A personal announcement, emphatic thank-you, and cheers to Fedora.

Yeah, there's definitely a limit. And I'd say from some of what I saw last night that non-TS cross-dressers are perhaps closer in spirit to drag queens than to trans women.

Talking with one of the other trans women there, I told her that while it felt awkward from my side, I also had a lot of sympathy for where the non-TS folks are: Someone who's considering going through transition has an end in sight. Things may not go super well, and passing may not ever be a really achievable goal, but we're going to reach a point where we're pretty much fully integrated with ourselves. Someone whose gender identity remains on the male side of things while having a tremendous need for feminine expression is in a very hard place where they're probably going to be living a double life for a long long time. That has to be really hard and scary, and some of the women I met last night have been doing that since the 90s (and in one case, the 80s). Sure, they're never going to have to deal with the stress of going "full-time" and finding out how all of their colleagues and friends react to the change. But that comes at a real cost.

(And as someone who is TS, I feel that going "full-time" may be a scary step, but it's also a really rewarding one. That's where I want to be, after all.)

Tanglebones wrote:

Is it similar to the uncanny valley effect, where as you try harder, the remaining seams seem more glaring?

That's a good comparison for it.

There's also the question of body types and knowing how to dress yourself for the shape you have. Male to female transsexuals and cross-dressers often end up with inverted triangle body types: broad shoulders, narrow hips, and a smaller bust. That kind of body shape is flattered by certain cuts and types of clothing that draw attention away from or toward different areas.

Lots of genetic girls have this shape, too, so those kinds of clothes exist, but a lot of the more femme stuff you'll find in stores, especially if it's for women and not teens, is cut for a figure with hips. Transwomen also tend to be taller than genetic women, which raises its own sorts of issues with waistlines, skirt length, and so forth. If you take someone who's 6' tall with broader shoulders and narrower hips and stick them in a dress cut for someone who's 5'6" with wider hips, things aren't going to look right. All the wrong parts of the taller person's body will be emphasized, which can give them away if they're trying to pass.

A more tomboyish look helps alleviate some of those issues because they're a little more versatile and a little more flattering to an inverted triangle body shape. The problem with that look is that it doesn't feel as feminine. I'm not a cross-dresser, so I can't speak to that part of it from personal experience, but if I had to guess, I'd say that someone who is male but trying to express a feminine side to themselves would really want to express that in a really strong way. Super femme clothes and makeup can make you feel really feminine even if you don't necessarily end up looking convincing. That might be what cross-dressers are after but that's not necessarily a goal of someone who is a transsexual where passing is a higher priority.

Bought some simple women's canvas flats today, for occasional kicking around in. Not eye-catching, so I can probably get away with wearing them out. Also saw some cute heels, but decided I didn't really want to do that right at the moment. I don't really have anything to go with them, and I'm not really prepared to add to my height. 5'10" isn't super tall, but 5'10" in heels kind of is.

Intake interview on Monday. Still pretty calm about that. I mean, it's whole [em]days[/em] away. I'm sure I'll start to get heart palpitations by Sunday night.

Small steps!

Hypatian wrote:

Bought some simple women's canvas flats today, for occasional kicking around in. Not eye-catching, so I can probably get away with wearing them out. Also saw some cute heels, but decided I didn't really want to do that right at the moment. I don't really have anything to go with them, and I'm not really prepared to add to my height. 5'10" isn't super tall, but 5'10" in heels kind of is.

Intake interview on Monday. Still pretty calm about that. I mean, it's whole [em]days[/em] away. I'm sure I'll start to get heart palpitations by Sunday night. :)

Yay! Page me when you want to get into female-trade-secrets stuff. I bet Amoebic and a couple others will want to join that party too.

LiquidMantis wrote:

Small steps!

Taken in some nice new shoes!

clover wrote:

Yay! Page me when you want to get into female-trade-secrets stuff. I bet Amoebic and a couple others will want to join that party too.

Hehe. I'm sure I'll be in touch, eventually. It may be a while. Still working on the basic stuff I learned back in high school (shaving, nail care). I don't think I'll be ready for many secret-girl-club secrets until I take care of the things that long-time members don't need to worry about ("how do I permanently remove thick masculine facial hair?" and "how do I fill my body with estrogen and decrease testosterone?" being the primary concerns.)

I think the first thing I'll eventually want advice on is "what hair styles might work well with the shape of my face?" But that's going to really have to wait on some further weight loss and hopefully the effects of hormones. Hope hope. (From what I hear, the counseling center I'm going to follows version 6 of the WPATH standards of care, which means it'll probably be at least a three month wait from when I first go in until they recommend HRT (version 7 basically says "if it's clear they understand what they're doing, let them do it"). Although I've also heard that they're loosening up, since apparently a lot more trans people are coming to them these days. Which is interesting.) Anyway, I figure that means I'll hopefully be approaching my desired weight and a few months on hormones around Easter. Which is kind of auspicious. Anyway, that's when I figure I'll really start feeling comfortable trying to girl things up a bit. Everything until then is just sort of preliminary.

