About cross-dressing and transsexuals, and a weird dream I had last night

So I went out to Karaoke last night. Monday night after work is my new Karaoke night.

I need to sing.

Anyway in my last entry (which I did not think was very good) I wrote about being a little apprehensive about meeting a person who may or may not be a trans woman. She never showed up.

Her friend did, and was quite drunk, but we chatted for a while and then she stopped by my place after last call.

"Oh when I first saw you I thought you were a manly looking woman"

I responded "I am." Okay, so I'm not easily offended, especially by drunk people, especially by people who think they are giving a sincere compliment. It's kind of a back handed compliment though.

It got me thinking a little bit about the culture I grew up in and the culture I still live in: trans women are not as legitimate as cisgendered women. Primary transsexuals are more legit than secondary transsexuals who are more legit than cross dressers who are more legit than fetishistic transvestites.

From my perspective I was born to be woman. From her perspective I've changed, and I've done a damn good job at it.
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When I first started going out as a woman regularly I got a hell of a lot of compliments and fortunately I didn't realize (at the time) that a lot of them stemmed from people's perception that I was a man dressing as and trying to imitate a woman. Or perhaps I did, but as I told a friend the other night, when you transition you really have to turn a blind eye towards people's perception of you.

Excuse my language, but quite frankly I started looking more and more faggy in my work clothes until I reached androgynous and finally female.

Her trans friend did not show up last night and made some lame excuses. She told me how he dressed in women's clothing at work but wasn't allowed to wear make-up because he did such a bad job at it. She told me how he goes into Denny's at 3 in the morning and gets punched in the face.

Okay, it takes a lot of courage to go out dressed as a woman when you are so painfully aware that you do not look like one. At the same time, everytime someone tells me they think I was so courageous in transitioning I can't say I'm a courageous person. I did what I had to do.

I can say a couple of things about her friend, whom I have not met, based on my own experiences. First, he really doesn't have a choice as far as going out cross-dressed or wearing women's clothing at work. Second he has to be doing something really innapropriate in order to be punched in the face at Denny's.

Early in my transition when I had short hair and a much more masculine hairline (and physique) people would (very occassionally) laugh or stare at me but for the most part people don't care.

Being trans is part of the human experience and has been since the beginning of time. Even if it is the butt of jokes people are basically accustomed to seeing trans people. It isn't such an unusual thing that people will break social customs like punching you in the face. Dressing in itself usually does not make people that uncomfortable.(Of course trans people get murdered and beat quite frequently, just for dressing as they feel comfortable. I'm not arguing that they don't.)

It's the difference between drag and reality. I don't try to emmulate or imitate anyone. He's trying (and failing) to emmulate womanhood. It isn't something that can be faked.

I mean why did I start "passing" so very quickly?

I "passed" before I "passed," meaning even when it was obvious that I had been born with what would be considered a male body it was also obvious that I was authentic when dressed as a woman.

I think this is part of why I don't meet to many trans feminine people that I like.

Too many of us are trying to emmulate some abstract idea of womanhood. Too many of us buy into the idea that we can never be as legitimate as a cisgendered woman. We buy into the idea that we are claiming a gender identity and becoming something.

We buy into the idea that we're changing something.

Instead of dropping the shit that we fake in favor of something that feels more authentic, many of us stop faking one gender to start faking another. And quite frankly if you're still a fake, what's the point.

When I transitioned I worried more about being over the top girly than being too masculine. Too many trans feminine people worry about being too masculine.

Go into any lesbian bar, library, or public bus and actually look at the women you see. There are a hell of a lot of really masculine women out there.

If you're using make-up, long hair, long nails, and clothing to look like a "woman" you'll probably fail because none of those things denotes woman. Nor do big breasts and butts.

I guess it's this culture that delegitimizes people who "don't pass" that makes everyone want to look like and be like a certain ideal of womanhood rather than just be themselves.

I sat down with a group of transwomen one time and was bored to tears and actually a little frustrated listening to their conversation about how often one should get their nails done, and how they should be done, and what clothing to wear, blah, blah, blah, and this is coming from someone who flips through Glamour every month. I mean, there's a difference between being interested in fashion and trying to figure out what to wear, how to act, and how to do your makeup in order to look like a woman.

That is the difference between transsexuals and cross dressers.

And yet, painfully, many of the transsexuals I've met are like that.


