A Dahl’s House

On a forum for crossdressers that I belong to, a rather embittered member plaintively asked how exactly one goes about accepting yourself — she’s tried and failed on numerous occasions to get over the guilt and shame she feels.

Here’s my tip — drawn from Gerald Weinberg’s excellent “Becoming a Technical Leader,” which has a lot about learning to manage yourself before you manage others. (more…)

On a forum where I shared my story about cracking open the closet a bit, one of the members congratulated me on taking a step towards “dull routine.”

Today, I got a sense of what she meant. I’d bought some foundation last weekend while I was out en femme — unfortunately, I’d discovered the matte version of the foundation I was using which the same shade as the regular version, and consequently it didn’t match as well.

So today it was too much of a hassle to get dressed up to exchange it, so I went en homme the to Prespectives counter (admittedly at a mall that’s further away from than the one nearest to me). As it happened there was a “regional coordinator” there helping to break in a new hire.

I explained the problem, and then made sure to let her know that I was a crossdresser so I needed the foundation to blend on my neck, which is lighter than my face. She and the trainee didn’t bat an eyelid and I did bring along a photo to show them, so they could see what I looked like en femme — both to help them do their job, and to do a little education.

With a little experimentation that they found a different shade that worked much better and I exchanged it for the old. But the regional coordinator appeared to become quite concerned when she misheard me and thought I hadn’t gotten good service from the salesclerk last week — she asked me a follow-up question that clearly indicate she would’ve followed up on it had that been the case. However, I reassured her the other salesclerk had been entirely professional and the coordinator replied something to the effect that it was their job to provide good service.

Anyway, it was nice for it to be just another errand I had to run on a Sunday afternoon.

It’s the question I’ve been both anticipating and dreading for a long time.

I had my weekly Pilates workout this morning, where I usually banter with my instructor, C., during the session. We’ve talked about a lot things—her frequently changing nail color, her psycho puppy—and last fall she saw photos of my “Halloween costume.” More recently she was a bit amused when I got my toenails painted during a pedicure, but said I if wanted to paint my nails I shouldn’t worry about what other people thought about it. Today, I was wearing gym pants instead of the usual loose-fitting tights, and during some of the exercises the pant legs slid down exposing my legs with a bit of razor stubble.

So when I mentioned that I’d gone out to a drag show with a friend last weekend, I guess C. put two and two together. “I bet you like to do drag pretty regularly,” she said.

Gulp. Pause.

There are others who know “the real me” and know that I’m crossdresser—store clerks who seen my male name on the credit card, a few people I’ve met through crossdressing circles. But C. would be the first person from my “ordinary” life to know.

“Yes, yes I do,” I said, trying my best to sound nonchalant about it. “Except that I’m not really a drag queen, I’m what’s called a crossdresser.” From there it was the expected questions—what was the difference between the two, what was my sexual orientation, did my family know, and of course: why? I told her that we crossdressers had spent a lot of time trying to figure that out ourselves and that no one was sure, but gave her a quick summary of my thoughts about it.

I mentioned how the vast majority of us cower in the closet and C.’s reaction was “What are they afraid of, why shouldn’t they be themselves?” It turns out C. once worked with a butch lesbian who transitioned. We talked about why female-to-male crossdressers are pretty rare, and how crossdressing relates to the (unfortunately) still unequal social status between men and women.

The session ended with Karen saying she wanted to talk more about it next time and also that she wanted to see more of my photos. (Yes, C. does know the way to a crossdressers’s heart.)

All-in-all, it was weirdly anti-climatic. Mainly I was just thinking how nice it was to no longer need to compartmentalize my life when talking to C. Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see what our next talk is like.

A few days ago I heard linguist Deborah Tannen talking about her new book, which looks a mother-daughter relations, and there were two observations she made that I think were interesting in terms of perhaps helping women understand common behavior by men and by crossdressers.

The first touched on the advice-giving the mothers do – which often drives daughters crazy but is (usually) meant out of love. I didn’t hear enough of the interview to hear Tannen’s explanation on why mothers feel compelled to offer advice, but I suspect it’s not dissimilar to men—they feel a need to show their concern by problem-solving.

The second observation was that many of the women studied (as adults) ended up not disclosing many of their inner-most secrets with their mothers because they didn’t want to upset their mothers—of course, not wanting to trigger the resulting advice-giving probably was another factor. But I hope woman can understand that there’s often a similar mentality at work when crossdressers don’t tell their wives and girlfriends about their dressing. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s far better to disclose it, preferably early in the relationship. And self-interest, and yes fear, can also be major factors. But often I’ve seen a genuine concern by crossdressers who’ve spent their lives struggling with it and want to “protect” their wives from similar struggles. I’m not saying it’s the right decision, I merely saying that it’s a decision that can be based on more than just selfish reasons.

