[Esme nha Maire]

Good heavens, my apologies for the tardiness of my response, introverted1; I managed to miss your post here at the time!

That's lovely to hear! It highlights the terrible effects that prejudice - pre-judging what someone will be like - due to the simple fact of their being trans can have on people. One has to be a tad careful here, because in my opinion there's distinctions to be drawn between folk who may have rejected your girlfriend due to political views on the one hand (eg: a small minority of women who feel that transgender women are not "real" women for purely ideological reasons), those who may have understanding of the subject and come to the conclusion that nope, sorry, but I definitely wouldn't feel comfortable getting into bed with a transwoman (which is perfectly fine - we can't help who or what our libido says yea or nay to), and those who in ignorance decide against because they simply have no idea what transwomen are like, or perhaps they have only encountered ones that didnt appeal and think all of us will be like them, instead of the highly varied bunch that we are.

In a world that often seems to like folk to be neatly and simply categorised, transfolk might just be one of the least homogenous but still identifiable groups of people one can encounter, so the tendency to judge all of us by just a few examples, and is particularly problematic.

Think, for example, of what the word 'lesbian' conjours up in peoples minds - or has done, over the years. Now, I'd hope that anyone reading this thread knows just how varied a bunch lesbiansactually are! Tomboyish, andro, high femmes, regular femmes, soft butches, stone butches, switches, 'just me' and so on... - and those are terms mostly just to do with outward appearance and behaviour. People sometimes wring their hands over why some people fit certain stereotypes or not, for example are femme women simply bowing to a patriarchal stereotype created for them by the patriarchy? Are butch women trying to be men? Well, not necessarily, no, and no! And some women are lesbians and trans as well..

The fact is that humans are so variable that almost no matter what sort of image or way of being you can imagine, there will be some out there for whom that is simply just them, or it's within their comfort zone to be like that. So here we are, just born into a particular society, and we start getting influenced by the society we are raised in. Girls and women look like this and behave like this and do these sorts of things and boys and men look like that and behave like that and do those sorts of things - gendered expectations of people has certainly been the norm in the vast majority of societies so far back as we have records.

Currently, Western society seems, thankfully, to be trying to push back against such restrictive stereotyping, but that's been a fairly recent thing. The world I was born into (late 50's in the UK) still had pretty restrictive views regarding expectations of men and women. Being female, even if the world didn't see me thus, I spotted (and resented) the limitations of societal expectations on girls fairly early. Being trans, I encountered the limitations of societal expectations placed on boys early on, too.

I wanted to be just like the other girls, for the most part. Although nah, dolls, don't interest me, but the sciences do! Pretty clothes - oh my yes! I wanted to look pretty, same as most girls did. That aspect of societal expectations of women was well within my personal comfort zone. Which wasn't a bad thing, given I was born trans.

I had to take metalwork and woodwork classes with the boys, whilst the other girls were doing home economics. I loathe the scrape of metal on metal, and was never very strong, so sawing stuff went very slowly with me. I was pretty hopeless at metalwork and woodwork, (and would much rather have done Home Economics instead) but didn't give a damn about it. I wasn't any kind of failure as a boy, in my mind, I was simply in the wrong class, I should have been in the Home Economics class with the other girls, but of course, the world didn't see me as a girl then.

I encountered feminism in books, and was overjoyed. But I still wanted to look pretty and be a fairly conventional woman in a lot of ways in the society I was amongst. The pain of not being seen as and not feeling oneself to be able to be accepted as "just one of the girls" was tremendous. Some sneered at me for failing to meet expectations of males in society, but I frankly didn't give a damn about that, except insofar as occasionally my personal safety was threatened. You might as well sneer at a giraffe for not being an elephant. And all this on top of the searing, life-threatening bodily dysphoria.

Fast forward to now. I dress rather middle of the road dykey, aside from my tendency to wear a brimmed hat, from my long hair and that I still use foundation and lipstick (although I note I am using lipstick less often as I grow older), and use handbags (hey, theyre practical, I like practical!). I mourn the fact that I can't seem to do a conventional femme look the way I used to - last time I tried, I looked like a butch trying to look like a femme and not quite succeeding, somehow. This despite my being , though I say so myself, conventionally femme and quite pretty in appearance in my 30's and 40's.

I've recently become aware that, feminist though I've been since my teens, I still managed to invest a large chunk of my feeling of self worth into my image, an image that used to conform to that of 'conventional femininity'. Now, a chunk of that, I suspect, may be due to my being trans - "woohoo, look at me, FINALLY being, looking, normal, just like all the other girls!" - but that's not the story entire, not by a long way. Being conventionally femme of appearance was well within my comfort zone, and I love the playfulness of image, the subtle nuances that changes in style of clothing can convey that are so exemplified by the variety found in womens clothing.

The realisation that my inability to do femme of appearance well recently has dented my feelings of self-worth really bugs me - as does the further realisation that some of that has to do with the fact that I'd become a size 22, huge compared to my former size 14 of my 30's. Am I less a woman due to what I am wearing now compared to what I wore 20 or 30 years ago? Hell, no! Am I less a woman because I am some particular weight or shape rather than another? Again, no! So why the heck do I feel as I do?

Answers on a postcard to...

.. meanwhile, my size 20 jeans are now rather loose, and I can nearly wear my size 18's again, woohoo!