All the Way Out

Told the last of my colleagues about my transgenderism today - and that I'm intending to change gender.

mostly positive - completely positive in fact...though reactions varied. My male colleague was completely unaware of anything untoward. Had not noticed, even the rather obvious nail varnish of the past few weeks. this despite the fact they I'd waved them under his nose a few times. Nor the "Charlie's Angels" hair. Nor the women's tops I'd been wearing since May.

Two female colleagues said they had already figured out something was going on and the other two were surprised but supportive.

This is an ongoing process which began with my boss and my flatmate back in May and crescendoed when I told my sister in June. now I feel stupid about not doing all this years ago - what a senseless waste of my own life!!!

People tell me I'm happier. I feel happier. I smile more. I talk to people. I feel like Stella even when I'm being Steve, which helps....

.. and this is all since my trip to Wales in May....the life changing trip to Wales.. now how many people can say that?

Out Again

I left work at 8.00 in this little number, and strode down to Vauxhall, via the tube and Victoria Station. 

Changing into Stella at work is a fraught experience. There always seems to be a colleague about working late, plus the cleaners. I have found a space to change in but thanks to the colleague, I'm unable to return my day clothes to my desk and have to take them with me in my rather over-full handbag.

The weather being on the hot side this week, putting on a light summer dress to go out in was an absolute delight. Would have been even better without the jacket but my pale shoulders just aren't up the exposure right now. 

This time I sat on the tube - still with my shades on even though I feel I have eye make up licked, I still feel the need to hide away. Bare legs. Sandals. The tube got backed up into Victoria and it seemed an age while we all sat there avoiding eahc others gaze, me paranoid about showing my bum, I checked my skirt coverage a few times. It felt like all the make up was running off my face in rivulets of sweat. I also knew this was deceptive, and sure enough, when i finally got to check myself in a mirror, i was fine. 

then walking through extremely busy Victoria Station, not really noticed at all. Onto a train southbound. Sat down after smoothing my dress, all so natural... 

I arrived at the RVT slightly stressed, but not overly so. It had all gone fine. I was a bit sweaty but once inside the pub I calmed down - ordered a drink - found a seat. 

Bar Wotever was as entertaining as ever - all musical groups this time, but the Kraken was supremely entertaining. Then home via Waterloo Station

eyebrows and cheekbones

I've finally worked out where on my cheek to put the rouge to create a cheek-bone effect. Of course it helps that since losing weight i actually have cheek-bones to accentuate now and not just a fat Julie Burchill moon face.

I consider these the best pics I've ever taken of me en femme. And look - no clothes involved - how far have I come? Plenty far is the answer....

new dress - new eyebrows

I wasn't sure about this dress at first as it seemed a little frumpy and middle aged. but then I remembered, hey! I am middle aged (maybe not frumpy, lets not go mad!).

anyway, i spent a good part of today wearing it and completely forgot about it fairly quickly. Just starts to feel oh so normal, especially when the flatmate no longer so much as bats an eyelid at whatever you're wearing. Mind you, no feedback at all on my dress is quite confusing. A "that's nice" or occaisonal, "not sure that suits you" wouldn't go amiss. Still having to entirely trust my own judgement here.

Anyway, think I've worked out what the photos and the dresing have been all about. Apart from the fact that I have always been driven to put on women's clothes, there has been a fair old whack of method on my madness. The camera is an objective all seeing eye and although it can be used to deceive, especially with photo-shop, it gave me an unerring view of myself in these clothes.

Sometimes it can be too harsh, and sometimes deceptively flattering, but overall you quickly get a sense of your strengths and weaknesses. I've been using my dressing sessions over the last 4 or 5 years to build on my strengths. cheap clothes from ebay allowed me to try out all sorts of styles without committing any serious money - same with cheap make up.

Recently I've been able to stop photo-shopping images that I post on the internet. a lot of it has come from within me though. I may not look like a woman, but I feel increasingly womanly and have the confidence I need.

new eyebrows

this is the first pic i took of my eyebrows after getting them done - I'm rather pleased with them, I must say.

this image was moderately photo-shopped due to me being drunk when i took it, with bad make up and hair :-/

Although i only applied a mono chrome filter... that's all...

