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=== the real you
if your discovery is like mine, it began like stargazing: a twinkle of light in the distance, finding coordinates and adjusting your telescope, and trying to bring a glimpse of her into focus.
the effect is profound, but the effect is an event. you dont walk around with your gaze towards the stars. or you do, and youre less like me, but thats legit.
euphoria comes when you bring her light into focus. and it gently fades, but the next day it brings a sigh, or a kind of sadness.
no, im exaggerating a little. only a little! if i didnt it might pass you by. the real me was out there, i saw her, i wanted to believe.
the willful stupidity of reactionaries is no joke, but among the cynical and sarcastic of our ranks (and you know there are quite a few) these serious things become the butt of our own jokes. we mock the slurs against us; isnt it cute how dumb people go out of their way to be? not so much, but we laugh anyway.
its a trend, dont you know? not only do the haters youd expect tell you so, but so do the terfs (and yes, it stands to reason they would, sadly) and so do the medicalists (sigh) and just like any other group of progressives, we have the narcissists that would rather police us than accept people just like they yearn for the same acceptance. i mean they actually worked for it! what did we do? another sigh.
these laments do not sum up my feelings about it, but they absolutely factor in. it isnt all rainbows and unicorns, though if any community has more rainbows than gay men, then we do. this is a friendly rivalry more than it isnt; community overlap is never tension-free, but the gay ftms in our ranks are as valid as anyone else and theres love there. there are plenty of unicorns for us to share. there are rainbows all over the place. as for the princess, whoever told you she never cries is obviously a liar.
autogynephilia is the shallow, cynical, limiting outside take on trans women which says even though these feelings frequently begin before puberty and a sense of sexuality, the transfeminine can be reduced to a kink or lack of romance in someones life. it may (and very often does) linger for a lifetime after loneliness goes away, but transphobe feelings dont care about facts whenever facts are on the transwomans side.
i write about transwomen more because its where my personal experience is. enbies are valid and close to my heart; some turn out to be transwomen like me and others are simply enbies. if i encounter one im ready to support them if they start to feel more predominantly feminine, and i also hold back because i never want them to think that i would invalidate their lack of a binary gender. no one pushed me towards mtf, i simply got over the trans hurdle then i was like "oh! i can turn this dial any which way i want!" so i expected! ive never wanted to turn it anywhere but up. that was the surprise.
i hide it in public. ive come out to a few people and thats wonderful, but i dont talk about why im not fully out. its important for people not to out you, and its important that you not feel pressure to out yourself. we should always work towards a society where you have no reason not to come out, but even if we did its your right not to and it should be respected. its a matter of safety, of respecting boundaries, and a matter of avoiding emotional coercion. this is a basic ethical consideration, but its not always obvious so it ought to be said often enough.
but getting back to the point, i can look back and smile at the times, childhood memories, when i said or thought things that make very little sense for a cis boy to say. they make perfect sense (and theyre common) for trans women and other trans people. it was all well before there was ANY "known" public, let along mainstream push for trans acceptance. by "known" i mean locally, but this was also before most people were on the internet. oh, usenet was a thing, but id never heard of it. the web did not exist. i used a bbs, but had never been to a gender studies class.
in hindsight, maybe a gender studies class would have had a more positive effect on my life than i could have imagined. i wanted equality for everyone in theory, yes, but i honestly thought the point of gender studies was to demonise masculinity in all forms. i grew up around plenty of gay men and i was far more comfortable with homosexuality than many of my peers, to me it was as natural as anything-- but the idea that men should never be men, that was something else entirely. i knew feminism was mostly about equality-- but i had concerns.
its kind of hilarious how that turned out. i mean, im sitting here feeling pretty in my makeup and wig saying "i honestly thought the point of gender studies was to demonise masculinity" unironically. but i wasnt entirely wrong, because today we have terfs and (sadly) not everyone is accepting or understanding of trans men. the first openly trans friend i ever had (years before i knew i was trans) was ftm, and he was the one who opened my eyes to the whole concept. before that, the most i knew about gender studies from a trans perspective was on par with an episode of "friends".
