For me, fitting into a specific category such as crossdresser or ->-bleeped-<- or transsexual is not so neat and clean. I've always felt that I have elements of all three of these categories in my psychological makeup. I wrote about this in the following article, which goes back to explore my earliest feminine feelings...
The time was 1970 and the place was an average middle-class suburb of Chicago. I was a well-behaved 10-year-old boy, named Jack, with a blonde crewcut and a secret – I wanted to be a girl.
Before I went to bed on some nights, I would say a prayer asking God to turn me into a girl overnight. I guess I knew it was just an impossible fantasy, but the idea of waking up as a pretty female made me happy and helped me fall into a peaceful sleep.
I've spent my entire life struggling with my gender identity – alternatively denying, ignoring, embracing, feeling guilty about, feeling happy about, and just plain being confused about my femaleness. Sometimes I want to be a girl, other times I want to be a guy. I first began feeling like I wanted to be a girl when I was about 10. All these years later, it's hard to explain why. It was just like a knowledge that came over me at that young age.
I remember one night at that age I was staying up late with my dad watching Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. One of his guests that night was Raquel Welch, who was telling Johnny about her new movie "Myra Breckinridge," based on the novel by Gore Vidal. The movie told the story of a man who got sex change surgery to become a woman, who was played by Welch. (Talk about successful surgery!) I specifically recall only one thing from that interview, and it has stayed with me all my life. Johnny asked Raquel, "Why would a man want to become a woman?" Raquel replied with a goofy little Hollywood giggle and said something like, "How would I know?" But I recall thinking at the time, I know... I know why a man would want to become a woman. The answer was simple... because I want to become a woman, too! I couldn't put into words why I wanted to be female, but I knew I wanted to. So it was easy for me to relate to another male who would want to do the same.
Another memory I have from when I was about 10 or 11 is the way I was infatuated with the TV show "Bewitched," particularly the show's beautiful, sexy blonde star Elizabeth Montgomery ("Samantha Stevens"). I remember thinking how wonderful it must be to be a woman like that – she was so lovely and so magical, she wore such pretty dresses, and she had such a handsome husband. (I mean Dick York. I never cared for Dick Sargent, who replaced York after he had to quit because of health problems.) Plus, she had this amazing secret! I simultaneously was in love with Samantha and wanted to be her – a duality of being sexually attracted to women and wanting to be a woman that still exists in me to this day.
As I grew up, I began to experiment with being a girl. I started wearing girls' clothes when I was about 12 or 13. I had a sister who was 4 years older than me, and when nobody else was home, I would get into her closet and admire and feel her clothes. Sometimes I would put them on. I especially remember this cute little purple miniskirt of hers that I always liked. I felt sooo good when I actually slipped that pretty skirt on one time... I was prancing all over the house in it saying, "I'm a girl... I'm a girl!"
I loved putting on my sister's makeup, too. I remember the addictive smell and feel and the shiny look of her pink lipgloss. It was so much fun to smear that on my lips, look in the mirror, and give myself a pouty sexy girlie look.
I took my first steps outside wearing girls' clothes one afternoon in fall or winter – when nobody else was home, of course. I put on my sister's long tan fur coat and went out in the backyard and walked around for about a minute or two. It felt impossibly fabulous to be out in the open dressed like a girl! I didn't even care if any of the neighbors saw me (and I have no idea if any of them did). But I quickly went back into the house, just to be on the safe side. That blissful, special feeling that comes over me when I'm in public dressed like a woman is still a feeling that brings me enormous happiness and satisfaction.
I also remember playing with my sister's Barbie dolls in the basement when I was a kid, when everyone else was upstairs. I enjoyed pretending that I was Barbie, with my long pretty Barbie blonde hair and my adorable feminine Barbie dresses. To this day, I still love Barbie. I have quite an impressive collection (about 15) of blonde Barbie dolls, not to mention my 6-foot-tall blonde lifelike "Eva" mannequin. Barbie remains my perfect little plastic role model of my feminine ideal.
One day after I had been wearing my sister's clothes, when I was about 13, I forgot to put an item away. I think it was a frilly, lacey scarf or some other similar item. Well, my mother found the thing lying on my sister's bed when she got home from work. That night, as I was lying in my bed, my mom came into my room and asked me about it... turns out it was not the first thing I had left out that she found. She had put 2 and 2 together, figuring out that her son was wearing her daughter's clothes.
Since I was a good kid, I told the truth. I admitted that I was wearing my sister's skirts, dresses, blouses, makeup, jewelry, and shoes. (If she only knew how much I loved those white go-go boots!) And I told my mom I felt very guilty about it (which was true), but that I couldn't stop it. My mom was obviously very upset about the whole thing, but she told me in as calm a voice as she could muster that what I was doing was sick and abnormal – and that I had better stop doing it! She told me that if I didn't stop, I would have to go see a psychiatrist.
Now – all these years later and with the experience and knowledge I have gained about ->-bleeped-<- and crossdressing – it would be easy to criticize my mother for being ignorant and intolerant. But I'm not going to do that. My mom was a product of her times and environment, raised in an old-fashioned, working-class family – with no college education or mass media to tell her that crossdressing or ->-bleeped-<- or other gender-identity issues are OK. In her environment, such things were sick and abnormal for a young man like me. At that time, I agreed with her. And I promised to stop. But, of course, I could not stop.
