Alright guys, now it’s the time for me to tell you about how my trans-perience took place. But before the story begin let me tell you that this story is kinda “bizarre, awkward or absurd”, or unusual, whichever you, especially trans people, might choose. OK, let’s begin:

As far as I remembered, I started to experience “the lady inside me” on around the middle of junior high school. However, if you ask about how I was like back then, surprise guys, I’m really so masochist & “tough guy” type! Even politically standing, I was practically a staunch Stalinist then fascist sympathizer back then. I disliked practically EVERYTHING feminine/girly/feminist, from makeups, fashion styles, “gentlemen” notion, “ladies first” notion, so on! Yeah, lets say I’m a huge nihilist, a staunch Chinese chauvinist back then. Furthermore, as I’m deeply influenced by socialism, I believe that emancipation means no “gentlemen” notion, no “ladies first”. If women wanted to be treated equal as men, they must also share the same burden as men did, without exception. But honestly speaking, though, those socialist ideals are still deeply entrenched in my mind even until today.

But here’s what’s really unusual ’bout my masochism at that time: despite I dislike anything feminine/girly/feminist, I still enjoyed reading women magazines, well just mainly because of enriching knowledge (and the information presented are really interesting). No more, no less. Knowledge is power, that’s the proverb. Yet, my machismo at the time (well, even until today) was really “conquer everything in your path”. Or long story short, the “alpha male machismo”. And, what increased my hatred towards feminism/girly/feminine stuff was that in those women magazines, in my own machismo eyes, they tend to “put down” men, either intentionally/not (don’t believe me? Just open the “relationship” or “love and sex” sections to prove it!). And also, during that time, I often heard stories about men fooled down by women. These circumstances, again, made my machismo increased, thus making me hating the femme world even deeper, despite of that I still give a “leeway” to buildup the machismo by absorbing any knowledge from anywhere to increase the machismo power. However, this “machismo buildup”, brought a very serious “side effect” to me: I almost turned gay because of the intense machismo that made me thought “I’d better had a boyfriend rather than had a girlfriend who would fool me later on”. Not to mention that most of the girls disliked me because I’m “too mean/strict too them” because of both my hostilities to feminism and my staunch Stalinist-militaristic stance.

Teresa Teng (1953-1995), the first female idol I’ve ever admired

Suddenly, on my 8th grade (in fact, since late 7th grade), suddenly everything turned to “backfire”. During this time I began to both enjoy and admire Teresa Teng (1953-1995)’s songs. Teresa Teng (Chinese: 鄧麗君 (Deng Lijun/Teng Li-chun), Japanese: テレサ・テン (Teresa Teng)) was a 1970-1980s Taiwanese Mandopop and J-pop singer, who enjoyed immense cross-culture popularity especially among Chinese and Japanese people in her heyday even until today. Her calm, sweet voice and looks, her fluty songs, and her elegant stage manners all become the attractive things about her for practically all groups of people, both men and women. This phenomenon was kinda unusual for me at the time, since I’ve never admired any female celebrity, despite I used to fan some like the Corrs, Christina Aguilera, etc. However, after I listened to Teresa Teng, first of all, I began to realize the difference between  a fan and an admirer, especially given to the fact that Teresa Teng had deceased. As a fan, you can’t expect to shake hands with her, chat with her (unless you got a telepathic/supernatural ability!), since she’s dead! If you continued to become a fan of her, people will call you a lunatic. However, as an admirer, you still could regard her as an inspirator then innovate from that point. That’d be the wiser way to deal with this fact. This distinction of thought soon became the basis of how I discovered “the lady inside me”.

As I’ve told in the previous paragraph, I was really mesmerized by Teresa Teng’s calm, sweet, elegant voice, beauty, styles, and manners. So strong the mesmerism of her that she could become the first female celebrity I ever admired! From this standpoint, I began to admire her so much. Her mesmerism became such a huge inspiration for me to perform (I love to sing), then, my personal beauty standard. But again, how could a fan different from an admirer? Well, based on my experience, If you become a fan, let’s say, becoming Beyonce’s fan, what stroked your mind is that “how could I get a girlfriend like her, date her and f**k her?” But an admirer will think “how cold I become as sexy, as beautiful as Beyonce?” I began to enjoy following Teresa Teng’s elegant singing manner, which then frowned my parents. Then, as time went on and the mesmerism grew stronger, I started to thought about “how I could become as beautiful as her?” especially given to the point that her beauty is kinda unique for me. However, this, again, sparked frowning from my peers and parents, especially from other boys at schools, my sisters, and my mom,  saying that “to choose a girlfriend like her is ridiculous. She’s not pretty at all, you know!” Well, I’m not searching for a girlfriend like her, I’m searching the way about how to become beautiful as her! Despite, I also realized that since nobody’s perfect, although I used to plan to model my beauty after her, I also must “discard the bad things” from her beauty, as my mom and peers pointed out: she had a flat nose (this is really a minus in East Asian beauty standards) yet mine is quite sharp (from my mom), and she had a flat chest (unattractive for most males’ beauty standard: from my peers). We simply can’t imitate her 100%: pick up the good and improve the rest.

