Being transgender is one of the hardest obstacles to
overcome in today’s society. The
transformation that one goes through is no small feat by any means. One puts everything at risk when he or she
decides that transition is for him or her.
The individual’s inner world will have to be expressed. This information will be judge by someone in
the medical field. The key to a
successful transition is to take things one step at a time.
The feeling that I was transgender did not start until I was
around fifteen years of age. Before this,
I identified as a gender congruent male.
For whatever reason, my brain decided it would be a cool idea to try on
opaque hosiery sometime during puberty.
I never actually accomplished this goal until much later. The idea remained a fantasy for quite some
time. I never actually told anyone in
person about my desires until the summer of 2002. While I was in the shower, this individual
put a skirt and top on my bed as a joke.
The only thing that this person did not realize was that she was the one
being fooled. When I got out of the
shower, I saw the clothes and tried them on to see if they would fit. Once I told the individual that brought out
the clothes for me to find, she let me keep them.
Around the spring of 2003, my desires went beyond just
wearing women’s clothes. I actually
wanted to be seen as a girl in everyday life.
I had no idea where this thought came from. I did not know what to do with this new found
idea. I developed a sense of jealousy
towards the girls in my school. I wanted
to be as they were, but I knew that I could not achieve this goal no matter how
hard that I tried.
During the winter of 2004, I decided that it was time to
start developing my voice. I did not
practice very often. I only practiced
for about an hour every night. I
eventually gave up after three weeks of practice because I still was not one
hundred percent sure that I was indeed a transsexual.
I then decided that even if I were a woman at birth, I
probably would not have been that different anyway. That is when I started identifying as
genderless individual. This only lasted for
a little over a year. It was probably
just an effort to reduce to my dysphoria.
I did not realize that my gender issues would be back stronger than ever
when they surfaced once again.
During the spring of 2007, my dysphoria returned to the
forefront of my mind. I became upset
about being a guy. I then went searching
for information on the Internet regarding transsexualism. I eventually found the huge trans community
that existed on Youtube. I ended up
receiving a private message from someone in regards to a comment I had left on
a video. She and I became great
friends. This individual also became my
twenty four hour therapist.
For the next four years, I kept going back and forth on
whether I was truly trans or not. This
was a very dark period in my life. I
could not find any logical reason as to why I felt fine as a male for fifteen
years of my life, and then suddenly feel negative about my gender for the
second half of my life. I got so
depressed about not being able to figure this out that I once said that I
wanted to suck all the sin out of the world and then die. I never had a strong Christian upbringing, so
it is interesting that I used the word “sin” instead of “evil.”
During the spring of 2011 is when I finally decided that I
was going to transition. I figured out
that I would never know one hundred percent if transition was right for me
until I decided to go for it. I did not
have that much to lose in the first place.
I was not close to anyone in my family outside of the immediate
members. I did not have a whole lot of
close friends left. They had all moved
to another state at this point in their lives.
I did not have a job at this point, so it would have been impossible to any
type of employment. The only thing
holding me back was my own doubt.
The first step I took in my transition was to develop a
female voice. I did not have any money
to do anything else. You do not need
money in order to work on a voice. Voice
surgery is just expensive garbage that does not yield positive results the
majority of the time. Why pay for
something that you can achieve yourself?
The first thing I did in regards to developing a female
voice was talk to my friend from Youtube.
I also downloaded a spectrogram as well as virtual voice tuner. I learned that the female voice is between
200-230 hertz while voices are between 100-120 hertz. Raising the pitch up to the female range was
not super difficult. Finding the correct
resonance for the female voice is the challenging part. Females have less of a bass in their voices,
but the trick is not getting rid of the bass completely. The female voice is just less of the male voice. In order to achieve the female resonance, one
needs to tighten up the base of her through and then relax enough in order to
project her voice loud enough to be heard.
