Reading
Transactions by Erica Zander, a now post-op TS from Sweden.
She goes into detail about being called "Young Lady" and "Gorgeous" as a newly transitioning full-time 48 year old TS while in London. I saw many commonalities in her story and mine except that I began at 55 "cold" whereas she had been on hormones on and off for twenty-odd years and was a CD for eleven years. It gives me a great deal of satisfaction to realize that I am getting the same type reactions at 59 and not having had the benefit of 11 years as a cross-dresser and only 3.5 years on HRT. (I love getting called "gorgeous" even when it is from a creep in the L, but it is especially nice when a woman calls me that,as they often do)
Another thing that struck me in the book, was how kind Great Britain seems to be to trans women:
She explains how even though she can still "pass" as a man...
QuoteIf you look enough like a woman to the British, that is what you are, and telling you that in each and every sentence just happens to be one of their habits.
Quite a contrast to San Francisco, Ground Zero for "Passing"
I traveled across the US from my Miami to SF in a rented truck when I was six months FT, pre-any surgery. I passed "flawlessly" in the Deep South. Never hearing anything but ma'am. "Oh where's the ladies room?" "Right over there, Ma'am." They twanged. I don't think I was in San Francisco a day before I got my first sir (from a 5'6" Asian man)
BTW I found the book at the library looking for
Whipping Girl which was checked out.
I am about a third of the way through, the book is very interesting and I would recommend it especially to the later transitioners. She had a very interesting life. (A Chinese Curse BTW) My life seems to be at least as equally interesting. I better get busy writing...Oh that is what I am doing now,and have been doing..)
There is no good writing BTW only good re-writing!
Better download all those archives and get started. LOL
Posted on: October 20, 2007, 10:26:25 AM
I became rather bored with the text and skipped through to some of the later chapters.
Ms Zander has some interesting observations on pst-op life as a Lesbian, her battles with Radical Feminists and on the stark contrast between "passing" in Minneapolis, Manhattan and London and the attitude of "passing" in general. To sum up, she is beyond that, like myself, she no longer cares what everyone thinks and that it's better to be in a place where one might be occasionally read and no one cares than a place where one rarely gets read but might be harmed or even killed if they are (read).
