Who wears the trousers ?

Maybe I can find places as a female playing with some tropes of male dandy, somewhere at the intersection of soft butch and drag king. A kind of queering of queer. This was the siren song of the trousers. An expansion, rather than a change, but still a welcome one.


Butch or femme?  Trousers or skirts?  Choices, Sophia's Choices.

Gender Dysphoria (GD)

......when I was young I was not able to look in the mirror as it was very emotionally painful to do so. Thanks to HRT I can now look in the mirror without issues. But at the same time I still have a body image issue that I am not 100% okay with.



So what has she done about it?  A few words, from Aleana, on a subject we all know too much about.

Dressing Up and Dressing Down

I don’t mind stopping by Starbucks or Target in four inch heels, but when I see girls wearing cute, comfy clothes I start to wonder if I could pull off the leggings/tank top/hoodie look.











Oh, this girl can pull it off.  Short post but, as is always the case with Hanna, several nice photos.  She's looking great!

Kleinfelter’s – Female-Style

Whether male or female Kleinfelter’s, I gotta say that it is good that I developed a female self-identification. I lacked critical male genitalia; my anatomy never could have been surgically corrected to male. I had no internal anatomy to connect to anything, to function as male.




A very interesting blog post on the author's intersex condition.  There are many "degrees" of XXY.  This one is 1 in 100,000.

HRT 6 Month Update

Don’t go into HRT thinking that you will suddenly be the woman (or man) you have always seen in your mind. I so hope it does for you and for me, but the reality is that it is a small step along the way, but even one step is important.



This update is good reading for those thinking about HRT.  The author gives explicit details as to the changes in her body and the resulting effects, so reader beware.

Comfortable As Female - An Interesting Concept

Do you feel more comfortable when wearing men's clothes or women's clothes?

 

  

 

Rhonda comments on a question she found on Quora.

34 Years Later…This is Us.

Today this is us. Not a fairy tale, or a romance novel but a love story. A love story that will only stop when “til death do us part” but will continue to be held and cherished forever.







This one will bring happy tears to your eyes.  Lovely post.

Why I won't ask my doctor to refer me to the gender clinic

I have always asked, though, that my medical record not be marked with any transgender indicators. Why? Well, if I cannot be offered any suitable help, I don't want my record marked unnecessarily with details of my being trans that makes it easier for Nazis to round me up, like the Dutch Jews. 


Sound crazy?  Maybe not.  You can decide for yourself by reading Sue's well thought out post.

How feminine is your voice?

Many of us M2F Transgenders have real concerns about our female speaking voices. And we have good reason for this.  Most cisgender males speak in a pitch approximately one octave lower than the average cisgender female. This means that for most people it is easy for people to identify male speech from female speech from pitch alone.  However, there is an area of androgynous overlap where both cisgender males and females speak in the same pitch range. This is the range that I have been trying to master speaking in, learning all the appropriate feminine speech patterns to have my voice identified as female when there is no other social clue to guide a listener.



How feminine is your voice?   In my opinion, the voice is the most important factor in passing when in the real world and living life as a woman 24/7.  Read more about it in an excellent post, from Marian.

My Outfit - Be the Queen

I am making serious progress on improving my self image!  That whole, estrogen and anti-testosterone thing with the meds and all has helped.  But what has helped even more, is actually freeing myself from my own self imposed restrictions.  Like, it's only okay to be myself around these people or in these situations, and I really can't let those in these other places know the truth about me.  Being able to give myself the freedom to be myself, and to trust that other people are actually good decent humans that really only want to experience connections with others, has been absolutely life changing. 


Nadine says her self-image is slowly improving.  Good, because the reality is that this girl is gorgeous!

is transition inevitable?

Is transition inevitable? I have been pondering this question as my own life seems to be heading in that direction only I do not yet know what form it will take. 




Her posts certainly make you think.   Is transition inevitable?  It's another thought provoking post from my friend, Joanna.

Spring Funsies

So, it is officially spring. I reckon temperatures of 34 degrees Celsius qualifies as spring! To celebrate we decided to go to Starbucks to get a Pumpkin Spice Frappuccino. Yes, that is right in South Africa spring is pumpkin spice season. Americans may need some time to get their heads around this. It is ok. I will wait…

 



Yup, Daniella, I've got it!  It's spring in South Africa and time for Daniella to try out that new baby-blue dress she got for the equivalent of $7 US.  Oh my!  What a deal and this girl was thinking deals when she purchased the dress at the end of last season. Read all about it and see the pictures of Spring Funsies.
 
By the way, 34 degrees Celsius is 93 degrees Fahrenheit! That's summer heat!

Pre-Electrolysis Blues

My coworkers didn't know I was growing my beard out so I could get it burned right off. All they could see was a transgirl who apparently couldn't figure out her shaving. Since I had come out at work I had striven to make sure that I took my transition as seriously as possible. And that meant always looking my best. It's not quite right, but people tend to take trans people more seriously when they look the part and are definitely putting in a lot of effort to look the part. It's not right but I always want to look my best. I shouldn't have to but that's life.


