Gender Was Always Such a Delicate Dance

Image from Morgan Petrosky
on UnSplash. 

 I can say one thing with relative certainty as I get started with this post, is that dancing has NEVER been something I have been able to do. I simply have never had the ability to sustain any sort of rhythm when I tried to dance, and I was notorious for stepping on my partner’s toes. 

My efforts became so bad when I grew up that I would only try to dance when I was semi-intoxicated. By now, you may be asking, what does dancing have to do with gender? When I started to think about it, I could equate it this way. At the beginning, I was so insecure as a novice cross-dresser, I was trying too hard to be perfect with my hair, makeup, clothes and movements. It was just like dancing for me as I struggled along with my life. The difference finally came when I discovered that being feminine was something I could learn and did not rely on the sense of rhythm that I needed to dance. For the first time in my life, I needed to go all in to perfect my feminine presentation and accept no shortcuts.

Perhaps you have heard of the term muscle memory. Along the way, I was discovering all that I was doing was changing my muscle memory from being a man to being a woman and it was very frustrating to me. My gender dance was starting off to a bad beginning. Of course, I knew ciswomen moved in their own special ways but to duplicate it was going to be the most difficult dance I ever attempted. 

In the beginning, I was trying just to not look like a linebacker in drag when I cross-dressed and went out. I thought anything would be an instant improvement than what I already was trying to unlearn walking like a man. I also needed to combine it with taking the menacing male scowl off my face and show to the world I was enjoying being there. Why put all that time and effort into applying perfect makeup if I was going to ruin it with a frown on my face. My whole problem was I was going to my own gender dance class without a teacher. The only feedback I ever received came from my second wife when she was coaching me on how to walk in high heels. She rarely wore hers, so I always wondered how she knew.

The final image I was trying to put together, just had to be so much more delicate than anything else I had tried in my life. Which was easier to think about than to do. The only previous cross-dressing images I had to work from were singular efforts on my own to work with my presentation before I was brave enough to sneak out of the house and into the world. It did not matter if I was just going to the mall shopping, or attending a transvestite-transgender mixer, I needed to dance my way in as a transfeminine person the best that I could. 

Initially, I failed more than I succeeded and spent hours trying to figure out how I could improve my presentation in all the ways I could. Since I was battling a severe case of testosterone poisoning from my unwanted male puberty. As I said, it was no fun unlearning the male poses and replacing them with female ones. The best part was that when I succeeded as a novice transgender woman, gender euphoria swept in and carried me away. Letting me know I was on the right gender path in my life. No matter how selfish or painful it seemed at times. The best part was when my new feminine self was coming together, the times I could relax and enjoy the dance. Sometimes, in my heels, I could even feel light on my feet which I had never felt that way before.

The more that I was accepted and then involved with a group of ciswomen who regularly socialized with me, the more I learned about how far I still needed to go to be on an equal footing to mentally dance with them. It was a shock, since throughout my life I had considered myself such an avid student of everything female. Only then to find out I still needed to learn so much more. Such as when to be soft and when to be strong as a woman and to project that to the world when I had to dance with all of it at one time. By myself.

My life as a man in the past taught me at least two ways to deal with the world I needed to change. One of which was to never show any emotion and the second was to internalize any negative thoughts I might run into. Like being able to ever dance with women at all. Overcoming those two obstacles on my gender path were very difficult for me and was especially difficult when I started seriously to pursue a male to female feminization. Way past just putting on a wig, makeup, and a dress all the way to dancing with the world as a trans woman. In fact, I never reclaimed my emotions until I started HRT or gender affirming hormones and to this day I have to still work to not internalize all of my thoughts. Now I know it is OK to show emotion and not internalize everything in life.

One thing is certain; I will never be able to actually dance well in any way shape or form but mentally I can now since my senses have improved so much. Along with my sense of smell and temperature, all the old music I liked so much just sounds better to me now. It is a place I never thought I could be, so I have grown to cherish it. Afterall, gender was always such a delicate place for me since I was forced to a male box at birth I did not want to be in, once I escaped, I never wanted to go back. So far, I haven’t and my dance continues.

I hope you are a better dancer than I am! Thanks for reading along and any comments are always appreciated.