sandra-leigh
10-08-2009, 06:12 PM
I may have inadvertently spun enough thread to out myself to someone I know :o
When I started actively face-booking a couple of months ago, I got in touch with (as Sandra) with a couple of guys I knew in high school, and apologized for not having approached them and talked to them back then. I had liked them then and they treated me well, but one of my few friends told me that I would be outcast by the rest of the school because the two of them were gay (this was the late 1970's)... and I regret to say that gave in to the social pressure ("suppose they aren't interested in being friends... then I'll be left with no friends at all...")
It was one of the pivotal moments in my life, because although I did give in to social pressure, I was saying to myself, "I don't know exactly what being gay is, and I don't know what it all implies, but surely being gay cannot be a bad thing: look, these people are treating me well, where-as the straight people are the ones who are putting me down and ignoring me!" It was, in other words, the point at which I discarded homophobia and started looking at how people treated me rather than at what society said about them. Since then, most of my new friends (or at least people who are happy to see me and talk to me) have been people on the margins of society -- I don't mean gang members or anything like that, but good people who for various reasons tend to trust very few people but trust me.
When I contacted the two fellows originally, I didn't give my birth name (the one they knew me under), but they were pleased to hear from me, and they accepted my Friend request as Sandra.
Several weeks later when I decided to start also Facebooking under my birth name (to get in touch with my estranged relatives and with people I'd gone to school with... to help rediscover myself by re-examining my past), I sent the two of them a message under my birth name, making the link to Sandra and specifically stating my CD/TG activities, and the topic division that I would be using between the two accounts, and left it up to them as to which (if either) of the accounts they maintained the Friend status with. Both of them chose to say Friends under both names. So some of what they write, I respond to as Sandra, and some I respond to under my male name.
Now where the inadvertent threads come in to play: I recently noticed that someone I know middling well from work is a facebook friend of both of those friends. This third person works at HQ, I work in the sticks, but I interacted non-trivially with him in the old work I did -- well enough to develop a friendly acquaintance. So I wrote to him a few days ago, asking him how he could possibly know these two people. Turns out that he was college roommates for several years with one of them, who had introduced him to the other. And he had noticed my (birth name) connection to the two of them and was waiting for me to put the names together.
The thread? Well, my writing style doesn't change much (if at all) as Sandra, and this particular third fellow is one of the few people in the organization I work for (other than my supervisors) who has read enough of my documents and emails that he fairly likely could name me as the author within a couple of paragraphs. Thus it is distinctly plausible that he's already noticed how much Sandra's writings look like <insert male name here>...
Oh well. Either he's noticed or he hasn't. If he has, I'm not expecting any trouble from him... though I wouldn't put it past him to send me a Friend request to Sandra just to let me know he's noticed :heehee:
So... anyone got any good stories along the lines of a friend wanting to introduce your female side to someone you already know from you male side (or vice versus) ? :D
When I started actively face-booking a couple of months ago, I got in touch with (as Sandra) with a couple of guys I knew in high school, and apologized for not having approached them and talked to them back then. I had liked them then and they treated me well, but one of my few friends told me that I would be outcast by the rest of the school because the two of them were gay (this was the late 1970's)... and I regret to say that gave in to the social pressure ("suppose they aren't interested in being friends... then I'll be left with no friends at all...")
It was one of the pivotal moments in my life, because although I did give in to social pressure, I was saying to myself, "I don't know exactly what being gay is, and I don't know what it all implies, but surely being gay cannot be a bad thing: look, these people are treating me well, where-as the straight people are the ones who are putting me down and ignoring me!" It was, in other words, the point at which I discarded homophobia and started looking at how people treated me rather than at what society said about them. Since then, most of my new friends (or at least people who are happy to see me and talk to me) have been people on the margins of society -- I don't mean gang members or anything like that, but good people who for various reasons tend to trust very few people but trust me.
When I contacted the two fellows originally, I didn't give my birth name (the one they knew me under), but they were pleased to hear from me, and they accepted my Friend request as Sandra.
Several weeks later when I decided to start also Facebooking under my birth name (to get in touch with my estranged relatives and with people I'd gone to school with... to help rediscover myself by re-examining my past), I sent the two of them a message under my birth name, making the link to Sandra and specifically stating my CD/TG activities, and the topic division that I would be using between the two accounts, and left it up to them as to which (if either) of the accounts they maintained the Friend status with. Both of them chose to say Friends under both names. So some of what they write, I respond to as Sandra, and some I respond to under my male name.
Now where the inadvertent threads come in to play: I recently noticed that someone I know middling well from work is a facebook friend of both of those friends. This third person works at HQ, I work in the sticks, but I interacted non-trivially with him in the old work I did -- well enough to develop a friendly acquaintance. So I wrote to him a few days ago, asking him how he could possibly know these two people. Turns out that he was college roommates for several years with one of them, who had introduced him to the other. And he had noticed my (birth name) connection to the two of them and was waiting for me to put the names together.
The thread? Well, my writing style doesn't change much (if at all) as Sandra, and this particular third fellow is one of the few people in the organization I work for (other than my supervisors) who has read enough of my documents and emails that he fairly likely could name me as the author within a couple of paragraphs. Thus it is distinctly plausible that he's already noticed how much Sandra's writings look like <insert male name here>...
Oh well. Either he's noticed or he hasn't. If he has, I'm not expecting any trouble from him... though I wouldn't put it past him to send me a Friend request to Sandra just to let me know he's noticed :heehee:
So... anyone got any good stories along the lines of a friend wanting to introduce your female side to someone you already know from you male side (or vice versus) ? :D