( While this is long, please take the time to read it through) This is JUST MY feelings and Experiences! Not to judge anyone else for their rights and choices!!
Wow, very interesting responses, glad someone asked this question! I can sure answer what I have done. Some of you already know that I worked on a research project (book) for the past nine years. I went all over the country and met families , spouses, children and the TS persons. These people were the participants in the book I did, that will be coming out this summer. I am just like the guy next door, and no one knew my back ground at all, except for my family and the participants of the work I was doing. On the very rare ocassion that I have even told someone, like a doctor, they have accused me of lying to them. They don't even believe my past. So I am free to go on with life. And for a few years after my research I did step back and take time out just for me, and I live a very "average" life. Wife, kids, family, co workers, friends etc. Most friends, and no co workers have a clue about my past.
I sat in coffee shops in all areas of the US with TS women that did not pass at all. I have had coffee with a ex NFL football player that stood 6' 5 and 250 lbs. and dressed like a woman. Because she IS a woman! She is one of the most spiritually centered people I have ever met in my entire life, and I am very glad I had the honor of meeting her! And it was not in some liberal area that I did this, I did it in the Western Mts by the TN/NC state line.
I have sat at a table of 7 plus woman that NONE Passed, and I was the only guy there, and people looked at me like, "dude you have a fetish or something" lol. Was it uncomfortable, yea at the very beginning it was. But it was my hang up, not someone elses problem and I had to get over it, I was human, so no when I first started going out in pubic and meeting TS people that others had wanted me to meet, it was a little rough at first. I have even been to support groups in various states/cities, and they did not believe I was transitioned, and when they found out, they made ME feel uncomfortable, the reactions were often just really wierd for me, left me very uneasy.
I have also gotten up and walked out of a restuarant when a TS woman I was with, decided to become abnoxious and go into their old "male mole" towards someone in there. I told her flat out, if you want me to treat you like a woman, then you need to act like a woman, and that behavoir I would never accept from any woman, and that includes you!" I stayed outside for her, and drove her home, with our other TS friend that was there.
I don't care who you are, how you look, but I do care how anyone conducts themselves out in public. I can be with a woman that never transitioned, and if she acts in a way that I find bothersome, I will leave. There are guys that I do not hang around, because they are not the kind of guys I associate with.
I know what it is like to claim your life back, I claimed mine. I also know what it is like to live in a prison fearing what people will find out about you. I had to make a choice when the book was done and ready to go to the press. I could write it under a pseudo name, I could have also never admitted my own transitional history and just wrote it as a "average" male, who happens to be a Sociologist etc. or I could go ahead and just say, yea I had to do some of my own transitional stuff, and keep it basic and simple, but not deny that I had a transition myself.
But I will never turn someone down that needs my help, just because they look different. I have sat and had dinner with a black women in a ALL black restuarant, and I am white, think I was not looked at??? Be real, you bet they did. So I do not worry about how people look at me just based on who I am with. There are too many people out there that are hurting, and for me to just close the door in their face? Umm, nah.
Can I respect that some people have the need to avoid? Yes I really can. I understand the fear. But I have been in places all over the US and I have never not one single time had anyone try and start a fight with me, or the women I was with. They probably just talked behind our backs, actually I would bet on that lol. So what?
ALL of the participants in the book, live their life in "Stealth" mode. But they gave back to the communities, by participating and sharing their lives and their families, in serious depth! We all have ways to give back. It does not mean that we have to be "out" there to do it. I hope that many of you that read this, will find ways that even later, when you are free into the new life that you are building yourselves, you will find a means of giving back, while keeping your privacy if you desire to remain private. That is a personal choice that we can only make for ourselves.
My own family gets upset because I consider myself a "trans male" I was born with testes and the rest considered female aspects of biological determination, so while I have that "intersexed" trait, I could ride on that shirt tail, and deny that I am a trans male, but one is not any better than the other! We are ALL equal, your brothers and sisters that will never blend into society, they need those of us that do, to help out the community, behind the scenes, as well as in the forefront. If you are like me and end up blending right on in to mainstream society, please don't forget to hand back a little something, because it is but for the grace of god, that you can have this freedom. You know, there was a time none of us would have ever been given the freedoms that we have in transitioning at all. And freedoms can be lost folks!
Sorry this was so long, and hope it offended no one!
Peace,
Taylor