Second Bar Wotever visit

I did actually wear my new skirt out.. with tights because it wasn't that warm out. I'd never actually been out by myself in a skirt before, so it was a bit nervy.

It felt a bit weird wearing it in the office, but I soon got used to it once I was outside. Got a tube to Victoria, then a tube to Vauxhall.

Sat on a bar stool in the RVT, and found my skirt rode right up to indecent proportions, that as well as the top button on my blouse coming undone...but, again, soon worked out out to deal with these problems.

Later, got a train home and hard to walk right through Waterloo Station. Amazing how the abnormal becomes completely natural. i feel I was hardly noticed, striding through busy central London.

Sat on the train with my skirt right up around my waist virtually. Placed my handbag on my lap and sat there Tweeting and texting till I got to Welling. The short walk back through Welling was as uneventful as I would have wanted it to be.

This new skirt arrived today - so I figure its next on the list for wearing to Bar Wotever

My First Pride

since outing myself to my boss I've been part of our LGBT network at work. TFL has one of the best track records for this sort of thing - recognised by Stonewall. 

My plan was to semi-dress as Stella to get to Baker Street - which was stressful enough! - and the finish up the last touches on site. I arrived amidst massive crowds wearing a red geometric patterned batwing top and black jeans, and shades to hide my eye make up. Then, once i found the TFL bus, I whipped on my ra-ra skirt, took off my jeans and added a little lipstick. Completely forgot my ear-rings... then the chair of the LGBT network saw me standing lost and alone and took me under his wing. I was introduced to the other TFL  people, some of whom i recognised, and they were absolutely lovely. 

this is the LGBT chair here - a gay man - and an absolute darling... now I understand why LGB and T can go together...

After all was done I wandered about a little dazed at suddenly being alone in the big bad city. I was pulled aside for a phot opp. That's me in red, obvs. 

Went into the co-op, my first solo shopping trip en femme, to buy a wrap and some water. then wandered around, ending up in Green Park, having a chilled moment. while there I decided to look up my new lesbian friends from Bar wotever. not suprisingly they weren't too far away - over in Soho. so I joined them for a can of beer and ended up meeting more lovely people than you can throw a stick at. Which you shouldn't do, by the way, not at lovely people....

jeggings and jumper

Orange

I was given a heads up about this new product. I somehow never manage to see adverts for things so I need a heads up... its been on the side of buses and all sorts. LOL

Anyhoo - its supposed to be good... so I thought I'd give it a go. On my face!!!

Busty

tried out my new top today - in  my new room 

Feminising my life

Its not much but now I'm out at home I can start to fix those things around me that were, well, just wrong. I lived like a male - a particularly malfuncitoning one for far too long. It has never made me happy. Little things are starting to make me happy now. A for instance... i bought a nice duvet set for my bed.. in my new room. It's not much but it made me happy. I had got used to sleeping under an old sleeping bag with a dodgy old fitted sheet which i barely washed...that is no way to respect oneself!!! 

In this new room, which is Stella's room, i will live well. Look after my things, and be, above all, civilised, and feminine! 

Out indoors

Suddenly everything changes. My new lovely friend in Wales has named me Stella. I never liked Liz.. not really. I feel I can be Stella. So have had to rename this blog too. For two reasons. One, is that it was a blog about a tranny who never went out. now it has morphed into a blog about a trans woman who intends getting out whenever she has a chance!!

Been trying out androgynous looks lately - well, i have blogged about it before. This is the latest which I have worn out - notably to work. 

But today was a landmark day in my life as it was the day that I finally outed myself to my flatmate. Who is also my landlord. Now I fully intend to be Stella at home all the time. All the time.... 

The outing wasn't quite as epochal as all that.. I've posted a bit on Facebook about it - which he's seen and he'd already worked out that i had a "secret" wardrobe... even caught me dressed on one occasion. what was new though was my coming out as trnasgnder, not a simple cross-dresser, he was surprised that I was seeking gender reassignment, but very supportive all the same. I got lots of questions from him about that...

It'll take some time getting used to it - I'm still very nervous to be dressed openly. although the least girly my clothes the better i can handle it. 