terfs prove that my concerns about an irrational hate towards perceived masculinity were not entirely unfounded. i mean, they do exist. the worst fear of a terf is male infiltration of female ranks, and theyre (at least theoretically but at least by proxy, actually) willing to police genitalia, private records and dna to become gender gatekeepers.
i was absolutely wrong about the value of gender studies of course. without that, it would be harder to be me-- it would be harder to ever even know myself. i made it through a ridiculous number of years pushing unfair ideas onto myself. how was i supposed to know that (some branches of) feminism really would fight for me later? no ones more surprised than i am.
its not lost on me that caveats remain, i mean i already mentioned terfs. on the other side theres policing in our own ranks, which makes me feel uncomfortable too. but despite that being a real problem-- im not sure that problem is being exaggerated so much, though i feel strongly that the people who would care about me, the trans women i havent met yet, are underrepresented in this. online spaces are battlegrounds i can see for myself. these were once the very places i went in my youth to get away from the mundanity of a society rigged against every form of progress; rigged to make the status quo the only thing that is truly sacred.
i wanted change, but i didnt know what kind of progress i wanted. i probably thought i did, but its natural (if foolish) to work with assumptions when its what you have to work with.
probably due to sheer numbers, i have no sisters in my life who are trans. its not that i dont long for some, because i do. its not because i havent talked to trans women-- who do you think told me when my egg cracked? but the trans women ive known are farther to the right (or centre) and we absolutely have that contention. im pedantic, im opinionated-- ive done a lot to evolve and question assumptions, but its possible i will always be pedantic and opinionated.
i wouldnt say i feel pathetic. its been difficult for a variety of reasons, but i dont feel unloved. there are cis women in my life who have been incredibly supportive, and i doubt i would have come this far without them. there was at least one very beautiful trans woman, who in this regard i looked up to, who was incredibly supportive, but we dont talk anymore. she was the one who was more of a centrist, but she swears shes anarcho-communist, but its funny how many of those seem more centrist. its not that i expect people to make their own fabrics, but i do hope if they claim to be so far to the left that they not start (routinely) apologising for the corporations running the sweatshops that do make fabrics, you know? so yeah, politics can be an obstacle to friendship, unless you dont care about them.
meanwhile the girl i talked to earlier today is cis, openly pansexual and one of the first people i ever came out to. and politically we are much closer. of course shes in a relationship (so am i) and i dont know if shes poly, but if she was interested in me she would probably mention it-- or give hints. regardless of any of that, i owe at least some of the leaps ive made on this journey to myself, as well as to her support. i feel as grateful to her as i do to anyone. but ive had emotional support from both trans women and cis women, even if its in very small numbers.
it hasnt been a year yet, and some of these things feel as wonderous as seeing an angel from a mountaintop, or northern lights, or the first time i stepped onto a different continent. i remember the first time i was in a different country, and there was absolutely a magic about it. it should also be said that this particular country is world-famous for magic, but its only a side point.
im not a kid anymore, but i dont think its uncommon to revisit some of the terrors and joys of adolescence when you discover youre trans-- not only is sexuality felt from a new perspective (it may not change your orientation, but your orientation may not be as tainted by toxic assumptions as it was in the past) but friendship, acceptance and quite obviously, your own identity is being challenged in a way that is both familar (because growing up can be at once terrifying and elating) and completely new-- holy shit, youre a woman. it makes sense, but it didnt always.
for those who still think its a kink, let me tell you something. as someone who thought they were male, i was an extremely sensual and sexually outgoing person. i care about peoples feelings, in a way that wasnt always easy to articulate. the last date i went on as a person who thought they were cis, was with a very pretty ace librarian (i didnt know she was ace when i asked her out, but she told me before we got dinner) who is still clearly working on issues from a previous relationship.
i was disappointed that shes ace and she was disappointed im poly, but i did everything i could bring myself to do to focus on having a nice time with her. from my perspective, dating an ace feels more like friendship to me. i dont pretend to understand what she wanted, but i asked her if she was (in general, not specifically with me) comfortable with cuddling and hugging. she said she was, and if that had been as far as anything went with her i would have been very content to know her.
