Susan's Place Transgender Resources

We all do things to hide our true selves.

So what did you do to hide.

I had a full beard and a shaved head.

I always had sort of short hair and wore jeans and tshirts (gender neutral?) for the most part, later in my career my customers were extremely wealthy men (think Bill Gates etc) so I had to dress a bit more appropriate.

other than being tall, thin and blond I didn't really stand out which I always liked, I could just disappear in a crowd :)  "a girl hiding inside a man hiding in a crowd"

I didn't. I (am) growing up in a time and place where such things don't need to be hidden. I suppose that's why I never understood having to "hide" anything.

I avoided having friends, kept to myself and that helped me not to get noticed much, especially in high school. then in my twenties, I worked a traditionally male job and a lot of the older guys would make jokes about me being a bit feminine. So then in my late twenties, I grew a full beard, but that only me feel worse about myself.

Oh, you know, at age 17 I joined the US Army... maybe I thought it would "make a man out of me."  I didn't fool anyone.  The other recruits recognized my girly nature in an instant; they ate me alive.  Seriously, I only barely made it out of the service with my life.  I was outed as a transsexual by an army psychiatrist, and as a result my commanding officer organized a group coordinated attempt to murder me (I was warned by a single kind soul 24 hours before my arranged "accident".  He saved my life!)  I am extremely lucky to be alive today!

After that, I realized that I was never going to be able to hide my feminine nature, and so I just stopped trying.  I made peace with the woman within and never looked back.  Honestly, in spite of being mis-gendered at birth, I never, ever passed very well as a boy.  Hiding who I am nearly cost me my life.

I wore feminine clothes, had long hair, and wore makeup. I shed them pretty much all at once which was rather nice. ;D

Nice one Ms. O,

Having a slim teen figure (still got it at 70 years) I was afraid I would exude an effeminate way, so I never wore jewelry right down to no rings. I had a foo Manchu mustache and side burn for a long time from 30 to 60 years old & at one point for a few years a full beard. Eleven years ago when I began to unravel the real femme me, all of that changed, no more body hair. And bring on the bling!

Jamie

None of the above, why would you need to do any of those things? I did nothing remotely masculine even while 100% in the closet.

I never really dressed feminine or anything average for me was jeans and a band t-shirt and usually no bra cause i hated them, but to try to hide who I was i tried to date men despite my lack of attraction to them but that was only for a short period of time back in high school.

Quote from: pretty on July 08, 2012, 02:48:09 PM
None of the above, why would you need to do any of those things? I did nothing remotely masculine even while 100% in the closet.

Why?  Cultural insanity.   :icon_dizzy:

Quote from: Miharu Barbie on July 08, 2012, 12:49:51 PM
Oh, you know, at age 17 I joined the US Army... maybe I thought it would "make a man out of me."  I didn't fool anyone.  The other recruits recognized my girly nature in an instant; they ate me alive.  Seriously, I only barely made it out of the service with my life.  I was outed as a transsexual by an army psychiatrist, and as a result my commanding officer organized a group coordinated attempt to murder me (I was warned by a single kind soul 24 hours before my arranged "accident".  He saved my life!)  I am extremely lucky to be alive today!

After that, I realized that I was never going to be able to hide my feminine nature, and so I just stopped trying.  I made peace with the woman within and never looked back.  Honestly, in spite of being mis-gendered at birth, I never, ever passed very well as a boy.  Hiding who I am nearly cost me my life.

quite the movie script could be written for you! omg!!!

also for me growing up and even now the guys (with a good natured ribbing) would call me Michelle, that teasing never ever bothered me at all, I would just smile with a "the jokes on you guys" look in my eyes...yep, hiding in plain sight, lol

Quote from: Miharu Barbie on July 08, 2012, 02:53:54 PM
Why?  Cultural insanity.   :icon_dizzy:

The only thing I noticed any pressure ever on that list over was my long hair, people always told me to cut it, but other than that... nobody even pressures men about those things. It sounds kind of paranoid? I mean it's normal for men to shave and stuff.

Quote from: pretty on July 08, 2012, 02:57:21 PM
The only thing I noticed any pressure ever on that list over was my long hair, people always told me to cut it, but other than that... nobody even pressures men about those things. It sounds kind of paranoid? I mean it's normal for men to shave and stuff.

My thoughts exactly. Who are these magical gender police who patrol society daily beating up people who don't conform? ::)

Granted, I toyed with the idea of joining the navy but only because of all the cuteboys :laugh:

Quote from: pretty on July 08, 2012, 02:57:21 PM
It sounds kind of paranoid?

Yup.  I am paranoid.  And insecure, sensitive, and emotionally fragile.  It was worst in high school, but I'm still scared to really be myself, and trying to overcome or work around that.

