Excuse the Mess - Personality Under Costruction

Please excuse the mess I am in these days, but my female personality is under construction. Maybe it is really reconstruction, and in part, translation and re-interpretation, relabelling, among other things traits formerly given masculine names, but now given their female equivalents. But it is I think more than renaming what is already there; I think it is also doing a bt of reconstruction.

One hopes the end point is a personality and character, which gives one a feminine appearance to others, so that they don't just dismiss you as 'still acting like a guy,' or worse, being merely 'a man in a dress.' That would be a part of giving you stereotypical masculine labels. It might mean too, spreading perceptions of your character as still all too masculine, or not ever being a real woman at all. Even when people talk of your faults, you would naturally want them to use feminine terms and concepts for understanding them.

This thread concerns the social change part of the TS transition, the key factor in a successful gender transition. I am beginning to think that there is an aspect to the way of my presentation as a female, that would cause some others, perhaps in a moment of frustration with me, to regard me as being both emotionally volatile and sort of shallow, the colloquial and dismissive label for that being, 'silly b@#?!."

Looking over the errors of my ways, including public bloopers, I think it is wise to face both the positive images I project as a woman, (some have called me a striking woman and others, well-dressed), and to recognize what stereotypes others will apply to me, especially when they perceive I am reflecting a negative image.

Any other examples of such re-interpretation of your traits that have been meaningful in your transition? Have you had to pass through a stretch in your transition when you seemed like being a mess, though hopefully not your whole life being a mess? Have you made a mess of passing as and living as a female?

Just to prove this exercise is politically correct and not demeaning to one's life as a woman, think of this: It is even trendy these days for women to claim ownership of, and control over old negative slurs and bad words. The most spectacular of these, has been the Sl*#% Walk movement. It is not anti-women to embrace this and defang it, but a quite positive part of the feminist agenda.

This topic has particular interest for me. Since I was mistaken as a male at birth, and raised to be male, I was pushed into the male socialization and mannerisms that go along with that. I never was really good at it though and usually considered a "sissy". Still it is difficult to unlearn the lessons I was expected to learn and the way of life i was supposed to follow and then to learn to be ladylike. It is one of the reasons I am not living full time as a woman yet as I do not feel like I can portray the image well enough yet.I will eventually though.

Love your title, id love to have it on a sticker.

Did you get a remolding Permit?
It must be posted you know.
Rader

I just sent Marleena a long PM and used the word "mess" in a similar fashion so it was funny to read it in your words.

I lived my childhood,teens and twenties feeling like the world was trying to kill me before I realized it was my identity that was actually under assault.

I'm extremely rebellious when it comes to what makes a woman or not and what is or is not feminine behavior and the reasons for this extreme rebelliousness are now quite clear to me.

I will always have a knee jerk reaction to others trying to define gender for me because I have fought so hard for my own expression of it.

The first thirty years of my life no one thought I was a man and neither did I and they and "I" were correct but now it is my turn to decide how I will be "what I am".

I do not want to go from trying to prove I was a man to "myself and others" to now trying to prove I am a woman because I will leave one prison for another.

For me being feminine is simply bringing back to life everything I killed earlier.

Being natural is for me the best way of being seen for who I am.

I have recently had another insight about my own personal journey to perfect my adjustment to living, behaving and thinking as a woman. My social life as a woman has been discouragingly incomplete, especially as it concerns close or even more so, romantic friendships.

I would not listen to those professionals who discounted my distress in not having had my personality remolded during the crucial two years of transition that included SRS/GRS by the taking of female hormones, (they were refused to me, in part due to bureaucratic error). One doctor even said in effect, that women my age are over the hill sexually anyway, and just to get over it.

The insight I had last Sunday that I was refusing to act my age, came from the keenly felt frustration I had, at being alone again, at a time when another date on the calendar is normally celebrated by single women with a date or at least the companionship of a close friend, so one does not need to go alone to a pub.

So I decided to just give up playing the role of an available, outgoing, single female in her prime time. A little further thought revealed that I had gone through and left behind, previous phases of my transition, the unisex teen and twenty era going on for some years, (almost twenty years ago). After that, I discovered teeny-bopper short skirts, bright colours, and skimpy summer tops. Even as I let go of those styles of expression of femininity, I failed to understand that what replaced them was though more mature, still not good enough. My recent age-related style and expression of aspects of my personality which were unaccustomed, or to put it more critically, just not me, also had to go, along with the youthful short skirts and continual searching for a date.

I think the real me can be unveiled now, an older, more socially conservative, softer spoken, mature, thoughtful woman, with a sedate manner and relaxed style. I should embrace the utility of comfortable shoes, the modesty of longer skirts, the consistency of less casually mixed-up combinations of style and quality in my clothing and accessories. I shall throw out the cheap purses, the out of fashion and crummy accoutrements and even stop using the word 'cheap' at all, substituting 'inexpensive.'

I had not realized that trying to turn back the years even modestly, to assume a more youthful and careless identity than I am comfortable with, was a mistake. Now I do, and I am ready to embrace the challenges of the mature, low-key living that others my age have moved on to.

Footnotes: Last Sunday was St. Patrick's Day. I have mentioned here before the refusal of HRT to me, which was also quite possibly a medical error as well. Unfortunately, I cannot afford to pursue it further medically, now that it has gotten so tied up in complicating convolutions. I also believe that there is a window of opportunity for starting HRT that is open only during the active phase of most intensive social and physical transition, for this is when one's personality is plastic enough in its gender-based sexuality , (that is, it is under construction). It is also a little late to get any significant benefit from a law suit considering how many years they require to be resolved. On the bright side, though its lack may have crippled any adequate adjustment to middle-aged female life, it is less significant for the adjustment to the third age of life that I am getting resigned to now.