we went on two dates before i gave up, because although i was okay with friendship or whatever she considered romance (we were both up front about our intentions) it was pretty clear she didnt like me very much or trust me to a point that i felt was reasonable. and thats okay, i mean if she has trust issues im not blaming her for that, ive been hurt really badly before and its not a linear or predictable process to deal with those things. but she spent a lot of time negging me gently, which was tolerable enough to be marginally cute (if the intent is obviously to flirt, then it can be flattering for about two minutes, maybe five) but it really got old fast.
if shes just clueless about dating, i kind of sympathise, but i couldnt get her to open up enough to help as a friend or lover (cuddler? if theres a book that will help me understand ace women better, id definitely read it) and im not into negging really. if i hadnt been so smitten from the beginning, there might not have been a second date. my biggest intention on the second date was simply to figure out where we could go that she might want to do something together (just getting a meal is fine) but she was so guarded (while negging the whole time) that i just couldnt get through to her. if you wonder why i bothered with something so clearly hopeless, i was really just curious if the ice was ever going to break. her interest seemed genuine but conflicted.
i thought about a third date but couldnt think of a single thing that would be fun for us to do together. it was like every avenue was shut down during our second time out, and i got the feeling that if i asked her out again she might well say yes, but we would never have fun together and she would never open up enough to be friends. i never bothered her again. maybe shes sad about it, im disappointed but im not equipped to deal with all of that. she was so cute and seemed really sweet at first, i dont think shes inherently toxic but nothing good was likely to come out of spending more time together. not even a hug or a held hand. not even an emotional moment.
i would have been happy for any of that, because at the very outset of it that seemed possible. would i have loved to simply hold her for hours, even if we never did so much as kiss? absolutely. id been on first dates before that had lots of cuddling with no promises of anything else. but it would be even easier to do that now.
i think its dishonest for anyone to imply that cis women never feel sexually excited when they look at themselves. its nice to feel pretty, its nice to imagine someone else appreciating it, its natural to feel excited about the prospect of sharing that with someone. and if cis women can reasonably feel that way, its even more dishonest to imply that theres something inherently kinky or even pathological for trans women to enjoy the same feeling. is it fun to see the pretty girl in the mirror? of course it is. but it isnt just sexual. why do idiots think that the experience of female beauty is exclusively about some kind of intercourse? if i take in a pretty pink sunset in a moderate level of awe, do they also think i want to f*** the sun?
at any rate, personal experience speaking, gender euphoria isnt the same thing as sexual arousal. its probably closer to the feeling of a perfect day. a perfect day might have sex in it or not.
or you know that feeling when you realise your best friend is someone youve actually fallen in love with? maybe its a bit like that.
or i dont know, maybe its like the feeling when you complete your masters of library science. this isnt a poke at my previous date, i was very open about the fact that librarian was a dream job for me. actually claire in "questionable content" is a librarian, and shes completely adorable when she isnt pissed off.
when i was growing up, i felt girls were no mystery and boys were impossible to understand. rather than being a giant clue about anything, i simply thought boys were exaggerating (or being lazy) about their understanding of women or lack thereof. of course if you really feel you have women figured out, the best way to get the mystery back is to become one. theres no better way to feel mystified with the process of womanhood than to go through it firsthand.
however, this is actually meant to be an affirming story. yes, there are times of doubt and sad feelings, there will be more of those. i had some terrible panic attacks recently-- the worst in years. those are a rare thing for me, and i know people who have had more of them. im not 100% certain the attacks were related to something i was doing, but i will say that when you are transitioning, please be as gentle with yourself as possible. its understandable to strive, but learn how to be kind-- especially if you dont know how, work on being kind.
ive been as kind to myself as possible from day 1, but that doesnt mean always being happy or always being non-critical. youre going to be self-critical sometimes, so try to be kind with that too (dont overdo self-critique, because you dont need it) and make each step as easy as possible.
ive been striving for euphoria. maybe i flew a little too close to the sun (like i said, who doesnt want to f*** a sunset? no, im still joking about that) but i honestly dont recommend trying so hard.
be kind. be gentle.
no, i know-- maybe you want to run. so make that a jog instead.
im not saying to hide, or hold back, im not saying you should ever stop trying to be yourself. you should absolutely look for joy in being you.
