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Share Your Story
Set 3
Posted November 9, 2001
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I have struggled with gender identity dysphoria for all of
my 48 years. At age 4, I knew that I was in the wrong body,
but in the 1950's and attending a Catholic school you didn't
breech this subject. All during my time in school, from
elementary through high school, I was continually ridiculed
and picked on. My three years at high school proved to be a
nightmare. Right off the bat, everyone gave me the nickname
of "Karen." I was humiliated and even considered suicide.
I made it through those years and joined the U.S. Army
thinking that my gender problem would go away and I would
finally learn how to be a man. I was totally mistaken. Every
unit that I was assigned to considered me gay. This was not
a label to have while in the military. I even had a Command
Sergeant Major offer to pay for the hotel room and the girl
if I would get "bred." I didn't and shortly thereafter,
found my wife while on a tour of duty in Korea.
Six months later, we were married, and I figured that all of
this would finally go away. It didn't, and it only
intensified, because now I had a female living in the house
with me, and I wanted so much to be female. My daughter was
born nine months later and I immediately aquired the
maternal instinct in regards to her. If she coughed wrong in
the middle of the night, I sat up in bed and went and
checked on her. The marriage finally ended in divorce, and I
raised my daughter from the age of four until she left home
in 1997 and joined the business world.
Less than a year after she left home, I began the process to
change gender. I started my transition in August of 1998,
and I have no regrets. I no longer live a lie, and I work as
a proponent for gender rights and gender education in the
Kansas City area. I have been able to feel bigotry and
discrimination firsthand and have been reduced to living on
$80.00 a month General Relief from the State of Missouri and
food stamps. I have been unemployed for 14 months and have
no idea when I will ever have employment again.
All of this because I "dared" to change gender and live as I
knew that I should. I have learned that I have far better
friends around me now than I did when I was living as a
male, and I would never want to go back to that miserable
existence that I had been sentenced to since birth.
Unsigned
When I was born, my genitals looked normal to the naked eye.
However, when I was only five years old, I knew that I was
different from everyone else. I am the eighth child in a
family of 10 children. By the time I was eight years old, I
started feeling like a little girl and couldn't understand
what I was feeling, thinking, acting like.
When I was 14 years old, I started bleeding through my male
penis. I went to the doctor, was examined, and had a lot of
blood work done, and that's when I was diagosed with
Klinefelter Syndrome. I have been blessed with two extra female chromosones; my
hormonal screen shows that I have XX-XY. The doctors put me
through all kinds of tests and physical and emotional
stress. They prescribed me testostrone, thinking that that
would be better for me in my later life. Regardless, I
started to blossom into an undeveloped 38b chest.
On July 29, 1980, I underwent two radical mastectomies.
Then, after the surgery I was still questioning my sexuality
because I was still feeling like a female. The doctors told
my mother that she made the right choice to have my chest
removed. They did surgery—a half moon is under and
through my nipple areas. I have little or no sensitivity
there anymore. When I turned 18 years old, I started
dressing like a female and passing as a female. To date, I
am virtually a female trapped inside of a man. I want to
have my SRS as soon as possible because at the age of 15, I
lost a big part of my gender identity.
On November 24th, I will be marking my 37th birthday, but I
won't be totally happy due to not knowing when the
real me will emerge. Until then, I will not stop
holding onto faith and hope, and I know that with God,
anything is possible!
Thank you for reading my personal story!
Reina
My name is Barbara. I am a 52-year-old cross-dresser. I am
married (25 years) with two children. I started
cross-dressing when I was around 12 years old. This all
started with my mom's or my sister's panties and bras. I
still to this day do not know what made me do it, but
something inside of me was telling me to do it. The feelings
I got from doing this were wonderful and exciting but also
scary (remember, this was around 1961); young boys did not
do this. I did not want to be a "sissy," but those feelings
and the sensations I got that day would never leave me. The
feel of the bra and those silk panties were almost too much
for a 12-year-old boy entering puberty.
Over the next few years I would dress as the chances would
appear (until I outgrew mom's clothes and sis had married
and moved away). As the next 10 years rolled on I did not
dress as I was too busy just getting through high school and
dating and building hot rods, which was my first passion.
Then in 1975 I met my wife-to-be. We were married in 1976. I
went about my manly duties working, being a good husband,
building hot rods. Then one day that urge returned, and I
tried on some of my wife's clothes, and they fit. All of a
sudden Barbara was back (I have always been Barbara; it just
took many years to understand that). This went on for a few
years until my wife lost weight, and I found it for her. So
Barbara took another long rest.
