Halloween and being trans

[LaRell]

Okay, so something recently occurred to me.  Ha ha.  When I was a really young kid, I would dress up for Halloween.  But it was always as something or someone specific to the sex I was born as.  Male.  As I got a little older, like 9 years old and up, I completely lost all interest in it.  I was always so jealous of the girls getting to dress up as princesses and things.  And I wanted sooooo badly to be able to do the same.  And you are probably thinking, "well duh?  Halloween is one of the only times you actually get away with dressing up the way you want to without judgement!"  Not me......  Our church always had a "no cross-dressing" policy.  I guess based off of the scripture that talks about it being wrong for a man to wear women's clothing.  I never could understand this ridiculous rule.  The one day of the entire year that I could have got away with dressing as the girl I felt I was inside, but no.  Still couldn't.  So I just lost all interest in dressing up for Halloween.  However........with Halloween coming up, and me now being a grown up that can make my own decisions  the other day I realized "Hey! I can dress however the hell I want on that day!"  And with me being part way through transitioning, you can bet your butt I'm going to dress up however I darn well please.  Ha ha

  So anyway, I was just curious as to how many of you got to freely dress the way you wanted to growing up, as opposed to those of you who very excitedly looked forward to Halloween when you could finally get away with dressing up as something that matched the gender you identified with.  And are there some of you that were in the same position I was, that you STILL couldn't dress the way you wanted to because of religion and things.

[Julia1996]

My dad wouldn't let me wear actual female clothes but I was allowed to wear gender neutral clothes in any color I wanted. Pink and purple were my favorites.

[Kylo]

There are several 'Goths' (and a few punks) in the family, so they were all quite happy for me to dress however I might want. I wasn't especially big on dressing up on Halloween, though. Introverted child, who didn't like bringing attention to myself. I would usually celebrate it dressing however I wanted (which was normal for me anyhow) but not going all-out fancy-dress.

While for some the unfortunate side-effect of being trans is to be forced into dressing and acting in a way that feels wrong, my unfortunate side-effect was despair and a diminished sense of self, to the point of wondering why I should bother to dress up at all and have any sort of fun anyway.

[Anne Blake]

I am one of those old ladies that didn't understand or feel the need to dress until quite late in life, two and a half years ago to be exact. And you can bet that I jumped at the chance that first year (of course the old witch in the Wizard of Oz), and last year as a steam punk version of that witch and we are really looking forward to later this month when an eccentric old gypsy lady shows up in the neighborhood! That first year I wasn't yet out but have been full time last year and this and still am very excited to play dress up.