but when this started, it was just the glimpses of her-- with no telescope, just a speck of brilliant light that stood out in the heavens. i said i set foot on a different continent once, but also in a place with no light pollution, just the clearest night i ever saw, and so much of this journey is about trying to see more of what i felt that night.
you make friends, painfully slowly. you gain courage to make secret missions to get clothing or makeup. you spend hours thinking about how to explain things that you yourself never understood before. its absolutely wild.
but amidst the confusion, amidst what felt like hundreds of questions i had-- i dont miss the dull, half-dead feeling that i was cis and "couldnt possibly" be trans. for any doubts, for any negativity, it was worse to go through life pretending (to myself) that i was something i wasnt.
you move from one kind of horrible doubt to a better kind of difficulty. i dont miss the days of fooling myself at all. i dont know much about the struggles of a publicly out trans woman-- i mean, not firsthand i dont. i meet people, know people who are transphobic but they (probably) dont know about me. im careful, because i know someone could out me (even accidentally) or i could foolishly put trust in someone who it turns out actually hates me-- like a terf or any other kind of transphobe.
but ive been femme in a public setting more than once, its quite rare. ive had someone stare straight at my chest instead of my face-- and i honestly dont know if it was affirming or not, but i feel like if it was disapproving they would have frowned or stared at my face or something. im not saying you should (or shouldnt) feel about the same thing like i do, im mostly lesbian and it was actually a woman that stared at my chest.
as to whether i know what its like to be uncomfortable in a (remotely) similar situation, ive been stared at a lot harder and had a person grab my butt and then try to smear my reputation a bit later, and that wasnt fun. that hasnt made me hate men, though i will hate terrible people of any gender.
all of this, every bit of it, is in preface to saying that ive been trying to see her more often, in more situations. shes always been there, but i havent always experienced her-- and yes, i mean me. i was just putting on lipstick at first. then i was going to sleep in it. i bought tops that just didnt work on a perfectly flat chest, so i made some boobs to see what they looked like. then i started sleeping in those. they were soft, i dont sleep in a bra and i have always advised my female friends not to wear one to sleep. ive never had a proper bra (i do have some tops with cups built in) but ive slept in a soft strip of fabric that served the purpose of a strapless bra.
i started undoing part of it to loosen it and relax-- still sleeping with boobs though. and this was before the egg cracked. i started joking that this was "perfectly normal cis behaviour." i knew it was far from that, but i was that unwilling to let myself have this. oh no, im a gender sceptic! not really, i was perfectly accepting (even ecstatic) for anyone ELSE doing this, just not me. its different!
it wasnt different, it turns out im actually trans as f***. i wish id known, i would have thrown a party and invited a select few.
i put on a wig and makeup, i put on one of my skirts (ive got some lovely pants too) and i love the way i look. i didnt know how the heck to put on foundation, but i have a brush and i managed eventually. there are at least two ways to put on makeup, and i usually go for something between the two.
the first way is to try to look good. of course i wouldnt put on makeup if i wasnt trying to look good, but if that was the whole point id probably use less. not to mention that im not good enough (very little experience) with makeup yet to put "looking my best" first, but i can absolutely look prettier than when i started, which is awesome. and i am a fan of the less is more look, but its easier to pull off when youre very proficient or maybe, a cis woman-- only because a cis woman already has that fact going for her when she starts putting makeup on. im not saying theyre naturally better at wearing foundation.
i still have to shave, you know? im not exactly working with the best possible canvas for this, but i do love my features. im grateful for that.
the second way is to camp it up a little bit (or a lot, if thats your thing) so that its not like "wow, thats a lot of makeup" but its definitely enough that youre not hiding the fact that its makeup. i take inspiration from cashiers who clearly wear a lot of foundation, but look pretty while clearly wearing a lot of foundation. and i do joke about germaine greer, who is an awful, awful person, and i wink when my foundation gets pretty and i say its "BURGEONING". but im smiling and feel happy with it, so "burgeoning" is like a slur ive appropriated. natalie did it first (i mean, at least she did before i did. i think shes incredibly beautiful).
