I think I am done with gay bars for a while

Well I think I'm done with gay bars for a while. I go back and forth about gay bars. When I first started presenting as female I chose a lesbian bar because I was scared of going out to a straight bar. I got over that fear pretty quickly and I also started passing pretty quickly (at least in a straight environment) and then I started preferring straight bars. Of course I ended up back at a gay bar because I like(d) women and as I was looking more and more like a woman I kinda had to choose a gay bar to find the type of woman who would be interested in me. Now I'm kinda going back to where I really don't want to be in a gay bar environment.

I have to apologize for that above paragraph; it perhaps isn't as clear as I would like it to be. Nothing in my life is very clear right now. What a lot of my cis-gendered queer friends don't understand is that I don't enjoy gay bars as much as they do. It's a catch 22. People out at gay bars are more accepting, but they're also more apt to read me as trans. I hate being asked if I perform. I hate being compared to someone's gay brother. I hate that some "gay" guys are really really into me. I hate that gay guys seem to think it is okay to touch my breasts; almost every Saturday some gay guy will grab my waist or try to cop a feel. Maybe I'm also read at straight bars, but straight men don't seem to think inappropriate touching is okay.

Okay and of course the other thing is: I don't particularly identify with being lesbian or gay. I mean I certainly don't identify as a gay man, but somehow I also don't really identify as a lesbian. I feel like I fit in more with a group of kinda femme straight women than I do with a group of typical lesbians. Just to be clear, I'm not talking about friendships or how I'm treated or anything; I love my lesbian friends. The thing is now that I'm on the other side of transition I don't feel particularly "queer."

I don't want to go so far as to say that I'm straight. Where I am now, I don't think I want to be physically intimate with anyone until after I've had my operation. It isn't about shame, it's just that when I do get intimate with someone I can only go so far. It isn't going to be particularly satisfying for me. It isn't satisfying just having my boobies felt up anymore. It's nice foreplay but it makes me want more...and I can't have that right now. I don't have the right equipment, and what I do have doesn't work the way I want it to, particularly since estrogen has changed my sexuality and sexual expectations to be more female than they were before. So the meeting someone for a relationship or hook-up at a lesbian bar is kinda off the table right now.

The big thing that cis-gendered queer people don't understand is that "transsexual" isn't an identity like L, G, or B. I experience it like a medical condition that I treat with pills and eventually surgical intervention.  Being read, even when it is accepted, is having my medical problems out on the table. I'm more likely to be read at a gay bar and when I am read it's more likely to be taken as an identity; "Oh you're transgendered."

Do you identify as cis-gendered?

I'm not going to tell my co-workers I'm trans at my next job. I don't want people to know. This isn't going stealth, it's simply that my medical history is not my identity.

Whether I am gay or not, I simply don't know. I honestly can't identify by it right now. So that leaves me, for the moment, basically where I was prior to transitioning. I'm transsexual by definition but I'm not transgendered. I'm not into gay men. I'm not into straight women. I'm not comfortable with being physically intimate with anyone they way my genitalia is now (though at least I'm pretty happy with the rest of my body).

Anyway I would kinda like to date an open minded, liberal, handsome, straight man, but that desire is so fucking complicated. Too complicated to explain in this entry. For the time being I'm still a lesbian, simply because it fits me better than any other category, but I don't know how permanent that is. Being transsexual forces one to have a flexible view on life that allows for change and sees things in shades of grey rather than black and white.

Right now I need to step back from the gay community, not my friends, but the gay bar scene.