DeliaTS~The Blog

Posts Tagged ‘transitioning’

For my birthday last month one of the best presents I got from my parents was a deeper feeling of acceptance.  It came in a few simple forms.  They sent me a card with a nice little check for a $100 AND they used my new (at least to them) name on both.  Since coming out to them they have used my boy name or girl name/boy name when addressing me and it’s caused a little friction.  So I think it was a pretty big step for them.  Of course I didn’t tell them that the money they sent went right into my boob job fund though   They also called and sang me Happy Birthday over the phone.  It’s one of those dorky parent things that they’ve done just about every year that I’ve been away from home on my birthday (which has been almost every year since I was 18).  But they included my new name in the birthday song too, which actually had me choked up a bit.

An older butch dyke friend of mine also celebrated a birthday last week and some of her friends, mostly older straight women, decided to throw her a little ladies luncheon party.  I felt really honored when I received an invitation too.  It was a fairly small but eclectic group of about 10 women.  Most of them know that I am trans (small town) so I thought that it was really sweet of them to let me into their inner circle and to actually treat me as one of their own.  It seems like such a little thing but it really meant a lot to me.

It isn’t always easy for transwomen to negotiate within women only spaces.  In fact sometimes they are not welcome at all.  It’s even harder in the first few years of transition and for someone like me who is transitioning later in life.  I didn’t get a strange vibe from the other women or feel weird myself in being there at all though.  In fact it felt quite natural and comfortable. It’s hard to explain.  I guess it was just a feeling of fitting in and being a part of  something that I never felt in men only groups, where I always felt awkward, uncomfortable and like an outsider.

I guess all this just was sort of a reminder of how important acceptance is to someone who is trans.  When I finally decided to transition I knew that I might not find much acceptance from the rest of the world and I was okay with that because I had finally found personal acceptance from within.  So lately I find myself being surprised when other people seem to offer so freely what I had to work so long and hard to gain from myself.  There are some days where I still get a dirty look or catch bad vibe but there are also some days that I simply feel blessed.

I told myself I wasn’t going to respond to a rather offensive and bizzarre email that I received the other day, and I didn’t. But I did want to address a comment this person made about me having a “hopelessly skinny” ass:

Sometimes people wonder how I feel about having all the content that I shot as a male still available on the internet or why I don’t just take it all down.

I have to admit that it does feel weird to look back on some of those pictures. In a way it’s like looking at pictures of when I was a kid or even baby pictures. But instead of thinking Wow, was I ever really that little. or Boy I was an awkward kid. instead I’m thinking Wow, did I really ever look that masculine. It makes me cringe a little when I see certain body and facial features that I dislike being displayed so prominently.  Granted I would play up the macho angle in a lot of those pictures. But the funny thing is that I never felt as masculine as I appeared, nor did I ever see myself as attractive as a male.  A lot of the time I felt pretty miserable about my outward appearance.  I guess that’s why in so many of them I am also drinking an alcoholic beverage.  Mostly I have a weird disconnected feeling when looking back on them though, as if I’m looking at pictures of someone else, someone I don’t even know.  And, since the person in those pictures *does* represent someone completely different from who I am today, I guess that makes sense.

It also feels a little weird to me to see some of the current porn that I shoot with Trixie that is POV or “stunt cock” work.  Most of it you just see my dick and part of my legs or maybe a bit of my belly.  Sometimes you hear me speaking in a male voice.  I think most people would naturally assume that it was a guy who was shooting it.  Trixie did say that in the last little thing we shot that my legs look totally soft and girly.  So I think my manly man stunt cock days may be numbered.

I totally understand why most transsexual women don’t like to share old photos or personal information about who they were while they were living in the gender assigned to them at birth. Basically, some people are just assholes and will use that information maliciously to try to de-legitimize their current gender status. Having that sort of evidence floating around makes it easier for those who are intentionally or unwittingly ignorant to claim trans people are “less than” rather than equal to.  Also some people *do* treat you differently once they either know you are ts or have seen pre-transition images, even if they are the most open minded people in the world. Most trans people work really hard at erasing or at least minimizing the traces of their pre transition sex in order to simply be treated like anyone else in their gender.  And in the one brief instance that someone is exposed to something as simple as an old picture all that work can go right down the tubes.

