Riding the wave of social adjustment: trans people exist and we are just like everyone else

Forging a new trans identity; who will join me?

Okay, I will admit that it is not every day that a casual punter will see a ballerina giraffe gracefully navigating her way through the British Airways First Class lounge, sipping on champers and eating cake.  Yes, I am weak for cake.  It’s the progesterone.  Dang, when the doc told me that progesterone might lead to weight gain, I just scoffed…what he really should have said is that “any food placed remotely near you will have an irresistible magnetic pull on you. Suddenly, whatever you felt before will become erased, and that close food will become your new magnetic North. You will devour everything in sight.”

Hmm.  I will have to find the antidote.  But I am going to keep the return of my sexual appetite.  And you know what, progesterone definitely makes me feel more female.  Big time.  So much so that I struggle to remember boy feelings at all.

Security was a hoot.  “You’re going to set off every alarm in this place if you wear that through the metal detector.”

“What, my rings?”

“That’s a lot of metal, but no, I wasn’t thinking of that, I was thinking of all that around your neck.”  I was wearing my slave collar.  And a few other pieces.  Just a few.  I love it when people compliment my collar.  I’ll never forget the joy of buying it.

It was in Buenos Aires.  I was drawn to the shop, an antique silver shop, as much as I was by the strikingly tall, tattooed woman smoking outside, who sized me up completely as she took her last puff, long and slow as she drank me in, and then held the door open for me.  She saw me looking and read my mind.

“This is for you,” she said, “isn’t it,” her eyes had followed mine.

“May I see it?” I asked.

She took it out but as I put my hand out for it she said, “turn around.”  I did and lifted my hair, and then I felt her around me, putting it in place, and it was that surreal feeling I get when I feel a collar placed with energetic intent.

“Look,” she said, and I turned and looked in the mirror.  She went to stand behind me, looking almost over my shoulder.  I liked it.  I turned this way and that and saw how it suited my neck.  I reached to take it off.  

“No,” she said, “you may not take it off.”

“No?” I asked turning to look at her, watching her lips instead of her eyes, her chin.

“No.  It belongs on you.”

“Yes, it does,” I said running my fingers along its links, “yes.”

“Good.”  She said.

“I am happy you put it on me.”

“Hah,” she laughed, “I can see that,” she said smiling and turning with my card in hand.

“It provokes religious feelings in me,” I said…and she was a silent for a moment, and then said,

“You wouldn’t be the first to kneel before me.”  I laughed back.  “Well?”

“Really?”

“Why not?  How about when you enter your Pin?  That seems appropriate, doesn’t it?”  Oh, the women of Argentina!

Meanwhile, back at Heathrow, I was removing my rings, but not my collar.  “It won’t set the alarm off,” I said to the security lady.

“I’ll be watching you,” she said.  “You know what will happen if it does?”

“Do I want to find out?”

“What about those bracelets?” she asked.

“Oh, there’s not much metal in them, its mostly beads and leather.”

“If you say…”

“It’ll be fine.”

“Take your shoes off instead,” she offered.  I took off my high-heeled black leather boots.

“Good luck,” she winked at me, and I sashayed through.  The alarm went off.  I turned back to look at her.

“Uh-oh,” I said, “what now?”

“Turn yourself over,” she said pointing to her colleague.

“Wait right here,” said the colleague indicating a place on the floor next to her.  Had she been the Domme, such a simple hand gesture would have resulted in me kneeling.

I finally got a full body scan, but before it happened, one of the men on staff came up to me and said, “Excuse me.  We will need to screen you.  Do you prefer that be done by a man or a woman?”

“That’s so sweet.  Thank you for asking.  Will you touch my breasts?”

“Yes, we will do a full body scan, so everywhere.”

“Okay, then a woman please.”

Thankfully the electronic scanner only disliked one of my wrists, so I escaped untouched and was soon reassembling my outfit.

Nothing like a little time before a flight to gather my thoughts…and this little vignette got me thinking about our progress as a society.  I was genuinely touched by this man’s inclusiveness.  Diversity training is working.  Consideration also helps.

As I was standing at the bar an American woman came up to me and said, “I love your coat.  In fact, I think it’s my favourite coat in the world,” she said.

“Oh, thank you,” I said, “it’s cashmere,” I said giving myself, and it, a hug and a caress, “London’s finest.”  And then we had a lovely chat about non-alcoholic gin which was being poured at the bar.  Not bad.

And I was struck by how people were startled by me.  Men, women.  I was wearing a very shape-hugging dress, bare shoulders, down to mid-thigh, somewhat revealing, and covered with my favourite flowers, peonies.  My own lovely tattooes were tantalisingly on display.  Nothing like showing a bit of leg.

