Not Fooling Anyone

 Early in my days as a novice cross dresser, I was obsessed with "fooling" the public into thinking I was a cis woman. As proof, when I look back at my earliest blog posts, I see a trend. I am almost completely into my appearance and not much to do with the feeling associated with being out in the public eye as a woman at all.

While we are on the subject, Mark sent in a question asking why I separated my time as a cross dresser with my time as a transgender woman. In essence Mark my idea of being a cross dresser was the process of looking like a woman. Being transgender to me was the process of coming as close as I could to becoming a cis woman of different upbringing. I have always believed females are not born as women. It's a process of socialization they go through to claim the title. Of course men go through the same process. So transgender people can too.

Photo by Daniel Lincoln on Unsplash

 I guess I could say my time as a cross dresser enabled me to learn and see if I wanted to take the next step to being a transgender woman. The point of no return for me was when I started hormone replacement therapy. Which brings up the question of why it took me so long. The answer is very complex and varies from person to person. In many ways I am very envious of the young transgender girls and boys who are able to come out and live as their authentic self at a young age. In many ways, at my age, I see myself as sort of an unwilling pioneer because times were so different and difficult to come out in as I was growing up in the 1950's and 60's. 

So, who was I fooling? Sometimes quite a few people when I started to try my hand at going out into a feminine world. At the time I thought the world was primarily a masculine one with women being around to look good and to birth/raise children. I was completely wrong. Once I started to dress for the approval of or to blend in with the rest of women in society I started to be accepted for at the least a transgender woman. I found also, most of the people didn't really care. They were in their own little worlds. Stay out of their way and they would stay out of mine. 

All of a sudden I didn't care anymore if I was "fooling" anyone into thinking I was feminine. After I quit fooling myself, my gender puzzle came into focus. 

My entire life, I had been trying to fool myself into thinking I was male orientated at all and the process hurt me deeply. I was the biggest fool of all.