If Mixolyde reads this thread (I have no idea if he does), we had dinner the other night while he was in town for training, and he can testify to how very far away I am from appearing even vaguely female. I've taken a few pictures, but the iPhone front camera is [em]really[/em] crappy in poor lighting, so I need to keep trying. I should have asked Mix to take a shot of me. :p

Check list for things I should do to practice even though I don't feel comfortable: 1) Get a new P.O. box (not because I feel weird receiving packages at home, but because receiving packages at home sucks if they ever want signatures while I'm at work, or if my neighbors decide to open them. >_> I guess they really didn't want a Star Trek pizza cutter, although they did check it out.) 2) Order a couple of reasonably nice wigs. (I was tempted to go into the seasonal Halloween store and look at their wigs while I was shopping today, but I've heard that those wigs are really [em]really[/em] awful.) Mainly to get used to wearing them, but also just to generally figure out what I can do with them. 3) Get some make-up and start practicing with it to start getting techniques down.

Oh, and I need to make an appointment somewhere to start hair removal stuff. I have info for a place right in my neighborhood that claims to be trans-friendly, but I've been putting off contacting them until my first visit to the counseling center.

I'm super happy for you! I love reading about your progress, and am incredibly encouraged by how you've committed to the change, and seem happier for it.

Hehe. I still keep telling myself "I want to see a therapist before I decide for sure." But I'm totally lying. I [em]know[/em] what I want to do. I think mainly I keep saying it to myself to make sure I stay calm even though everything takes so long. (Waiting until January for hormones? OMG.)

Hypatian wrote:

5'10" isn't super tall, but 5'10" in heels kind of is.

I'm 5'9", and finding a pair of cute heels that don't make me feel like a giant can be a bit of a pain. I usually wear really nice flats or keep the heels fairly short. Which works for me since I have terrible balance!

clover wrote:

Yay! Page me when you want to get into female-trade-secrets stuff. I bet Amoebic and a couple others will want to join that party too.

Yes, add me to this list!

Thoughts on heels: I'm 5'8" but I prefer tall heels (like 4-5") because I have pretty big feet and higher heels actually perch you on the ball of your foot, so to me they're more stable and comfortable for walking around than something shorter.

Also, runway models have to be a minimum of 5'10" to even get work, and those are the short ones. There's nothing more amazing than someone tall in a pair of fierce heels.

Yeah, my wife is 6' and wears 4" heels all the time.

IMAGE(http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9oxxlA5Kg1qmbu5mo1_r1_500.png)

Bah. Image is too small to be legible, but the gist of it is a genuinely positive 1936 story about a FTM trans person.

Edit: ooops, unsolicited tips. I'll leave that out for now.

Good luck with your intake interview! I'm so glad you're willing to share your experiences in these new steps you're taking in life. Behind you 100% : )

:p Now I want to know what the unsolicited tips were!

Hypatian wrote:

:p Now I want to know what the unsolicited tips were! :D

+1

Hypatian wrote:

:p Now I want to know what the unsolicited tips were! :D

Haha, I'd misread Clover's post so I assumed it was something that had been already established. Here goes, it's totally boring! I think it was something to the effect of:

Slightly inebriated Amoebic wrote:

Hey lady, shave yo' legs for the interview! Wear the shoes! Even if you have the stumpy, hairy legs of a fat potato farmer like I do, when you're smooth-shaven it feels like you have girlishly slim and sexy legs (two things I'll never, ever actually have). It nice little confidence booster if you're into that kind of thing. : )

When I was in my teens and haughtily shunning what I felt was overwhelming pressure from society to conform to feminine standards, I developed an identity that was very...coarse. Didn't wear makeup, do my hair, wear feminine colors, shave my legs or underarms, or wear much in the way of women's clothes. However...sometimes, it still felt good to occasionally shave and feel all ladysmooth sexy sexytimes under my cargo pants and combat boots. I could maintain the façade of being tomboyishly tough-as-f*ck and still secretly enjoy something that is usually reserved as a feminine activity.

We like to have our good-luck rituals and lucky pennies to calm our nerves when we need them, so doing something that is personally and satisfyingly yours can be reassuring if you're nervous about taking big steps in life.

Giant truth here! I am not even close to girly ( even though right at this moment I'm dressed up for someone else's wedding) but even I have a couple sets of SERIOUS underwear for that.

It has nothing to do with hoping to show it to someone. Its all about how you feel about it.