Nishida Sachiko (1939-). Photograph taken in around 1963-1964.

Chiaki Naomi (1947-). Her type of beauty is somewhat unique. Photogtaph taken in around 1972.

After I admired Teresa Teng, thanks to her Japanese songs, my chauvinist stance about Chinese culture as my began to thaw. I soon began to admire other Japanese female singers of her contemporaries (mainly from 1960-1980s), and all of them are, for me, good looking ones, yet their music are also equally attractive to Teresa Teng’s. Despite, there are also lots of East Asian celebrities I admired of their beauty despite of their acting or songs are not so appealing for me. This widespread of admiration, soon began to influence my admiration over beauty standards. In my own eyes, most of them had a distinctive, unique, elegant style of beauty I yearned for. Then, my machismo began to deteriorate, as I became no longer so hostile to feminine/girly stuffs, but instead, wishing to becoming the part of it! I was deeply enchanted with those exotic type beauty, even leading me to think that I wanted to become a woman! I began to enjoy fashion, makeup world, and so on. Thus, I became more coquettish but calm.Yet so, this stance also produced a quite severe side effect, that because of

Yashiro Aki (1950-). Her beauty by today’s Japanese standard is still considered as “exotic”. Taken in around 1975-1976.

Koyanagi Rumiko (1952-). Her beauty is kinda exotic hot. Photo taken in around 1976-1983.

this kind of thought, I also began to deny myself as a born-male, become attracted to men, or in short words, covertly homosexual. Yet so, homosexuality, transgenderism are still a heavy topic in my home society which is still very ultraconservative. My mom, who is the most powerful figure at home and extremely ultratraditional-conservative, really stunned and denounced my stance. From what I understood, she both can’t believe and accept that I wish to become a woman, having SRS, and get  a boyfriend. Furthermore, she also insisted and convinced me that I’m still a straight normal guy, and homosexuality is dangerous, yet transgender/transsexualism are just mere fantasy like UFO stories. But yet, rebelling against her isn’t the best way to do now, so what I could do was acknowledging her conservative stance and trying to forget about the trans-desire. For a few weeks after the “interrogation”, I really struggled to scrap those “trans desires”, which means, restoring the machismo. However, the more I tried to scrap it, the harder for me to resist the backfire. Thus, after around 6-7 weeks, my newest form of “trans-piration” began to appear. This “major interrogation” did happen on my first days at high school.

In this newest for of “trans-piration”, the ideal for exotic beauty possession still remain firm, however, now I become instead attracted to women. If I see an attractive woman, the burning desire that comes out doesn’t just the desire to date and fuck her as most normal men do, but also, the desire to become at least as beautiful as she does. From the scientific and religious background, I acknowledge and understand the validity for the reason behind anti-same sex marriage notion (in the sense of, sexual intercourse as well). Besides, philosophically speaking, I began to embrace the notion of androgyny. However, as you all might predict, some of the greatest stumbling blocks for this kind of thought include the rigid prescribed notion of “how a man and woman should behave” that often violates the androgyny principles embraced by most traditional religions. Not to mention the notion of “homosexuality and/or transgenderism is a sin” based on the orthodox, conservative Judeo-Christianity-Islamic values I’m raised from. By this circumstances, given to my position as a minor still dependent on parents’ care, the wisest thing for me to do is, again, keep low profile while keep enlightening myself.

Suddenly, on the second half of my 10th grade, I encountered Aikido, a martial art and philosophy that will soon become a great amplifier for honing my femininity besides of self-defense capability, despite of maintaining the attraction towards women as opposite sex and comprehending religions. Or in other words, Aikido has helped me honing the androgyny inside me. Now, the prevailing “lady inside me” is the combination of a femme-fatale and a grand-princess. Aside from that, after time passes on, the notion of androgyny/hybridity manifested throughout the transgender experience roars even more. Especially, after I watched a classic 1957 movie Sayonara by Marlon Brando, where Nakamura’s dialogue depicting the ideal of a kabuki player really enhances my androgyny thought: “a kabuki player must possess the power of a man and a grace of a woman.” This is an exact analogous expectation I got from practicing Aikido. Yet, the exact phrase for the androgyny expectation for a kabuki player, some other rumors say, has a more intense transgendered or androgyny expectation: “the mind and power of a man and the beauty, the grace, and the heart of a woman”. Despite this ideal is stated for the kabuki players, soon, I found that this ideal also works for budoka and after all, all human beings as well, no matter men or women. This androgyny ideal also reshaped my character from a stiff escapist, and preventive mentality to a universalist facing up, curative mentality, in which the androgyny not only made myself a more idealist, but also a more realistic and warm as well. I hope that this ideal could last forever.

These are the glimpse of how “the lady inside me” evolved. It’s so hard for me to put my background story in words, but now, at least you can see sketchy image of how my ideal and personality evolved.  I’ll soon make a video based from this entry to both clarify and elaborate my trans-thought. See ya soon!