It’s not uncommon for folks in the transgender community to talk about being “gender gifted”–to which Andrea at the “My Husband Betty” forum had a great response: “If this is a gift, I want the receipt so that I can exchange it for some business acumen or something.” Helen had some good thoughts on this as well.

Do I hate my crossdressing? No. Are there times where I wish it didn’t cause complications in my life? Yes.

On the other hand, I was already “different” as a kid before crossdressing hit the scene (a Mensa-IQ kid who wasn’t great at sports in a neighborhood full of jocks, a liberal in a conservative area, etc.). And at times I have a similar –”ambivalence” is probably too strong a word but I don’t have a better one at the moment… “twinges” maybe?–about that as well.

But being a “normal” man or woman in American ain’t always a picnic either.

I think it’s helpful is to break down “gender” into some more specific components, since even us folks within the transgender spectrum often use “gender” to describe a collection of related, but really separate, things. Which is why we’re often uncertain where we may fall on the spectrum.

(more…)

Hmmm…. another justification, sounds good to me

Forget pretending you are talking to one person or concentrating on a single point in the audience–having sex is good way to calm nerves before giving a speech or presentation. But Stuart Brody, a psychologist at the University of Paisley in Scotland, said it has to be full sexual intercourse to get the best results.

Well worth reading… “Economic realities lift gay rights” by a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Here’s an except:

As you may have noticed, Ford Motor Co. made a hasty retreat this week from its announcement that it would stop advertising in gay and lesbian publications. It was a triumph for individual rights, fair treatment and a more tolerant social structure.

Uh, sure. If that’s how you want to see it. Personally, I’d say it had more to do with a simpler common denominator.

Money.

For all the dialogue about the social significance, for example, of the new gay-themed cowboy movie “Brokeback Mountain,” the real issue won’t be whether it breaks cinematic ground, but whether it breaks even on the balance sheet. It is amazing how brave and socially responsible folks can be when there’s a profit to be turned, and the greatest strides toward acceptance of gays and lesbians will come on the economic, not legal, front.

The columnist goes on to describe the example of how conservative Palm Springs was initially horrified by what’s been called “lesbian spring break” but quickly changed it’s mind once it realized the money it brought into town — and now the locals eagerly look forward to it each year and everyone gets along fine.

In other wordsis that greed is a good icebreaker for getting past biases, and from there personal interaction can help people realize that CDs may be different, but not “abnormal.” Unfortunately, most of us are far too closeted to make people aware of our buying power.

But there are a number of trannyfests (Southern Comfort, Eureka Springs, Esprit, etc.) as well as smaller things, like local transgender dinner outings, etc. The history of Esprit, which is held in a small town in Washington state, had a similar history from what I’ve read. The conference is one of the biggest money makers for local businesses so needless to say they’re more than happy to welcome would-be customers. But apparently, many of the locals have also grown to genuinely like the conference attendees.

So when I shop en femme, I always make it a point to send feedback to the company–so far all positive–so that they’re aware we’re here. Plus I do try to interact with the sales staff (a little small talk, etc.) so that they can see I’m a person too. Maybe a bit eccentric, but there are lots of eccentrics in this world.

In a discussion about fucking it was interesting to see how all the references were to “penetration” (even by the women). So why do we always seem to think of it as “penetration”? I suspect if men magically had their genitalia switched with women, it wouldn’t be long before we would start bragging about “enveloping” women (…and of course who’s tampon was bigger. ). Not sure if women ever think of it that way…

I’ve been re-reading “My Husband Betty” and it struck the well-known T* fondness for giving-head sexual fantasies, may in part have a simpler explanation that the reasons Helen cites (not that I think her reasons are wrong): it’s that while giving a blowjob a symbol of manhood is quite literally under your nose. I suppose if we want to be scientific, we could call it the “phallic proximity” theory.

I know women who love giving head in part for precisely that reason. This was regardless of whether they had bottom or top overtones to blowjobs, i.e. submitting to have his penis in their mouth or enjoying the control they had over his response. And since most of us males are such visual critters, it’s probably got even more of an appeal for us. After all, being penetrated isn’t something straight guys normally do either, but without mirrors on the ceiling it’s a lot tougher to actually watch yourself being taken that way.

An aquaintance of mine just shared a story that provides me with another example that people are often more accepting than we give them credit for.

She’s an intersexed transsexual who’s into bicycle racing. Some troll on a local cycling forum she belongs to somehow got info about her gender status and plastered it all over the forum. The post was deleted by the other mod and troll banned, but the rumors were swirling, so she had the courage to set the record straight.

The result was wonderfully accepting. She received more than 200 private messages of support as well as more from the vast majority of the 150 posts (and counting) in the thread. Plus when the troll reappeared under a new name to give her more grief, the other members slapped him down. Oh, and my aquaintance  discovered one of the prominent members of the forum was a post-op MTF.