Transition

 

Transitioning is the period when you stop living your every-day life as man and beign living it as a woman.  What can you say about one of the biggest event's that can occur in anyone's life?  Actually, a quick search of the Internet reveals that a lot of girls have a lot to say!  For example, Calpernia Addams:

"I did feel like I went through puberty at age 24.  Learning to wear a bra, makeup, date boys, all that - everything other girls learn at age 13.  And we're alone.  Most of the time society hates us - people think we're freaks or whatever - so you're doing all this alone.  And it can be really hard."

I first posted this page in early 2001 and have no apologies for the fact that it includes some motherly words of advice that I know may be read but rarely followed by would-be transition'ers.

As an indication of the enormous challenges faced by a transitioner, the story of former cyclist Robert Millar, a married man with a son is fairly typical.  Friends became suspicious when the then 40 year old was seen in pigtails with a suggestion of breasts under his top.  One said "Every time we meet him he seems to have a bigger chest, but he wont talk about it".  Two years later he 'disappeared', leaving friends and family behind when she moved town and changed her name to Phillippa York.

An important acknowledgment at this point - I found Adele's excellent The Bird Cage website (sadly now long gone, as are her succeeding sites ... from the other side and Altered States) to be a wonderful source of information and inspiration during my transition period. 

Documents
One of the primary tasks in every transwoman's transition is changing as much documentation and records as possible to reflect her new name and sex.  I've included in a separate page here some information (mostly derived and updated from Adele's original and now off-line work) about how to change your name and documentation during the transition in the UK and Ireland.

Thankfully, in recent years it has become immensely easier to get documents changed and re-issued to reflect a legally adopted female name and a change of sex, also the level of evidence and representation required has become less onerous and pre-SRS women are also often accepted.  In the UK, if granted a full gender recognition certificate by the Gender Recognition Panel, it is now even possible for transsexuals to get a new birth certificate reflecting their gender. 

A personal comment in a UK context is that the next item that you should change is your passport, armed with this (which has a photo) it's then much easier to get other key documents and records quickly changed.  

If for some reason a document cannot be re-issued, nowadays it is relatively easy to obtain or even produce for yourself a very authentic looking "corrected" version, this is often illegal but it is a last resort that some transwomen choose to risk.  However the same march of technology also means that increasingly official records and archives (including Births, Deaths and Marriages) are readily available on both government computer systems and the internet, and even the most convincing "original" document may be only a few key strokes away from suddenly becoming suspicious. 

Unfortunately - as so often - your passability as a woman (see below) can be a key factor as regards documentation.  For example for marriage in some countries such as Ireland, if you pass convincingly as a woman then the responsible official just might let you get away with showing only your Passport as identification, but pass unconvincingly and even the most authentic looking Birth Certificate that 'proves' that you were born female will be checked out - leading to possible criminal charges.  

Beginning to Pass as A Woman
Although my viewpoint offends some people, I personally suggest that for most MTF women an ability to pass consistently as a woman is essential if they are to enjoy a successful and happy post-transition (and post-SRS) life, with little or no regrets about their actions. 

If six months after transition you are still constantly getting strange stares when shopping, and your "friends" and even family obviously don't like going out in public with you, a very hard re-assessment is appropriate before proceeding further and undergoing irreversible actions such as surgery.  The often lambasted real life test prior to SRS does have a very serious purpose.

A few lucky boys look like a girl (left), long before they transition (right).

But the good news is that you can stack the odds in your favour.  Just fifty years ago only a very small percentage of adult men could in truth live and pass convincingly as a woman, nowadays a transitioning MTF transsexual woman can improve her percentages considerably.  Some physical characteristics (height, hands, feet, ...) remain almost impossible to change, but the modern transsexual woman has an enormous battery of weapons that allow her to feminise many of her other characteristics.  In general, my own advice is if that you can afford them and need them, then use them:- hormones, breast augmentation surgery, a 'nose job', additional facial feminisation surgery, hair transplants, electrolysis, skin peels, liposuction, etc, etc.  But a very serious proviso is always seek good quality professional medical advice, care and treatment - you get what you pay for and skimping is big mistake.  To the physical changes you can add valuable aids such as voice training, deportment lessons, grooming tuition... even cookery lessons (really, they were a great laugh!).   

Assuming that physically you are reasonably feminine in appearance, then passing then often becomes all about the small things - things that are second nature for some one brought up as girl but entirely strange for a man - and things that Hollywood often has a field day over when a man impersonates a woman in a comedy. 

