Month: December 2023

Nail that gender expression!

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This post was originally published on my Substack blog on October 21, 2023.

When I came out to my mom a few weeks ago, she had some questions. She’s very analytically-minded, so they were insightful questions. One of them was about gender expression. Why do trans and gender diverse people put so much emphasis on feminine expression? My mom rarely wears anything more feminine than jeans and a t-shirt, and rarely wears makeup, but it doesn’t make her feel less like a woman. 

I know the reason I want to express my identity clearly is because I spent so long expressing myself as a gender that didn’t suit who I am inside. And not just expression; all of this “terrible T” did a great job of giving me a masculine body, and is starting to rob me of my hair. Now that I know who I am, I feel like I need to turn the tables. 

Not all at once; I’m still only part way out of my sturdy, comfortable closet. But I started dying my hair purple a few months before I was consciously aware of what I was trying to express. I wear makeup when I go out with my friends (another habit I’ve had since before I was conscious that I was transitioning). And I’ve recently started painting my nails. 

Out of all of the forms of expression I’ve adopted so far, my nails are the most satisfying. I don’t have enough hair to do much with it, and I don’t have the shape for feminine clothes. My makeup game is improving, but my face still isn’t quite right. But my nails are a small victory.

I compulsively bit my nails for decades. I tried to kick the habit many times, but always started again, unconsciously in most cases. If you’ve ever tried to quit a bad habit like smoking, imagine if you had cigarettes constantly attached to your fingertips. You don’t need to take any action besides raising your hand to your face. So when I first applied clear nail polish, it was mainly because I wanted a stealthy form of gender expression, but secondarily because I thought maybe it would discourage me from biting my nails. 

I don’t know whether it was the polish or my egg hatching, but I haven’t bitten one nail since. 

A beginner’s how-to

For anyone who is just getting started, nails are one form of expression you can get the hang of fairly easily. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

With some polish, you can paint one coat on your unprepared nails, let it dry, and go on your way. But it won’t last very long, and you won’t have a smooth finish. I always apply multiple coats.

Before I paint my nails, I prepare them. First, I use nail polish remover to completely remove the previous polish. Then I use a coarse file to make sure the upper surface of my nails is smooth. After a few times, you won’t need much coarse filing. Then I use a fine buffing block to smooth out the surface. Finally, following a tip from a helpful employee at Sally Beauty in Edmonton, I give each nail a swipe with acetone-based nail polish remover to get rid of any dust and dehydrate the nail surface.

Next comes the base coat. Some friends recommended Essie, so I bought their Strong Start base coat. You just need a thin coat to protect the nail and help the next coat stick.

After applying the base coat, your next step is to wait.

Then, when you think it’s time to apply the next coat, wait a little longer. Even if your polish is marketed as “Insta-dry,” well, “insta” must mean something completely different in marketing speak.

You can speed up drying with a fan, but I’ve found I still have to wait a minimum of two minutes to ensure that the next coat covers the previous one instead of trying to blend into it.

The color coats require some practice. The tutorials I’ve seen recommend covering each nail with no more than three strokes. Unfortunately, this isn’t always easy. The color I’m wearing right now is Y’Orchid-ing from Finger Paints’ Naturalism collection. I love the color, but the brush is so tiny it takes at least five strokes to cover my thumbnails. Essie and Sally Hansen both have much better brushes.

My nails with two coats of Y’Orchid-ing covered by one coat of Fig Flash

Practice your brush work to get each coat as even as possible with few strokes. You’ll have to find the right thickness. Too thin and the color is blotchy, even after two or three coats. Too thick and it will flake off. 

I’ve gotten nice coverage with two coats, but you may want more. Some people advise adding four coats or more. 

After your main color, this is where you can add the magic. My favorite overcoat is Fig Flash from Sally Hansen’s Insta-Dri (haha) collection. It’s a semi-transparent light purple glitter coat that adds depth to the color underneath. That’s what I’m wearing in the picture, over the Y’Orchid-ing I mentioned above. It transforms a nice, deep burgundy red into a scintillating wine purple. 

Finally, don’t forget your top coat! I’m currently using Essie No Chips Ahead. It seems pretty effective, although I do a lot with my hands, so I get wear on the leading edge pretty quickly. 

