Marcie and I left the mid-west almost two years to the day of her coming out to me. During the first year she dressed only at home or in anonymous fashion out in public, avoiding place where we might encounter someone we knew. She considered what she was doing to be cross dressing.
Later [421] she changed to identifying as trans as she felt the term ‘cross dresser’ had the connotation of sissy or dirty old man. However, she gradually began to acknowledged that her gender identity had changed. This self-recognition of how she internally viewed herself was her earliest step toward social transitioning2. This blog entry will focus on further steps including using a different name, changing her pronouns, and changing her appearance with clothing, makeup, jewelry, etc. 3, p. 129 on a regular basis.
In the beginning I referenced her as Marcie only when she was dressed. She introduced herself to store clerks, restaurant servers, and others who didn’t know her as Marcie. I switched between pronouns depending on the situation.
Unlike with many others, she first transitioned among my friends, specifically those at a distance. This came about because each of these friends knew I was working on a book, a mystery. They would regularly ask me for an update. Once I started working on my memoir it became difficult for me to update them on the mystery, since I’d stopped working on it.
So, with Marcie’s permission, as each of them asked about my writing, I told them about her. As expected, all three were supportive, asking how I was doing, asking about Marcie, and of course asking about progress on the book. Now I could incorporate comments about her into this small group of others. I was no longer completely in her closet, nor was she.
My memoir also prompted Marcie’s first time to dress in front of someone she knew other than me. On Day 474, a friend of mine came to our house so we could catch up. Marcie and I had planned to go out to dinner that evening, so when my friend arrived, she was upstairs putting on makeup and otherwise getting ready.
Marcie and I had discussed my telling this particular friend, the opportunity just hadn’t presented itself. This afternoon my friend and I talked about a number of interests before she mentioned my book. This was it; the chance to introduce her to Marcie. My friend was surprised but supportive. During college she’d had both trans and other LGBTQ+ friends, so she was knowledgeable and comfortable with those who were trans. She asked if she could meet Marcie.
I ran upstairs and let Marcie know my friend wanted to meet her. I must have been nervous because what I said didn’t make much sense when I blurted it out. Marcie was quite confused. She eventually realized she needed to come downstairs rather than remain upstairs while my friend was there.
All went well. Marcie quickly became comfortable with my friend. We planned for the three of us to go to dinner together in a couple of weeks. That didn’t work out, as I had a last minute request to help a sister move. So I flew away and left the two of them to fend for themselves. Marcie said there was no reason for her to turn down a good steak.
Our local social circle was relatively small and mostly limited to work settings so we didn’t have a great need for further disclosures. Our broader social circle was online. This didn’t require disclosure except to a couple of friends, who again knew I was writing a book.
A number of years before Marcie even realized she had an interest in cross dressing we had decided to retire somewhere in the southeast. We picked a specific location and an approximate time frame, albeit a few years down the road.
As the time to relocate came closer, Marcie began to talk more about transitioning full time. She decided the move would be the perfect opportunity to do so. Introducing Marcie to new people would be much easier than trying to explain a change in her gender identity to folks we already knew. We could save that for a later date on a need to know basis.
However, before moving I suggested to Marcie that we needed to tell our daughters and her sisters. Then when they came to visit her transition wouldn’t be the major focus of conversation. Another consideration was we didn’t want to tell one daughter or one sister without telling the other, forcing one to keep a secret from the other. Marcie also preferred to do this in person. Both pairs already had plans to visit us together before the move, so this worked out well. I was tired of being in the closet, tired of having to watch my language around the four of them. I’ll say more about how this went in a later post.
Transitioning with the move went better than expected in some ways and not as well in others. We were pleasantly surprised at the welcome we received in our new home. One evening shortly after we arrived, several of the neighbors had piled into a golf cart and came over to greet us [754].
I had begun to establish a rapport with these folks before Marcie came out of the house. Even after she did, I sensed no hint of discomfort with the fact we weren’t your typical heterosexual couple. Maybe their obvious enjoyment of an adult beverage before their trip had help. It didn’t matter. We were off to a good start in the neighborhood. Truth be told, Marcie was more uncomfortable than any of them, maybe because of the one to five ratio of her to them or the fact they hadn’t yet offered her a beer.
We also encountered no problems when being out in town, at the grocery store etc. An occasional person might give Marcie a second glance, but we heard no disparaging remarks. The community was a college town, and by nature more liberal than other areas in the south east. We’d been told by a member of the local PFLAG group that over the last couple years the group had provided education on LGBTQ+ issues to local service providers such as police, EMS, fire, etc. They assured us we’d be treated respectfully should we need any of their services.
I had originally thought this change might just be like flipping a switch. I was surprised Marcie’s desire to go 24/7 wasn’t quite as easy as expected. For one thing, unpacking boxes, moving furniture etc. in the heat proved to be difficult en femme. She soon converted to her guy shorts and shoes and things went much better.
Despite assurances we need not be uncomfortable with public officials, we were cognizant of the fact we lived just over the border in a neighboring county. This county was a bit more conservative. This became obvious when at election time we noted that permission for liquor by the drink was on the ballot. We also didn’t know if this community have received any specific LGBTQ+ education. As a result Marcie initially went en homme when doing business at government offices. That said, she did go en femme when getting her drivers’ license so her picture would match her usual presentation. Luckily we encountered no difficulty from any of the folks we interacted with that day.
Thus, her social transition to 24/7 was not like flipping a switch. She had to consider what was on the schedule for the day before she dressed. Some days we were just too busy with getting settled for her to have time to dress. Both of us were less comfortable than expected with being out and about, not knowing how others would react. But we barged ahead.
Oh, and her pierced ears. One of her driving motivations to socially transition was so she could get her ears pierced. She had anticipating this being one of the first things we did. She had already identified where she wanted this done. However, this shop didn’t have any open appointments for several weeks. She didn’t want to wait, so ended up going to a mall store.
By Day 965 I acknowledged that she had made a full social transition. She’d done nothing to physically transition other than changing her clothes, adding makeup, and piercing her ears. Yet she presented out in public as the woman she was and was generally accepted as such. She’d made just one small concession to more official recognition by replacing her name on her credit cards with her initials.
All in all her social transitioning went well. Not everyone has the opportunity to make a clean start, but for us it worked. No one knew what she looked like before. No one asked about the specifics of her transition. We shared that information slowly, over time, on a one to one basis with those we’d gotten to know.
I still say what she did took guts [646]. When we decided to move to the conservative southeast we didn’t know about Marcie. We didn’t anticipate this added, potential complication. But the south is not always as advertised. The people are much more welcoming than the politicians.
1 See Blog 1 for a discussion of the principles I have applied to the writing of this blog.
2 Planned Parenthood. (2023, April 9). What do I need to know about transitioning?. https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/gender-identity/transgender/what-do-i-need-know-about-transitioning
3 Thompson, C. B. (2024). Inside My Husband’s Closet, Transgender Publishing, https://transgenderpublishing.ca/
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