You've got to grow it out before you can burn it out.  Faith tells you about her experience in both words and snaps.

The suicide rate among FTM transgender youth is much higher than among MTF teenagers. Why?

Moreover, I suspected that female to male transgender youth would – at least to some extent – find some relief from the fact that female assigned persons are given more freedom as regards gender expressions. Society does – in general – accept that a woman wear more "masculine" outfits, like for instance jeans, boots and a leather jacket. The opposite is not true for those assigned male.

Still, this study tells me that my assumptions were off target.


This one surprised me too.  Jack comments on an article from BuzzFeed.news.

Here we go then...

It's good to be back writing here without having to think about the subject. I feel bad I've been away for a few months. In a few weeks I'll be having my GRS, but fear not, this won't become one of those breathless every five minutes update GRS blogs. It just is what it is, I'm not looking forward to it or the aftercare, but I'll get through with it. And get back to writing about cider and tech. 




My good friend, Jenny, hasn't posted since May.  Here's an update, which includes fabulous news.

summer

It’s been a good and bad summer here at Sox Cottage. 






Sometimes it's nice to just see a simple update from one of our bloggers.  This one reviews the summer of 2018 and includes some nice pictures.  Bobbysox is looking gorgeous!

a small incident

By this age I don't get intimidated by anyone, and at conversation's end he was a little more educated than before. He didn't know what was between my legs but he got to know what was between this girl's ears.




And just what was the incident?  Read, a small incident, to find out.

Trans is not a word to understand

Surely, I would be happy to have made no changes to my body or life if only this social construct of gender did not exist. Yes! I could have lived happily with a male body, dressed as I wished, shaved, gone bald with age and maintained all that cut and thrust of testosterone – because no-one would have minded. I could have just ‘been myself’!
Not so, dear reader, not so.



A few thoughts on "trans", from Andie.

Transgender in Today's World?

I know too, much of being transgender revolves around where you live.









I agree.  It all depends on where you live.  I like to think that I live in the center of the trans-universe (San Francisco Bay Area), but Cyrsti names a few other areas in this post.

Vaginoplasty or labiaplasty?

If you want male partners, it makes sense to have the orifice. If you don’t, it is less clear to me. Then the orifice is part of your self-image as a woman. You would have a uterus transplant if you could, but given that you can’t at the moment you go as far as you can. So it’s about being genuine, being a real trans woman, rather than about what the alteration will accomplish. It is about ideas and not reality. It is all in your head.


Clare goes into explicit detail on the subject of vaginoplasty or labiaplasty.  Written from the point of view of someone who has had the surgery but also has second thoughts.

Self-care

Anyhoo, one of the numerous questions they asked was off I had any advice on coping mechanisms. The ones that came to mind where.....






Lynn was asked to run some trans-awareness training and it resulted in some good questions.  Naturally, Lynn had some good advice.  Read about it here.

Sephora Spotlights C.J.

At this year’s Sephora Store Leadership Conference, executives shared the following video about our family to encourage Sephora cast members to “Be The Difference” in their stores, with clients and at home.



Ok, perhaps it's a wee bit of a commercial for Sephora, but CJ's just so cute in the video.

Losing the thrill

I came to visit a friend this weekend. I drove up here in boy mode, as I could be a little more comfortable. I’ve gone back and forth the whole weekend, depending of the situation. Went to a waterpark and it was more convenient to be in boy mode. The same night we went to Choctaw Casino. I went as Stefani. The compulsion to be one or the other is not as pronounced now. I have reached equilibrium.


It's been a while since we heard from Stefani.  She tells you why in Losing the thrill.

For the parents of gender-nonconforming kids, a new approach to care

Stories and false statistics that exaggerate the proportion of children who stop exhibiting gender nonconformity may offer comfort to anxious parents who long for an easy life for their kids. They also prompt those parents to interpret any signs of struggle or ambivalence as de facto evidence their child is not trans, to withhold information about transgender lives from interested children and to create an atmosphere in which children learn to hide the complexities of their experiences to garner the approval of adults.


Trans Express links to an article on The Conversation website.  This is an excellent article, well worth taking the time to read.  How I wish these articles were around when I was a transgender child. Thanks to Jack Molay and Trans Express for sharing this.

How to Challenge Unconcious Bias

Strangers have an idea of who we are before they've said a word to us, or heard a word by us. So, how should we apprach these situations?



Brianna has some good advice on the subject.

further adventures in Cisland

 .....and as we were winding things up he called me "sir" - I thought I'd heard that earlier too, but didn't pick him up on it; sometimes life's too short... but the thought of spending more time with him without clarifying things was unbearable.





Some people just don't get it.  Read, further adventures in Cisland, from Dru.

The balancing act

I'm being hypothetical here: does my partner need her hubby to be all man all of the time? Is it selfish for a person to ask for time to be themselves?





Short and sweet, from Lynn Jones.