I had a weird dream last night. I dreamt that I was on some sort of journey, and it was a journey that I'd been on before. At the end of a journey was a cliff that I had to scale to get to the end. I'd scaled the cliff before also. It was a difficult cliff to scale and took all my effort and will power but eventually in every previous attempt I'd scaled it. This time I started, and then paused and took a break at it's base. I waited a while and then saw that there was a staircase that led to the top and was quite easy to climb. I climbed it and looked back down over the cliff. I started laughing hysterically (at myself for having twice before climbed it when I could have taken the stairs, and at having advised others to climb it). I sat down at a table, and a fifteen year old boy came up to me. He looked like he was twelve. He told me that he wanted my help because he was going to register for highschool as a girl. I asked him if his parents knew. He said they did but I could tell he was lieing. My father was sitting next to me and said to the boy. "Well let's not do that. How about you, Nathan, (my former name) and I go get you registered."
"That's not my name." I said. "My name is Natalie, not Nathan." I spent the rest of the dream crying uncontrollably.

I don't know. It seemed like it had some sort of meaning.

A guy and a girl and a growing collection of phone numbers on cocktail napkins

So, I'm once again writing in the library.

Haven't been thinking about much recently, but I thought I'd write a quick entry.

I'm beginning to get a growing collection of phone numbers on cocktail napkins. A couple of weeks ago some girl gave me her number at karaoke, and on Tuesday night some guy gave me his number; he says he wants to make me famous...LOL.

I want to talk about the guy first. I went to happy hour at Babe's on Tuesday, even though I kind of didn't want to. I actually wanted to spend the evening at home in front of a classic, or Disney movie; I can get those for a dollar at video fan. (Yeah, I still go to a video rental store) I was in a pretty good mood, because I went to my doctor's appointment and my blood pressure is down.

I swear, this being an adult thing and having to worry about my blood pressure and cholesterol... I don't know that I like it all that much.

Anyway, I am also getting back over a grand in taxes. That is pretty much all going to pay for a root canal, but I'm still happy about it because I don't want to lose a tooth. So when I walked in I said something about how I'd much rather spend the money on something that will be more fun like a vagina, but how I should really keep my teeth. I went on to talk about wanting to actually be able to use my vagina, and how missing teeth might hinder my ability to do so. As in, I definitely judge people who are missing teeth. As in, I don't want to sleep with the type of person who sleeps with people who are missing teeth.

Actually, it's a molar and no one  would notice anyway.

Well this guy sitting at the bar heard my comments and decided I was a pretty interesting person. Apparently he dates men and women and has had a couple of trans women girlfriends in the past.

So normally I shoot down guys pretty fast...but well...maybe I've been a little too judgmental. Actually I did want to write a blog about this as well. I can't really honestly say that I'm not attracted to men. (though just to be clear I definitely still like women) But that's another story. So I talked to this guy for a while. He just asked me a bunch of questions about "Why?" Cis-people find trans people fascinating in general.

Now another guy comes in to happy hour everyday. He's married (to a woman).He lives like a block away and likes cheap PBR and burgers and he has no problem with lesbians. He's kinda a redneck though. Well, "Good ole boy" would be a better term. So the two of them alternated buying me beers and then kissed.

Yeah, you'd have to know the guy I was talking about. Anyway, he's not the type you'd imagine kissing a guy.

So the girl I met at Karaoke, a couple of weeks ago. She met my friend first and they exchanged numbers and facebooks, and then we talked for a while. eventually she told me this story about her friend, this guy who cross-dresses and may or may not be transitioning. So I was like "I guess you've read me then," and I answered her questions. Then she insisted I take her number.

I have no idea what I've done with either of these numbers, but the girl contacted my friend to see if we were planning on Karaoke this Monday, which we were. Apparently she has a friend she wants us to meet.

I'm guessing this is the friend she told me about.

So I'm a little apprehensive about this.

Sadly it has been my experience that I don't really get along too well with other trans women.

I don't know why. Maybe I'm too catty, maybe I'm too judgmental of them when they don't pass, and then sometimes (quite frankly) it seems that I am just a hell of a lot more feminine than the other trans women I've met.

Though, I also have never really met any other trans women my age, and I think that makes a big difference.

I transitioned at 27 because I just could not do it anymore. I couldn't keep up the masculine act or appearance. I was in hell trying to do it, and I think it really was about life or death. I mean, I wouldn't have killed myself (I'm not that dramatic) but I would have gone completely numb. I doubt I would have seen 30.

Most of the trans women I've met make it to their mid forties or even fifties.

As impossible as that would have been for me it makes me believe, somewhat, in what they call primary and secondary transsexuals.

I don't want to make a value judgment, but there is a huge difference between someone who never really had much of a life as a man and someone who was an adult man for twenty something years.