For example, personally I physically have too many "male" appearing characteristics for comfort - I'm quite tall (5ft 9in), have broad shoulders, large feet (size 8 UK), a thick neck, and a boyish waist.  I will the rest of my life be slightly worried about people (particularly strangers) instinctively classifying as a man based upon a first impression of physical characteristics.  For me, maximising my chances of making an immediate female impression means that I've learnt to emphasise some factors of my appearance: staying slim, a substantial bust, figure flattering clothes, suitable hair style, a good and very fair complexion with relatively light make-up, and an appropriately female (but not exaggerated) posture and manners.

In Between Two Stools
My long second puberty - the period from when I first took hormones in May 1994 until I transitioned in December 2000 - was difficult and hard.  When still supposedly a "man" I worried about how people would take some of my oddly feminine characteristics.  For instance, questions I faced included:

• How do I explain my shaved legs and plucked eyebrows?
• How do I react to jokes about my "man boobs"
• Dare I go to a doctor?
• How do I react to comments about my pierced ears?
• How do I avoid being seen topless? (e.g. at a pool party) 

You have no choice - you love these!

While as a woman (pre or post-transition) I faced new problems like:

• Do I have facial hair or a shaving rash visible?
• How do I react to a groping or over-forward man?
• How do I react to children and babies?
• At security checks, will the guard discover anything unusual?
• Sharing a changing room with other women.

Transition
A man trying to "pass" as a woman faces a constant and often high-risk challenge and obstacle course.  It is one thing to dream about being a woman, to actually try to live as a woman is quite another.

It's a real "chicken or the egg" situation - you can't successfully pass as a woman until you've lived as a woman, but you can't successfully live as a woman until you can pass as a woman!  It's also very hard to go to work and be accepted there as a woman until "being a woman" - with all its many downsides as well as upsides - becomes at least second nature. 

Before I transitioned I always worked as a man and largely socialised as a man, but in several 'waves' between ages 21 and 33 I also socialised as a woman - Toni, later Annie - who's background was known to only a few. 

I found that it was much easier for people who had only met me as "Annie" to accept me as a woman (even if they knew that I was a transsexual) than people who previously known me as a man.  Even my small family had problems, although the passage of time helped a lot and my mother was always generally supportive.

When I transitioned I was reasonably confident about my appearance and dress, but my mannerisms, actions, attitude's, reactions, and speech were still far from those expected of a woman.  Every time I appeared in public or had to interact with someone, I was still "acting" a female role and had to consciously consider my actions and voice, at first I would get (or think I had got) strange looks several times a day.  I frantically studied, observed and learnt from other women; desperately starved and exercised; and spent a large chunk of my waking hours in front of a mirror.  Under pressure (near panic!) the human being is an amazingly quick learner, two months after transitioning I knew my instincts had become female.  I still caused slight puzzlement occasionally, usually due to a strange ignorance, but it was getting rarer and more trivial.  However an unfortunate physical give-away sign during my early months after transition was beard growth and a beard rash.  I undoubtedly should have sought treatment for this before I transitioned, rather than after.

In my experience, transitioning and passing successfully is rather like sitting on large scales.  You start off with the male side the heavier and dominant, you keep on adding weight to the female side but it doesn't seem to make much difference - the male side is still "heavier" and people still identify you sooner or later as a man.  At 12 months, I was close to despair, I had been out'ed in three jobs, the last of which was a particularly bad experience.  I began to seriously wonder if I was doing the right thing.

But keep adding the weight to scales and eventually adding just another a small feather to the female side makes it the heaver and the scales swing over - suddenly people are consistently identifying you as a woman.  It took about 18 months, two operations, three moves and four jobs for the scales to finally tip for me, but suddenly I realized that I was comfortably "passing as a woman" [a truly horrid term] day after day in a largely female work environment - something that simply hadn't been possible a few months earlier - and my confidence soared.  The feathers falling on the scales of my passability were individually light, but cumulatively they had finally reached a critical weight:- I instinctively touched-up my make-up every hour, my skin was soft and stubble free, I flirted as needed, I could often go a day without laddering my tights, I even began to choose fashionable shoes over comfort! 