Re: Unsolicited advice: Already *all* over that. Shaving legs and stuff (*almost* all the stuff, really) was a super easy and safe thing to do, since we're officially not supposed to wear shorts to work. (Boo!) Also growing out my nails. Little things can be very comforting.

I'm probably going to have to trim my nails down again soon, though. Even slightly long nails and typing do not make a super good combo, especially on the new chiclet-style Apple keyboards. (This is not something I had considered about them until lately!)

Hypatian wrote:

since we're officially not supposed to wear shorts to work. (Boo!)

Those goddamn fascists. Pants are a means of oppression.

Skirts are okay. A friend of mine has been considering a Utilikilt.

Hypatian wrote:

Re: Unsolicited advice: Already *all* over that. Shaving legs and stuff (*almost* all the stuff, really) was a super easy and safe thing to do, since we're officially not supposed to wear shorts to work. (Boo!) Also growing out my nails. Little things can be very comforting.

I'm probably going to have to trim my nails down again soon, though. Even slightly long nails and typing do not make a super good combo, especially on the new chiclet-style Apple keyboards. (This is not something I had considered about them until lately!)

Oh Lord. Fingernails. Another spot those are going to bite you is gaming, particularly console. I'd like to take whoever designed the Playstation, Wii, and Xbox controllers out behind the woodshed some days.

You can adjust, just as you actually can type in long nails. It takes a lot of practice, though.

Hypatian wrote:

I'm probably going to have to trim my nails down again soon, though. Even slightly long nails and typing do not make a super good combo, especially on the new chiclet-style Apple keyboards. (This is not something I had considered about them until lately!)

It takes practice but you get used to it. Stop thinking of it as typing with the pads of your fingers and more with the end, which may be part pad part nail or all nail depending on length. The hardest is if one breaks so things get lopsided.

SERIOUS underwear!

I'm going through the car wash here, and something just dawned on me. Feel free to tell the nosy old bat to take a long walk off a short pier, but I think this needs to be said.

I know two people who've transitioned, and my cousin used to do an amazing Marilyn Monroe before he married his boyfriend and settled down to have a family. One thing I saw was a lot of focus on the trappings of being female. Right now it all seems so weird and scary and like you have to do all these "things" or it won't be real.

But the part you have to remember is the really important things are inside you. You ARE what you are. You don't paint it, pad it, or trim it to fit. I'm just as much a woman under my car in jeans and a t-shirt changing my oil this morning as I was yesterday dressed to the nines (well maybe the sevens ).

Other people will judge you no matter what you do, for any reason under the sun. That's the way they are, particularly as a woman. There is no way to do this so perfectly that they won't say stuff even if you are XX female. If you're pretty, they'll talk. If you're not, they'll talk. Part and parcel of being a woman is this constant stream of judgement and assessment, both internally and externally. As hard as it is for someone like me to deal with, it's going to make it doubly hard for you because you have define yourself and how you want to present and express yourself in that stinging hail of bullsh*t.

There is a lot of work ahead. I'm not in any way minimizing that. But instead of "passing" being your goal, maybe you could try to look at the goal as changing the outside so you match what you feel on the inside. The goalposts are set by how you feel rather than external expectations.

Look around, try things out, do what makes you feel good. Pull on a pair of leopard print silk boyshorts (or whatever tickles your fancy; just make sure get full coverage ones to start with for comfort's sake) and then smile all the way to work. No one else has to know what's under your cargo pants. The rest of the world and it's crap can go piss up a rope and when some dribbling twat feeds strDumbAss into response.write you can give them your most devastating smile and the Hawaiian Good Luck Sign.

Amoebic wrote:

Good luck with your intake interview!

This. Sending good vibes your way.

Yellek wrote:

It takes practice but you get used to it.

Normal keyboards is okay. The Apple chiclet ones, though... >_< I really like them, actually--[em]except[/em] for this. I think I might get a nice mechanical keyboard for work. Normal keys, there's plenty of space between the keys, so there's room for the nails to move around. And when you do type with the nails a little, it's okay, they just sort of tap at the key and slide a little. On the chiclets, they slide a little into the tiny gap that's flush with the surface of the keyboard, and it just feels nasty.

IMAGE(https://encrypted-tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRRQV82WfMFgfc7LSUtpPUhnUuDahHVkejFOg6HH7QnjndviZF6EVdtbmytXA)

momgamer wrote:

But the part you have to remember is the really important things are inside you. You ARE what you are. You don't paint it, pad it, or trim it to fit. I'm just as much a woman under my car in jeans and a t-shirt changing my oil this morning as I was yesterday dressed to the nines (well maybe the sevens ).

