OK so this year’s cold virus was a bit more stubborn than I anticipated so instead of the next chapter of Selene (don’t worry it will happen sometime) I’m instead going to bore you with stuff that might have come out of the fictional stories on this site, but which actually happened. This for two reasons, 1) I don’t want to post nothing for so long and 2) I need to get this stuff off my chest to someone else than my therapist. Again this stuff actually happened so it might either be amusing or completely dull, regardless it had a big impact on me.

Ok to start I’ve got to tell a little bit about myself, I’ve always been very girly, not just in behaviour (only female friends as a kid, not interested in guy stuff, throwing a tantrum over having to have my hair cut ect.) but also in looks. I’ve always was identified as a girl until either I or my parents corrected them. And although I kinda liked it I learned very fast from my father that some girl stuff is just NOT DONE (like wearing nail polish). Now before you go and condemn the man, he genuinely didn’t mean it in a bad way but he’s 1) a very highly candidate for authism or something because he didn’t see what every one else in the world seems to see (he was the ONLY person surprised at my coming out) and 2) he did it so I wouldn’t be bullied (not that it helped, but intention matters).
To add to his authism thing, I was never corrected for (in hindsight) very obviously female body language because he couldn’t tell that I was displaying myself that way unconsiously. Had he done that the stuff I’m about to write might not have happened, I’m not intersexed enough to not be able to pass as male if I knew what I was doing. Which brings me to the special physical features I have. First off I have enough female features for the specialist doctors to reject me having NO medical condition, at the same time they’re not pronounced enough to fit me in with any existing conditions so they did the tests, and look and behold I’m clean. As much a surprise to the good doctors as to me. Anyway before hormones I had a female muscle development, female fat distribution including moobs when being severely underweight, but sadly no breasttissue, in addition to that girly hips (but neutral, leaning to manly shoulders, go figure), femenine facial features (although more in a Japanese bishounen way if you’re familiar with that term) and my voice broke like a girls’ would. (Yes girls voices break too in puberty, just not the same way).
In short if I knew how to act the part I could pass as both a guy and a girl and they would just believe whatever I told someone who asked, but we know already I can’t act the guy part so that’s why stuff happened.

For starters, bathrooms. Even with short hair pre-transition people stared, rechecked the sign on the door, walked back out and were probably more uncomfortable with me bing there than I was about their outright weird behavious. Over all the years only one guy actually had the courage to direct me to the ladies, I had to tell him three times that I knew where the ladies was before saying to his face that I was no lady and he finally got the hint.

Secondly, until lately I’ve only had one friend, sure I got along with classmates to work on school stuff and except for them all treating me like a girl (or taunting me that I should’ve been one) but we never hung out after school (except that one friend that is). The issue is that my friend is a guy, so every single time we hung out after school or participated in some activity he was always assumed as my boyfriend, and I as his girlfriend. Again pre transition and with short hair. He even got outright asked a few times if he finally managed to snag himself a girlfriend (he was’t exactly mr. Cassanova and never dated) to the embarresment of all once the misunderstanding was solved. Honestly what irked me the most about this was that apparantly guys and girls can’t just be friends, no they have to be a couple.. And while at that point I was getting used to being seen as female and had long since given up on correcting people unless absolutely needed, being seen as his GF made me uncomfortable. For starters since I’m atracted to woman, and secondly we never EVER were remotely romantic with each other, no handholding, no kissing, no looking each other in the eyes dreamily, nothing. I’d figured they’d pin me as his sister instead, but apparently not. Yet he’d still always get the bill when we ate in a restaurant on of one of our birthdays. The only time he wasn’t seen as my BF was when some drunk dude tried to ask me out, despite him standing right next to me. The lack of “dump the loser” makes me think he didn’t see my friend as my BF.

Speaking of that incident, the guy asked me out somewhere around 5ish but we were having festive activities that day so I ran into him earlier. Guy actually cat-called me but I always shrugged them off as manly-dude-picking-on-sissy-boy kind of stuff, after his hilarious attempt to court me (seriously guys, don’t ask a girl out when drunk, you WILL mess it up) I had to reevaluate all the previous cat-calling I had received, like I said I always brushed it off as teasing or being picked on, now I wasn’t so sure anymore and this is what made me go to the doctor to hopefully find out I was intersex so I would have an excuse. For those of you wondering how he tried to court me, I’m sorry I forgot I only remember my response nad his response to that. I told him I wasn’t attracted to men (true) and he asked, “oh so you’re a lesbian then?” Now I should have said “Yes, thank you for understanding” since the guy was beefy and had friends with him but instead in my naivity I instead told him that no I wasn’t gay. He asked to confirm that I wasn’t gay but yet was attracted to women, and after a while he put two and two together. I have to say I was lucky he had a sense of humor and just laughed with his friends over his own stupidity, but it could have gone a lot worse for me. Oh well, the look on his face was probably worth it.