When I had a beard, I didn't think of it as hiding.  I thought of it as giving up.  I figured I'm not going to like my body anyway, so why bother?  But when I shaved it I was irrationally worried that the sudden change might give people a clue that I'm not really a man, so I guess I was hiding.

As an androgyne, the magical gender police are still going to be after me even if I pass perfectly....  in fact, they'll be after me especially if I pass perfectly.  But over the years I've become less worried about that, and now I'm mostly worried about the expectations of my family and old friends. :(

Quote from: Adam1 on July 08, 2012, 03:06:33 PM
My thoughts exactly. Who are these magical gender police who patrol society daily beating up people who don't conform? ::)

Granted, I toyed with the idea of joining the navy but only because of all the cuteboys :laugh:

There's actually quite a few of them...only a small fraction of the population, but like the saying goes, "A running man counts his enemies twice."

Think far-right conservatives, church goers (not all of them, and certainly not most of them...but there's enough "tsk tsk" in a church crowd to set off a nuke if they could just focus it).

These few people actually mean something to those of us who were beaten/abused during early- to mid-childhood. Yes, we should just dismiss it...but if you're at all aware of how PTSD and other psychic trauma works, it's not possible to "just dismiss the conditioning."

For the OP, I always tried to be either invisible, or present a strong male presence...but like Miharu Barbie it didn't fool anyone. They knew I was a girlie-man so I was often the butt of gay jokes (which sounds like a gay joke, in itself  :( ) When I got out, my first girlfriend and I were talking and I said (in response to a question she had), "That's what I have to do; that's what men do." And she said, "Are you a man?" That didn't hurt my feelings as much as it made me think, "Well...am I?" (At the time, being trans was not even in the "wild imagination" of possibilities).

I didn't.

Quote from: Adam1 on July 08, 2012, 03:06:33 PM
Who are these magical gender police who patrol society daily beating up people who don't conform?

Well, to use my own personal experience as an illustration, I can offer you a snapshot in time from my 19th year of life, 1984.  The day that I was outed by my army psychiatrist, I saw First Sergeant Gottschalk, a grizzled old man at least 30 years older than I was at the time.  Wounded 6 times in Vietnam, Gottschalk had an intensity about him that could block out the sun.  I remember the day, I remember his face, I remember his breath, and I remember his words... He pushed me against a wall, got in my face and called me a f***ing queer.  He said, "You will never get out of my army!  I will see you dead!  I'm going to kill you, you f***ing queer!  Get out of my face, I can't stand to look at you!"  And he MEANT IT.  I went to the cops.  I went to the company priest.  I went to the battalion commander.  They all spoke words of empathy, but no one was willing to lift a finger to intervene. 

A lot has changed in the past 30 years.  Much remains the same.  Our Transgender Day of Remembrance is our annual reminder that, for many, the so-called "Gender Police" sometimes have teeth.

It wasn't so much hiding, but I did try to convince myself that I could be a girl if I made myself feminine.  This involved a lot of uncomfortable shoes and makeup...

Quote from: Beth Andrea on July 08, 2012, 05:46:15 PM
There's actually quite a few of them...

True. And many of 'them' are internalised. Those are perhaps the most fearsome and most elusive. Those internalised police that make us give an f about how we look and how we are perceived and force us to cut ourselves up and take HRT to 'fit in'. We beat ourselves up daily.

I started with going bald at age 14, grew to 6 ft tall, giant sized wide 11 feet and frog hands. Oh yeah, also packed on an extra 100-150 lbs. No mistaking me for a woman  :o

Quote from: Miharu Barbie on July 08, 2012, 06:25:55 PM
Well, to use my own personal experience as an illustration, I can offer you a snapshot in time from my 19th year of life, 1984.  The day that I was outed by my army psychiatrist, I saw First Sergeant Gottschalk, a grizzled old man at least 30 years older than I was at the time.  Wounded 6 times in Vietnam, Gottschalk had an intensity about him that could block out the sun.  I remember the day, I remember his face, I remember his breath, and I remember his words... He pushed me against a wall, got in my face and called me a f***ing queer.  He said, "You will never get out of my army!  I will see you dead!  I'm going to kill you, you f***ing queer!  Get out of my face, I can't stand to look at you!"  And he MEANT IT.  I went to the cops.  I went to the company priest.  I went to the battalion commander.  They all spoke words of empathy, but no one was willing to lift a finger to intervene. 

A lot has changed in the past 30 years.  Much remains the same.  Our Transgender Day of Remembrance is our annual reminder that, for many, the so-called "Gender Police" sometimes have teeth.

This is going to sound really insensitive and I'm sorry for what happened to you but I can't fathom why on earth an mtf would join the army for any reason. That sounds incredibly masochistic  :-X

Quote from: Sarah7 on July 09, 2012, 08:25:55 PM
The ones at school.

