct option, but also because not having a space has implications you may not have considered. Think about it. You never say blondewoman, whitewoman, blackwoman, asianwoman, etc... So why would you say transwoman?

The difference here comes from recognizing that blonde women, black women, asian women, white women, are women. It's the word "woman" acting as the noun, and the word "blonde" acting as the adjective. The noun being the thing, and the adjective being the description of the thing. By saying "transwoman" you are combining the adjective and the noun together to create a new noun. Why wasn't the old noun good enough for this? Because people don't recognize transgender women as being the same as a woman.

I know some of you may be saying in reply to that, "But you weren't born as a woman. You had to transition to become one." No. Stop that. That is not how that works. I was born a woman - a woman with incorrect chromosomes. Think of it as having been born with a hormone imbalance. I was a woman all along, but because of that hormone imbalance, everybody thought I was not. Therefore, I went through life being told I was a boy so often that I even believed it myself. I took me many years to get past what everyone else was telling me, to figure out the truth.

So please, say "trans woman" with a space. The space is important, because trans women are women, not some other noun. Just as blonde women are women, so are trans women. Because trans is the adjective, not the noun.

My walk feels different. It appears to be using different muscles than it used to, causing it to feel more like a workout. I just discovered that this month. I'm not entirely sure why. It could be a number of things, but it feels like it's using different muscles, possibly because the fat redistribution has changed my center of gravity. In any case, I should probably work on this so I don't end up miserably out of shape... Well, more out of shape than I already am, that is...

When I get really frustrated, I feel a kind of fire well up inside me. Before hormones, when that fire became intense enough, it would cause me to feel a fight or flight response, usually resulting in me yelling. But now, instead of yelling with a booming voice, I cry and yell through my tears. I haven't gotten to that point very often, and I don't really like to yell at the top of my lungs, but when I do now, there are also tears involved, and the tears usually come first. More often than not though, if I get super frustrated, I tend to respond from a place of sadness rather than a place of anger. This could be from the hormones, but also it could be from a certain amount of personal growth work I've been doing. I try to keep my emotional responses to things in check to be used as a tool for productivity. If my response makes things worse, then it's something I need to work on.

The way boobs grow, with trans women and with girl puberty in general, is that the nipples protrude out first creating a kind of triangular "cone" shape, and then the rest of the boob fills out to meet the nipple. And mine are filling out more! Of course, this means more growth pain. It's been pretty bad this month, even getting to a point where I had to go to work without a bra, because the bra was making the pain too distracting. I wore three layers of clothes to make sure no nipples poked through... Because my bra wasn't there to shape my boobs into a nice pleasing "all in one place" kind of shape, they moved around when I leaned to one sure, and it made me look flatter. But it was so much more comfortable, so I don't really care. I'm not going to work to look attractive anyway.

On the day I went in without a bra, one other thing happened that caught me by surprise: this was the first time I drove a car without a bra since around month 1 or 2. The result of that was that the little bumps I drove over on the road, and the subtle bouncing done by the car, made me boobs jiggle while I sat in the driver's seat. I wound up smiling during the whole drive because of how funny it felt.

My grandma, who has dementia, moved in with us in January, and it has been a struggle dealing with her misgendering me on a regular basis. I've come out to her many times at this point, but her dementia causes her to completely forget our conversations every time I try, so I've given up. Every time I come home it's "Oh, there he is!" It has gotten to a point where I have to coat the situation in humor and extremes as a way to cope. I was cleaning the dishes one night, and she said I was a good boyfriend, doing the dishes for my lady. So I said "I AM the lady!" and pulled my shirt up to flash my boobs. She laughed and said, "Oh, I know it!" I'm not entirely sure what was in her head as she said that...

By the end of this month I've started wearing glasses, and I think that between that and my new haircut, I have finally become different enough in appearance that my grandma no longer recognizes me when I walk in the door. Now she says, "Oh hey, it's... Someone's at the door." This whole situation is causing me more anxiety than I had ever expected. Aside from the mixed feelings that come from her not recognizing me, and occasionally mistaking me for my mom, the regular misgendering has made me cry a lot by itself. It's one thing for random strangers to misgender you, when when it's a family member you live with, and they're doing it to you every single day, it eats away at you. It doesn't matter whether they know what they're doing, they're still doing it, and it still hurts. Home is supposed to be a place where you feel safe and comfortable, and misgendering a trans person is a really easy way to quickly make them feel uncomfortable. At this point, I am very rarely misgendered in public, even when I'm wearing my large parka coat, unless I'm going swimming or having a bad facial hair day...

I've been a part of some various online trans communities lately, and it's been nice feeling that connection to other people who know my struggles. It has made me realize, however, that I seem to have worked past a lot more of my issues than most of the people I meet online. I have been experiencing a lot of dysphoria around my voice, my facial hair, and my lower parts, but otherwise my mental and physical health is actually not that bad in the grand scheme of things.

I felt like I needed some help with my voice therapy situation, and the online communities weren't able to give me the help I was looking for, so I turned to a local LGBTQ group and thought attending one of their meetings might be helpful, and maybe I'd find someone who could help guide me. What ended up happening was that I was one of two trans people there who had their identity down. Everyone there was struggling so much more than I was, and I reached out to help them, completely forgetting my own question. But none of them would've really had an answer for my question anyway, so that's when I think I truly realized... I'm not new to this anymore. I'm not a baby trans girl anymore, learning the ropes. I'm a grown trans woman who knows what she's doing. What? When did this happen? When did I become the one who knows nearly all the answers to these questions they had?

Well, at least here's one question I didn't have an answer to at the time: muffing. For trans women, this word has a different meaning that I had previously understood. I knew about "muff" as a '70s slang term for vagina, but apparently "muffing," when referring to a trans woman, means to... For lack of a better word, "finger bang" her. But not in the butt. Let me give a brief biology lesson...

So people who were assigned male at birth often have testicles. Those testicles drop out from an abdominal cavity. When it is very cold out, sometimes the testes will suck back up into that abdominal cavity for warmth, to help maintain a particular temperature. This is the same abdominal cavity that aids in what I call the "trans tuck." I forget if I've explained this already, but I will again: the "trans tuck" is when you gently push your testicles up into your abdominal cavity, tuck the penis down in between your legs, and wrap the empty scrotum around the penis to help hold it in place. Yes, this means the testicles are now up inside the abdomen, not inside the scrotum.

Alright, now all of that being said, "muffing" is when you position your testicles away from one of your two abdominal cavities and stick your fingers up inside of the abdominal cavity. This is a form of penetration used in sex with trans women. Sometimes. It depends on how much it weirds both sides out.

So yeah, that was some new information I acquired this month. I've tried sticking my finger in there, and it feels rather weird, so I stopped. But I am fascinated by it, so I'll probably try it again at various points, as I'm feeling brave.

Apparently I didn't take many pictures of myself this month... I guess I've gotten used to my appearance and the surprise is wearing off. Left side without makeup; right side in my doctor's office with makeup. I'm getting glasses, so get used to the look on the left.

You can view the Month 12 post by clicking here. >>>