The Great Purge of 1983

In yesterday's post, I mentioned The Great Purge of 1983. I received some inquiries about that purge, for example, this comment from Connie, "I am really curious now. What happened that caused the Purge?"

I have been femulating for over half a century and I only purged once, so that is why I call it "The Great Purge of 1983."

In the trans timeline, 1983 was Mesozoic. There was no Internet and there was very little published information on the subject. We were flying in the dark and grasped any bit of information we could find.

One legend was that you would stop femulating when you fell in love and got married. I bought into that legend because I stopped femulating after meeting my future wife and did not femulate for over two years while we dated and became engaged.

About a week before our wedding, I purged everything because I assumed I was done with femulating. Like I wrote yesterday, "not only did I discard replaceable items like clothing, wigs, makeup, etc., I also discarded irreplaceable items, primarily my collection of self-taken photographs. As a result, I no longer own a single photo of myself en femme prior to age 32."

Our wedding was in late September. One month later, we were invited to a Halloween party and I dressed as a woman.

And so it goes.

Wearing Boston Proper (Source: Boston Proper)

Harvey Korman femulates in the 1979 film Americathon.

My Quest

In 1983, I purged everything related to femulating.

Not only did I discard replaceable items like clothing, wigs, makeup, etc., I also discarded irreplaceable items, primarily my collection of self-taken photographs. As a result, I no longer own a single photo of myself en femme prior to age 32.

Starla has been scouring the Internet searching online high school yearbooks for photos of high school femulations. She has sent me her findings and I have posted some of them here in the past.

Last week, it occurred to me that there were yearbook photos of me en femme (at the ripe old age of 25) attending my law school's Halloween party. I lost the yearbook (it went out with everything else in the great purge of 1983), but I wondered if Starla could find it online.

I asked her, but after searching her resources, she responded that she could not find it. She explained that the majority of online yearbooks are of the high school variety; only a few college and graduate school yearbooks are online. She suggested contacting my law school.

I phoned the law school library and asked if they had the yearbook in their stacks. They checked and as it turned out, they had it! They welcomed me to visit the library to view it and photocopy anything I wanted.

Wednesday, I dressed en femme. I wore the black dress with the sequins pattern at the neckline that I bought from Ideeli, nude pantyhose, my new Nine West patent red and black Mary Janes, a new matching red bag from ShoeDazzle, earrings, bracelet, and watch. I topped everything off with my white fake fur coat and was off to Springfield to visit my alma mater.

(I might mention here that although I graduated from law school, I never practiced in the profession — not for one second. My first love was writing and while I waited for the results of the bar exam, I got a job as a writer and never looked back.)

An hour later, I arrived at the law school, parked the Subaru, and walked to the school entrance.

There was a security guard station at the entrance. The library is not open to the general public; only students, alumni, faculty, and attorneys can gain admittance. I explained to the guard that I was an alumnus and she asked me for a photo ID. As I extracted my driver's license from my purse, I told the guard that I was trans and that I looked a little different than the photo on the ID.

She said, "You're not the first."

(Years later, I became acquainted with a prominent transman who graduated from my law school long after I graduated.)

After she logged me in, I walked down the hall to the library. It was deserted. Final exams were underway and I assume most of the students were in the classrooms filling up blue books. (Do they still use blue books?)

The library staff had set the yearbook aside for me, so they did not have to search the stacks again. I just had to fill out a simple form to borrow the book.

I found a comfy chair in the library lounge to cuddle up with the book and recall the past. I was sure that there were two candid photos of me attending that Halloween party 35 years ago en femme and I was a correct.

I wish I had my computer scanner to copy the photos, but all I had access to was a copying machine. I did my best adjusting the darkness to capture the best image and the results accompany this post.

By the way, you find me in the photos wearing my first wig (purchased at a local Frederick's of Hollywood store), my mother's skirt, my own boy mode sweater, a blouse of unknown origin, and my first pair of Mary Janes.

