I was thinking about my RLE.
The longest I have lived full-time in my preferred gender was when I attended Fantasia Fair for 7 days in 2008, 2012 and 2014, but I discount those experiences because the people who live and work at the site of the Fair, that is, Provincetown, Massachusetts, are aware that the transgenders are in town for the week. Every tall female stranger is a suspected transwoman and nobody passes. How can you have a real life experience in your preferred gender if almost everyone you interact with knows your assigned at birth gender?
Discounting Fantasia Fair as an RLE for that reason also discounts the various three, four, and five-day transgender conferences and conventions I have attended in the past.
That leaves me with my four-day full-time experiences in New York City in 2009 and Hamvention in 2010 through 2019 (sans 2017) and my too numerous to count one-day outings. I consider those my real RLEs.
Admittedly, in some cases, some people knew what was going on because I came out to them, but the majority of people did not know. They may have suspected something was up, but I was just as clueless about what they thought as they were clueless about me.
I do think it is noteworthy that no one reacted negatively to me during my RLEs (a youth in New York City called me a "dyke," but I considered that a positive reaction).
So either (a) I passed as a woman in other peoples' eyes, (b) people suspected something, but were not confident enough in their suspicions to react to the tranny, (c) people suspected something, but respected my desires to present as a woman, (d) people suspected something, but did not care, or (e) people suspected something, but were afraid to react to a crazy transwoman.
Whatever.
In my opinion, my RLEs successfully demonstrated that I can “function" as a woman.
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| Wearing Acler blazer |
Jeremi Sikorski femulates Izabela Trojanowska on Polish television’s Your Face Sounds Familiar.
