transretrogurl

It’s been a while since I blogged and for that I profusely apologise; this year hasn’t been a barrel of laughs to be honest and it’s one of those times when everything seems just a little too bit on the dark side of the spectrum. So this will be a bit of a muted post, partly because, as per normal, I’ve managed to over-exercise myself into excruciating back-pain (or have I? A little bit of an eye-opening explanation in a bit) which has made my world somehow smaller for the last ten or so days, and the news has been appalling for many many reasons.

A quick caveat; I’m liable to rant in the next 1000 or so words, so if you like the normal blog posts hang around, I’m going to vent in this one and then write another one in the more usual flavour as a palate-cleanser.

I’ll start with the big thing that is on my mind, other than the fact that walking, sitting, standing AND sleeping are acutely painful at the moment, and that is the murder of Brianna Ghey.

But where to start? From the moment I saw the happy picture of her on the BBC news site I knew it was going to be a sh*t week. A 16 year old transwoman schoolgirl stabbed to death by one or two other people of that age. It’s a horror story on so many levels, but what effects me the most is I know people like Brianna, and without even thinking I can put myself in her shoes, because I can’t, the people I know have and had a hell of a life getting to where they are. Period.

Being trans, CD, whatever in this day and age whilst looking like a breeze and showered with acceptance is far from it. I used to think that it was paranoia on my part about the constant anxiety and fear you have, every minute of every day, that you are somehow broken because you don’t adhere to the ‘normal’ rules. It’s a lifelong curse. People like Brianna who, for all the evidence from someone outside looking in, are brave in ways the majority of the population can never understand are shunned, hated and in this case killed for a lifestyle and direction that is never a choice.

What stunned me almost to the point of rage was the BBC and the police debating ‘whether’ it was a hate crime. A 16 year old girl is stabbed and left to die alone and they are terrified of calling it a hate crime because the majority of society nowadays are bonafide sex-orientation Nazis is just gut wrenchingly appalling. It was a hate crime, period. Calling it anything else is just pandering to the self-important wants of people who do not have any capacity of understanding for the sheer hell that their opinions make the lives of trans people.

What is horrible about all of this is a 16 year old has been cruelly murdered, probably for just being herself. There’s no debate. Violence against trans is massively on the rise and this is just a desperately sad outcome. Will we learn from it? Nope. The situation and society that causes and allows this kind of almost fundamentalist hate towards people wanting to step over the gender-gap is like a bloody oil tanker and will take years to turn. In fact, with my cynical/realist head on what will happen is another minority that people find somehow threatening will be vilified and targeted.

Which doesn’t bring Brianna back from the dead. Which doesn’t make her last moments on this world any less terrifying. Regardless of motive having a 16 year old transwoman murdered on the streets of England by people of her age group should make every single person with a conscience sit up and ask how the hell did we get here?

I look at pictures of her and I’m heartbroken. I didn’t know her, but I can see so much in those photos that strikes chords in my own soul that a part of me burns with a righteous fury; and down that road lies madness. So I’m just going to be appalled, sad and just worn out about it. And that kinda sums up life for people like us in this society.

I can talk about change. I can talk about acceptance. I can talk about calm. But the majority of people just don’t get it; years of the media treating gender fluid people as an oddity means that it is ingrained in a ‘normal’, and I use that term loosely, persons attitude.

This is not a soapbox rant. This is just me trying to put into words the fury and anger I feel. When people like Rowling are portraying cross-dressers as testosterone fuelled rapists out to invade good woman-folk’s safe spaces you’re going to get this kind of backlash and hatred. And the people who pay are the ones we should be protecting, we should be encouraging.

I was starting to think that the new generation of kids were actually much better adjusted than us old farts from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. The advent of the internet and social media has been a thing of wonder as well as a cesspool of silliness, but in nigh on all my encounters with the younger generations I’ve found an almost complete sense of personal acceptance. Hate to sound ironic but this killing may have been just another stabbing incident; it’s an endemic problem. But something tells me it isn’t.

OK, I need to stop ranting there as I could carry on until my bile is truly vented, but what would be the point?

Let’s switch to something a little more positive. Due to my back I’m having to shift about some appointments for ‘Sarah’ time; my new job is immensely busy at the moment and the combination of that with the back means I need to be gentle. Plus I’m *meant* to be running a half-marathon in six weeks. To cheer myself up, and having had a lot of fun with the wigs that Cindy bought from a brilliant Etsy store, I treated my self to a proper 1950’s up-do wig. Tried it on last night and I was stunned by the effect; I look like a proper 1950’s ‘Lucille Ball’ style woman. My session is in a couple of weeks, back allowing, so that’s definitely something to look forward to in these dark times.