And I was so young — so young that it brings tears to my eyes!

Caveat Emptor! This post is a rerun from December 2011.

Wearing Bebe (Source: Bebe)

Sylvester (right) portrays a female impersonator in the 1979 film The Rose.

Number 4

Last month, my blog was selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 100 Transgender Blogs on the web. When I checked the Top 100 list, I discovered that Femulate was in the number 20 slot!

Earlier today, Feedspot informed me that Femulate is also one of the Top 50 Trans Woman Blogs on the web. Specifically, they rank Femulate number 4 on their list!

Wow!

Wearing Boston Proper (Source: Boston Proper)

Daniel Bilić femulates on Crotian television's Your Face Sounds Familiar.

Coming Out When Going Out

Next weekend, I will attend a ham radio convention in central Massachusetts. I plan to arrive mid-afternoon Friday and attend a ham radio dinner Friday evening (hams will be served, but ham is not on the menu). Saturday, I will take in the workshops and presentations of interest and peruse the flea market and exhibitor booths, then drive home Saturday evening.

Personally, I will be breaking some new ground. Although, I have attended the Hamvention in Ohio a half dozen times as a woman, I have never attended a local ham event as Stana. As a result, I am likely to run into local radio friends and acquaintances who don't go to Hamvention and may not know about my preferred gender. 

So I may be coming out to a few folks next weekend, which is always a dicey proposition. Over the years, I have come out to a lot of people at Hamvention and there was only one occasion where it did not go smoothly. At the time, I thought the fellow, who I had known professionally for years, was not too thrilled with my change. But in retrospect, I think he was just very surprised and taken aback when I sprung Stana on him. I hope to run into him next weekend to smooth things out.

And so it goes.

Wearing IRO dress and jacket, Maison Bonet belt and Jimmy Choo boots (Source: Intermix)

Duke Looks Like a Lady: Duke of Windsor (seated left) femulating in 1925.

Don't Be Fooled

National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) Legal Director Shannon Minter issued the following statement in response to suggestions that Secretary Mattis exercised discretion to halt Trump’s transgender military ban:

“Secretary Mattis did not make a decision to ‘buy time’ or to ‘freeze’ the current policy. The President’s August 25, 2017 Memorandum expressly provides that the new ban does not go into effect until March 23, 2018 and expressly states that no one can be discharged for being transgender in the meantime. There is nothing new at all here, and suggesting otherwise is terribly misleading.

This inaccurate reporting is playing into a patently bogus strategy to make it appear that there is going to be some new ‘study’ that will legitimate what is already a forgone conclusion: the discriminatory banning of military service by transgender people, based on a characteristic that has no bearing on their fitness to serve. The August 25 Memorandum is perfectly clear: President Trump has ordered the military to ban transgender people from serving. That ban will go into effect in about 7 months, on March 23.

That appalling decision is not (and cannot possibly be, given its timing) based on any hastily assembled, post hoc ‘study’ that is being cooked up now in a transparent effort to provide a retroactive fig leaf for the President’s bigotry. This order is an act of pure animus toward transgender people. The military spent two years carefully reviewing all of the relevant evidence on this issue and concluded that there is no reason to exclude transgender people from military service. The cost of inclusion is literally negligible, and there is no evidence that permitting open service will have any negative impact on military readiness. The notion that there is any good faith ‘study’ being conducted is a blatant pretext for unmitigated, vicious, baseless discrimination.

More than ever, we need reporters not to fall prey to false information that is being used to set up an attempted cover for one of the most shocking acts of official discrimination the transgender community has ever experienced.

There is no new ‘freeze.’ This is just what the August 25 Memorandum ordered—along with a permanent ban on enlistment, effective now, and a new ban on open service, effective on March 23, 2018.”

Wearing Boston Proper (Source: Boston Proper)

Jiang Du femulates in the 2016 Chinese film Miss High Heels.