If you have more nail tips, leave a comment below!

My awakening

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This post was originally published to my Substack blog on September 7, 2023.

This is the story all about how
My life got flipped, turned upside-down
So if you’d like to take a minute, just sit right there,
And I’ll tell you how I became a princess with purple hair

The egg came first

I’ve told parts of my hatching story in my other entries, but in response to something a friend posted on Mastodon, I’m going to tell the whole thing. This could be longer than average for my articles, so grab a drink and a comfy chair.

It was August 2, 2023. I was sitting at work with not much to do. I’m a safety coordinator at a shop where injuries are rare, so I’m kind of like the Maytag repairman(1). I was scrolling through Mastodon when I came upon an article by doc_impossible, who I had recently started following. I clicked the link and started reading her blog. The first article I read was Part One: A Webcomic. Take a minute to follow the link and read through the comics in that article. 

The first comic was the key. I love how Mae Dean drew it. The static panels imply that Mae’s former persona was having a routine, ho-hum day sitting at the computer until, a couple of minutes after reading that Facebook post… Yeah. I was just like the last panel. “Oh…” I thought. “I think I’d better keep reading.”

By the end of the day, I had read seven of Zoe’s articles and had talked back and forth with her on Mastodon and in the comments on her blog. If you know Zoe, you’ll agree that she is a wonderful person who has a knack for knowing exactly what to say when you’re feeling anxious or uncertain. She was my guiding light for the week that followed, until I finally allowed the shattered pieces of my egg to fall away, revealing the cool purple chick inside.

Stained Glass Woman provided me with most of the information I needed to discover myself. If you haven’t read How to Figure Out if You’re Trans, go read it now. I mean it. There are spoilers ahead. I loved that article. I loved how Zoe described her methodology for designing the questions(2). And the questions themselves…

I’m serious. Click the link if you haven’t read the article already. If you’re just starting to question yourself, you might want to take a break and attend to the egg you’ve just been given.

On Day One of Hatching Week, my answer to the first question was that I’d think about pressing the button, but would put it away and spend another day as my new self. The next day I’d think about pressing the button again, but probably wouldn’t. As time went by, I’d think about the button every day, but my desire to press it would fade until I was comfortable with my new reality.

My Day One answer to the second question… Hybrid, baby! I had fun figuring out the best combinations to create the perfect body.

Question three… That one was heavy. But by the time I reached it, I knew I was going to explore this path and keep digging until I had the answer I needed, so I wasn’t overwhelmed by potential future regret.

A novel discovery

That heading is literal. I’ve been working on a story for a novel for twelve years now. Not steadily, by any means. I wrote the first couple of chapters in 2011, then put the story away because I didn’t know where it was going. I returned to it a couple of times, but never found a central conflict or a strong path for my protagonist. 

The novel was originally about an accountant, a skilled auditor, who lives a life of routine. Her insistence on her routine is compulsive bordering on obsessive. The tiniest change in her day is a major catastrophe. So obviously, the story starts with a small but inexplicable change in her world, which totally freaks her out. As the story progresses, the changes get more dramatic, more shocking, until…

In twelve years, I could not figure out “until what.” In late July I had pulled the story out to start writing again, having downloaded some character templates that seemed to be useful. I was looking at my story notes on Monday (August long weekend in Canada), when I wrote down, in bold letters: “Could Mavis’ story be about transitioning?”

Suddenly, it all clicked into place. I rewrote my character interviews, bios, and the existing chapters of the story with my new protagonist: Don Nystrom, forensic auditor. The changes that happen to him keep adding up until…he wakes up with a feminine body. My fingers flew as I wrote the transformation scene, then sketched out Dawn Nystrom’s path as she self-actualized in her new identity. I put a lot of myself into both aspects of Don/Dawn’s character.

Then I wrote a second transformation scene. It’s a very short scene that I wrote in about three minutes. I was crying as I wrote the cathartic twist. I cried again when I proofread it. Then again every time I went over it to mentally place it in my protagonist’s journey(3).

I cried a lot that week. I cried more than I had in the two years before, and that included a painful marital separation. I never anticipated that. Obviously hormone treatment was still far in my future, but I was crying every day as I peeled away the layers I had built up over the years. 