During that rest we had two wonderful children, a boy and
then a girl. Now it is the early 1990's, and my wife finally
found that weight she lost back in the early 1980's, so I
could dress again. Then all of a sudden in late 1999 Barbara
wanted out (she is very demanding), and I had also
discovered the Internet and eBay. Barbara could now buy some
clothes for herself.
By June of 2000 Barbara was acquiring a nice wardrobe
complete with makeup, jewelry, shoes, wigs etc. I was now
having a problem storing all of her clothes. A section in my
garage was given to store Barbara's stuff. This too was a
problem. When I could get a chance to dress I had to dig out
clothes and take them into the house, then when I was
finished take them back out to the garage. I was also
starting to get careless, leaving items out.
So in July I made the decision that I had to tell my wife. I
had also found Crossport, the local tg support group here in
Cincinnati. This turned out to be the best thing I had done
in a while. They advised me to see a counselor to help me
with how to go about telling my wife and to deal with my new
gender. After four visits she said that I was ready to tell.
So on a Sunday afternoon in late August 2000 (the kids were
gone for the day), I sat her down and told her about my
cross-dressing. This all came as a tremendous shock to her.
For the next two weeks the tension was unreal, and I
expected to come home from work and see my bags outside. (I
had hoped all along that after 25 years and the fact I am a
good person and that I love her very much would help.)
Then one night after leaving some friends' house she turned
to me and said we will work this out. It is now Nov. 2001,
and we are closer now than we have been in 10 years. We do
more together now, sex is much better and more often, and we
talk a lot. We had not realized how apart we had become.
Barbara Sue now has her own closet in the house for her
clothes. I know my story is special, as not all have this
happy story, so I feel very lucky. But we still have a long
way to go as my wife does not really care for this part of
me, and she does not want to see Barbara (hopefully some
day), but she is trying real hard to understand. She does
admit that I am a much better person now (it is amazing what
fear and stress will do to a person), especially after I
have been out as Barbara (and Barbara does go out quite
often).
She even let Barbara go to Erie, PA in Nov. 2000 for the
Erie Gala 2000 put on by the Erie Sisters. This was my first
transgendered event, and it was great. Three full days and
nights of being my feminine self, meeting new "girlfriends,"
seeing and doing things. We went on tours, we shopped (which
I love to do, as a woman should), we went to night clubs,
and we were treated wonderfully everywhere we went. It is
such a high when being addressed as "Ma'am" or "Ladies"
(especially if you have not been made).
My personal high was on the first night when I went into the
hotel bar looking for the girls, and I was not only the only
tg girl in the bar, I was the only girl period, and one of
the old men at the bar gave me a smile (I wonder how many
beers he had to make me look good). I already have my
reservations for Erie Gala 2001.
I do not know what the future holds for Barbara but as of
right now she is a happy girl. Each day my feminine self
grows and matures. I do not want to be a full-time woman
(50% of the time would be nice), as I still love being a guy
(building my hot rods), but I love the feminine side of me,
and I would never trade that for anything.
When I am Barbara I am a woman!!! I try to act, walk, think,
and do all things female. I love being as feminine as I can
be. I also love it when a man holds a door open for me (that
adds to the thrill of passing). When I pass another woman on
the street or in a store I look at her not as a man eyeing a
woman but as a woman looking at another woman, judging her
hair, makeup, outfit, etc. I am not ashamed to ask a woman
for an opinion about an outfit or shoes or whatever. I have
never had another lady not help me. I have had them ask me
why I do this but that is all, then they help me.
I have the best of both genders. I personally think that
this is a wonderful gift to us (the transgendered), as it
has taught me to treat people with a lot more kindness and
to take a different look at things in general (I am not
nearly as judgmental as I once was). Now if we could just
get society to accept us (so we must empty the closets of
all the sisters in hiding and get out in public and be
seen).
My only advice for anyone that reads this is be true to
yourself and accept who you are, and I can only hope if you
can come out, work with a counselor who specializes in
working with the transgendered community, and if you do
decide to tell your spouse then having the counselor as a
reference will help. Never stop telling her (your wife) that
you love her, and both of you must talk about it. I hope my
story has been fun for you to read and not boring, but most
of all I hope it gives someone hope and courage to come out
of that closet and chase that fear away.
Hugs to all my sisters,
Barbara
I am a transgendered person who was born a male, and now I
am female. To clarify, I was born a male, not a man. And I
didn't become a woman, or turn into a woman; I already was.
I only became female. It is really so very simple. The words
"man" and "woman" are emotional terms. Male and female is
just a technical term.