The Zoe Report

This just came off the mojo wire from our intrepid Femulate reporter, Zoe:

Femulation is child's play. Meet Lactacia.

Liev Schreiber attended San Diego Comic-Con with his son who was dressed as Harley Quinn.

At the movies:

A trans actress plays a trans woman in crisis in A Fantastic Woman. Here is the trailer.

A Kid Like Jake is about a gender creative child. It is due next year.

Wearing Nightcap bodysuit, Adam Lippes pants, SJP sandals and Suzanna Dai earrings (Source: Intermix)

Mario Roth femulates Madonna on Croatian television's Your Face Sounds Familiar.

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What did you do in the war, Daddy?

When Bombardier Arthur Butler of the 122nd Field Regiment Royal Artillery transformed himself into Gloria D’Earie she became ‘exquisite’. She made all her own costumes and moved and spoke just like a woman. Butler was a professional female impersonator and widely regarded as the best in Changi. His act was so convincing that some men found it too painful: they would rather not be reminded of what a woman looked like as it made their separation from wives and sweethearts harder to bear. (Source: The Barbed-Wire University: The Real Lives of Prisoners of War in the Second World War by Midge Gillies)

Wearing Rebecca Minkoff (Source: HauteLook)

Let's Go Out One More Time

Just some thoughts and comments regarding the previous two posts Let's Go Out and Let's Go Out Again.

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Julie Shaw commented, "It took me a NUMBER of years to venture out, but now I kick myself for not going out earlier."

Same here. I so regret the years wasted in the closet. I can't urge girls enough not to hesitate and go out and enjoy the world as the woman you really are as soon as you can.

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Paula Goodwin commented, "My first step truly outside the closet... I decided that if I didn't wear my glasses I would be harder to recognise."

Your mileage may vary, but I need eyeglasses for long distance, particularly for driving and for short distances (reading and computing). In between, my vision is good enough that I can get away without wearing eyeglasses, so when I am out as a woman, I don't wear them except to drive and read..

In boy mode, I wear eyeglasses almost all the time, so I feel very confident that folks who know the boy me will not recognize the girl me. And more than one encounter in girl mode with civilians who know the boy me, confirm the eyeglass strategy (as can be seen here).

And as they say, "Boys don't make passes at girls who wear glasses." I think I look more attractive without eyeglasses and you probably do, too.

Wearing Boston Proper (Source: Boston Proper)

Filip Dizdar femulates Tajči on Croatian television's Your Face Sounds Familiar.

Let's Go Out Again

My previous post (Let's Go Out) described my early baby steps out of the closet en femme, going to Halloween parties and attending my support group meetings and its rare outings where brief encounters with civilians were always a possibility.

I wanted more, but I still feared that my size would out me. I attended a few trans conventions, which were typically held in high-rise hotels. In those scenarios, there was a greater chance to mix with the civilians, but in truth, the hotels were just a bigger closet than the one at home or at the hall where my support group met.

One of my friends dragged me out of the hotel to shop or dine. Although I looked passable, those were deer-in-the-headlight moments. I acted like a man in a dress in fear of being found out rather than acting like a natural born woman. As a result, I was read right and left.

I retreated to the closets where I felt more comfortable and I became even more active in my support group editing their newsletter and running their annual banquet. The latter probably helped me a lot because I had to deal with civilians who ran the hotel where we held our banquets. In boy mode, I would contact the banquet person at the hotel and meet with her to arrange the event. In doing so, I was admitting to a civilian that I was trans and guess what? The world did not end and the news did not phase her one iota!

As I became more active, the need to go out increased. Finally, I had to do something, so one day, I dressed to shop (sweater tunic, leggings, booties, etc) and drove to West Farms Mall. I sat in my car for almost a half hour before I could overcome my fear and push myself out of my car and into the mall.

As an average looking, middle-aged woman, I was invisible shopping in the mall. No one paid any attention to me except for the sales people trying to sell me their wares. If any sales person figured me out, he or she did not indicate the discovery and treated me as the woman I portrayed. And guess what? The world did not end and my presence in the mall did not phase the civilians one iota.

