Playing on the Girl's Team

 

Image from Fa Barbosa
on UnSplash.

I am fond of calling my initiation into the world of ciswomen as being allowed to play in the girls’ sandbox. But recently, I have seen it described as playing on the girls’ team. When it comes right down to it, it doesn’t matter what you call it when you have essentially given up life as you know it to transition into the feminine world.

When I was allowed to play on the girls’ team, of course there were many new things I needed to learn because I was seeking admittance to a new and complex, layered feminine existence. For the longest time as I was learning what life really was like for ciswomen, I took the easy way out by thinking all I needed to do was look the part. This is when my second wife began to mock me by calling me the “Pretty, Pretty Princess.” She was right as my presentation was advancing quickly forward and I had ego trips when women at transgender socials I went to on Long Island, New York mistook me for a real woman and wanted to see a male identification before they would let me in.

Even though I was extremely flattered when they asked for my ID, deep down I knew my wife was right and all I was trying to be was a princess. That was when I tried to begin studying the lives of women around me to discover the deeper meaning of being allowed to play on the girls’ team. Which I knew my wife would never help me with. She was busy with bigger issues such as the possibility of losing her husband to another woman which was me.

Initially, the shock of playing on a different gender team came from losing all of my male privilege such as using my size to bluster my way through life. All of a sudden, my size which I took for granted became a problem for me to disguise with the best fashion choices I could. All I knew for certain was I was told I had good legs at the Halloween parties I attended as a woman, so I tried to build my style from there. All the way to putting together my own tennis outfit even though I had never played a game in my life. Eventually, I needed to back off from showing too much leg and getting kicked off the girls’ team for not blending in and attracting too much attention to myself.

It took a while, but finally I began to realize what feminine privilege was all about and it was so much more than just having men open doors for me. Privildge to me meant I could appreciate the world around me so much more deeply. I had many more avenues to explore in the world once I escaped the restrictive bonds of living in my old unwanted male world. Other women freely interacted with me once I was firmly accepted on the girls’ team and once I learned the rules of engagement and communication, I was able to have so much more enjoyment in my life. Most importantly, I knew I never wanted to go back no matter how many stop signs I faced on my gender path.

Sadly, my second wife passed away before she could see the maturation of her princess into a fully-fledged transfeminine person. Looking back, I don’t think we could have ever stayed married but hopefully we could have remained friends while I continued to fill out my gender workbook. I finally learned I did not have to rely on her assistance to gain admission to the girls’ team because she had given all she could to help me. As with any other female, I needed to find my own way to womanhood. And even though I was not born as a psychical female, I surely thought like one and fought to be one my entire life.

As a novice on the girls’ team, I needed to earn my way also which included many bumps and bruises along the way when I learned I was much more than a cross-dresser who liked to wear women’s clothes, the mental process I went through was much more complex and tougher. To quote an old popular “Kenny Rodgers” song, I had to know when to hold them, know when to fold them and know when to run when I was dealing exclusively with other women.

Fortunately, my newfound acceptance on the girls’ team meant I needed to do very little running. No one came up to me and tried to pull my wig off in public, and for the most part I had to just deal with silence, stares and glares when I encountered a woman who for some reason wanted to hate me. There was one in particular who was also invited to the girls’ nights outs I was invited to who had a problem with me being there. I was able to ignore her for the most part or try to kill her with kindness. Finally, it occurred to me that her problem may not have anything to do with me, it may have been with the world. Maybe she resented the fact that I was happy, and she was miserable.

The more I was allowed to play on the girls’ team, the more I learned from them on the nuances of the new life I so badly wanted to live. Along the way, I never imagined learning so much in such a short amount of time. I also never thought feminine privilege could mean that much to me after I left all my male privilege behind. Especially when the effects of HRT softened my world and improved all my senses,

Whatever you want to call it, playing on the girls’ team or playing in the girls’ sandbox never mattered to me. The most important part was that I made it and rarely got any sand thrown in my face as the princess grew up.