Everything happens for a reason and this has been one long process of things happening just as they are supposed to happen. Me being free to be Stella at the start of the year, last summer's opportunity to go out dressed with my then girlfriend, and her more than positive acceptance of me being dressed whenever i wanted to in her presence...then my trip to Wales to meet J. who treated me entirely as a woman, as a friend. It's the first time I ever had a relationship (in the broadest sense, as the word also includes friendship) with a woman that did not involve me being male, and my maleness being my defining factor.

Also the friendships I struck up with t-girls along the way has been invaluable. There's nothing like getting out there.. and only a T-girl can give you the right balance between approval and reality check!!

Even my weight loss has come along at exactly the right time. though I've had to shed a lot of clothes, I probably needed to anyway as my wardrobe was - shall we say - eccentric to say the least. Now I buy with a view to wearing out in the real world. No more Liz Indoors. now I'm super Stella!!!

Breaking out the tripod

stripey skirt

I'm looking a lot like my sister here. That's probably not too surprising.

new black dress

an ebay purchase. I wasn't expecting to fit quite as well as it did. Now I just need to lose that spare tyre round my waist. It's gone from being a tractor tyre to being a mountain bike tyre - but its still there!!

about Lucy Meadows

This is worrying. You wonder if it is a trend - like the backlash against the poor, against the disabled, now against transsexuals  My own confidence in being Lizzie is extremely fragile so I can empathise entirely. Once you've decided the only way to be happy is to transition, change gender, live outside your assigned gender norms, and then you are hounded to the point where even transitioning can't make you happy, on a national level, which affects your job, your relationships, your family, your private life to the very core, then suicide can easily seem the only way out.

Littlejohn has a history of being a complete bastard. Contrary to the facts, history, all the laws of decency, he persists in taking people the right doesn't like and bullies them to the point where life becomes unbearable.

What makes this one different is that some feminists have waded in to support the bigots. WTF!!

Women fought for decades (centuries?) for the right to dress as they please and live as they please, and still do. Now those options might not be there for everyone. And they might not always be easy options. But they are there, and I'm pleased to say women are taking those options in their hundreds of thousands, without being called lesbians, unnatural or perverts or any other disgusting or inappropriate name. So why deny men the same rights? Men want to dress as they please, present in the gender they feel they are, and take advantage of the full spectrum of human existence - or just the part they happiest with.

Why the FUCK not? It is actually a matter of life and death round here. While a woman can put on men's clothes and go to the most bigoted pub in Welling, and join in with the lads talking about cars and football, or some such, how far do you think a man in a dress is going to get round here? Riducled at the very least, and certainly not treated as an equal to either gender!

We have enough fucking problems with Littlejohn and his army of little bigots who read his every word without the fucking feminists lining up to put the fucking boot in too!!!!

Read this:

Are the cis supremacists winning?

http://stavvers.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/are-the-cis-supremacists-winning/

A blog by "Another Angry Woman"

Last week, an awful New Statesman column was published which featured a cis woman whining about being called cis. Me and Cel West wrote a takedown of it.

Yesterday, over 200 people mourned Lucy Meadows, standing in the cold with candles, outside the Daily Mail offices. Over 100,000 people have signed a petition calling for Richard Littlejohn to be fired for his tirade of hate. A part of me wondered–as it did in January when Julie Burchill and Suzanne Moore went on transphobic diatribes to mass outrage–that perhaps the tide was beginning to turn. That maybe, just maybe, we were overcoming the seething cissexism of society.


Some background in case this passed you by
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/mar/22/lucy-meadows-press-harassment

Dame Janet Bond

I found this on one of my random searches - don't they look good their new roles :-D

Men in Saris: Mumbai's New Lavani Dancers : The New Yorker

Men in Saris: Mumbai's New Lavani Dancers : The New Yorker: "LAVANI DANCERS"

'via Blog this'

Interesting Debates

on masturbation and transgenderism

on the sort of snobbery that divides the trans community

My own view - the idea that trans people should conform to a set of rules by which they can be judged to be better women or men than those who don't is, frankyl, offensive in the extrme.

I take my inspiration from women of the late 19th early 20th century who wanted to buy into masculinity to the point that it helped them live a happier more fullfilling life. Most women are fairly butch these days, compared to their 19th century counterparts, as, indeed are men compared to their 18th and 17th century counterparts.