The flood gates were now open and I began going out with great abandon. I attended a four-day workshop in Manhattan as a woman, I started doing outreach at colleges and universities as a woman,  I began attending ham radio events as a woman, I attended my law school reunion as a woman, etc. Whenever I went out without my family, I went out as a woman.

And guess what? The world did not end and my presence in the world as a woman did not phase the civilians one iota.

Wearing Veronica Beard (Source: Veronica Beard)

Miguel Bosé femulating in the 1991 Spanish film High Heels.

Let's Go Out

Going out for the first time is a very big step in the life of a femulator.

When I grew tired of the closet, I wanted to go out en femme, but I was very apprehensive. After years of practice in the closet, I thought my dress, hair and makeup were passable, but my size worried me.

I did go out en femme to Halloween parties about a half dozen times and those experiences should have given me confidence about my femulating abilities. In each case, I dressed in "office girl drag" and at three of those Halloween parties, strangers asked about me – they wanted to know, "Who is the woman not in costume?" Yet, I still shrank away from going out en femme because I thought my size would expose me as a faux female.

After about 20 years of femulating in the closet and out on Halloween, I joined a support group (Connecticut Outreach Society) that met 30 minutes away via the interstate. The group provided the option to dress at their meeting hall if desired, but I dressed at home and drove to the hall en femme. Perhaps, my Halloween experiences had emboldened me enough so that I did not fear driving en femme without the safety net of October 31.

I was a regular attendee of the support group's meetings and eventually was on their board of directors, edited their newsletter and organized their annual banquets. Today, I am their membership chairwoman, but I am getting ahead of myself.

In addition to the annual banquet, about once a year, my support group had an outing – usually to a restaurant where we were ensconced in a separate dining room so as not to scare the civilians. I did not cotton much to those arrangements, but it was better than nothing and it did give me an opportunity to mix with the civilian staff of the restaurant and any civilian customers that I might encounter entering or exiting the establishment. And being a rebellious sort, I always used the civilian restroom instead of the bathroom assigned to us girls in order to mix it up with the civilians.

In retrospect, those outings don't seem like much, but they were baby steps in the right direction.

Wearing Bebe (Source: Bebe)

Karl-Erik Taukar femulates Dana International on Estonian television's Your Face Sounds Familiar.

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The Perils of Femulating

Wearing Iro dress and Jimmy Choo sandals (Source: Intermix)

Pawel Jasionowski femulates Urszula on Polish television's Your Face Sounds Familiar. 

Hear Ye, Hear Ye, Hear Me

If you attended a transgender convention and I was on the bill as a speaker, what would you like me to talk about?

My friend Alison suggested that I spend one day attending the three-day First Event in lieu of attending the week-long Fantasia Fair. And while I am at, why not present a talk on something near and dear to our hearts (assuming that the First Event organizers would have me).

I asked Alison what she would like me to talk about and she responded, "I'd say there's quite a number of topics that you could do presentations on: certainly makeup, fashions tips and shopping. There are lots of newbies who attend First Event who would love that. And there's some heavier stuff, like dressing in the workplace and navigating family relationships, dressing in Dayton and, of course, blogging."

In the past, I've done presentations titled "Makeup Basics for Trans Females," "Top 30 Things Every Crossdressing Man Needs In His Wardrobe To Emulate A Woman" and "What To Do When You Are Out and About."

Those are some topics to consider, but I was wondering if there is anything we missed. If you have a topic you would like me to cover, let me know by leaving a comment below or sending me an email addressed to stana-stana @ sbcglobal.net (without spaces). If I don't cover your topic at First Event, I may cover it here on the blog.

Wearing Alexia romper and Khokha bag (Source: Intermix)

Miguel Oyola femulates Paulina Rubio on Panama television's Your Face Sounds Familiar.