You Said What?

 

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More than a few novice transgender women and trans men think their gender presentation is the major path to being able to survive as their authentic selves in the world. Following my nearly fifty years as a cross dresser and novice transgender woman I was locked in totally on my appearance. In other words, I had made all the stupid mistakes I could as far as my appearance was concerned. I was also becoming fairly proficient in going out as a woman. Somehow I knew something new was going to happen on my transgender path. No matter how hard I fought saving my male self the more I failed and the more frustrated I became. 

What happened was I was suddenly beginning to meet the same people as my feminine self. All of a sudden I was expected to come up with a name, wear the same wig to look similar and use it all to try to communicate with new people. By this time you may be asking how did I handle the voice situation. Early, what I did was try to mimic the women I was talking to and attempted to not talk to men at all. Yes, that worked for awhile. As I progressed in my gender transition, the more I learned I had so much farther to go.

It was around this period of my life I learned the true secret of of blending in with and being able to play in the girl's sandbox had to to with how well I communicated with other women.  Dressing similar to them was not a problem, understanding what they were saying was a whole other issue. As a guy, I worked primarily with women and prided myself on understanding what they were saying. When I transitioned to being a full time transgender woman, all of it changed. 

First of all I learned the feminine equivalent of silent communication. I learned to watch (no really watch) other women's eyes when they were talking to me. On several occasions other women helped me to stay clear of interactions with other toxic men, On other occasions I learned to take what I heard from other women very lightly because often they were carrying a knife behind their back. I was clawed several times before I learned. A prime example would come when a woman, normally at Halloween, would say I "made" a good looking woman. What they didn't say was for a man, 

Gone were the good old days of straight forward communications. As I always thought women operate on a much more layered existence then men. I had to learn a whole new communication system. Of course all the effort was worth it as I assumed my feminine place in the world. Ironically the whole experience taught me women are the stronger gender. Even though I would never go back to being a guy, my time served as a woman would make it so much easier.