So we'll see if this guy makes me famous, and if this girl introduces me to a trans female who I can actually get along with.

How I've changed since transitioning male to female

Okay so I’m going to write this entry from home for once.

I went out to Karaoke after work last night. Okay that’s not that unusual. Since transitioning I’ve kind of become a karaoke person. I had the realization that that’s what I’ve become several weeks ago when I realized that in general if I’m drinking I’m also singing karaoke. Okay, whatever. Anyway last night I was sitting at the bar next to a friend of mine from back before I transitioned. We were never particularly close. He worked at a bar I hung out at all the time before I transitioned. Anyway we didn’t really talk. He had just closed down the kitchen and was doing a cross word puzzle while drinking his shift drinks. I left after I sang my last song (“The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Damn those early rappers were really lyrical geniuses) we said good bye to each other and I walked home.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how I’ve changed since transitioning. It’s really complicated.

Okay, I’m much happier. On my 29^th birthday someone described me as “bubbly” vs “always kinda sad.” I don’t think I’m quite a bubbly as I was a year and a half ago. There is something called gender euphoria which is what happens after denying your gender expression for years. It happens a lot when cross dressers come out of the closet and then want to cross dress all the time. I read about it in a book called “My husband Betty.” It’s a pretty good book about cross dressers but most of it doesn’t apply to me very much. Anyway, if you’re familiar with the gender community you’ve probably gone to her blog, engender. I’m not gender euphoric anymore. I mean, I’m still pretty girly, but I’m kind of over that high that “passing” used to give me.

I wrote my last entry about passing actually.

What I’ve been noticing more and more is that really I’m the same person I’ve always been, well… with a subscription to “Glamour” that I actually kind of look forward to getting. And I don’t drink like I used to, and I actually care about my health.

I would like to able to write that our body is just a vessel for our souls but I can’t. It is really a huge part of who we are and when it is wrong it really hurts.

I mean that because I am so very much the same person I’ve always been, I’d like to be able to say that I could have grown into the same person that I’ve grown into as a man, but I couldn’t have.

Gender identity has nothing to do with liking shoes and nail polish and make up etc.

Then again, I’ve changed a lot. I’ve gone through about twenty years of maturing in the last three. I think that being transsexual is a physical not a mental condition. I think that on a certain level transsexuals are very immature until they do start taking hormones. I think that a female brain needs female hormone to mature properly, and I’ve found that there used to be a lot of doors closed to me before I started taking estrogen (and didn’t stop again) that are open to me now. There were a lot of things that everyone else experienced that I flat out didn’t. Like, sexual attraction, real genuine sexual attraction.

No I take that back somewhat. Before I transitioned I did experience being very much in love with someone, but I do think I experienced it in a very adolescent/pre adolescent way. I think that my mind matured sexually normal until I went through male puberty and it did not get the chemicals it needed and it stalled.

I talked about this in a letter to my extended family pretty early on in my transition and I’m a little embarrassed about it now. But I was really excited about transitioning.

I mean, changing one’s sex is kind of a big thing.

So as far as how I’ve changed, there’s the maturity thing.

But the thing about it is. I think I’m probably more similar to my six year old self now than I was when I was twenty six.

I wrote once about how when you grow up transgender you gradually stop seeing your reflection in a mirror. You start seeing someone else, this person you occupy and control, and you look at this person and tell yourself that it is you and you try to convince yourself of it but it never really works. Then you transition and one day you’re on your way somewhere and you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. Not the person you remember from childhood, but the adult version. And that’s when I really knew I was doing the right thing.

See there is also this person you are when no one’s looking, the person you are when you pray to God. This awareness of self that gets lost when you’re not being completely honest or when you’re trying to hard to be someone. I don’t know this is much harder to describe. But when you grow up transgender and don’t transition you kind of lose this person also. Then one day after you have transitioned you’re lying in bed and you recognize yourself and you feel familiar and recognizable.

I think that in trying to describe how I’ve changed in transitioning, I would say that I’ve become more. I’m more of the things I always liked about myself and I’m losing the things that weren’t ever really a part of who I am anyway.

I like to think that someone who used to know me well but hasn’t been there for my transition would recognize me for everything I ever was and more, and have one of those moments where they see me; “Oh of course this person has grown up to be a woman! I always knew she would.”

I can’t imagine having not transitioned. I can’t imagine myself as a man. I don’t think I ever could actually (which I think is probably what made it so difficult to try to live as one).