I’m sure I have lost potential members after they have seen my boy pictures. For some guys (and especially those who consider themselves straight) it’s just a hard image to shake from their minds. But I think most people are going to see what they want to see. At this point, even if I wanted to, it would be virtually impossible for me to wipe out all the pictures of me as a guy that are floating around the internet. And since some people do *only* enjoy my guy pictures I don’t feel too bad about having them available for a small fee

My life has changed in so many ways in the past few years.  I’m making a whole new start not only as a woman but also as a sober person.  I try to look forward and make a little progress every day and not dwell too much on the past.  At the same time it’s hard to measure progress if you don’t have a starting point.  Today I have a clearer understanding of where I came from and also a stronger focus on where I am heading. There’s a passage in AA literature about not regretting the past nor wishing to shut the door on it.  Of course there are plenty of things I would do differently if I could do it all over knowing what I do today.  But if I seriously want to be happy and whole for the remainder of my years here on good old planet Earth, I need to not feel any more shame or guilt about who I am and how I got here.  That is why I came out and began to transition in the first place and that is what will keep me sober.

I thought I’d post a few of my latest youtube videos here since I seem to have forgotten to. One of them is a promo for my site and the other is a pg-rated version of my latest transition vlog. I post the r-rated ones in my members area so people can see how my breasts are developing.

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Most of you probably can imagine that I get quite a bit of email from fans, admirers, and quite often from other transgender folks. I try to reply to as many as possible, but sometimes things get pushed to the wayside and I never get back to them. Or something might take a little more thought to reply to so it consequently takes more time to send off a reply. I thought I’d start to post a few emails here from time to time because you all ask some pretty interesting questions and I do end up getting a lot of the same questions over and over. So hopefully it will result in a little less redundancy in questions. This one of those emails that I thought was interesting.

Hi Ms,

As a Ts,(though at 6′5″ probably a non transitioner) I had some thoughts and questions about you, and your transition.
What role is this exhibitionism having in your decision? Would you ever have transitioned with out your success as a crossdresser? I know in my mind, I’d prefer transition to be something done kind of privately. (which at my size would be impossible!)
It sort of seems like the crossdressing is the vehicle that is driving you towards to a female mindset, instead of the other way around.
Also, what role do men have in your life? At the moment it seems like you don’t seem to romantically interested in them.
Being Ts involves a lot of baggage right? Not always the sexy fun outsiders think.

For some reason I felt a little defensive when reading this. I get the feeling this person thinks that I am some misguided kinky crossdresser that has decided to transition for all the wrong reasons and not a “true transsexual”. I hate it when people take a few little facts that they might know and make much broader assumptions. So I’ll go ahead and answer these as best as I can.

What role is this exhibitionism having in your decision?

I am actually more of a voyeur than an exhibitionist. I don’t get a thrill out of being the center of attention. It makes me uncomfortable. I hardly ever went out dressed in public as a crossdresser and still am not completely comfortable in public situations as a TS. I would say that having my site and posting naked pictures and videos of myself is driven more by an urge to make money and less of showing off for the pleasure of strangers.

For me though transitioning was less of a decision and more of a realization. I had been in denial about it for so long that it was consuming me mentally and physically. For a long time I was able to hold things together, at least on the surface but towards the end things were starting to fall apart. At some point though I had an epiphany and was able to cut through that cloud of denial and see exactly who I was and where I was heading. If I had continued down the path I was on I don’t think I would have lasted much longer. There was nothing I could have done that would have changed that. Sure, the path I’m on now is going to suck for awhile but if I work hard at it at least there’s a good possibility that things will get better. In fact they already are.

Would you ever have transitioned with out your success as a crossdresser?

What do you consider success as a crossdresser? Passibility? If so the first success that I had as a crossdresser came in 6th grade when I came to the school Halloween party dressed as a gypsy girl and no one could figure out who I was. The teacher thought I was a girl from one of the other class rooms. I wish I would have had the courage to transition at that age, but it took more than simply being passable as a crossdresser. It was a culmination of many life experiences that lead me to transition.

There has always been a very clear distinction in my mind between fantasy and reality. It’s true that I run a successful crossdressing adult website. Most of what I do for my site is erotically charged and caters to people with specific fetishes. Most of my personal life however is pretty vanilla. Being successful as a fetishistic crossdresser online probably did give me a boost of confidence at times but it wasn’t a big factor in my decision to live full time as a woman. In fact the validation I got online felt really shallow at times. Working on my site though did help me realize that I really wasn’t a crossdresser at all but something else. So in the end it was actually failing at being a crossdresser that was a big factor in my decision to transition.

It sort of seems like the crossdressing is the vehicle that is driving you towards to a female mindset, instead of the other way around.

Right, this is the old age question of which came first the chicken or the egg. Personally I don’t think it has much relevance. Some people do transition from the outside in and others from the inside out. They are two sides to the same coin. We all have taken different paths on our journey.

