I started out as a child - actually that is an old Bill Cosby bit, but it applies. My mother tells me now that I had been putting on her nightgowns since I was old enough to climb up on the bed and crawl into them. I think I first figured out that everybody else thought that I was supposed to be a boy when I was taken for my first haircut, which my mother tells me was at about 2 or 2 1/2. That would have been 1952, and the haircuts then were three - the burr, the crewcut, and the flattop. I got the burr. All of my beautiful blonde curly locks on the floor! What I remember, or maybe better described as how I remember, was seeing myself from above, my nearly bald head, and all of my hair on the floor. My therapist tells me that this is a classic description of how an abused child sees him/her self. But my parents were not abusive in any ordinary sense. They were really quite normal for 1952. After all this was the year that Christine Jorgenson had her surgery that so shocked the world.
I cross dressed whenever I had the opportunity as I grew up. I realize now, looking back on my childhood, and most of my adult years, that I was divided in two. Part of me was doing just enough to get by as a boy. The rest of me was intent upon anything and everything that had anything to do with being a girl. Gee, no wonder I was a classic underachiever!
At puberty my desire to be a girl was displaced into my sexuality, and my crossdressing became very sexual. I convinced myself that I had a fetish for womens clothes (I had found the word "transvestite", which then was defined as such) and tried to convince myself of that for many years. When I finally decided to stop hiding my gender issues, and started coming out of the closet, the sexual aspect of my crossdressing pretty much went away. In talking with others in the gender community, I have discovered many with similar stories.
At the age of 19 I got my girlfriend pregnant, and we got married. Our daughter was born 6 1/2 months later (a month early, but that is hardly enough to make up the missing time). My then wife-now ex-struggled with this all through our marriage. She really dealt with it fairly well, and the last few years we were married we even went on some vacations together as Annie and Kathy, which we both thouroughly enjoyed! But she still could not see herself living with me as a woman, both because she couldn't see herself as a lesbian, and was still discomfitted by my presenting as a woman to some extent.
My daughter is very comfortable with my transition. She still calls me Daddie (and spells it that way when she writes it) Depending on the situation, in public she may call me Anne instead. She introduces me to friends and coworkers as "my dad Anne", and says "they can deal with it, it shouldn't be a big deaL" She considers it perfectly normal and is not going to go out of her way to help anyone else feel that it is anything beside normal.
For me, coming out and going through transition was both an exploration of and getting in touch with my emotions, and a spiritual journey. Being emotionally connected is probably what draws me most to living as a woman. It is the kind of intimate sharing relationships that many women have all of the time that makes me feel good about presenting as and being accepted as a woman.
Somehow though, transitioning didn't make the first 40 years of my life, when I was pretending to be a man, go away. I still find that old male feelings come up from time to time. To use Nancy Nangeroni's words, I used to feel like a woman in a man's body, sometimes now I feel like a man in a woman's body.
The intimacy that I feel with my women friends is one of the things that keeps me from being a classic transsexual. It just feels wrong to me to start off an emotionally intimate relationship by lying about my past. I was told at one point that if I was open about being TG that I would always be treated as a TG woman, not just as a woman. In fact, I have found that my women friends forget that I used to be a man, to the point that when one heard that Lisa (my current spouse) and I were trying to get pregnant, she wanted to know which of us was going to carry the baby!
My "then wife-now ex" and I split up during 1991 and 1992. Lisa and I met in January of 94 (92 and 93 were time of transition for me), and moved in together in August. We both felt like we were moving a little fast, but since we were sick of driving across town (we lived about 45 minutes apart) we decided to try it. It has worked fantastically well. The only thing missing is that she isn't my size, so she gets to borrow more of my clothes than I do of hers. Lisa is an attorney for the Indiana State Public Defender's office and is completely out there. I went off of hormones in the beginning of January, and am suffering the effects of testosterone poisoning (a euphemism for how I feel, not a real disease - or is it?) while trying to get her pregnant. I am just taking things a day at a time. But it does get frustrating to have those "guy in a dress" feelings coming up stronger and more frequently. I should mention that I am writing this May 1st 96. Hopefully I will update this in a few months (to tell you all about our/Lisa's pregnancy).
I mentioned that this is a spiritual journey for me. When I read The Spirit and the Flesh by Walter Williams I felt in many ways like I was reading about myself. Williams talks about the native American "berdach" or two spirits. These are men who live as women, and women who live as men. The are considered to be "boith a man and a woman, yet neither a man nor a woman". They are considered to be healers and teachers do to their status of living in two worlds. This experience is seen as giving them special knowledge. They are considered to healers and teachers and spiritual leaders. I have always loved to help others learn, and find more and more that people experience me as a healer, and as having a very strong spiritual presence.
I am now working on a book and limiting most of my workshops and speaking engagements to events that will at least pay part of my expenses. I have, over the last 4 years done workshops at the IFGE, Southern Comfort and Be All gender conventions, an AASECT (American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists) national convention, the 95 National Women's Music Festival (and will be doing the 96 NWMF in June), and National PFLAG conventions, doing workshops on gender, transgender, life cycles, spirituality and diversity. I am pleased to say that my workshops have been universally very well received! My goal for the end of the year is to actually be making some money from my workshops and speaking, and to have found a publisher for my book. I need to find ways to support myself such that I can teach in some form.
I find more and more that I have few choices in my life. Ursula K. LeGuin has a character in one of her novels talk about how he wanted to be a wizard when he was young because then he could do anything he wanted. But now that he is the Grand Wizard, he knows that there is only one thing that he can ever do, and that is the right thing.
Annie Johnson leflore@iquest.net
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