Two years after transitioning, thanks to necessity and experience, I finally reached the point where I was confident that I would be perceived as a woman by a new acquaintance.  I've found this to be a strong driver for seeking "stealth" as something that I have totally hated since my transition is the feeling of being constantly under examination by everyone (even family) who knows that I'm a MTF transsexual.  My body, hair, dress sense, manners, make-up, voice, movements ... I know that they are all up for discussion when I'm not about. 

A Teenage Girl's Education
A few month prior to my transition, I went on holiday for a few weeks as a woman.  This was a rather traumatic experience in which I discovered that my ability to pass occasionally in a night environment did not translate in to 7x24 full-time passability.  In addition to problems about my physical appearance, I was not thinking and behaving like a girl automatically.   Without the immersive experiences of a female childhood and up-bringing, I was still lacking essential instinctive traits and habits.  The adult transitioning woman has to work hard to gain these.

Careful observation of other girls and women is essential.  For a while I tried to become my sister!

Reading women's and teenager magazines became very important to me in helping me to help develop a female sexual orientation and point of view.  I can certainly recommend teenage magazines for advice on shopping, fashion and popular culture, and for plenty of tips on sex and love for the inexperienced heterosexual girl.  My favourite magazine is still 19, which is slightly more mature than Bliss or Sugar, but far more entertaining and enjoyable than the likes of Marie Claire or Cosmopolitan.

Weight
Perhaps one of the hardest mental battles I've fought since my transition is the battle of the waist line.  Between 1997 and 2000 I put on a full stone (14lb, or over 6kg)!  The increase was perhaps partly an age factor, but also one of the feminising effects of oestrogen is to increase subcutaneous fat deposits, which inevitably means a gain in weight if counter-measures aren't taken.  As I approached transition in late 2000 I made a determined effort to get my weight back down to 10st (140lb or 63½kg) - acceptable for my height of 5 feet 9 in - and the constant challenge since has been to keep it there.  Although I'm far less rigorous than I used to be (my 6 a.m. workout is ancient history!), most weekdays I alternate between a 30 minute jog on my running machine or a video based fat burning session, and every Sunday morning I go swimming for an hour (this really isn't difficult or risky).  Minding what I eat is also important, although I'm now just habitually careful rather than rigorously dieting.  A particularly difficult challenge was switching from drinking fattening lager beer to nursing one glass of white wine or sipping Perrier water when out at night! 

Keeping my weight down will never be easy but ironically a very helpful factor is the much maligned social pressure on women (from my fiancee, other women, the media, ...) to stay slim.  Also, I know from experience that I only need to slip for a few weeks (e.g. while on holiday) and my weight soars again. 

Gossip and Maintaining a Consistent Story
In my first two jobs post-transition only one or two people (only) supposedly knew of my transsexuality when I started.  Optimistically I hoped that this information would remain confidential (as they had promised) - I was fooling myself.  Even a year after transition, a combination of marginal passability and a boss eager to gossip when asked was a disaster which led to me to leaving the job in tears. 

One of my biggest problems I still have (like many transsexuals) is that some people know my background while others don't.  Having the two types together can be an unacceptable risk, and trying to avoid their interaction can very unfortunately dominate arrangements.   For our first Christmas my boyfriend invited many of his family over to our house, I nearly killed him as only a couple of his sisters [supposedly] knew my background at that stage.  And when my darling arranged a birthday party for me, I could never relax in case those "in the know" accidentally gave something away to those who didn't.

Another nightmare is that over many months I've often have had to make up things on the fly to tell people who don't know of my transsexuality (particularly my colleagues at work) which I've since forgotten, and thus I may contradict myself in another spur of the moment situation.  Lacking "Total Recall", there's always the chance of later being caught on one small point that someone thought strange or remarkable at the time, and remembered.  One or two minor gaff's can be laughed off or the other person made to doubt his/her memory, but eventually people may start to wonder what's going on. 

The "Costs" of Transition
For me, transition has had a devastating financial cost - my income has dropped enormously.  In the year 2000 - just before my transition - I was working as a man as a consultant on a tax-free salary of roughly £50,000/$75,000 at the contemporary exchange rate.  Thirteen months later, after having lost two jobs as a woman, I briefly worked as a Teachers Assistant for what would have been €10,000/$9,000 a year.  Things have improved slightly since then - I now earn about €22,000/$17,000 a year.