Introducing…

That Saturday I knew that, whether I was trans or nonbinary, everything had changed. On one social website, my username started with “Mr.” which no longer fit who I am. I thought about what I would use for my new handle. It had to be something to do with purple because, well, reasons. Mr. Purple? No! That doesn’t get rid of the problematic honorific. PurpleGuy? No, still too male. PurplePeopleNeeder? Better…but no. 

Then it hit me: Violet. It was purple, and I loved it as soon as I said it. I know some people spend a lot of time choosing their new name, finding underlying etymological meaning, symbolism, or family significance. But when I came up with Violet, I knew it wouldn’t just be a website moniker; it was my new name. I am Violet.

It was afterward that I thought of Violet Parr from The Incredibles. Violet is the invisible girl. Throughout her life, she hid in plain sight, never showing herself to the world. But when she realized the full extent of her super powers, she became stronger, more confident, and eager to help and protect others. And she has great hair.

A manner of speaking

During the weekend, my speech changed. I went out for dinner with a group of friends that weekend, and I stopped controlling my voice. I let myself talk the way it was most comfortable for me to talk. It wasn’t a huge difference, but I was talking to everyone the way I normally talked to women. 

We all change the way we talk when we’re speaking to different people. Usually it’s such a slight difference you don’t notice it(4). For a long time I’ve been conscious of the fact that I talked differently to men than I did to women. When I talked to men, my voice was bigger, my diction was sloppier, and I always felt guarded. When I talked to women, I was much more comfortable, so my speech just flowed, and I let my emotions show. 

Back to life, back to reality

That Monday evening, I pondered the next morning at work. At seven AM I would stand in front of thirty welders and fitters to present the weekly safety meeting. Would I revert to my old speech pattern? No! I wasn’t going back into that closet! 

Luckily, I kind of paved the way for that four months previously when I dyed my hair bright purple. That was another act of symbolic defiance, a refusal to go back into the closet about my orientation, which I had finally defined in a way that made sense to me and I could describe to others(5). 

So on Tuesday morning, I gave the safety meeting with my slightly altered voice. My voice was bigger than I speak in normal conversation, of course, because I was addressing a large group in a very large space. But if anyone noticed the change, they didn’t say anything. That was enough to tear down my vocal shields for good. Now everyone gets my comfortable, natural voice. I’ll work on raising my pitch little by little, but the underlying speech pattern probably won’t change much. It’s me.

All the king’s horses

The final event that pushed the egg out of my grip happened that Thursday evening. I was on my way home from work, thinking about the fact that I was actually a girl, and was definitely going to girlify myself(6). As I walked in my back door, I realized that I was thinking of my old persona in the third person–and in the past tense. I started to panic. “I’m not ready to lose George!” I told myself. “He’s a good guy…at least he tries…and I love him.”

My voice broke when I said the last bit(7). It wasn’t so much the thought of losing my old self; in fact it was at that moment that I realized that I wasn’t losing anything. The me I was is still the me I am. The me I’ll be may look different, talk different, and act a little different, but it was me in here all along. I was just wearing a suit that didn’t fit quite right, and was feeling a little exposed, having cast it off.

What really hit me when I verbalized my existential panic was the fact that I had never said or thought that I loved myself. Even my old persona, which I’m leaving behind. I do love the person inside. I had always been rather unsure of myself before. There were times when I didn’t particularly like myself, and times when I actually hated myself. By the time that egg arrived on my desk, I was at the point where I was content with my existence. Not particularly happy, but not noticeably depressed. 

When I realized that I do actually love myself, it was like flipping another switch. Seeing myself clearly for the first time allowed me to love the person I am. 

That was it. August 10, 2023 was my rebirthday. 

Notes

(1) You kids under 40 might not get the reference. Here’s one of the Maytag ads featuring Jesse White, the original Maytag repairman who did these commercials for twenty years or so.

(2) I’m a sucker for meticulous scientific logic. By the time I reached the actual questions, I had a serious internet crush on this woman!

(3) I’m not going to describe that scene in detail. You’ll have to read the novel when it’s done.

(4) Unless you’re talking to a baby or a puppy. 

(5) Little did I know how that was going to change in the following week.

(6) Google Docs did not put a red line under “girlify.” Did I just make up a word that already exists?