Yeah, this is definitely something that I'm really focused on. I think it might be one advantage I have over a lot of trans people, particularly younger folks. I have a very very firm sense of self. I think I'm going to be changing a bit around the edges of that, but I know the core of my soul is as firm as bedrock.

The surface things are really more of a way to feel like I'm letting something out while I'm still really holding a lot of stuff in. Right now, I still have a hard time looking at myself in a mirror and thinking that I'm looking at a woman. I really [em]really[/em] can't expect anyone else to do that. It's getting a bit better--I can look at myself now and start to see bits of the me I want to be. I know there's a lot of work between here and there, but I can see the path, I think. Internally, well... my internal self-image has always been female. When I looked in the mirror before, I simply didn't let myself look and see that it was [em]me[/em] there. Just bits and pieces of some person. It was this sort of detachment, alienation from the body. It was [em]a[/em] body, but never [em]my[/em] body.

Now, I have to look at it and see [em]my[/em] body there. See my stubble. See my (lack of) hair. See my eyes, which... are actually rather pretty. See my nose, which is actually rather bulbous. See the lines of my face and think "That's not so bad... I think I might turn out okay." I have to look at it and see it, because I need to stop ignoring it. I need to start living in it, and make myself at home in it.

I know who I am, inside here, and I know that the outside is just trappings... but... I don't know how to explain it. It's the whole heart of what "gender dysphoria" is all about. It's about how proprioception doesn't quite feel right, because the body you expect to move when you act isn't the one that's actually moving. It's really weird and disconcerting. It's not just about the cultural trappings of gender, it's something deeper than that. But it very definitely is about the discordance between the inner self and the outer self--and the only part that seems changeable is the outer self.

Hopefully that explains a bit why there seems to be such a huge focus on outward appearance in trans folk. It's not that we're shallow, it's that changing your appearance ends up being a lot easier than changing your soul.

Anyway: The shaving, the nails, dressing up under my guy clothes: that's all surface stuff. When I think about who I want to be? I'm not the kind of person who has long nails most of the time--they get in the way, they're awkward. They're kind of fun once in a while, but not practical. But I'm doing that right now not because I want to be the kind of person who gets all dolled up all the time, but because all of this effort struggling to look at myself is really stressful. It's working out okay, but I need these little concentrated doses of feminine expression to feel more in tune over the day. Even though it's neither something that all women must do, nor even something I want to do all the time myself, it's something I'm doing because I can look down at my hands and feel a bit less stressed out.

The surface things are my life-line so I can get back inside safely after going EVA to inspect the hull. Sort of a living promise that "yes, I'm going to get there."

So, yes. "Passing" is not the heart of my goal. The real goal is feeling comfortable in my own skin. Having some sense of congruence between my self-image and my actual presence in the world.

The passing goal is more of a hope to not make other people too uncomfortable when I get there. (Both for my sake, because that's just awkward, and because I don't really [em]want[/em] to make people feel uncomfortable. I accept that even though the world ought to be a better place where the existence of trans people is an accepted thing, it is in fact far from perfect. It's totally easy for people to wig out over things they don't understand. If someone I personally know finds out I'm trans and freaks out, I expect them to figure things out and deal with it. But people I walk past going down the street... I'd rather not have them have to think about it at all.)

Amoebic wrote:

Good luck with your intake interview!

pgroce wrote:

Sending good vibes your way.

Thanks. It really really does mean a lot to have people cheering me on.

I'm starting to feel a little anxious now. Twelve hours. What's it going to be like? I have no idea. I feel like I'm climbing the ladder up to a diving board, and tomorrow is the day I jump. I'm sure the actual event won't be anything so momentous, but... for me, this is when it gets real. After this, it's time to start the big things. Facial hair removal is the super big thing I can start right away, which I've been putting off until this point. The interview will also start the timer for when I can be prescribed HRT according to the v6 WPATH standards. Either three months (if I'm lucky) or four (if they start counting at the first visit after intake.)

Or, as Eleven would say: "Geronimo!"

Amoebic wrote:

SERIOUS underwear!

Oh, serious underwear is seriously fun to buy. And wear. And no one knows unless you want them to!

I esp. enjoy serious underwear on days when I otherwise would feel like an enormous cow, esp. sitting next to one of the super dressed up women I always see on PT who always have flawless makeup (something I suck at) and always appear to have just got their "hair did", and have perfect nails that are never broken and have never been accidentally cut into with a sharp knife...

Well, I can feel smug knowing my underwear is hot stuff. Join our Smug About Our Underwear club. No annual fee!

I hope the appointment goes well - I've got my fingers crossed for you - and keep us posted!

I just caught up with this thread (last couple pages, I had a LOT of unread posts here) and just wanted to say Good luck Hypatian! It really sounds like you have the right frame of mind going into this.

Good luck today, Hypatian! Geronimo!