why i would i wear (a bit) more makeup when i totally agree that as an aesthetic, less looks better? because before it gets to the point where i have so much on im like "ugh", theres a sweet spot between maximising "looking good" and "really camping it up" (not my thing, but it does look okay on some people when its creatively done) where it kind of optimises how good i feel about it.
i actually feel nicer with an application of foundation and blush that goes a little beyond whats optimal from a purely aesthetic standpoint. and i know someones going to imagine 75% of "oh my god, what?" which is still "oh my god" so lets just say its 150% of "natural" instead. because thats what im really going for and what i see.
and thats the sweet spot, or rather its my description that tries to quantify what i consider the sweet spot for my own appearance. its like that with clothes too. when i femme it up, im still a tomboy. but shes a very femme tomboy <3 and that makes me happy. oh, im not uncomfortable with the term "tomboy". i associate it with stunning females like xena and gabrielle and with my own concept of an "ideal" woman-- which is a very diverse and spanning ideal, but tomboy is an ideal to me nonetheless. to me its a feminine word (i would just say "boy" otherwise) but i wouldnt use it to describe someone who felt it was less than affirming.
as said by one webcomic artist about a trans girl who i will mention again in a minute, makeup is part of the "summoning" process. i first summoned myself with a top, then lipstick, then... prostheses! and that was enough to crack the egg. after months of highly scientific and rigorous experimentation and research (and scepticism!) the nonsense i put myself through at the time was comical compared to any doubts i have now. it finally got to the point where i was like "you can take the red pill and see yourself the way you really are, or you can take the blue pill and bullshit yourself forever" and i took the red one and finally let the person id seen the subtlest glimpses of in childhood and much later take on a leading role in my identity.
so thats nice, but i want to see her too, not just know shes always there. i want to BE her, even when im wearing a disguise to look outwardly male. and by "be" i mean actively be, not just passively know shes me.
my hair isnt very girly (it used to be girlier, i had almost beautiful hair when it was longer) and indeed its quite butch by my standards. its only because of the quality of my natural hair at this point. it could be worse, and its not great. if i were cis id just get rid of it, but you probably dont want to be perfectly bald in the first weeks of your mtf transitioning. i mean i tried it eventually, just to see it! and within a couple weeks it was growing out again. but id made it very short before that and its quite short now.
obviously a cis woman can get away with this, even if everyone will assume shes a lesbian. but for me? i want to be more femme than that. and by "want to", i mean its one of the most fulfilling things ive ever experienced in my life.
i dont wear my wig all the time. i love it, it completes the look, before my wig arrived i simply wore a cute hat (still easier to find than a wig) but the wig was planned before the hair went short.
lately i wear a bit more makeup and i wear the wig a bit less. the trick is to see her looking back at me even when i remove my pretty lego hair.
its all done with love, and practice, and the combination of the two. im not the sort of girl who is naturally good at this. this is a learning experience. its really very simply that ive felt this wonderful feeling, of being more like me than i ever was, and i dont want to feel like im just putting on makeup. in fact, the first time i ever put on makeup as a joke, it wasnt profound at all. later on, though...
thats one of the reasons i thought i wasnt trans. id tried makeup (and a dress) for shits and giggles, and there was no thrill of any sort. it (seriously) was just a laugh. it isnt now, now its something profound and beautiful and incredibly fulfilling. but this was a long time ago, and though i did get to kiss a lesbian (i wasnt fooling a single person on earth into thinking i was a cis woman, i didnt even shave) it was the latter that felt meaningful and profound, not the dress or the lipstick at the time.
turns out, putting on lipstick just once doesnt necessarily do anything at all. years later it was pretty fun, and now its a complete joy, but at the time i was just like "heh, whatever" and my date was (once again) bi but mostly lesbian (we both kissed other girls at that party, even some of the same ones-- and it was her dress id borrowed) but did i care about the lipstick? nope, it was basically a prop. the lesbian by the way, specifically said she wanted to try kissing boys. so i volunteered. she probably saw me leap but it didnt put her off. the other one said she was bi-curious. i just thought it was the coolest thing ever, but i thought i was cis and no one (including me) ever suggested i might be trans.