I started crossdressing at a very young age as is the case with many transgender people. I didn’t understand why I was so drawn to female clothing or why I would cry whenever my mom would cut my hair. I was a really “sensitive” child and believe I had a feminine mindset at a very early age. Unfortunately I also figured out that that sort of behavior was frowned upon so I learned how to suppress many of those feelings and kept my forays into my mothers closet to myself. I started stuffing myself into the box that society had constructed for me. That lead to all kinds of problems throughout my life, many of which I am still dealing with today. I considered transitioning in my late 20’s and probably would have if I had the kind of information at my disposal that I do today. My decision to finally transition was rooted in being true to who I am on the inside and giving myself permission to make the physical and biological changes I needed in order to feel finally feel comfortable in my own skin. Crossdressing ended up being something of a red herring. It was a superficial sign of something that was going on at a much deeper level. Crossdressing as well as copious amounts of alcohol became a distraction from getting to the crux of the matter.

Also, what role do men have in your life? At the moment it seems like you don’t seem to romantically interested in them.

I have always considered myself bisexual (or pansexual if you will). I’ve had several relationships with men before I transitioned although the 3 longest relationships I have had have been with women. Two of those women came out as lesbians while we were together and both of them are now married to other women. The third one being Trixie who I have been with now for over 7 years. We have an “open” relationship though neither of us is really interested in pursuing any outside relations at this time. I find certain men to be sexually attractive and wouldn’t mind being with the right guy if he came along. But it’s not something that I want to invest time and energy into pursuing at this point.

I hope posting this will clear a few things up and possibly offer a little insight into what my experiences have been.

I’ve been feeling a little shift in gears in my transition recently. Kind of like I’m settling into it a bit. Like when you hit cruising gear after accelerating for awhile. Or maybe it’s just 2nd or 3rd gear or something.

Once again this year Trixie and I attended a local transgender conference. The past two years we’ve only been able to be there for the weekend. We also were one of the couples on a panel discussion on TG relationships. This year it was just us and one other couple, a female to male (FTM) transsexual and his female partner. It was interesting to hear things from the other perspective, especially the shift in sexual identity within the couple. In some ways it was a reversal of what we are going through as a couple. Although Trixie and I both identify as pansexual/omnisexual so I don’t think our own sexual identities have really shifted much. The way we are perceived as a couple by society has shifted though from a hetero couple to lesbian, the exact opposite of what the other couple was going through.

I also attended a great little workshop while we were there on feminizing your voice with Kathe Perez. Kathe is a Speech-Language Pathologist who specializes in voice feminization. I did a one on one session with her too later in the day which was really cool. Nice to get some feedback and a few tips and pointers as well as some take home exercises. She has a CD series, Fundamentals of Your Feminine Voice, that I picked up while I was there also. I haven’t made my way through the whole set yet but it seems like it has some pretty good tips and exercises. I think it’s really going to help me focus on the the areas I need to improve in order to have a more natural feminine sounding voice. Eventually I would like my singing voice to have a feminine ring to it too. I haven’t been playing my guitar much lately because everytime I start to sing something my male voice comes through and it just sounds weird to me and freaks me out a little.

Speaking of things that are natural and feminine . . . my boobs seem to really be starting to shape up. This picture and the one up top are from my latest members update. There are some really beautiful shots in this set. We took them right around sunset so they have a nice warm glow to them

A few weeks ago I did something not so good to my back. I’m not sure exactly what I did to cause it. I think I may have tweaked it a little when I was shooting a POV video of Trixie giving me a blow job. I tried doing some stretching later on and I think I may have over twisted or something only making it even worse. Our soft and sagging mattress didn’t help things either. I was waking up in the middle of the night in pain and having to get up and lay on the floor in sleeping bag with my legs propped up. I finally got a sheet of 3/4″ plywood and slid it in between the mattress and the box spring. That helped a lot. I’ve been doing a lot of light stretching and taking things pretty easy lately and I’m feeling a lot better.

The whole ordeal made me feel old and feeble. It really made me appreciate what it must be like elderly with all the aches and pains. It’s funny how having your mobility limited can effect you mentally. It really put me into a bit of a funk.

I was a little bummed out the last time I went in for my laser treatment. They had a new esthetician there who actually worked at the old place I went to. So the treatment wasn’t nearly as good as the first time I went. I made sure to request the same person who did it before for my next appointment coming up next week.

On the boobage front things seem to be going quite well. My breast are continuing to grow and are still pretty sore. My areolas are looking noticeably bigger. I did end up taking my nipple rings out after going back and forth on it for so long. It is nice to be able to feel nipples without any metal in the way. Trixie has been enjoying them also. It feels incredible when she sucks on them and plays with them when we’re having sex.

This is actually the last set of pictures I did with my nipple rings in. The full gallery is now available in my Members Area. I also posted a new video update for my Trans Vlog where I spend a lot of time playing with my budding titties That ended up being more fun than I thought it was going to be!

