JosefKirchner.com

I am what you may call a male to female to male transsexual.  My journey to finding me is a different one and may have taken a long time, but I don't regret a thing because I respect the journey and what has been learned which has been invaluable to me and many other people.

Life began for me in Louisville, Kentucky, USA in April of 1964.  I knew my emotional orientation was towards boys from at least the age of 5.  Later, of course, emotions gave way to sexuality which I knew boys were the target of, not girls. 

Sexual orientation can be a disturbing time for kids when one part of the brain says the same sex appears to be mating material, but another part of the brain has been trained to torture yourself with false ideas like, "homosexuality is wrong, unnatural, etc."

Thankfully, I received a good University education which taught me about how the human species begins with a female default in the womb, both brain and body.  This information shouldn't only be in University level textbooks, but should be taught in elementary school biology so children could know the truth about their bodies and brains instead of the lies and misinformation they received from a "manipulation" and not and education.  All babies physically begin life with a female default body and brain and it is only at the 6-8 differeniation period during the 9 months that a female default baby will become male.  Yes, this mean that every man on the planet has has a sexchange from female to male in the womb at 6-8 weeks and on varying levels all men are still in touch with their feminine side.

This is how I believe homosexual orientation is set.  Not only must the body change from female default, but the brain must also change from female default.  We understand that a female brain, for reproductive purposes begins with a heterosexual orientation so for the male of the species that female default brain must defeminize, but also masculinize before the sexual orientation part of the brain will become that of a heterosexual male.  What happens if the sexual orientation center of the brain does not defeminize and fully masculinize?  You get a female heterosexual orientation trapped in a male body.   The male will see other males as mating material and at a young age that can be very disturbing for a boy because so many people do not understand homosexual oriention is inborn and have created all kinds of negative  remedies for homosexuality.

Some of those negative remedies for homosexuality we create in our own heads and for the purposes of this website I will mention one--transsexuality.  While I see nothing wrong with someone living their lives however they feel, I believe some are not presented with alternatives and life seems very black and white--you either must fit in the boy box or the girl box with no inbetween.  This was part of my journey.

As a young boy who was more in touch with my feminine side than other boys I was often teased in school for being a sissy.  Later when kids learned the word "fag" they labeled me with it and I was still unsure and struggling with my identity and possible sexuality.  When I reached my teens I knew I had to find out what was going on with me and I tried to find anything I could read about homosexual orientatation at my school library.  My findings were insatisfactory and during my highschool years I made access of the shopping mall bookstores where I found a copy of The Joy of Gay Sex.

It was age 17 when I was in the B. Dalton bookstore at the mall that I met my first adult homosexual.  He was looking at The Joy of Gay Sex too.  He smiled at me and I guess I was experiencing my first gay cruizing.  We began talking and walked around the mall together, never once talking about our obvious mutual interest in guys.  To make a long story short, his name was Carlos Villasmil from Caracas Venezuela and he was a year old than me and attending University of South Florida.  He became my first boyfriend.

Carlos introduced me to the world of gay bars.  Because I looked mature and the legal drinking age in Florida was 18 I never got carded.  Age 17 was an early awakening of what gay life was all about.  I was always the relationship minded guy, but it seemed like most guys only wanted one-time-only experiences.  Then when I found a guy that like me he always wanted me to penetrate him sexually and my sexuality didn't work that way.  I was a bottom and didn't like oral sex on me.  Also, having to masterbate myself to have an orgasm while a guy was penetrating me made me feel bitter.  lol   I guess this was how I realized that if I were a girl and had a vagina I wouldn't have to deal with all of things I didn't prefer sexually with guys.

Seeing transsexuals doing the female impersonator shows in the bars seemed like the answer for me.  Being an overly emotional teenager and not dealing well with coming out and gay life and my mother hating me because I was gay made me depressed and I overdosed in an attempt to escape my pain. Afterwards I began talking to a therapist at 17 about how I felt like I was a woman trapped in a man's body.  Two years later at age 19 I began the official process of transition to alter my body physically to appear female.

Five years later while living in Europe I had penile inversion surgery with Dr. Michael Seghers in Brussels, Belgium to give my penis the appearance of female genitalia.  At first I was very pleased and felt as if my life was finally right and I was at peace.  Slowly, but surely though over the next 20 years that peace erroaded and I was faced with the reality that no amount of surgery could ever allow me the peace of being female.  I could not escape the memory that I was born male and there would always be flaws in my female appearance and physicality.  Certainly nobody would ever truly accept me as female if they knew the truth about me so I realized living as female was all an elaborate little game of dressup I had played on myself.  I remember when it really struck me hard was when I was working as a nurse in Kentucky while living with my grandmother when she was in the last stages of her life back in 2002.  I saw this television commerical in a patients room of a happy family--husband, wife, kids and how I longed to be that wife and have that handsome husband and kids.  I gave myself a good psychological slap in the face and said, "You idiot!  You will never have that life because you are a man who has had a sexchange to look like a woman no matter how much your heart aches or how much you try you will NEVER be a woman.  Everyday will always only be a life of pretending and a sad reminder of what you can't be and can't have.

So, here is a picture of what I looked like before I decided to leave the life of pretend womanhood behind.  Yes, I know this picture is worn out, but its the only one I have from back then that shows how well I looked as female.  There is nothing more convincing than a nice bathing suit photo.

 As you can see I was very feminine and passable in every way, even down to a perfected female voice.  I had even married and later divorced a man who never knew I was transsexual.  Perfecting your appearance to pass as female doesn't satisfy because it is you who down deep on the inside knows that it's not real.  You have to do a lot of lying to yourself when you are transsexual to try to be happy.  I just got tired of lying to myself.  What took many years to perfect was removed basically in one day in one fell swoop of the hairdressers sheers.  On October 26, 2004 my very long hair was cut off at the back of my neck.  We measured my hair and it was 52 inches long.  I had a very thick and glorious head of hair and I wanted to donate it to Locks of Love, but they refused to accept it because it had been color treated, so I still have my souvenier ponytail.

Immediately after my haircut I began strapping down my 38 DDD breasts to dress as male again.  It felt so good to finally be able to just walk the way my body was created to walk instead of trying to take smaller steps like a girl.  Months later in May of 2005 documentary producer Tom Murray followed me to San Francisco to have breast removal surgery with Dr. Michael Brownstein.  He did a very nice job of removal however, his nipply replacement is too high and now low enough and more out to the sides.  Many female to male transsexuals who have gone to Dr. Brownstein for breast removal say he "marks" female to male transsexuals by placing the nips in a more female position.  This is often why some people in their ignorence will accuse me of being a female to male transsexual.

Tom Murray did a great biography about my life and framed it with the stories of five other transsexuals in varying degrees or styles of transsexuality who were very pleased (or so they said) with their lives.  You can check out this documentary about me at www.AlmostMyself.com

The last six years since transitioning back to living as male have been very good for me.  Not that I ever dreamed things would be so good