I don’t know. I’ve gone through this experience that is so unusual and interesting to most people and it just makes so much sense to me that I don’t really know how to explain it.

I mean I was sitting at the bar next to my friend last night thinking about who I was three years ago and who I am now and how much I’ve grown, and how I could never go back to that person I was again.

about "passing", and some life goals, and less about being a bridesmaid than I wanted to write

Okay. Once again I am writing in the library and don't have much time.

I have so much to say also.

Oh well.

Anyway first I want to write a little about passing, yet again. Anyway I was in a wedding this weekend as a bridesmaid, and went to a bachelorette party, a rehersal dinner and of course a wedding. I swear there were a lot of other trannies at the club we salsa danced at for the bachelorette party; that or a lot of cis women look like trannies. it's hard to tell. One of them was actually kind of hot, I thought, but I am really attracted to boyish looking women.

I was perhaps a little overdressed for the rehearsal dinner. Oh well. Anyway afterwards I went to Babe's, (the lesbian bar in Richmond). I sat down at the bar and ordered a beer. This guy from across the bar smiled at me and waved a little bit. I ignored him. I hate to make assumptions about people, but being as he was at a gay bar and quite effeminate I think it was fair to assume he was gay. It weirds me out a little when gay guys hit on me.

Actually on a note I realize when I really started to be read as a woman because gay men stopped flirting with me and gay women started.

Anyway after I got my beer I went outside and saw this girl who kind of looked like Bob Dylan, the sexy one from the early sixties. I went up to her and asked to bum a cigarette, then told her she looked like the 1960's Bob Dylan. She said she got that alot. I told her that I liked women that looked like Bob Dylan and we talked a little bit. That guy from the bar came to our table and started talking to me.

"You look great. I just love meeting other drag queens" He said.

I layed into him. "I am a transsexual. I am not a drag queen and I hate being compared to drag queens. Also I do not like men."

He asked me why.

I said they were generally not very interesting and for the most part look like trolls.

Actually all of a sudden the girl I'd been trying to meet found me pretty interesting and gave me her number. The guy whose pick up line blew up in his face kind of left us alone.

I don't look like a drag queen.

I looked pretty cisgendered in my bridesmaids dress, which I hadn't steamed and was much more wrinkly than I would have liked. My date told me I looked amazing, and I was probably more comfortable standing in front of everyone being a little self conscious about how much bigger I was than the other bridesmaids than I ever was attending a wedding as a guy sitting in the back row.

That's a gender thing I guess. I'm not really faking anything anymore.

My date told me I totally passed. The thing about it, and the thing I thought about this morning when I was leaving the grocery store and heard someone say "That's a man." is passing isn't that much of a thing anymore.

I mean on the one hand I really don't like being read as a man. On the other hand. Whoever said that totally misread me. Being a "man" implies so many things that just flat out don't fit me anymore. For one thing it implies that at some point in my day I am going to do something as a man. It's been 2 and a half years since I've done anything as a "man," if you even want to say I was ever a man. Also it would take more effort for me at this point to look like a man than it does for me to look like a woman and quite frankly I just have no desire to do that.

So passing really has kind of come down to "passing as what?"

Yes. Sometimes it does bother me when I don't pass as cisgendered. I don't know why I feel like I need to, but it does bother me sometimes when people see my transness.

Then again, I am trans, and I'm relatively proud of that.

And as far as passing as a woman goes, I just can't imagine anyone thinking I fall into the category of man.

I mean I think the worst I could get is to be read as is as a trans person. I can't imagine anyone seeing me and thinking man.

Actually last night I met this girl at a straight bar where I sang karaoke. She wasn't sure enough to ask me even when she was drunk. She brought up a story about her transitioning friend instead. And when I came clean to her she admitted that she didn't really know until I said something.

So really. What is "passing" to me anymore. I "pass" as a woman? I am a woman, so of course I "pass."

The word "passing" implies that I am convincing people of being something that I'm not. Quite honestly I'm not doing that. I think passing is a little irrelevent to me now.

Yeah I did transition. It's in the past, and it's further in the past every day.

Also. I slept with a man for the first time. Yeah. I don't know have time to say anything about that now.

And when I get married I think I'm going to have karaoke at the reception.

I made a resolution, because I want to meet more people who have the potential to be really important in my life, and because I do want to fall in love with someone and get married, and because I just don't want to decote my life to people and things I don't care about: I'm going to get myself in a situation where I only do things and only hang out with people I love.

I spent most of my twenties trying to be someone. Now I'm just going to try to be myself.

First goal. I want to earn my income writing.