(7) Yes, I talk to myself out loud at home. When you live alone, you need to hear someone’s voice; it might as well be yours.

Becoming a woman

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This post was originally published to my Substack blog on August 22, 2023.

I’m trans.

You mean you’re going to turn into a woman?

Not exactly. My internal sense of gender has always been feminine.

So why did you wait so long?

Because I didn’t know I was trans.

But you just said…I’m confused.

That makes two of us, hon.

When you realize you’re trans later in life, your mind lunges out in different directions, trying to make sense of it all. Am I a woman now? Was I always a woman? Why didn’t I see it before? Was this or that event a clue I should have seen?

However long it takes, the process of hatching is hard. You will look at the core of your being more closely than you ever have. You may wonder if you have two personalities. You may wonder who the real you is. You may wonder if there is a real you. You may ask yourself, “Is this my masculine face?” And you may ask yourself, “Is this my genuine voice?”

As the days go by, you may find yourself crying more in one week than you have in years. But at some point you will figure out who you really are. It may take a week, or a month. For some it may take years. But after you discover your authentic identity, one question may remain:

Who was I before?

I think about this question a lot. As I write this, it has been two weeks since I emerged from my existential uncertainty as a trans woman. I’m still equal parts terrified and excited–although I’m more joyous than either of those emotions. Every hour of every day, I celebrate who I am. 

I’ve never done that before. After years of ups and downs, dealing with depression and constant change, I had settled into a comfortable pattern of content existence. I felt like I wasn’t a special, unique individual, just another person making his way through life. The egg metaphor is significant. I feel like my life began the week I hatched.

So what does that say about who I was before?

Near the end of my hatching week, I confided in a new friend that I wasn’t ready to lose my old self, to let him fade away. (Dammit, Mae! Your webcomic is so beautifully poignant!) I was terrified of losing the person I was in order to transform into the person I would become.

But I realized that I don’t have two wolves inside of me. I’m not losing any part of myself that matters. The man who lived his life, trying to be a good person (failing more than I’d like to admit, but still trying), was always me. She will always be me. She just wasn’t a man.

So who or what was I?

I keep asking this question, and the only answer I have is, I was me. My “actual” gender was questionable. I lived most of my life as a man, not as a woman, at least performatively. I had everybody fooled…including myself. But it’s not that simple.

Gender is not a hard-coded binary attribute. (Neither is biological sex, but that’s a whole article in itself.) My transition was eased somewhat because I’ve long recognized some of my feminine traits. It’s been over 15 years since I tried to get my beard lasered away. At that time, I was back in school (long story), and my best friend was a classmate who happened to be a lesbian. We got along fantastically well from day one, and I opened up and let her see the real me. 

One thing she knew very well about me was that I was attracted to women, but also wanted to be friends with them (and had almost no interest in friendships with men). Because of this, she referred to me as “a lesbian trapped in a man’s skin.” In that way, she saw me better than I saw myself.

I’ve always had a strong feminine component to my personality, even when I ignored it, pushed it away, or hid it behind a mask of exaggerated masculinity. Does that mean I’ve always been a woman? I honestly don’t know. But the conclusion I’ve come to is,

It doesn’t matter!

I was me, and I am me. The person who was George is the person who is Violet. I’m just being more honest now, both with the world and with myself. Having a masculine body doesn’t make me less feminine. But having a feminine body will make me feel more complete. It will make me a more confident woman, fulfilling my deepest existential desire: to be one of the girls.

And, of course: more hair!

Are you normal?

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This post was originally published on my Substack blog on August 20, 2023.

Note: This article includes straightforward but non-explicit descriptions of kinky activities. It also mentions the word “sex” several times. You should be okay unless you’re too normal.

I’ve been socially transitioning for two weeks now. Officially, anyway. Looking back on the last couple of years, my interactions with the women in my life have been transitioning for quite a while. Dropping my “social shield” when talking to my friends was so liberating, it made me feel almost like one of the girls.

And despite the oh-so-subtle feminine affect I let show, no one thought I was weird. Everyone thought I was normal.

One of my coworkers used to get an artistic manicure every week or two. Her nails always looked fabulous. Every time I went to her office to talk about a project, I totally fan-girled over her nails. I hadn’t realized I was interested in nails because, after all, I was a man. But she talked about them with enthusiasm, as if my interest were completely normal.