I kind of tried to conform for a couple years in high school/first year of uni by cutting my hair shorter and wearing baggier clothes to hide my body, and my friends tried to teach me to be less girly in how I walked and talked and sat and whatnot. It didn't really succeed at making anyone think I was less gay and it was making me more miserable, so I eventually gave up on it. I could never have grown any kind of facial hair. I'd have slit my wrists first. Even growing it out enough to have it zapped off with electro made me want to claw my face off.

By the time I finished university, my "boy" presentation involved my hair in basically a lady's bob tucked behind my ears and the girliest men's clothes I could get my hands on - embroidered jeans, flowery fitted tshirts, androgynous military-style jackets, etc. I was passing as female about 10-20% of the time already without meaning to. We all figure out our own ways to cope.

Huh, interesting. Up in Canada no less??

In my subpar American college and in a night physics class full of men I got a grand total of 0 criticisms for having shiny long hair and actually even wearing women's jackets that showed off my tiny waist in the winter. Princess seams!

Actually I sat next to a gigantic probably 6' 300 lb manly man with a full beard and he confessed to me that he was jealous of how small I am! lol :D

I guess everyone has a different experience. Strange world.  :)

Quote from: Felicitá on July 09, 2012, 04:53:41 PM
True. And many of 'them' are internalised. Those are perhaps the most fearsome and most elusive. Those internalised police that make us give an f about how we look and how we are perceived and force us to cut ourselves up and take HRT to 'fit in'. We beat ourselves up daily.

In the military, those "internalized" critics are what's called "force multipliers"...by themselves, they're not too powerful. Their real power comes in magnifying the little barbs that the "tsk tsk'ers" say.

Most people can learn to ignore the internals...some of us can't, because those internals are us.

Quote from: pretty on July 09, 2012, 07:54:29 PM
This is going to sound really insensitive and I'm sorry for what happened to you but I can't fathom why on earth an mtf would join the army for any reason. That sounds incredibly masochistic  :-X

To prove he's a man? That's probably the biggest reason I joined the USAF...to prove that I "had what it takes" to live in a man's world.

I can't say it was the worst 6 years of my life (I do have some good memories), but then again...I would not repeat it, not for a billion dollars.

Quote from: Beth Andrea on July 10, 2012, 03:36:21 AM
To prove he's a man? That's probably the biggest reason I joined the USAF...to prove that I "had what it takes" to live in a man's world.

But I don't understand... as an MTF why would you want to do that  ???

*definitely does NOT have what it takes and no desire to try* lol

Quote from: pretty on July 10, 2012, 03:59:54 AM
But I don't understand... as an MTF why would you want to do that  ???

*definitely does NOT have what it takes and no desire to try* lol

I don't know about the other lady, but for me it was a case of deny, deny, deny.

I wasn't even aware of trans-people until several years into the military. And even then, it was "oh look at that freaky person! Only a crazy would want his pecker cut off and "become" a woman! LOL!!"

20 years later, multiple suicide attempts, and a final, massive panic attack led me to a therapist...and about 18 months later, "I am MTF" became a reality.

It's really bad to bury things like that. But, it can be done.

I couldn't literally grow a beard. Even the word now sounds disgusting to me. What facial hair I did have I plucked out with tweezers because I couldn't stand shaving and what it did to my skin. I couldn't do anything macho. It would have looked ridiculous and cringe worthy. Apparently, I had mannerisms and movements of a ballet dancer. But I think most of my behavior was neutral. If I did hide, I wasn't very good at it.

I used to have a full beard, but I've given that up- I'm still hiding to some extent behind a slacker male persona, but that's not ALL an act- I will probably be a slacker casual girl to some extent after I transition :)

Besides my clothes and stuff, mustache. I still have it actually, I want to shave it but something holds me back. I've been told numerous times that I look like a girl with a mustache, you can't really tell with my hairstyle but when someone or me decides to pull it back into a ponytail then it becomes apparent. It works as a closet mask pretty much, without it my face looks a lot less masculine. I'm sort of afraid of arousing suspicion I guess, lolz, normally it's a big deal when I shave because I never do it much. I can tell why too, it makes my face seem naked. >.<

Lots of trans women have served in the military. I know a couple personally, actually. No shame in that game. 

Quote from: pretty on July 09, 2012, 07:54:29 PM
This is going to sound really insensitive and I'm sorry for what happened to you but I can't fathom why on earth an mtf would join the army for any reason. That sounds incredibly masochistic  :-X

Oh Pretty!  You are so adoreable.

I don't know you, but I say this in all sincerity: My hope for you is that you live your whole life in ease and comfort.  I wish for your life to be an inspiration to future generations of transsexual children so that they might all live their lives free of strife, free of crushing confusion, and free of grief imposed on them from those who judge and condemn them.  I mean this from my heart!  I hope that your life and your transition is easier than it was for any transsexual person who ever came before you, and that those who come after you have an even easier time of it.

HUGS!
Miharu