And as people look at me and then look away, every possible thought/emotion seems to play across their faces.  And it just felt so darned good, like I was screaming that song, “I’m coming out, I want the world to know, got to let it show.”  Diana Ross, I love you.

These thoughts have been brewing for quite some time…

Earlier that day I had met my lawyer, my knight in shining armour, the woman who is saving me from the predaceous wife who seems to be gnashing her teeth at me (and by the way, she seems to be the only one)…[and weirdly, we are at an all-time low in our feelings for each other I would guess given the latest incidents, but I felt my love for her still there, still strong…I could not go back to her—trust, once broken so dramatically, cannot be mended…but love can still exist.  Plus, she’s smokin’ hot.  Divorce looks really good on her].

I hadn’t seen my lawyer in quite a long while…but I said to her, “I don’t look the same.”  When I walked in to see her, the first thing she said was, “no you don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Look the same.”

“I don’t do I?”

“No.”

“Do you think I still can pass as a man?”

“You just look really androgynous now.”

“Is this how you always dress?”

“I figured the BA lounge needed some eye candy.”

“You look great.  I don’t think anybody looking at you would have any mistaking it.”

“The breasts make a bit of a difference.”

“It’s not just that.  It’s the whole package.”

“Yes, I dress like this all the time.  Well, I do wear trousers from time to time, but not that often.  I like dresses and skirts too much.”

A new trans identity

Why must I be a woman?  Why must I be a man?  Why can’t I just be a third sex?  That is what I am.  And I share this with trans women and trans men…They are my tribe.  I don’t need to be a woman.  I definitely don’t need or want to be a man…And with every passing day I realise that I have more in common with trans-men and trans-women, than anyone else.  I am not saying “in-common” in the sense of life experience, but dysphoria of any kind, including racial (and probably of any kind), seems to produce a remarkably consistent feeling about the body, the essence of who we are.*

I don’t need to pass.  Yes, had I transitioned when I really should have, at the age of 12, I have no doubt that I would have grown into the strikingly gorgeous trans woman that my body was capable of.  But that cannot be.  In the meantime, though, I become more beautiful by the day.  I look “weird”, but it is that “weird” that makes me beautiful.  It is dissonance.  And this is something I share with my tribe.  We are all stretching the boundaries.

We also have a unique experience.  That uniqueness gives us unique perspective.  We are rare.  Very rare.  When I had a haircut in Japan, they collected my hair, because they had never seen anything like it.  That was a while ago, but the truth is the same.  We love diamonds because of their rarity.  I am a diamond.  My trans brothers and sisters are diamonds.  We have so many sparkling facets, we too, are beautiful.  It is that we are neither male nor female that makes it so…and for those of us who approach either end of the binary spectrum, that is just another kind of beautiful harmonic dissonance…how we feel it is its beauty.

No matter what, we are outside of the mainstream.  Sadly, some people don’t love the fringe, but it is the fringe that makes the coat beautiful (and that’s the deal with my actual coat—it’s all fringe)…

And yes, I love you back when you love me…not that I don’t start out loving you too…but I do find that some groups of people seem to love me more overtly or predictably…first, sex workers, not ones I see, but ones I know, have been the most accepting and encouraging people of any…they are and have been my best allies.  Bless you all.

Black women have been my greatest civilian supporters, no matter the nationality.  Bless you all.  Black men give me an incredible sense of chill energy…they have given me nothing but calm, and a sense of safety…like I feel as if someone were ever to jump me, it would be a black man who would step in to help me.  Even when they might not like me, I can see that in their eyes, this kind of protective spirit.

Yes, there are others too, but these groups have given it to me in total abundance.

What’s the point of all this?  I am out.  Utterly and totally out…and I don’t apologize.  So when someone says to me that I need to understand that someone might have a hard time processing me, even though I am so not militant, I have to say, “no, I won’t.  There is no space for bigotry.  I have a right to exist, as me, we all do.  Get over it.  Whatever dissonance you feel that troubles you is about you, not about me.”  And in the meantime, I will cultivate it, which is why I like to hitch up my skirt and stand at the urinal in the men’s room, because, yes, we’re here.

And once I have up-cycled my bits I won’t be going into the men’s room anymore…catch it while you still can…

*as a bit of an aside, I am feel strongly for the Sex Workers who refuse to do any kind of play with racial undertones…I do know that some people are drawn to those types of kinks, but it is a positive stance to say ‘no’.  I have felt the same way about sissy-play or cross dressing of any kind that is fetishizing women, or that somehow a choice of clothes might be degrading for the wearer.  It makes me deeply uncomfortable to think of how that kind of thing is actually disrespectful to women.  I don’t judge people who play that way, but I have found that many dommes have asked me if I like that or have suggested that to me.  No please.  Not even a little.  Thankfully, the two dommes I have come to know didn’t have a drop of either in them—that’s what happens when you play with the best.