What genitalia you were born with is no indication of who
you truly are. And the correct words in my case are
important. Because I was born with a birth defect that
carries a powerful stigma. I wasn't intersexed, a
hemaphrodite, or what have you. I was born male, so some
people think I have no excuse. That's why up front people
have to know when you change your sex you don't become a
woman or a man; we're born that way anyway, just sometimes
our bodies don't match, and we have to fix them so they do
match our true emotions and self.
In my case the whole story is bittersweet, but I am
extremely lucky. I had my surgery when I was 24, in 1984. I
started hormones when I was a teenager and was very
naturally feminine even before that. But I paid a terrible
price to become who I am, namely growing up a feminine male.
To say I was tormented endlessly my entire life in school,
until I finally had to quit, is an understatement.
I am white, but I know all too well what it means to be a
minority. To be hated because I was different. I was the
designated sacrificial lamb, as are millions of "different"
children who are in school now. There was almost an unspoken
rule that it was okay to be completely inhumane as long as
it was against a person like me. Something that still goes
on in our schools. Something that must be stopped.
Yet as terrible as it all was at the time, I got to see
vividly how shallow most people are. When I "bloomed" and
became who I really am, I went from being hated to having
doors held open for me. I could be the nicest "different"
person and be treated like crap, and I could be a bitch and
get some modicum of respect because I'm a woman and blend in
or fit the "norm."
But it is so important to start when you are young. I knew
something was wrong with my body from the time I remember
being alive. I heard about "sex changes" when I was about
eight years old from a book and felt a new hope in my life.
I even had to see a school psychiatrist when I was in fifth
grade because I was so feminine. Ironically, my tormentors
were never questioned. But I still think about the few
sessions I had. How if society had been different back then
I could have just leveled with the shrink and told him I'm a
girl. Then my mother would have let my hair grow out, move
me to another school or state and let me live the way I was
supposed to. I would have avoided all the future years of
hell I had to go through. No more children should be
sacrificial lambs. Emotional pain gives you character, but
it can also break your spirit.
As I said, I have been lucky. No one knows about my birth
defect unless I tell them. Being born extremely feminine and
starting female hormones so early helped me tremendously. I
modeled most of my 20s and early 30s, and having looks has
been a cushion that has helped me a lot in my life, as
superficial as it may sound.
Unfortunately, in the early 1980s I had my surgery done by a
less than skilled doctor in Galveston, Texas, and my vagina
does not function. I have lived this way since 1984 and have
never been able to save enough to have surgery to repair
what the doctor did. But I am the way I was supposed to be
at birth. And I would do it all over again even if I had to
end up with the flawed physical results I have now. I have
no choice.
And that's what millions of people go through every day. Our
emotions are not a choice. Who we are, who we love, are not
a choice. If everyone knew this, especially the bigots and
closed-minded among us, the world would be a better place.
No one would have an excuse to be a rotten person in regards
to people, whether they are gay, intersexed, transgendered,
or what have you.
Unsigned
I am a married male (married 18 years) with two beautiful
children (6 and 9). I have made choices in my public life
that have been greatly influenced by traditional male/female
roles. I resonate with much of what I have read of the
previous postings of males in similar roles. What stands out
most are two comments that at an early age other males have
sensed that they were different. I dreamed and had fantasies
very early of being a girl and dressing as a girl. It was a
strange but comforting feeling of being who I truly was.
In elementary school I found myself wanting to join the
"other" girls in their typical girl activities: jumping
rope, playing with dolls, and fulfilling those societal
expectations of being a girl. Instead, I suppressed those
thoughts as best I could and fulfilled the expectations of
my family and society and lived as a boy. In my teenage
years and into adulthood I occasionally dressed as a female
in private (my wife knows nothing of these desires).
Clothing is so much a part of society's gender stereotypes,
and this fed my fantasy of someday being the woman that I
believe I was meant to be. I too prayed at night that I
would wake up the next morning as a woman. The
disappointment as I looked beneath my pajamas every morning
became routine. I often thought about leaving home,
disappearing from my family, my community, my life to begin
a new life as a reassigned woman but could not bring myself
to the point of abandoning my family to fulfill this
longing. I knew that it would tear them apart if I shared
with them my true feelings of my female identity. I chose to
live with my secret rather than risk the lose of any or all
of my family.
Dressing up is not a part of my life today, although
thoughts of being a woman are. At times I am overwhelmed by
very real sensations that I have breasts, a vagina, and
ovaries and that my penis and testicals are gone. I cherish
these times and indulge in the fantasy of the moment.
I no longer believe that I could ever be satisfied with
gender reassignment surgery. My longing is not to be
reassigned as a woman but to be a woman. I long to have
ovaries, to have a womb, to give myself to a man who I could
love completely, to give birth. I also know that the effect
that a gender reassignment would have on my wife and
children, my ministry, and my community would be
devastating, so my choice is to live as I am.
