Pre-transition, my then partner A and I had a bit of a cruel habit of making up nicknames for the various transpersons in our life. There was "Leggy" (tall and short skirts), and "Fabby" (because everything was fabulous), and Murphy (a close friend, Irish), and "Boney" (skinny, without a lot of feminizing baby / body fat, and choosing shoes / fashion that highlighter her angularity), and "Briskly" (her social style was somewhat curt), and "Moany" (always going on about something), and "Sneaky" (on the D/L about dating men while married).
I am sure there were others, more or less cruel. My nickname was "Primpy".
I suspect that nobody who has known me over the past 15 years could imagine me being called Primpy. While I have been blessed with a nice assortment of feminine attributes, I've been living the life of an androgynous, gender neutral, soft butch something or other for many years. There's an old trans community joke: What's the one cure for cross-dressing? Answer: Transition. I certainly stopped "dressing" in anything feminine once I transitioned.
The joke plays on several levels. First, touching on the way some folks (myself included) warmed up to the idea of gender transition by testing the waters as a cross-dresser. Another joke: What's the difference between a cross-dresser and a transsexual? Answer: Two years.
Second, once one has transitioned, one can no longer be considered to be cross-dressing, but is rather is choosing clothes appropriate to ones gender.
Third, back in the day, the transitioners / transsexuals, intent on proving their own authenticity (to the world, to medical professionals) generally disavowed any sort of outward display of femininity. We'll get back to this, I promise.
But, I'm getting ahead of myself. M, my therapist, spent our first few sessions identifying the issues. Obviously, my pain, suffering, malaise, apparent circling the drain. Something was clearly broken in our heroine, Jude. Second, my self-imposed isolation, from friends, family, etc. Third, the way I got involved in a group, event, community, cause, and inevitably found myself over-committed, running the place, but no longer able to enjoy, benefit, or participate, and filled with resentment as a result. And finally (scrolling off the bottom of my list, but M would not let it go) my relationships, or lack-thereof. Your correspondent has been wholly out of the world of relationship and sexuality for roughly 15 years.
At our first meeting, I gave M a heads up. I've been down this road before. I've done a lot of work (both traditional therapy, reading, and less traditional healing / spiritual growth work). As a result, I may get there before she did (so please try to keep up), my intuition is on point, and I can be pretty fearless. Once there was blood in the water (figuratively), once I got a clue of where this was going, she would not have to spend 6 months trying to get me to see what to her was crystal clear, and another 6 months screwing up the courage to make changes.
To call me prescient was an understatement.
So we talked, we made some charts, she got to know me a bit. She pulled out a copy of Janina Fisher's The Living Legacy of Trauma Flip Chart: A Psychoeducational In-Session Tool for Clients and Therapists. I drew some boxes, and chewed on some stuff. One of those boxes was labelled "The Good Transwoman" and that one has proven to be important. M gave me the language / visualization of having a long antenna - super sensitive to what others are feeling, thinking, etc. - which makes me highly careful as I move through the world.
And then, (maybe 3-4 weeks into our work), two things happened.
First, my niece was planning a wedding, and I realized I'd need to find something to wear. I've gained weight in the ~20 years since I transitioned. I have a closet full of things that do not fit, are no longer fashionable, are not appropriate. I floated the idea of wearing the dress I bought / wore to my nephews wedding a few years back, but my sister, knowing there would be family pictures, would have none of that. "Go buy something new for your niece"
Meanwhile, M and I got talking about relationships and my exceptionally dour opinion that there was nobody out there for me. Transgender women are often suspect in lesbian spaces; I'm a firm believer that vocal TERFs (Trans Excluding Radical Feminists) are the tip of a much larger iceberg. And while most queer women are polite and PC enough to not be outwardly trans-excluding or trans-phobic, well, we transgender women are generally not dating material, especially among women my age.
On the other side of the gender line, whatever currency that transgender women have with men pretty much goes out the window once one is post-operative. I've been hit on a handful of times in the past few years - always men who recognize that I am trans and are looking for a lady friend with something special (a penis). It takes a simple "sorry, I'm post-operative" to send them on their way, along with pat on the head, because for whatever reason these dudes are usually 5'2" and I'm a kind of amazon queen at 5'11".
Also in the back of my mind - the fact that transgender women get killed by men, invariably men who are attracted to them, seeking them as sex or relationship partners, conflicted by their sexual desires. So yeah, nothing there.
And to be honest, I have no idea what or who I want. I'm not really attracted to a specific type or gender, but rather to how we relate. You press my buttons, you make me feel like a desired, feminine, receptive woman (maybe even leaning into subbing or bottoming) in our relationship - and I'm all yours. Stone butch, silver fox, straight but open minded, gender adventurer - I'm pretty much wide open.
And yet... M would not let it go and we've come to use the word "unicorn" as short hand for that mythical, possibly one of a kind, person who might want to connect with me: sexually, socially, emotionally.
M simply posed the question. "If your unicorn is out there, how would they find you?". Boom. Wake up, Judith.
Because yeah, I've spent the last 20 years mastering the art of invisibility. My present FB profile quote has been:
"...invisibility is a superpower." ~ Banksy
Recently changed in light of the current situation:
And I've hidden from the world as a soft butch, androgynous, gender neutral being, My friend K noted "you're sort of blurry, muddy - blacks and greys and earth tones". So long as the world honored my gender (and the world invariably does) I was fine. But an invisible, gender-neutral person in figurative camouflage might keep me safe, but it is not going to catch the eye of a bright and sparkly unicorn, looking for a playmate or a soulmate.
And finally, the dresses arrived for the wedding (Kohl's, don't judge) and as I pulled them out of their mailing bags and pulled them over my head (they fit and looked pretty good, all things considered), a familiar feeling, long dormant, washed over me. The same sort of happiness and excitement and endorphin rush I got 30 years ago as I dipped my toes into the world of cross-dressers. I like wearing the clothing that society and culture mainly mostly assign to women. Boom. Wake up, Judith.
And this is where it all comes together, where the earlier prescience pays off. Because it become crystal clear what I had to do: I had to embrace my inner femme.
About 12 days ago, I sat in M's office, in my usual camouflage. Pondering the need to bait the hook (so as to catch a unicorn) with the suspicion that the positive emotional experience of putting on a dress might have something to do with it. A week later, I was in there, wearing the best femme mode I could cobble together (after decades of not giving a shit about pretty much anything I wore) and weeping. I want to be a girl; I need to be a girl; I miss being a girl. (I'm 61 and I know its not PC, but the wounded part of me that we're dealing with is still very much a young woman / girl).
Let's just say things have moved quickly. I've come to understand what's happening slightly more slowly than I havelet things unfold. Outwardly:
- I began to purchase clothing, rebuilding a wardrobe that has lain fallow for nearly 15 years.
- I began to reclaim some of my gendered spaces - a dresser top where I keep earrings and jewelry, a closet filled with clothing stretching back to my cross-dressing days.
- I took 7 bags of clothing to Savers that no longer fit, were no longer appropriate, or were remnant of the various organizations, communities, events, and career requirements I've participated in over the past 25 years.
- I've "come out" (again) on social media, this time not a trans or a woman, but rather as a "femme", mostly so as to ease the transition with family, friends and colleagues who have not seen me in a dress (or wearing jewelry or makeup or bright colors) in years, if ever.
- I've started to move through the world as a clearly gendered, brighter, happier, sexually and emotionally available woman. My friend the unicorn, here I am. Come find me.
So yeah, 20 years post-transition, and I'm primping again.
The universe is a funny place.
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