Although my income has collapsed, some outgoings have increased massively.  I've just done a very rough tot-up of the amounts that I've spend on doctors, hormones, laser hair removal, breast augmentation, orchidectomy and a few other bits from December 2000 until now (July 2004), and it comes to nearly £11000 / $18000 - i.e. about £3000 / $5000 a year - and that excludes other associated costs such taking as days off work and travel expenses.   Also the added financial cost of simply living as a woman is extraordinary - I kept records for a while when I was totally broke in 2002 and found that I still was spending at least €200/$180 a month on clothes, make-up, hairdresser, etc, and that really was an absolute minimum.  I'm not sure what the net financial cost of my transition is, but I expect that it is over £100,000 / $170,000 in just three and a half years.

The term "cost" can have other meanings as well.  Almost all women instinctively make a huge investment in both time and money on their appearance (i.e. improving their beauty and attractiveness to men) because that's what society expects and that's how they've been brought up.  As a man I guess I used to spend about 20-30 minutes a day showering, shaving, dressing, etc.  When I first transitioned I had to get up (in England in January!) at 5:00 am so that I had two hours to get myself ready for work.  I'm considerably more efficient and practiced now (standard mascara and lipstick in a minute), but I still spend at least one hour a day on my grooming, and on top of that there's the gym, the dieting, the shaving, the Hair Salon ... while preparing for a big night out can dominate my life for days.  Personally I don't like all these aspects of womanhood, although I know that most genetic women and transwomen seem to.  However the constant worry over my appearance is something that I've had to learn to live with and cope with, and even enjoy sometimes. 

Shopping is yet another gobbler of time and money, half days off work and late night shopping trips dissolve in to over stretched credit cards, and aching feet - although a compensation is the relationship and long chats over a tea or glass of wine. 

Marriage and Children
As I hit middle-age, one of the oddest things that many unaware people found about my boyfriend and myself was that we are not married after two and a half years living together, and had no kids.  Hints and reminders from uninitiated friends and acquaintances that my biological clock was ticking and that I should be thinking about having children before it's too late were constant.  The social pressure from almost everyone for us to marry become pervasive, indeed they become almost overwhelming when someone close had a baby.  In some countries this would not be a big problem, but in parts of Ireland it's still fairly unusual. 

If we did commit to each other and exchange wedding rings (managing to overcome a mass of legal and religious hurdles), the pressure for us to have children would be even more intense, and the need to make up some convincing excuse even greater.  Baring a medical break-through, a fake TV-style pregnancy and miscarriage may be the best option!

In 1998 Carlos Roberto Paz Wells became Veronica Paz Wells, age 38 - an ex-husband and father of a daughter.  Many transsexuals only finally face their gender dysphoria when they hit middle age - some are lucky and transition well, others ....

The March of Time
I mention elsewhere on this site that the passage of time works against the transsexual woman, I should perhaps qualify that by saying that I mean mainly for the pre-transition transsexual woman.  When I transitioned, the first year was very very tough.  But time actually starts to work in favour of the transitioned woman who sticks with it.  Actions, responses, motions, stories, even feelings, that start off requiring conscious thought eventually become automatic. The subtle effects of many years of hormones and an orchidectomy have slowly worked on my mind and body in many subtle ways, e.g. fat thighs and cellulite, an inability to change a car tire or lately even a fuse, crying when watching the happy bits of a movie, ... and joining a health club!  Looking at old photo's has become like looking at a stranger. 

Another problem I mention is that as transsexual woman you may eventually get caught out contradicting yourself on some small point.  That risk will always be there, but in the bigger picture your slightly adjusted stories about your childhood, your first "boyfriend", your time at university, etc. become totally ingrained in your memory after a while, and the responses and comments are automatic and convincing.  Even better, you slowly begin to have your own boring but true post-transition stories and experiences to tell, even better be told about you.  I can now tell all about the weird admirer I used to have at work (he's now my fiancée!); starting to walk home when I couldn't get a taxi and having a guy in a BMW stop and give me a lift; my mammogram; the Arab in the Night Club who simply wouldn't give up holding my hand and telling me how beautiful I was; and somehow 'loosing' my bikini top on the beach!

A critical part is feed-back and support.  When I moved in with my boyfriend  (about a year after my transition), we had a "honeymoon" period lasting a few days, and then it became truly awful- for example I felt that I was the lackey on which all household chores fell.  But after  intense interaction and a huge effort by us both, I finally became the female partner of an often annoying but also totally devoted and loving man - and wouldn't change it for the world.