Excuse the Mess - Personality Under Costruction

[Beth-Lock]

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.