Five months later, there is still a low-level buzz at work about my Halloween presentation. I understand that some people wonder when I am going to drop the other shoe and present en femme full-time.
Which indicates that some people have concluded that there is more to my Halloween presentation than just Halloween.
My spouse is not on-board with me living full-time as a woman. I will not bore you again with the details, but I will simply state that I have made commitments to my spouse that I plan to honor, which precludes me living full-time as a woman.
Recently, I read about a girl who was in a similar situation as mine. Everyday she left her home in boy mode, dressed en femme at work, spent the day en femme and at the end of the work day, changed back into boy mode and returned home. In her case, it was to hide her girl from her children. Her spouse knew what was going on, but I do not know if she was supportive or not.
That daily routine sounds exhausting, but it is an option.
Maybe I could try it one day a week, see how it goes and build up to doing it five days a week.
It will make my work day longer because dressing and undressing takes time and I would do that on my own time, not company time. But practice makes perfect and over time, I probably can streamline things and cut some time off the processes.
I believe that Human Resources would support me because the head of HR already asked when I was going full-time.
What's holding me back?
Stana -
ReplyDeleteIf I had mastered speaking as a woman *and* had a more viable career, I'd consider working en-femme. It'd wreck my chances in the mating market, but living 24x7 (save when with family) is awfully tempting. But even things we dream about pale when they become reality - so I can wait for that....
M
Marian I think being your true self trumps suppression in favour of pleasing someone who really does not love you exactly as you are. I am slowly but surely coming to that conclusion for my own life, which is why I have given up the search...
Deleteto paraphrase Woody Allen it would double your chances of a date!
DeleteStana I am divorced in large part due to my trans nature and this is how I live my life now. I work in male mode and present as male in front of my children, otherwise I present as a woman. Its atough balancing act which may one day change. For now this is how it needs to be. But I do prefer this to my previous life of denial and suppresion. Whatever you do it will be the right thing because you are an honourable woman.
ReplyDeleteTo a certain extent we all get caught up in the gender binary. Either we are men or women...either we present en homme or en femme.
ReplyDeleteIt would be nice if we could move away from an 'either/or' situation and dress as it pleases us for the occasion.
If you are blessed with a job that you can do as competently whether dressed en homme or en femme (and based on your experiences it seems that this may be the case) it would be nice for you to have the option of present as Stan/Stana depending on your own view of how you want to dress that day.
As for me I know that I am the same person regardless of my attire and I sense that you are the same core individual regardless of your dress.
I respect my committments to my wife and I respect you for honoring your committments to yours.
Pat
I've had similar sentiments, Stana, but got divorced for acting on mine! I took it all one step beyond. My then wife never told our children but I suspect they know why I left. The result, I live f/t as the woman I feel I am. While I feel happier, I've lost a bit (a big bit!) in that process but gained in so many other ways.
ReplyDeleteIn truth, there are no books about this subject, no instruction manuals, no totalitarian views about what "might" happen. To quote Forest Gump, Life is like a box of chocolates. Forest's mother may have also known that as well. In that movie, the scene of him sitting on the swing under her bedroom is my favorite! He did make into the school!
Simply be the woman YOU want to be! Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!
Best of luck, Stana!
With the country moving closer to accepting LGBT rights, it will not be long before living as we feel does not matter. As an old transwomen, we are still caught thinking in the past. I do not think it matters that much anymore. Sure some of our old friends and family may have issues with the change (because thay are morning the loss), but the vast major of the public no longer cares. As most of you know, it's so much different than just a few years ago. When I dress now, I am fully accepted (Part of that is because I am better at it and went to E3000 for beard removal). Remember the young teen girls who would laugh. Now that group will give suggestions. What a great change and a good time to be an older "Tranny" :-)
ReplyDeletePerhaps Stana, the problem is that all of the sudden you have arrived at the spot you always wanted to be in and....severing what's left of your exterior male self is still scary!
ReplyDeleteSo many in our community think the process is sooo much easier for those of us who may be where they dream to be. Speaking for me, my life is wonderfully satisfying now but easier not so much.
Good luck on your next move. I think you have paid the dues!!!!
Dear Stana.
ReplyDeleteI think that you and your spouse can make a new compromise, in which, when you get home from work in femulate, immediately, you change to boy clothes. I think his spouse will understand perfectly, because she loves you.
Congratulation, I send a lot kiss.
Nanda
PD: Regardless of whether we will have another life after death or not, I think this life is about living as much as possible without hurting who surrounds us, but they must understand that to give happiness, we have to be happy. Do not you think?
