More Musings
So Friday night I was hanging out with a new friend who happens to be Trans. Well hanging out might be phrasing it a bit optimistically because I was kinda low key due to still feeling crappy from my recent surgery. Anyhoo, she was here at my place (Chateau de Tranny) and we were chatting away about the struggles of transition along with how great it feels to actually be doing it. She is very early in the process and she is in that uncomfortable space that I remember so well. She is small in stature (lucky beeotch) but she is still clearly masculine looking in many ways. Her hair is longish and cut rather feminine (beautiful hair) but her skin is still testosterone tinged, meaning it has that ruddy maleness that hormone therapy will eventually mitigate. She basically is stuck in between genders in a way that is at once liberating and frustrating. Because of her size and great hair she is not immediately masculine even in jeans, T-shirt and no makeup, yet because she is so early in her physical transition, she isn’t likely to be read as feminine in close contact. This is a place I remember well because it was less than a year ago when I could have been read either way at any given time. In fact before my first round of FFS (over a year ago) I was in the exact position that my friend finds herself in now. It was a time that I describe as the Sir, Ma’am, Sir comedy, when people were struggling to get it right without offending. In those days I was not exactly cross-dressing, but not exactly butching it up either. In the beginning I didn’t really care how I was gendered by the public and I kind of enjoyed the whole gender queer thing. Of course I was openly transitioning, meaning I would tell anyone who asked what I was doing, and for a while I had a lot of fun with it. It wasn’t long before I stopped having fun and began to get impatient and that’s one of the things I was talking about with my new friend. She is feeling lots of things, from freedom, to impatience, to frustration, to fear, to joy and she was wondering how much of that is normal. Well of course I told her that it’s all normal, and none of it is normal at the same time. There is no guidebook for what a TS person will experience during transition. We all bring our own unique experiences and prejudices to the journey, our own set of personalized luggage if you will. One of the things that make us unique is how we dress. One of her concerns before coming over is how she should be dressed. Now that may sound kind of silly but this new Trans Girl prefers to wear jeans, T-shirts and minimal makeup, and she was afraid that she would offend me by not femming it up when she came over. She was also wondering if that was normal for a transsexual to be well, a bit of a tomboy in the fashion department. I just laughed and told her it was as normal as anything else we do. I myself have written extensively on my rather pedestrian fashion sense. I wear jeans on the weekend, and slacks at work. I rarely wear dresses and it’s not because I don’t like them, it’s mainly because keeping my legs looking good for dresses is just not worth the effort. This turn in the conversation got us talking about clothes and the misconception that many people have about transsexual women. By many people I’m referring to the cross-dressing community that often gets lumped in with us in politics and discussion forums. Because I’ve been transitioning for over three years now and because I have a higher than average profile due to this very blog, I have had the opportunity to meet and befriend several transsexual women in various stages of transition. Most of us have very little in common, but NONE of us have a particular interest in women’s clothes other than wanting to look like regular women. Don’t get me wrong, most of us like to shop and most of us want to look as attractive as we can but that is all in the service of having people treat us the way we feel. If I don’t feel like a dude, then why would I want to dress like one? It’s in this sense that I totally understand cross-dressers and why they enjoy playing dress up on the weekends. If they feel like something other than a man, then it’s fun to dress up and pretend to be a woman if only for a few hours. I cross-dressed for about a year before I realized I needed to transition and I can attest that cross-dressing can be a lot of fun. I can also attest that my transition had nothing to do with cross-dressing. Nobody I know who is actually transitioning has wardrobe in their top ten reasons for doing it. Every T-girl I know would trade in all her skirts and heels for the simple pleasure of being accepted as a woman instead of something in between. If a genie popped out of a bottle with a magic pair of burlap boxer shorts that would make the rest of the world see me as nothing short of a woman, then my VS account would be closed that evening. I care nothing for the trappings of femininity, other than how they make me look, I do not need feminine things to make me feel feminine. As far as I know, I’ve felt feminine for as long as I can remember. This is a characteristic shared by every Trans woman I know. Speaking for myself, I have just come back from a second round of FFS along with some further body modifications in the pursuit of one simple goal; To look like a woman with no effort. I want to pop out of bed and walk outside in sweats and a T-shirt with no makeup and have the world view me as exactly how I feel myself to be. I don’t care about panties, or hose, or bras, or camis or anything else that the cross-dressing community concerns themselves with. I only care that the world sees me for who I really am. I think any person who is considering transition should seriously think about their motivations if they are motivated at all by a particular style of underpants. Transition is no joke, and there aren’t enough pretty panties in the world to make the hard times any easier. There’s nothing wrong as far as I can tell with having some kind of clothing fetish, but I can promise you that any thrill you might get from wearing a bra under your shirt and tie is not going to shield you from the slings and arrows of a public transition. So my new friend and I have a quick dinner at a local restaurant. There she is, in the glorious middle. Her T-shirt has a feminine cut to it but otherwise non-descript. Her jeans could be smaller because she has recently lost a lot of weight. Her hair is tossled, her makeup is light. I notice she gets a couple of looks, but as we talk I look at her face, in her eyes, there’s no pretense. She isn’t hiding from herself or anyone else. What is she? She’s a real transsexual in the midst of a real transition, that’s what she is. Another brave person who is tired of living a life that isn’t hers and has made the permanent decision to show the world who she really is, and stiletto heels aren’t necessary to get this done. On second thought maybe a wardrobe change might help after all. She may not need any foundation garments, but a suit of armor definitely couldn’t hurt.
DATE OF PUBLISHING
04-AUG-2013
SOURCE LINK
http://www.badtranny.com/bad-tranny/2013/8/4/more-musings.html