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I am still always amazed when a bigot or uneducated person thinks a transgender woman dresses as a woman as some sort of a fetish.
In my case, I realized the feminine clothes and makeup I was
wearing were secondary to the real reason I was doing it. I wanted to be a
woman, or as close as I could come to being one because I knew there were
certain things I could never do such as give birth. As I progressed through the
years, however, I found I could find my own path to womanhood and follow it. I
would have no part of thinking I was involved in a fetish at all. I was different.
Little did I know how different I would turn out to be.
Initially, I judged a ciswoman’s life from what I observed,
since I was not allowed into experience more. When all you have is a one-sided
view, all you get is a shallow result. All I could see was the pretty clothes,
shoes and hair that the women around me had. Why did I have to be stuck in my
same old shirt and tie when my cousins at Christmas got to wear their new
velvet dresses, shiny black shoes, and creamy tights. I was always so disappointed
when we left for the trip home, and I dreamed of the day I could be a woman.
For many reasons, I took my time getting to my dream world.
It was almost fifty years later when my wife Liz and I took in a Cincinnati
Symphony Orchestra Christmas concert, and I was the one who needed to come up
with the most beautiful semi-formal gown I could to blend in with the other
ciswomen and enjoy the evening, I did as I thrift shopped diligently until I
came up with an attractive, sparkly gown in my size. Happily, I brought it home
and it worked well as I blended right in. Without a fetish in sight.
The only time I had to deal with being a fetish object was
when I first came out into the public out of my closet and tried online dating.
At first, all was pretty quiet on the dating front until I began to try the “man
seeking man” sites. Since I never kept my transgender status a secret, I began
to be flooded with men who wanted to wear my used panties or just meet up in a
motel room some place. I even had a couple of men who wanted me to dress them up as a
woman. Naturally, I turned down all those requests and was stood up often when
I required meeting a man in a public location of my choice. Even though I was
intensely lonely, I knew I was more than a fetish object and had to be safe in
the new world I was in.
The longer I followed this route, the more I knew I was
headed towards a complete gender lifestyle change. My dream was more than a
dream and it could be a reality if I tried hard enough to reach it. But first I
needed to change who I was trying to reach in the world. When I started out, I
thought men would be my focus. All the way to having one woman friend tell me
to get a banana and practice. (I will let your imagination do the rest.) As I
progressed though, I discovered the opposite was true, in order to make it in
life, I needed to first be accepted in the world of ciswomen. Who made it a
practice of looking me over from head to toe when I went out in the world. They
taught me how to be better, because I was certainly not a fetish object to
them. I was locked into a scary, exciting new transfeminine lifestyle.
When I became a regular in certain venues, it helped me jump
the gap I was experiencing when someone just saw me for the first time and
thought I was a man in a dress. When they saw me for the second time or more,
they began to realize I was a lifestyle, no matter what I used to be. The world
opened for me, as well as the ciswomen around me who taught me I did not need
validation from a man to feel good about myself.
As day-to-day transgender women, we do face the improbable battle
with trans porn in the world. Men think we are all like women they see in videos,
and magazines. When the men find out we are not the fetish objects of their
desire, some react violently. Trans women have enough threats to face without
the extra problems of trans porn.
As soon as the government leaves us alone and realizes we
are just living our lives, not as fetish objects, the world will be a better
place to live. Our transgender reality is what we are fighting for.
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