Thanks for the positive feedback-I think it is funny that I didn't even think my dress was that short- just on the short end of normal.

And that illustrates one of the inner measuring tapes people are using when they observe others. As Debs pointed out, 'see beard- see male/expect and feel certain things about him' . For many others: see skirt or dress-evaluate length and secondary messaging [flaunting her legs/weather just cleared and she finally got a chance to wear that nice sundress/ trying to be younger than she is/ dirt poor and only has one dress, ... as we pick up additional clues]

But I see over and over that after that initial reaction- then 'see beard see male' rapidly dissolves into 'see person and figure out: friend or foe, interesting or repellent, needs help or doesn't, adding something or isn't, etc.' So just being a normal person works just fine. Humans mostly can't and don't want to be stuck wondering why you are wearing a dress when life is moving on and conversation is to be had. Most people seem to be mildly uncertain, but relaxing progressively, seeming to me to be relatively relieved that at least someone has bucked the gender norms and is proving safety. That said, it is a heavy lift to reconstruct society, so I will be understood as an outlier, suffering the loneliness and exclusionary pressure felt by every minority. It is a rare person who will just run the other way to avoid contact. I never get any threats or hostile looks. Mothers usually just communicate to small children that it is no big deal, and men generally are either stiffly polite or ignore me like they would any man not in their sphere of manhood.

Meanwhile, I am finally free just to live life as feels normal to me. I take pleasure in the superficial pleasures- the breeze, the ruffling of my hem as I move, the colorfulness of my clothes a a walking art piece, the gentleness of my interactions with others, the ease with which I am being a girl in the world, rather than the way I learned to behave and feel as a boy. Life feels like it doubled in size since I am free to have the whole range of experience of being a person, rather than one side of the dualistic gender framework.

For the benefit of those still trying to find a way past the uncertainties to subdue the fear of going out- I'd liken this to a day on a river where there was a high tree limb people could walk out on an dive in the river. I saw them doing it, wanted to do it for the intense pleasure and adventure and fun, and I could calculate the risks as low if performed with simple confidence in ordinary actions I already knew how to do. When I go up on the limb, though, I froze. The water seemed too far away. But I knew it could be done, so I just leaned forward until it was too late, and as I started to fall I turned the fall into a dive. It was a great afternoon after that, and I never forgot it!