Ironically, perhaps what I should have done at that time was to pursue my mom's threat of sending me to a psychiatrist. Depending on the particular psychiatrist, maybe I would have been diagnosed at age 13 as being a transsexual. And maybe it would have opened doors for me to undergo gender transition when I was a teenager. Perhaps that would have been the best thing for me... I really cannot say for sure. Instead, I never got the professional help I needed when I was young, and I spent the next 37 years of my life in denial of my female feelings – a denial that caused me much mental anguish and confusion. I finally fully accepted my femaleness in May 2010, when I was 50, and began going out in public dressed as a woman on a regular basis.
The labels that are flung about regarding this issue drive me crazy! According to my understanding, a crossdresser is a guy who likes to dress as a woman for fun... to go out (or stay in) and enjoy the special feeling of being female for a while. A ->-bleeped-<- is a guy who dresses in women's clothes to get sexually aroused and masturbate. A transsexual is a "guy" who dresses like a woman because he feels that he really is a woman. A drag queen is a guy who dresses like a girl to perform in front of a crowd. A ->-bleeped-<- is a chick with boobs and a dick, which could be the result of surgery or a unique congenital condition. The term transgender is a general label that can refer to any of these conditions of mixed male and female characteristics or feelings. I'm sure some readers will have nitpicky disagreements with these definitions. And I apologize for framing all the definitions in terms of male-to-female, because there are also female-to-male transgenders. But I'm male-to-female and this is my story, so these are my definitions.
The main point I want to make here is this – I have never felt that I fit neatly into any of these categories. I've always felt that I am my own unique, complicated mix of a number of different labels. Dressing like a woman has always been fun and exciting for me. The feeling of appearing as a woman in public is so wonderful for me that I cannot adequately describe it. I will admit that I sometimes get sexually aroused when I look into the mirror and see a beautiful, sexy female (me) – and those feelings sometimes lead me to masturbate, or to get so sexually aroused in a feminine way that I need to have sex with a man to verify those female feelings. So those things would make me a crossdresser and/or a ->-bleeped-<-, according to the expert definitions.
However, I have also sometimes felt that I really am a woman, and I always identify with women much more than men. There are times when I desire sex change surgery, though, for whatever reason, that desire is always temporary, and I go back to being comfortable with my maleness. But the female identification eventually returns – and that identification might mean that I'm a transsexual.
A renowned therapist whom I saw a few times in 2010 told me that I could not be a transsexual, because a true transsexual starts feeling female at about the age of 5, while I did not start having femme feelings until I was 10. That therapist also told me I could not be transsexual because I was worried about adverse effects from female hormones and I hesitated when she suggested that I get an orchiectomy (surgery to remove the testicles). Apparently she never met my friend Malaya, a very feminine transsexual who prefers to keep her penis and testicles because of the sexual satisfaction they give her. I have heard that there are many transsexuals who have had the complete genital surgery and who later deeply regret it. Lots of things can go wrong in that kind of surgery. So you can be transsexual and want to keep your male genitals.
To add to the complexity, I have always been sexually attracted to women – despite my sexual experimentations with men. I only feel like getting horny with guys when I'm dressed as a woman. It's like the female hormones magically kick in when I'm Jacquelina. But when I'm Jack, I find the thought of being with another guy repulsive and disgusting. I believe that women are the most beautiful, most sensual, most intelligent, most intuitive, most compassionate, most caring, most graceful, most perfect creation in nature. I love women, and I worship women.
The renowned therapist concluded that I was merely a crossdresser rather than a true transsexual –meaning that I just want to dress like a woman rather than actually be a woman. She further proposed –based on the fact that I had told her that I was attracted to women but did not have a girlfriend at the time – that my crossdressing might be a way of me trying to become my own girlfriend.
I replied that her conclusions might be partly true, but it's not quite as simple as that. I reminded her that I began feeling like a girl at age 10 – well before I was interested in girlfriends. Despite my protests, she seemed convinced that she had found the appropriate diagnostic label for me. Perhaps she was correct. It is true that during my most recent relationship with a woman (my summer fling last year with a stripper), my need to crossdress temporarily vanished.
But the bottom line for me is this: I hate labels, and don't try to label me. The best label I have come up with for myself is "bigendered," meaning that I can be either a girl or a guy depending on my mood, and I can be happy either way. I am both Jacquelina and Jack.
At age 52, I've come to be more-or-less satisfied with my day-to-day life as Jack combined with my frequent fun public outings as Jacquelina. Nevertheless, an undeniable fact remains: If I could wave a magic wand and instantly have any wish I wanted (or if I could change overnight while I sleep, like I wished when I was a kid) – without the hassles and risks and expenses of hormones and surgery – I would still wish to be a real woman. At this point in my life, however, gender transition would be more trouble for me than I want to deal with.
But my experiences since May 2010 of living part-time in public as Jacquelina have given me a glorious, magical taste of what my life might have been like had I been fortunate enough to be born female. No matter how I live outwardly, my female feelings will always be an important part of me. And who knows? Perhaps my wish to be a beautiful female surrounded by love will be fulfilled in my next life.