The people I admire are those that choose to move towards androgyny and carve out their own spaces between the genders. fine, if you want to be the opposite gender, go for it, but don't fucking judge me for not following the same route.

I know if I was a woman I would be treading the adrogyny line and probably with a whole lot more success than I do as a man - but that is where i want to be.

To Illustrate, Part 2 - Kaftan Years

In the mid '00s - 2005 / 06 / 07 I took to wearing kaftans a bit more. My reasoning was that they're a bit less obviously womens' wear and more like stuff that men can acceptably wear in many hot countries. 

That said - the one below is quite dress like - and for that reason was my favourite. It had a drawstring neckline and quite a hefty slit up the side - nice with a casual jacket. 

Then there's this - much more of a desert theme going on here. I wore this to death - even my wife didn't mind me wearing it round the house. Very, very long though, nd possibly quite a brave shade of green there....

Then there was this orange one...very feminine and yes - the only picture i have of me wearing it is in make up and very much in femme mode - as Stevie as I called myself at the time.

I lost my kaftans about 4 years ago in a mini purge...however, have just acquired a new one and want more for the summer. I also have a mini kaftan and there's nothing remotely manly about it :-p

Here's another couple of shots I just found - this long M&S skirt is long gone, but it was very pleasant to wear.

and this is my Glastonbury festival skirt - never worn at glasto but it was bought there in a last day sale.

Still have it - just washed and ironed it as I've lost enough weight now to get back into it.

and this was one of my wife's rare skirts....i'm not sure she wore it more than once - or ever. I wore it out to walk the dog in the mornings, and whenever i got the chance indoors. Nice to get one's legs out on a warm day. 

To Illustrate - part 1 - early days

All inspired by writing that last entry - here's a history of me as a man in women's clothing, and trying to make it work!!

I know I said those wedding dress pics were my first tranny photos - but this predates those by a couple of years. I'm wearing a lacy body under my shirt in about 1995

i fully intended to wear this top out in man mode  - but then put on so much weight i couldn't get it on. Still have it. It nearly fits again. goes nice with denim skirt or jeans! Emphasises the bust!

fully man mode here - hairy arms and everything!!

bought this dress on ebay. Not very practical. Probably shouldn't be included here, but, hey, why shouldn't i wear a nice formal dress to go out in on special occasions?

another slouchy dress i wore a lot, a hell of a lot, from about  97 when it was vaguely fashionable to about 10 years ago when it finally had to be thrown away.

this dress was lovely to wear, but i never really thought it suited me. Looks good in this pic though!

Womens' Clothes, Man's Body

After reading this thread on Angel Forum and this blog entry by an Angels member, which attempted the following:

I'm going to show a few pictures of "female" clothes looking good on a "male" frame. The four "models" (Michael, Jasper, Andrew, Alex) identify quite differently – respectively, across the spectrum: freestyler, femme, transvestite, trans-female – but that's not actually relevant here. What is, is that all have developed a personal style that expresses who they are in an attractive and (potentially) inspiring way.

I felt inspired to try the same. Of course, that was already a stated aim of mine, back when I discovered this blog, Eve's Rib, I decided to concentrate on what a feminised male would look like, and how s/he would dress. My desire to be a woman which as been with me since I can remember, has to be balanced against the fact that my physicality makes being a woman rather unlikely - or at least convincing woman that is. As my sister once put it, trannies are "butch men in dainty feminine women's clothes" - cos she had some of them trannies in her cab once - and to most people those two mental concepts, rugby playing hairy blokes, and soft, floaty or pretty clothes, cannot be brought together. 

I keep coming back to this dress cos its just so nice to be able to fling on a complete outfit in the morning, which is already hanging up by the bed. and very comfortable too. 

Though at this time of year I do find myself having to put tights on too - and a big cardy to feel cosy in the winter months.

Later the same day I tried this out as a combo for stepping out the front door. I feel it successfully walks the line between feminine and yet not so girly that it will incite the local EDL casuals to bash my brains out with a rock.

or with this jacket - please bear in mind, I would usually shave and brush my hair a but - yes I do let myself down in the presentation!!

and then at the end of the day I tried this. This is the office where i work, as a man. Only one person in my office knows I crossdress.

in the men's toilets

sitting at my desk