It is easier to show how this is done than the written word can do to
explain the process. There was a content
creator on Youtube that showed the breathing exercises that she used. I learned where the female resonance was
located by breathing in through my mouth and nose at the same time. By doing this, one will hear the breath inside
her own head. Everyone has heard her
voice inside her own head before. If one
has ever been to the mountains or inside of a pool, then chances are that her
ears have popped while she was in the middle of a conversation. This can also occur after an individual
yawns. Immediately after she starts to
speak, the voice will be in her head and then the ears pop. Hearing the breath inside of one’s head is
similar to those instances. When words
are spoken, the throat needs to remain someone tightened but loose enough to be
projected. When I first learned how to
speak in a more feminine voice, I fell victim to the same issue that every
other transsexual does when developing her voice. I was too scared to relax my throat enough to
allow my full voice to be heard. This
made things sound off. I did not like
the sound of my voice at all. After I
practiced for several months, I realized that I no longer needed to breathe
through my nose in order to help tighten up throat. I learned how to tighten my throat and just
breathe in through my mouth. Melodic
intonation is the final step in achieving a female voice. I used the Harvard Sentences in order to
learn how to speak like the majority of women in today’s society. I just downloaded a few sample files from the
Internet. The first sentence is the one
I practiced the most. This sentence read,
“The birch canoe slid under the smooth planks.”
I must have recorded this sentence at least fifty times or more.
During April of 2012, I scheduled a voice consultation with
the legendary Andrea James. I was shocked
to learn that I was rather advanced in my voice progression. I still did not like the sound of my voice,
but I would have to learn to accept it as time pushed forward.
In May of 2013, I finally obtained a job out in the work
force. I was a call center
representative at my local electric utility company. I had to go back to using my male voice for
the majority of each day. I still kept
up with my voice practices at night.
Throughout the next year and a half, I noticed that my male voice had
changed somehow. While trying to speak
with more melodic intonation to customers in my male voice, I realized that I
was going up into the female register without even trying. The customers never said a word about the
change in pitch and resonance. They were
too busy complaining about how I sounded like a foreigner. I was born and raised in the Baltimore area,
so I have no idea why others thought I was Chinese or Jamaican.
During April of 2015, I decided to come out to my supervisor
at work. She found out from the human
resources department that I would need to have my name legally changed in order
to present as female. I still had to use
the men’s bathroom until my name was officially changed by a judge. The people I would run into within the
bathroom were starting to ask me if I belonged in there. I told my supervisor as well as my human
resources representative about the issue, but there was nothing anyone could do
until my name change was finalized.
The name change process is not that difficult in the state
of Maryland. Only three sheets of
paperwork are required to change one’s name.
I had to fill out the petition for a name change in the most princess
like handwriting possible. I then had to
fill out the paper to publish my name change in a local paper. I then filled out part of the order for a
name change that the judge would approve.
The total cost for everything came to about seventy two dollars. The judge denied the order the first time due
to my bad handwriting. I went up to the
courthouse the following week and got everything resolved. I had someone assist me on how I could make
my handwriting more legible.
My name was legally changed as of July 31, 2015. I was finally able to present as female at
work two weeks later. My human resources
representative held mini meetings within the call center. I did not particularly care for the
presentation regarding the overview of transgenderism, but the meetings were
not God awful by any stretch of the imagination. I should have been the one to give my own
presentation. None of my co-workers
showed any ill will towards me after I transitioned. One girl hugged in the bathroom because she
had an uncle that went through a gender transition as well
Living as a transsexual has not been too horrible. I still get misgendered from time to time,
but that does not bother me as much anymore.
I know what I have been through to get where I am today, and that is all
that matters. I no longer need anyone
else’s approval to be who I am. My
thoughts are what brought me to the choices that I have made over the course of
my life. Just because someone else has a
different idea about how another individual should live does not make his or
her perception more accurate by any means.
Everyone makes correct choices most of the time, but the consequences do
not always look how he or she thinks it should.
The only poor choice that one can make is to think about negative
situations that have not arisen or to choose to be so afraid of making the
wrong choice that he or she does nothing at all. I chose to do something about the discomfort
that I had with my gender. I ended up
smelling like a rose in the end. Anyone
can come up on the positive side of a situation as long as he or she keeps
pushing forward. As long as a person
remains active towards some end, then it will be impossible for the individual
to lose.
