Behind the Mask: Going Through Changes

by Scott Ledbetter and Stephanie Ross

10-25-2015

From early on in our lives, we are told what to think, believe and say.  Others are bad because they do not look like us, or talk like us or even worship the same God as us.  Children are brought up to be who they are programmed to be; just like a computer.  And when they do not behave the way they are supposed to behave, then they are to be reprogrammed or shunned.

For the first eleven and three-quarter years of my life, I was a girl.  I had dresses, dolls, tea parties, and cooked and cleaned.  I hated when I had to dress as a boy because I was expected to be someone that I was not.  Whenever my father was at work, I was called Misty Dawn, and would go to my mother's relatives as a girl.

At church and at school, I had to be a boy.  My father would complain because I was not manly like he wanted.  He would get angry with me because I did not want to work on cars and get all greasy.  I would rather be inside cooking than outside mowing the lawn or working on the house.  I wanted to be around girls and women, preferring their company to the company of men and boys.  On Thanksgiving, I was always forced to go sit with the men when I really wanted to be in the kitchen cooking with the women.

As far back as I can remember, I loved boys.  I learned to like girls, too, but I really wanted to be friends and do things with them.  I had one female friend that I would go over to her house and play house.  We didn't play doctor and nurse; we played house and cooking.  Although I was not allowed to join the Boy Scouts because they were sponsored by a different denomination and met on Sunday's, I really wanted to be a member of the Girl Scouts.

When I went to Church, I was so conflicted because I knew what the Bible said.  I knew that Deuteronomy 22:5 said, "The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God."  As a biological male, I was wrong to wear female clothes, but I never considered myself a male, so I felt that when I wore men's clothes, I was sinning.  I thought that I was a female.  So I became angry and bitter because it seemed that I was damned if I do and damned if I don't.

I knew what Leviticus 18:22 said, "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."  I knew that, as a biological male, that I was not allowed to be with a boy/man, and this pushed me to like girls/women in a sexual way and not in a friendship-only manner.  This caused me to be awkward when trying to find a "girlfriend" and chasing girls away, which made me very angry and bitter.  But I desired to be with boys/men, and thought that I was a girl.  So I became angry and bitter because it seemed that I was damned if I do and damned if I don't.

I knew what Ephesians 5:28 said, "So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself", but I hated my body and actually hoped, believed, and prayed that my male genitals would just rot and fall off.  So then, how could I ever love a woman when I could not love my own body.  So I became angry and bitter because it seemed that I was damned if I do and damned if I don't.

I took my anger out on my dad, because it was because of him that I had to be a male.  It seemed that nothing that I did could ever make him happy.  Although my grades were good at school, I had trouble focusing because all I could think about was being a girl and how I hated being a boy at school.  I was constantly in trouble at school, and that caused me to be constantly in trouble with my dad.  My school gave out paddlings when we did wrong, and if I got a paddling at school, I got a whooping at home from dad.  So I became angry and bitter because it seemed that I was damned if I do and damned if I don't.

In late July of 1984, I heard my mother making plans to leave my dad.  She caught me, and told me that if I said nothing, when we left, I could be Misty all the time.  So I said nothing, because all I wanted was to be a girl.  When we left, at the first place we went to, I was told that I could not be Misty until we got our own place.  It was there that I got beat up while being called a nasty "faggot".  The second place we went I could not be Misty, and then when we finally settled in Mississippi, I was told to just wait until we got our own place.

When my mother divorced my father, she said that if I wrote about how terrible my father was in a letter to the judge, that I could be Misty where we were at; so I did what she asked, putting down exactly what she told me to say.  But then, the judge wanted me to testify in person, so a female cousin that I was very close to in Texas came out and dressed me up and talked about how all my relatives back in Texas missed me, and how that I made a beautiful girl.  The day that I was to testify, my mother promised again that all I had to do was just tell the judge what I had written down, and I could get out of the boys clothes forever.  my female cousin was there holding my hand before I was called in to see the judge.  I testified just as I was told, and when I came out from talking to the judge, my cousin was gone, and I had to go back to being Scott.  So I became angry and bitter because it seemed that I was damned if I do and damned if I don't.

