Engaging with other women and girl talk.

[Lucy Ross]

The thing I'll need the most work on is passing out random compliments, I should do that already with people I'm out to but still feel a titch insecure about it, since I'm just andro in appearance for now.

[JulieAllana]

I have started doing that with female coworkers.  Compliment shoes, lipstick, hair etc.  They seem to like it.  Of course, I am still presenting as male...

         -Julie

[SadieBlake]

The thing I'll need the most work on is passing out random compliments, I should do that already with people I'm out to but still feel a titch insecure about it, since I'm just andro in appearance for now.

You know I don't pass and I never felt comfortable wearing femme attire until I was post op -- tucking the <shenis> was more dysphoric for me than just wearing feminine underwear and dressing DRAB.

Once post op I started wearing skirts more often than not and if men don't figure that out and always misgender me still, women usually actually get it.

So early on in my experience of wearing femme attire a quite stunning young woman sat next to me on the bus attired in a stylish pair of overalls. I was genuinely taken with her appearance and while knowing it wouldn't be a look I could easily pull off I was inspired to simply compliment her and ask where the outfit came from. She accepted the compliment gracefully and told me the store.

It wasn't an invented compliment and before I transitioned I never would have said a thing - would have assumed I would be read as hitting on her.

It came down to we had a shared interest and she read my intent in asking accurately.

If compliments are random, they're probably going to be read as invented, that may even be ok but really I think as soon as we truly feel ourselves to be female, we become comfortable in the femme-femme interactions and then it's not an invention or affectation, it's simply being female.

[echo7]

I guess the flip side of that, how do women interact with MEN?  It just occurred to me that that will have to change as well.  I probably don't want to seem like just one of the guys to other men, notwithstanding however my sexual orientation will end up (currently attracted to females). 

I generally don't interact with men anymore, unless I'm interested in dating them.  I made the mistake early in my transition of being nice to men. You know, just talking to them. They often took it as a sign of interest from me, and ended up asking for my number or something.  It's a little safer to interact with men in a group, such as a group of men and women talking together.

[Vinya]

I don't know if I'm a good example of a sociable woman, because I pretty much talk about pokémon other anime shows computer science stuff and other nerdy stuff like I did before. However should you insult people ( all in good fun) well if that is something you and your friends do I would say go for it, but not with anyone else. What I'm trying to say is be yourself, ultimately you are as much woman as anyone else and therefore your way of talking is as good as any ^_^

I know this is hard though, it was hard for me as well in the beginning to not worry and think about the way i talked. So in the beginning I was a bit more quiet and listen, not so much to conform my way to talk by listening although that happens naturally anyway, but to get more relaxed and comfortable in the new setting that i was in. Then more and more I'd take part of the discussion when I feel comfortable. The best response I got was when I just stuck with "me". I guess it didn't feel forced or anything but more natural from my part.

One thing though that you will notice that infuriates me like nothing else is that men listen to other men more then they listen to woman. It happens so often in school when we have group assignments the questions are always directed to the boys. maybe it is seen as a masculine trait but I always try to butt in if the question is more suited for me, I think it is important that we don't back down and make us small  in conversations with men but rather take our equal place.

In summery You need not change how you converse, with time/practise you will feel more comfortable and it will feel natural to converse and it will be fine.

Hugs and good luck with future talk ^_^