When I met moved to Vancouver, I made a new best friend. She is so awesome*, and one of her awesome aspects is her taste in shoes. I never knew I had an interest in women’s shoes until I met her. I went completely gaga over several of her pairs, which are so darn cute. And her work boots…I was so disappointed they only come in a B width so I can’t commit my soles to them. She thought I was normal too.

Earlier this year, when I firmly committed to myself that I was not going back into the closet from which I was finally emerging, I dyed my hair bright purple. I was a little anxious when I went to work the next day, but the most dramatic reaction I got was “Hey! Your hair is purple!” When someone new comes into the building, they don’t react at all. To them, I’m perfectly normal.

So what is normal?

“Normal is what everyone else is and you’re not.”

– Soran

When he said that, Malcolm McDowell’s character was trying to intimidate someone who looked different from everyone else. The deeper meaning is that we all have thoughts, feelings, and desires that we think are uniquely ours. We’re afraid to show them because we think they’re not normal. But if everyone shared their “abnormalities” at once, we’d probably find that they’re not as unique as we thought. In fact, they’re quite normal.

What’s that? Not you? You think I’d blush if I knew half of what you’re thinking? One of the best ways to get in touch with the normality of your weirdness is to join your local kink community. Yes. Those weirdos. Even if you’re not into stereotypical kinks like bondage and spanking, you will eventually find someone who shares your kink. Even if you enjoy having your toes painted green and slapped with a rubber band. Even if you enjoy sniffing other people’s knees. Even if you enjoy wearing white after Labour Day. And you’ll have so much fun, you’ll realize how normal we weirdos really are.

The truth is, no one is a carbon copy of anyone else, but at the same time, our unique quirks are similar enough to someone else’s unique quirks that we can all find a community. We all like things that we think other people think are strange, and we all try to fit in. To be normal. But guess what:

Normal does not exist.

Normal is an illusion created by our insecurities. It creates a wall between each of us and the rest of the world. It’s time to embrace weirdness. Your unique weirdness that, despite its uniqueness, will make someone somewhere say, “Hey! I can relate to that!”

Gender Norms

Sex!

Did I clear the room? Did anyone who stayed for the kinky talk get scared by the mention of the critically important biological activity that allows life on Earth to continue?

Sex is so important for our survival, it always boggles my mind that it’s such a taboo subject. That’s why discussion of gender tends to be uncomfortable in some environments even though gender has nothing to do with sex.

Nothing? Not even a little bit? Not really. Who we are, who we’re most comfortable with, how we behave in certain groups, what we wear, and what we’re interested in have nothing to do with the ins and outs of furthering the species.

I could dive into a deeper explanation of the nature of gender, but someone else has already done it far better than I ever could. This would be a good time to pause reading this post and go read this other one.

Is everyone back? Great. She’s amazing, right?

Where was I…

Sex and gender get conflated because for most of the population, their gender corresponds to their assigned sex at birth in a way our society has come to accept as normal. Could any other way be normal? Could “normal” men wear dresses and pantyhose? Could “normal” women be fearsome warriors and lead armies? Could “normal” transgender people be accepted in society without so much as an eyeblink?

Of course, because all of those things have been the norm at various points in history in various societies.

The norms and taboos of our society are not a constant, unbending, fundamental foundation that would collapse our whole world if they shifted. On a broad time scale they’re a passing thought, a momentary lapse of reason. Attempting to make everyone conform to them is pointless because they’ll shift, if only slightly, in a single generation.

So embrace your uniqueness. And, yes, even your weirdness! The more authentically we all live, the more we will all feel…normal.

*Yes, I know you’re reading this, and I know you’re blushing, but you are awesome!

A “Two-Cities” Kind of Day

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This post was originally published on my Substack blog on August 20, 2023.

I’m having a strange day. It’s not a bad day, but it’s also not a good day. A thought came to me when I realized I was going to put on my sandals to take out the garbage, exposing my painted toenails to the world for the first time.

Well, to the part of the world between my back door and my dumpster, showing them to probably 0.2 people at this time of day.

Right now I’m on the edge of wanting so badly to be seen, but also wanting to be able to hide in the man suit that everyone is used to. The last time I was on this edge, I dyed my hair bright purple. I love the color, so I’ve kept it for five months now. And I’ve had nothing but compliments.