there was a person there who to this day i think was intention-wise in drag (i didnt even know to ask back then) but whatever their pronouns were, they were significantly hotter than john leguizamo in a dress and even back then, i thought john leguizamo in a dress was HOT. anyone who doesnt think john leguizamo can wear a dress, i dont know whats wrong with them.
this person was either a trans woman or the most stunning person id ever seen in drag, and they never asked to kiss me but not asking them is one of my biggest regrets. (on another reading im not sure this is clear enough-- i never kissed them, i wish i had-- someone might think i meant i kissed them and regret not asking first).
the way they looked at me was-- not at all clear really, but entirely comfortable and i wish i had another chance to meet them. and to come out! as to how they identify it would make no difference to me in terms of attraction. they were the very definition of kissable.
but i try to let go of the feeling of a guy who wears makeup. i mean, when i was starting to wear boobs to sleep that "guy" was already getting less of my time. and its not that i hate him, hes just a distraction i dont need or get anything worthwhile from. i want to spend my time with her instead. so thats something ive been putting effort into.
when the egg first cracked, i toyed with this idea of doing things "as a trans girl". it was incredibly fulfilling and "almost" silly. it was sort of a play on when they were legalising gay marriage in the states, and a clever woman said shes gay, but its not gay marriage-- its marriage. when shes hungry, she eats lunch, she doesnt eat gay lunch. she doesnt gay park her car, and so on.
oh, but i did! one of the first things i did as a trans girl was make "trans girl tea." its exactly like cis tea, except i was the one making it. and it tastes exactly the same as cis tea, except now for some reason its twice as delicious.
and i feel like doing it again. there are little, subtle things i can do that make everything a little more feminine. this is not by any means a novel approach (i refuse to move my hands more when i talk, but if they do it on their own then its fine and im not trying to stop them) though the main thing i want is to smile in the mirror and see a girl looking back.
and i see more of her, even without the lego hair. its really just a cheap wig, i love my wig dearly but i know its very much on the cheap side. its not going to be in great shape for a long time, and i would like to get a better one-- this is my first. but i got it so i could stop having hair that never worked for me (its too fine, and its just a bit too thin in some places to ever be affirming) and go full girly so i can smile in the mirror with ease.
plan a was to style it, but plan a wasnt going to work. plan b was the wig, which i knew would work, and it did. plan c is a better wig, but also just girling things up in various ways-- trans girl lunch and trans girl parking. i totally respect (and always admired) the woman who asserted that her marriage rights were like any other persons rights. she didnt seem terfy and i hope shes not! but either way it was a fun idea that i used to tease myself out of my trans egg.
oh yes, this is perfectly normal cis behaviour-- would you like some trans tea? no? okay, ill make cis tea then. what? you want trans tea? fine, trans tea it is!
it wasnt intended to be profound, i was mocking my own denial. oh im not trans, not ME, im merely TRANS-ESQUE in some ways or something!
or as daffyd thomas would say, "no, youre not a gay, i am gay, youre probably just a little bit poofy!" but in reverse. and yes, david walliams had that awful emily howard character, but ive also read "boy in a dress" which incredibly didnt crack my egg whatsoever, but its actually a very sweet story to read. if you dont like him you can just read azul crescent instead, shes lovely.
you know the feeling when you fall in love? being a trans woman and letting yourself do the simplest things as YOURSELF is a similar feeling. i wouldnt say its romantic, as much as its caring. and to be cared for that much, when you werent before, is a pretty amazing thing.
its not a perfect process, its very far from ideal. every november (and not only in november) we remember the people who have literally died for this.
because all of the little things we can joke about, some eyeshadow here and a cup of tea there, its hard to think thats important-- its not about my lego hair or my lipstick or foundation. its about going from being someone who never allowed themselves to exist, to someone who can see themselves and be seen.
its about going from someone who never felt loved for who they truly are, only for someone else-- to letting that love become a real possibility in life. and some of that love must come from within, which means you have to learn something incredibly profound.
but, some people think its just about f***ing a sunset. and theyre being idiots, but whatever its like to f*** a sunset, i think probably, sometimes, this feeling is even better.
its about love.
this work can be freely reused: (cc by 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
<3 zara