So I went to a new hairdresser this week because I wanted to find someone who knows how to cut curly hair a little better than the person that I had been going to. I’ve been procrastinating a bit on this because I was totally out to my old hairdresser. I always presented as a female when I went to her but she knows that I am a transsexual so there was never any of the awkward tension that I sometimes feel when I’m around people who don’t know that I am trans. I know it shouldn’t matter to me what people think and I should just be myself, do my thing and to hell with what anybody else thinks about it. But the truth is I still get hung up on whether I am “passable” or not in social settings and how people are perceiving me.

I’ve gotten to the point now where I can usually tell the moment someone clocks my T. There’s a certain look of recognition I notice in the eyes and face, followed by a shift in their demeanor and tone in their voice. The first few times it happened I think I let it really get to me. I would have a deer in the headlights type of reaction for a split second and then try to finish up whatever it was that I was doing and get out of where ever I was asap with as little eye contact as possible. It was an instinctual reaction that I felt at a gut level. At times I felt betrayed by my adrenal system. I could feel my heartbeat quicken and face get warmer as I slipped into flight or fight mode.

I know that reaction sends the wrong message to people. It tells them that I am ashamed or embarrassed by who I am, that I am doing something wrong and it probably reinforces a sense of moral superiority in some people. I’m starting to get over it though and slowly learning not to let it shake me or at least not to show it if it does.

So a few days ago I went to see my new hairdresser. I should mention that the woman that I was originally going to had her own shop where she was the only one doing hair. It was very much a one on one situation. The place that I’m going to now is more of a salon and day spa experience with multiple chairs, hooded hair dryers, a big washing and rinsing sink, the works.

Before I left for my appointment I was feeling confident in my overall appearance. I had a nice day look going on with my make up. I was wearing a tank top with a long sleeved shirt over it and a long skirt. Trixie convinced me to ditch the flats that I was wearing and go with my boots. I’m still a pretty self-conscious of my height and the boots add a few inches but definitely were a better match for the outfit.

In the parking lot I checked myself one more time in the rear view mirror before heading into the salon. On the way there a women stopped me on the street and asked me where a good place to get sea food was, so obviously I was looking friendly and approachable. Once inside I had to wait a few minutes for my stylist to finish up with a client. The receptionist offered me some coffee or water while I thumbed through some fashion magazines. I declined because I didn’t want to have to get up and pee right in the middle of everything. Finally my stylist was ready for me and lead me back to her chair after a friendly introduction.

Nice, I had a chair back by the corner window with a great view of the water. She put draped the cape over me and attached around my neck then asked me what I wanted to have done with my hair. I told her and after a brief discussion she got started. She spun me around in the chair so I was facing the mirror and that’s when my mind started in. I looked up and saw my big male face staring back at me. With my hair pulled back the overhead lights were glaring down on my thick arches of my brow bone. With the black cape pulled up around my neck my masculine jaw and chin seemed even more prominent. As the stylist started foiling in some color for my highlights we engaged in a little casual conversation but all I could think about was whether or not she had clocked me yet. I tried to relax and kept telling myself it didn’t matter but it was hard not to wonder.

The conversation continued. Something about boots – did I say cowBOY boots? I meant to say cowGIRL boots. Oh dear God she must know now. She spun me around so I was facing the rest of the room. Two other women were getting their hair done. I suddenly felt like all eyes were on me as they sized me up. Finally she spun me back around. A minute later someone burst into laughter. Obviously someone had cracked some kind of joke about me, I mean what other explanation could there be.

Finally the highlights were done and my hair was ready to be rinsed out. As I leaned back in the chair by the sink I felt my neck stretch out while my head tilted back. I swallowed once and felt my adam’s apple bobbing up and down. It must have been obvious to her at that point. I mean it was right there in her face. As I walked back over to the chair for my cut there was some chatting and giggling going on between the receptionist and another stylist. Again I was convinced that I was obviously the topic of their conversation.

She finished up with the cut and set my hair in nice curly style, all the while complimenting me on my beautiful ringlets. After sitting under the dryer for awhile I made my way back to the chair once again for the final inspection. She had done a great job and staring back at me in the mirror was my old feminine looking self once again. As I walked back up to the front to pay, one of the other stylists remarked on how beautiful my hair looked and even went so far as to say I looked like a model. I have a feeling they all knew that I was trans by the time I left but in the end it didn’t really matter. I had the cut and look I was hoping for, everyone was really nice to me and I now have someone who knows how to do my hair the way I like it rather than settling for someone who I was unsatisfied with.

I know I let some things get to me that I shouldn’t and I am starting to get better with it. I do think being on hormones has helped me feel more relaxed and confident. I still really want to have some facial surgery done soon though. I think it would do wonders for my self esteem. Until I can save up enough though I’ll just have to get by with what I have and keep working at it.