I’m not hiding who I am inside anymore, and despite a sudden shift in my voice and mannerisms as a result, no one has said anything negative, in public or at work.

I know I don’t have to hide, but this man suit feels so comfortable. The main character in the novel I’m writing seeks comfort in her old persona’s worn old sweatshirt after her abrupt, unintended transformation. This morning I put on the old sweatshirt I was thinking of when I wrote that scene.

Sometimes we try to linger on the edge, deciding which way to go. But the thing about edges is, you can’t balance on one forever. I already know which side I’ll step off. But my sense of balance is pretty good, so I’m just going to stay up here a little longer.

Me, but Not Me

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This post was originally published on my Substack blog on August 24, 2023.

After the grand revelation that I had lived (mostly) in hiding for five decades, I experienced a great deal of confusion. One source of consternation was the fact that I didn’t think anyone would ever see me as feminine, including myself. I looked at myself in the mirror, and it was wrong.

I didn’t hate my appearance. After years of not liking my face, I had reached the point where I saw myself as reasonably good looking, and I had worked enough on my body that it was fit and functional. Actually, pretty darn good for a fifty-year-old man. I had even come to terms with my age, and the road ahead into the “second act.”

So, while my revelation shook me to my core, I was more ready to accept it than I would have been at any previous point in my life. But my face… My face was now doubly wrong. I had long wished for a more attractive face, none of this annoying facial hair, and more hair up top. Oh, how I’ve always longed to have hair!

I actually gave up on my hair at a young age. I tried letting it grow long, but it would only grow up. I had that kind of hair. I felt like a cotton ball in a washed-out medium brown. So one day in my late twenties I shaved it all off, and I kept shaving it for twenty-five-odd years.

Until last year. After my wife moved away, I was on my own for the first time in many years. Without the expectation to play a role, I began to discover myself. The girly tendencies I had felt forever started to resurface. I discovered an interest in cute shoes. And I basically inverted my shaving routine; I stopped shaving my head but started shaving everything else. I had always shaved my beard because I hated having facial hair. But the first time I got out of the bathtub with my legs smooth for the first time in four and a half decades (I was an early bloomer), I knew I would never stop shaving them again.

In letting my hair grow, I knew I would never achieve my achingly profound hair goals. After all, I was over fifty. I’m thin on top and there’s a point right at the crown of my head that’s just a tiny bit bald. Yes, I overuse adverbs when I’m in denial. It’s a bald spot. But I was happy with the result when my hair grew in. It felt right… but not half as right as when I first dyed it purple earlier this year. For the first time I looked not just okay, but fabulous!

My awakening was touched off by Doc Impossible’s blog, Stained Glass Woman. I’ve read that blog cover to cover, and I eagerly await her next entry. The article that’s relevant to my post today is Part Five: Panic. I wasn’t quite panicking at that point; I pushed that down until it bubbled up a couple of days later. In that post, Doc Impossible describes putting her face into an app that shows an example of how you would look as the “opposite” gender.

I had to know. I have Stable Diffusion installed on my computer. I installed it locally so I wouldn’t be sending a bunch of information into the cloud. The advantage of Stable Diffusion over a generic app (aside from the privacy issues) is that you can craft your prompt to control certain aspects of the result—and prevent the deformities that demonstrate that artificial “intelligence” deserves those quotation marks.

I dragged the selfie I had been using online into the “img2img” interface and wrote a prompt to turn it into a picture of a fifty-three-year-old woman with purple hair and glasses. When I saw the result, I wondered why whoever trained that model thought fifty-three was absolutely geriatric, so I reduced the age to fifty and specified that the result should have long hair.

I generated a series of images. I couldn’t stop staring at this one. I still can’t

Those are my eyes (for the most part; the algorithm hates different colors, so my blue eyes are a little bit of a gray-purple). That’s my mouth. My nose, my neck, even the cheekbones are all mine!

But I’m not gorgeous!

Could I be? Could a few years of HRT and some surgery on my heavy brows make me look even a little bit like this? And the big question: Is there any modicum of possibility that I could have that hair?

This picture is both me and not me. But the more I look at it, the more I see the me I’d love to be.