Going a bit back in time, a few years before that I went to Japan on holiday. Wonderful country (except searing hot) and great joy all around. Except that I managed to bust my sandals and had to get new ones. So during free time (it was an organised group trip) I went looking around for shoe stores. I see one and proceed to head to the men’s department, and some sales girl stops me and almost drags me away from that because there were only “men’s shoes” and directs me to the women’s department instead. Now while I love wearing female clothing in general, I didn’t dare at the time and female shoes aren’t usually made for the long walks I made during that trip so I went elsewhere where I found a store owner / manager who understood the practical need I had. On a plus side at least I didn’t have to explain why I would want a women’s yukata as a souvenier when I went to buy one.

Said yukata would, of course, get me into trouble a few months later when I went to an Anime-con. Now if you think the bathroom thing was bad, it doesn’t hold a candle to the dressing room. First con I went to only had one dressing room, people usually dressed with the door open unless they had to undress a fair bit, for which they’d close the door. Now since I was going to keep on my shorts (to keep my stuff in like wallet, buspas and keys) underneath my Yukata I didn’t bother to close the door. I don’t know how many of you had the pleasure of donning traditional Japanese robes, but it can be kinda complicated so I had my back towards the door looking to a youtube instruction. This way I didn’t notice that two girls came in and closed the door and started to dress themself. I turned around for a bit to grab my Obi, only to get a face full of two teen girls in nothing but their bras and panties. To say I was shocked and terrified would be an understatement so I quickly turned around, got dressed as fast as I could and hurried my way out of there as I really didn’t want to get caught as a guy right then.

A second con I went to was actually big enough to have seperate dressing rooms for men and women. So of course I went to the men’s one only to have a member of staff to show up and tell me I should use the ladies within 30 seconds of my arrival, EVERY SINGLE TIME I went in there, wether to completely change or just to mend something. One time I only went in to retie my Obi and was telling a friend (who stood outside) about what happened earlier, I didn’t even get to complete my sentence before she got a live performance herself. Same con actually had a crossplay workshop I went to. Picture a room full with guys wearing female costumes and girls wearing male costumes, although not all of them and this is important because the workshop lady was dividing the group between actual guys and actual girls no matter the way they’re dressed. (The point was to learn guys how to project female bodylanguage and vica versa and matching costumes weren’t required). Once she got to me she, of course, put me in the actual female group. I protested and the whole room went “No way, that’s a guy?!”

Going back in time again, and a quick warning for sensitive readers about sexual abuse. What happened to me in this paragraph was nothing more than pretty bad sexual harrasment but if you’re sensitive about that sort of thing, skip to the next one. Anyway Highschool schooltrip to Paris, we’re on the way back in a touringcar and some jerk (if you’ve been reading Selene, you can recognise Jordy in him) come up to my seat and dropped his pants taking his member in his hand and told me that I should stop pretending to be a guy, that I was a girl and that I was just jeaulous of his penis and would never have one, except in my mouth or pussy. I have to repeat he did this in a moving touringcar, filled with other students and, more importantly, teachers. I was stunned to say the least and went up to the second floor (dubbledecker bus) while letting the teachers handle him. I have to say they did a swell job as I never saw the guy again, despite occasionally running into him before.

Moving forward in time, at this point I’ve given up at pretending to be a guy (didn’t work anyway) but had only just started the very first steps thinking about contacting a gender specialist to actually start transitioning. This means that by this time I had long hear, but no make-up or female clothing besides trousers to accomodate for my hips (guys’ jeans constricted my thighs or were ludicrously oversized). I had just switched college due to an inability for me to pass the practical exam at my previous one. This meant that for theory I was ahead and could officially skip stuff. This of course means bureaucracy and this is how I was introduced to the women handling that stuff by my teacher. “Yes this is [very male name] and she has some administrative problems.” Half the teaching staff and half the class would refer to me with female pronouns out of reflex, occasionally catching themselves and appologising, but mostly not even noticing they were doing that. All this despite them only knowing me by my very male name. Turns out at least one of them thought I was FtM, go figure.

So moving forward again I had finally contacted a gender specialist and was meeting her for a first meeting. First question a specialist who deals with people like me on a daily basis asks “So how long have you been presenting as female?” I told her I wasn’t, she was shocked. Fortunately I did have that intersex check-up earlier so I got spared questions about taking hormones. But seriously, all other things I can understand. People often see what they want to see, but this was a specialist she should have been able to tell, yet she didn’t.... Anyway last incident, I had to get a seperate shrink in order to come out to my parents, again first meeting with my parents almost didn’t happen because she was expecting Mr. [My name] and the waiting room was filled with women and me so I didn’t know it was my turn, once I went to the recptionist the misunderstanding was cleared and I got what I needed from her but still. Like I said earlier, it’s probably pretty telling that only my father had no idea I was a MtF transsexual during my coming-out.

So this is a part of my life-story, please leave a comment, and I would like to know if stuff like this happened to you, either before or during transition.