Unsigned
I have been a transvestite since puberty. For some reason I
get sexually turned on by the perception that I am somehow
feminine. Growing up I was predominantly heterosexual. I
liked women and male-to-female transgendered persons. At age
23 I started to become sexually turned on by men and lost
the ability to be sexually turned on by women. For the next
five years I was in denial about being homosexual. Through
all this time I was depressive, from early childhood to into
my mid-30s.
I was fascinated by transvestism, transgenderism, sexual and
gender identity. I was reading all that I could find on
these subjects and psychology and sociology, including
autobiographies of transexuals. After reading these
autobiographies, I thought I had very much in common with
these people. For a week sometime in my early 20s I started
to become extremely sexually aroused and was elated anytime
I thought I was somehow thinking feminine thoughts or
behaving feminine. And when I wasn't or was resisting, I
started getting stomach cramps and feeling really bad.
After almost a week of this, following a long walk, I found
myself convinced I needed to go to Sweden for a sex
reassignment operation. On the way back I stopped in the
library and found a book on addictive behavior. In the book
there was a chapter on how sexual behavior could be
addictive, and I realized that I was sexually addicted to
perceiving myself as being feminine and snapped out of it.
Since then I have been careful in not letting my
transvestism take over my life, even though every once in a
while I spend a bundle on women's clothing that I don't wear
often and buy transvestite porn. I know I am a male person,
but I have met a number of transgender persons, and I
believe I have a understanding of what kind of suffering
they go through during their lives and the relief that
transforming their bodies to match their identities helps to
provide.
Unsigned
I was three years old when I argued with my mother to please
stop dressing me in boys' clothes because I am a girl. I was
very sure of who I was and just couldn't understand why my
mother thought I was a boy. I, of course, had no idea that
having "that thing" was what had her convinced I was male
and not female.
Oh well, I would like to tell you that she totally accepted
me and allowed me to live my life happily as the girl I was
from that point forward. Fat chance! I found myself put into
a boarding home, and although my mother divorced and married
several times, moving from city to city, I always seemed to
find myself back in a boarding home as soon as I talked
again of being a girl or exhibited feminine behavior such as
standing with one hand on my hip or something like that.
When I was eight years old, one of the grown men in the home
I was living in discovered I considered myself female. His
room was next to mine, and one night he invited me in to
watch a TV show "Oh Suzanna" that was on past my bedtime.
For the next two years, he told me I was his girlfriend,
told me how beautiful I was and how much he loved me, and,
every night, he would use me sexually.
Somewhere around age 11 or so, I stopped talking about being
a girl, and my mother took me back to live with her. I
decided quickly, after being beaten up constantly going to
school, in school, and on the way home from school, that I
had to keep it to myself and make myself "tough." After all,
wasn't this what "guys" did? I just wanted to try to fit in
and forget all about that "silly" stuff about me being a
girl, although I knew it to be true. I took martial arts
classes for years and became part of a Special Forces team,
joined a motorcycle club, and took just about every woman I
could to bed—all in an effort to prove to myself and
to the world I was a man.
The problem was, it didn't prove anything to me except I
really was a girl pretending. The thought of this just
angered and depressed me more. I had been married once, had
three incredibly wonderful children, and was miserable. I
married again. The marriage was fantastic, yet I couldn't
stop wishing I could just be the woman I was supposed to be,
and I continued to pray every night to wake up as the woman
I am.
In December of 1997 I just couldn't take it anymore. I told
my wife who I am and that I needed to do something about it,
or I didn't think I could continue to live. She helped me
and along with a great group in the Philadelphia area called
Renaissance, I was able to get the help I needed, therapy,
hormones, support, and, after a couple of years of
transition, my SRS by Dr. Brassard in Montreal in January
2001.
I can now state, uncategorically, I am a very happy woman
living in Philadelphia with my life partner, as the woman I
was always supposed to be.
Sandi
Perhaps this isn't the proper forum for a comment such as
this, by a person such as myself. After all, I am a "normal"
(insofar as that term applies to anyone), single-gendered
woman. However, after reading the comments posted here, I
feel compelled to add one of my own:
To those of you who feel as though you will never be able to
have a meaningful relationship with a person of the gender
of your choice, don't lose heart. There are those of us who
are perfectly willing to accept love when it comes along,
regardless of the size, shape, or original configuration of
its owner's genitalia. It may take us a little while to
adjust to the idea (intersexuality not being something most
people ever think about), but, never doubt, we exist. Really
and truly, it's just like every insecure adolescent hears at
some point or another—it's what's inside that counts.
Unsigned
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