A suggestion:
ReplyDeleteTake a vacation. A week, say. Pick an ordinary middle American city of 500K population or more you've never visited and where nobody knows you, in summer. St. Louis, Dallas, Cincinnati, Charlotte, Indianapolis, KC, SLC, Nashville, Phoenix, Boise, etc. (not someplace like LA, New York, Vegas, DC, or Seattle, where the locals are jaded about t people) Then, Stana goes there. No Stan attire allowed, either to wear on the plane, or to wear while there. You have to experience life as a woman for a week. Yes, you have to put your face on before you can go to the lobby to get your coffee in the morning, you have to negotiate public transportation and public interactions of all sorts, tourist stuff, in all weather, and you have to stay femme and presentable all day, in outfits that women would normally wear in those places you go, in a normal middle American city doing normal middle American things. Then fly home afterwards.
Did you enjoy it? More importantly, on the next day after getting home, did you absentmindedly wake up in the morning, stumble to the bath, shower, shave, have most of your makeup on, and were hanging your earrings on before you realized you were back home and going to work that day? Or were you relieved to not have to paint the face, wear a bra and spanx, wig, hose, or women's shoes, for awhile? That pretty much answers your question for you.
Hi Annie --- Actually, I do something similar every May. I drive 750 miles en femme to Dayton, Ohio (pop. 145,000), check into a hotel en femme and spend four days en femme 24/7 attending a convention, staffing a booth at the convention, attending talks at the convention, dining in the evening, taking taxi cabs, and doing everything a woman would do including putting my face on before going to the lobby. When I get home and have to do the boy mode thing, I very much miss doing the girl mode thing in Dayton, so I think I enjoy being a girl.
DeleteThere are times I too wish to live out the remainder of my life as Charlotte. Yes I have dreamed of going full time 24/7/365(For as many years as I have left. I’m 68 now). So I know your conundrum.
ReplyDeleteI do not have any issue in my immediate family, wife, sons, daughter in-law, and granddaughters all know of and see Charlotte most of the time they come over.
I have never tried, not even on Halloween, going to work as Charlotte. I’m a contract hardware/software test engineer, subcontracting to a fortune 500 avionics corporation. This bi company has supported at least 5 M->F TS that have transitioned on the job. All of them were above average highly regarded, engineers, before their transition and the company was more than willing to be accommodating to keep them and their skills during and after transition. And as engineers working in cubicles and not having to met face to face with the public they didn’t have to be perfect passers. Granted they did, at the end of their transition, look acceptable. Yet if it was my company I would not have wanted them to be in sales and out there as the face of the company. But as engineers in cubicles, they were and are great employees.
In my case I guess I’m not a pure 100% TS,f or there are still activities I enjoy doing as amale. So even if I was once again to recover my girlish figure and pass well, I’m not sure I would truly opt for 24/7/365. There is still too much I would miss.
We know the stories of how much it takes, how many compromises, how much commitment for our sisters that do successfully transition to full womanhood. For me that is just not in the cards.
Your Halloween at work en-fem photos do show you could pull it off, but even without your promise to your wife, would you want to make the commitment for 24/7/365?
In my yahoo group and profiles you can see how I looked back in the 70s and 80s. Oh to get that look back.
Charlotte3tv,
Profiles can be found on FLicker, Fet-Life, Colarme amoung others
I monitor my AOL and Yahoo Emails
Charlotte3tv@aol.com
Charlotte3tv@yahoo.com
And I respond to IMs on Yahoo again as Charlotte3tv
Pictures can also be found on http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheCharlotteSaga/
Stana, it might not be just the way you look - but the way you act. I have friends who like me more female. They say they see a difference - warmer, more nurturing... they LIKE Fiona better. Sometimes i wonder... I seem to think differently than he does, and say things differently. We get to the same place, but the styles vary.
ReplyDeleteCharlotte3tv, I have a number of friends who are "hardware/software test engineer, subcontracting to a fortune 500 avionics corporation."
ReplyDeleteThey have gone around the world to training people to service their products. They have giving training to military personal and private contractors in many countries.
Another friend is a project engineer in a different division of the same avionics company and has worked with all the major aircraft manufacturers around the world.
The customers cares only if the person knows what they are talking about.
N response to CTcTransAdvocacy Coalition March 30th response to my earlier post.
ReplyDeleteYou and I have seen their big fortune 500 companies letting good solid engineering types transition on the job and keep their positions, salary and benefits.
Our younger sisters may not realize how much things have change since the 60s. When I left collage 1967,and started living on my own, of course Charlotte came along with me. As I joined TV support groups this was not the way things worked. The professional engineers, scientists and college professors, I met who were in transition, had lost their previous carriers. It was really said to see them having to try and make it in cosmetology. Now however do be open with your HR department and you may well be pleasantly surprised at the transitioning help you will find.
Since I’m in the engineering ranks, I don’t know the stories of sisters transitioning in Sales, Marketing or training. I just imagine that looking acceptable, in you new gender presentation, would be much more important there, than just working in an Engineering Dilbert like cubical.
Charlotte3tv