Due to a touch of insomnia due to work and the back I’ve had a lot of those ‘awake at 3:00am’ nights where your brain is very clear and very insightful without being overly friendly. I assume I’m not the only one to get those; it always feels like I’ve woken up while the brain has been rebooting/patching for the day and it’s an interesting experience as, without sounding a little mad, things seem a lot clearer and uncluttered with emotions.

Night before last I was thinking of classifications. This will probably ring a lot of bells with a lot of readers, but I’m starting to realise, slowly of course, that I’m not so much ‘non-binary gender’ as, and I apologise, ‘non-binary non-binary gender’.

I’ll explain; there are people who know which gender they want to be and to me that’s not exclusive of ‘CIS’ people. There are trans people, and I have a couple as dear friends, who are definitely female, regardless of their birth gender or their current gender. And then there are the cross-dressers, who dress for the thrill, be it fetish or sexual. They are male, for the most part, with no urge to transition or adversely effect their ‘majority time’ personas. Both are are fine, but I’ve been daft in the way my brain has automatically tried to partition and sort people based on, sigh, these ‘binary’ distinctions.

I’ve always said I’m not ‘trans’ but that’s not the whole truth. Part of me would love to embrace the feminine role all the time, at the expense of my male persona. But, and it’s a big but (as opposed to my butt, which is bigger, noticeably, due to the messing about with chemicals), I also have the thrill side. And this comes from how I behaved during puberty.

When the brain goes through puberty it locks some feelings into ‘what you felt first’. Biologically the brain is all about the biological imperative, and a lot of ‘sexual behaviour locking’ comes from first experiences. Mine were different; I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 21, again because there was something ‘wrong’ in my mind about my body-form and I was shy. Plus, as I said before, growing breasts when you hit 12/13 is a bit of an epiphany.

But my first true sexual moment was when I was wearing a dress. I’ve told the story before; I was staying at my grandmothers, I had sneaked a lovely 1960’s collared dress out of her storage, found a wig in the loft at home, bought some lipstick from a superstore, and found some sandals that fitted me. So when everyone had gone asleep I dressed up, just the dress, no underwear, put on the wig, painted my lips as well as I could, slipped the sandals on, and oh-so-carefully snuck out of the front door to walk around outside at 3:30am.

I got to the end of her path and out onto the pavement, under the bright lights, and started to walk towards the junction; this was 1970’s Bristol in the suburbs so it was silent. I could hear my heels clicking, which a lot of us find immensely satisfying, and the feel of the dress against my body was like nothing I’d had before. Of course, because I had no underwear on it inevitably aroused me, which I was completely ignorant of. I had no idea what was going on and thought, wrongly of course, that something was off, that maybe I wanted to go to the toilet or something. I turned back to head towards the house and as I did a car went past the junction behind me and I was lit up by the headlights.

They couldn’t see my face of course, and they didn’t turn into the junction, but instantly I had a rush of fear and thrill and started to move as quickly as I could, in three inch heels that I wasn’t used to, back towards the door and safety. And suddenly I ejaculated.

Almost running in heels with a thigh high floral 1960’s big collar dress on, tasting lipstick, and it was my first unexpected orgasm. Whilst that may sound like a low-budget XHamster video it was a *massive* effect on me and my psyche. The combination of terror and thrill locked that sensation into the sensation of wearing a dress and heels, and the taste of lipstick. It had a massive effect on my sexual personality, but I was already on a different path.

My point is this; I have a lot of thrill/sexual feelings about the act of wearing women’s clothes and taking on the role, completely, of a woman. But, and again it’s a big but, I already had the trans mindset before I had that incident. I’d always, always, since the day I could first remember, had a warmth compulsion to *be* a girl. The sexual experience muddled that and I always had/have myself down as a firm fetish based cross-dresser, but, as I eluded to earlier on, it’s not a binary thing.

Contrary to the way a lot of people in the community, on both sides of the trans/CD fence, think you can be non-binary non-binary. I am coming to the realisation that I am both trans and a crossdresser; they don’t complement each other and it gives me some serious headaches; I get vivid and intense sexual fantasies that are 100% from the source of fetish crossdressing. And I also get that subtle, nagging, warm urge to *be* female.

It’s the nature of online communities that opinions can be polarised (and very loudly stated), so I have kinda got myself into a weird guilt cycle about both sides of my femm-self. The fetish side tells me I’m definitely not trans, the trans side berates me for the intense sexual fantasies and urges. I wonder what would have happened back in the late 1970’s if that car hadn’t driven up that road at exactly that moment in time.

Also, and I can’t stress it enough, when your parents don’t have ‘the talk’ with you and you see ejaculate for the first time when lifting a dress that can send some…….. odd signals to a developing brain. Just saying…..

Anyway, thanks for sticking with me on the rant; I will now write a ‘normal’ Sarah post, as normal as they get. I don’t feel any less angry or sad about the society we live in, but you can only go forward in this life.

Stay beautiful, take a deep breath and try to find a nice spot inside yourself to wait out the winter…..