When we finally got our own place, an apartment not far from downtown Oxford, my mother angrily told me that I was the man of the house now and that she didn't raise a faggot.  My heart was ripped out of me.  My mother would continue to call me faggot, and even some of her friends would.  I was so angry and bitter that I would just fly into rages.  

When my father got his first visitation and my brother and I went back to Texas, he took my mother to court there in order to get custody.  I begged him to not let my mother meet with me, but the judge forced my brother and I to meet with her.  She once again promised me that if I came back with her, I could be Misty, and if I stayed with my father, that he would never allow that.  I knew that he would never allow it, so when the judge met with my brother and I and asked me who I wanted to live with, I could not answer; so my mother continued custody.  The whole way back I was berated for her believing that I provoked my father into taking her to court and was told that I was never going to be a girl again.

After we came back from Texas, I was taken out, beaten senseless, and with my head shoved down right beside a band saw blade, I was raped.  I was told that the guy wanted what I gave other men.  Before I even went through puberty, men were already having sex with me.  I did not even have sex with a woman until I was in college, and even then, I had to be told by her what I was supposed to do.  I did not even have a girlfriend until college.  When I got married, I was a horrible husband.  I told my wife that I was really a woman and that I wanted to dress like one.  She let me once, and then said she was disgusted.  So my anger that I had harbored towards my mother for all the lies she told me was then transferred to my wife.  Needless to say, that destroyed my marriage.

In my second marriage, I told my wife again about how that I was a woman, and she even let me dress up at home.  Then she hooked me up with a man, and it felt great.  But then we moved to Texas, and back around my father's family.  At home I would dress up, and she would help me with make-up and my hair.  When we moved to Vegas, she took me to gay bars and let me go out in public as a woman.  After the end of my first marriage, I had left Christianity because I had married a PK.  My second wife was a pagan.  But when she almost died, she converted to Christianity, and all of a sudden, I was not allowed to be a girl anymore because that would be a sin.  So I became angry and bitter because it seemed that I was damned if I do and damned if I don't.

She began to make fun of me and mock me, telling me that she needed a real man, even though she was bisexual and still wanted to be with women.  She even told me that I was demonic.  When she left me, she took our son with her, and over the years, told my son how that I was a disgusting faggot and now he refuses to even speak to me. I had another woman that thought she could convert me and stop me from being a woman.  But she failed as well.  I left Christianity and had already tried converting to Judaism because too many Christians had told me how that I was not a Christian but a sinner because I knew that I was a woman.

But after my second wife left, I left Judeo-Christianity altogether.  I had gone into paganism, following Jewish Kabbalah into Pagan Kabbalah.  Although I worked offshore in the US Merchant Marines, when I was home, I would live as a girl as much as I could, and planned on having sexual reassignment surgery.  I met one Christian lady, and she convinced me that I could be a good man and husband.  

A work in progress

After that, I met Ruth.  Even though she is a biological female, she is just like a soft male.  For 8+ years, I tried my best to turn her into the woman that I wanted to be, while I was so turned on by the man inside of her.  It got to the point where we were fighting a lot and neither of us was happy.  I finally decided to stop living a lie.  People think that they have been talking to Scott all the time, but the reality is that the Scott that people were talking to was a shell and it was me inside of that shell that people were talking to.  

Do I like men?  Yes.  Do I like women?  Yes.  Am I a male?  Only on the outside, and I desire to change that.  Ruth has had a complete hysterectomy, and if I was to have a sexual reassignment surgery, I would have everything that she has.  Ruth has said that she does not plan on leaving me, and fully supports me.  Will I be having sex with a man?  Only if you consider Ruth a man - and I do.  I have chosen the name of Stephanie Elizabeth Tianest Ross.  

This does not change who I am.   This does not change what Ye Olde Journalist is.  It only makes me stop pretending to be something that I am not.  I am an eleven and three quarters year old girl, that is trying to learn how to be a lady.  So in order to align my body with my soul, I am transgender.  If you choose not to keep me in your life for being who I am, then that is your choice and I will not lose any sleep over it.