GenderLife Forum: The Information Exchange

Wendy Carlos... great music... I still have a cassette

The young woman working in Polk Gulch in SF when I was a child growing up there. She was always sweet to me. I no longer recall her name. She was killed later. I wish I could remember her name.

Renee Richards.

I also learnt how badly the world (including my parents) could react towards what they did not understand. :tears:

Christine Jorgenson, Renee Richards and Tula.

I saw Tula and her mother on Donahue. My lord she is pretty. I looked at myself in the mirror and thoguht no friggin way. I look like a dude in a dress. I could never become who I was inside.

Now I identify myself as transsexual. And when I look around I see my mother at my side. Oh yes... I got rid of that ugly dress!

Well after getting thrown into haverford state mental hospital (for four months) as a youngster for wearing womens clothing i guess i was the first. But when i was about three my mom wouldn't let me bathe with my 3 younger sisters anymore. She said i was different. It took me years to figure out why.
However, i do barely remember something on the phil donahue show.
After i ran away as a young teen i ended up in northern Calif. There i lived on a commune where there were a few lesbians and some gays and well i hung with the lesbians. They introduced me to some other lesbians on H street in eureka calif. There in the Left side (looking out of the house) second floor front bedroom facing arcata i met my first TS. She told me she was from conneticut. She had very bad skin. That was in late 70's. She was a brunette and told me with my long streaming blonde hair and my non facial pure white skin that i shouldn't think about transitioning because i would end up like her. I saw her face and well it did scare me. I also heard some of the lesbians joke about her, which was mean. I then got stuck on smoking and growing pot and it took me until i left and went back east to home in phila Pa where i found the gender clinic on 8th or 9th street in phila. I walked in there and saw the girls and thought i could never pass. By that time my facial hair had grown and i was tough from living in the woods for years and partying. It took me till the late 80;s to go back to the clinic a second time. That time i found out many TS's who were mostly black were hanging on sansom street. I would drive by them but only because i admired them. they thought i wanted some action since they were hooking. I then got into recovery and stayed clean and sober and ran recovery homes for ex drug addicts and alcoolics. After 13 years i sold my places bought a 200 acre farm in virginia (after developing it for a yr) and then after getting married through an ad in mother earth news i separated after 20 days. I then moved back to phila area and thought i wanted to save my hair. I went to a DR who told me that if i really wanted to save my hair i would take what transsexuals take as he heard many get great results. So here i was thinking thinning hair but later after getting estrogen injections to stop my thinning hair i was ironically chemically castrated. Two weeks went by and my mind went back to the feelings i had as a child and the many other times. I knew i was a woman. I posted an ad in the phila gay press about being a woman trapped in a males body. But i also added i was a lesbian. I had a beautiful russian girl contact me. She let me dress at her place. (Wow its all coming back.. it seems like light yrs from here.) She wanted sex but i wanted a female friend. She thought she could change me into something sexual. I had hated sex. Sex was all about being male. As time went on she broke from me because she saw me change. When i came back from DR O in june 98 she met me at the airport but never contacted me again.

"""The below is more but not in sequence to above. """


I went back to south st in phila where they sold all kinds of clothes. I bought some super wild high high heels and a dress and a wig and went to a club. there i met people who wanted to talk to me. I didn't realize that they saw me as a CD. I knew that wasn't what i was. ((Yes at 11 to 16 i wore and passed a lot and went to many places alone with my sisters clothes on. But i didn't know what to do with this. It wasn't about sex it was identity but i hated that i had to go back home each time and be a boy. I even at 8 to 10 years old would go to a store called the bazzar of all nations. There i would take bras and girdles and skirts and go into the woods behind it and wear them. Sure there was also always wearing my sisters clothes anytime i could from 6 to 16. )) So i called one of the persons i met at that club and they told me to go online and look for transgender nation. I wasn't sure what they meant but i did. I had AOL in jan 98 and i found the transgender community forum. It was run by gwen smith and well i started hanging out there. I also went back to south street and asked where could i get some hormones. Heck i didn't know how to do it. They led me to first a black DR in phila who would inject me. people on AOL thought i was probably playing or role playing as many did as after a year i soon found out. I then went to DR Spector and he gave me a much greater dosage. By march98 i was chemically castrated and had the screen name xcshormone on AOL for excess hormones. meaning i had too much T and hated it. I loved being Free from T. I told them at the gazebo that i got castrated and they all called me a liar. I went to DR O and they called me a liar. I went back again to DR O and they called me a liar. There was no one near me online to meet to prove myself. Anyway i found out 80% of them were just role players and after they realized i was for real they all wanted to get with me intimately. only one post op from NY would befriend me and i would eventually call her. It was now august 98 and i had to get letters to finish. I went to a therapist. I was all bruised and well i had an orchy and BAS and two FFS and hundreds or hours of electro.. wow thats another story..

Anyway by the time i went to my first group support meeting at renasaince i was post op. That was after jan 99. I had had my GRS dec8th 98.

Anyway sorry about going off on a tangent but its been years and well i seem to have forgotten the sequence of my transition but i do have many memories poping back in my head.

So thats my rough experience with meeting TS's and transitioning alone for 8 months in my apartment and never really having anything to do with support groups in person but basically learning all i could from AOL.

I think we have to go through what we do because that is the fate we chose before coming to this earth. I regret nothing but my only hope in life is to one day know true love with another like me. But if my fate is to be alone then so be it. Transitioning was never about sex. Actually it was about getting away from the testosterone roller coaster that wreaked havoc on my life.

PS: I use to look like chuck norris and i hated it.. I love the person i see in the mirror and well i have grow much spiritually and thinking of myself in that past life is soooooo farrrrrrrrrr awayyyyyyyyyyy..

I guess the question i ask here is now who did you meet first? But what influence did they have on you. I think the TS i saw on a rerun of phil donohue was attracted to men and well to me it was never about an attraction but basically about being myself and free from that nasty secondary sex characteristic TESTOSTERONE

Caroline Cossey, when I heard that one of the bond girls in 'Diamonds are forever' was a TS.

Caroline Cossey was in "For Your Eyes Only" which was released in 1981.

I was working in a cinema at the time and when we ran that movie, I would watch for her 12 seconds of screen time. Even on my nights off, I'd come in to see her. I enjoyed the movie, but seeing her for that fleeting moment was a revelation to me. Being six feet tall suddenly didn't seem so insurmountable.

Ten years later, when I was in Trinidad recovering from SRS, I was watching Entertainment Tonight as they announced Tula's appearance in an upcoming Playboy. Her outing by the tabloid press was horrible for her, but it did have the effect of giving many of us hope.

when i was a kid and visiting my sister in philadelphia...she lived on chestnut st...that her friend was a guy and now is a girl.she said he had a real feminin body.i thought it was cool.i think the first well known ts i knew of was renee richards.i spents lots of time in philly as a kid so nothing was that big of a deal.my sisters were so liberal anyways!