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I never cared for the word “passing.” It sounds to me that it means one isn’t being identified as masquerading, as if the presentation (clothes, makeup, hair, shoes, accessories, mannerisms) are all so good that one is passing for female even though they’re “not really.” I don't wish to brag—transition is quite a long journey—but of late I’ve been so pleased that I’m consistently gendered female everywhere I go. I love hearing everyone referring me to as "ma'am." While driving yesterday it came to me that my happiness comes from seamlessly and authentically being seen for what I am, a woman. Sure, I remain critical of my voice and the face I see in the mirror. Perhaps that's just another example of any woman's dissatisfactions of her self? I suppose that the word “passing” is meant to describe my experience? Even so, the word doesn't feel right to me. I think a better way to express it would be to say “gendered correctly” although 5 syllables and 2 words is more of a mouthful than 2 syllables and 1 word. I wonder if we should/could come up with an alternative to "passing" with another single word. Thoughts?

My new Queer life.docx

Hi Rachel, I just now realized you'd made this post. I downloaded your story—which is excellent and sounds so familiar to me. I hope you'll post more hear but in the future I'd recommend not in a Word file. For one reason, I was concerned about infecting my laptop with some virus. Perhaps the more important one is that adding this additional step to accessing your writing seems to be off-putting to many. I see there have been about 30 "looks" at this page but only 5 downloads. Here's a quote from your doc: Am I the only one who feels like this? Did I miss the queer crusade that I should have been on when I was younger, fighting alongside those other trans-pioneers? I feel like I have missed so much in my life that I can never make up for. The sixty-year silence in my closet was deafening. The walls were screaming at me, but I never heard them. You're certainly not the only one who feels (or has felt) like this. I'm 63 now and started my transition almost three years ago as my wife of 20 years and I began divorce mediation. It was only three years before that when I started to finally work on discovering my authentic self which ended up with my determining that I am trans. All of these years have been tough, especially the last three until roughly 6 months ago. Transition is hard and scary. Divorce, and that feeling that one may never fit in with friends or a new romance is very lonely and scary too. I'm also a trans lesbian and found a group of women on Meetup from which we now have about 8 close friends. We do all sorts of things, mostly hiking, potlucks, game nights. They've been incredibly supportive. One even flew out to Scottsdale a year ago to spend several days with me after my GCS. I mentioned that transition is scary and hard. For one thing determining where one is on the trans spectrum is scary. I had no idea when I started that I'd end up where I'm sitting now, basically like any other woman. But I love it. As I wrote on my blog this morning my being consistently gendered correctly is so fabulous. I feel so lucky and grateful. Yes, we both missed a lot in the last ~60 years by not being born female. That sucks so much and yet as you wrote there's nothing we can do about it now. It can be hard to let that go and we probably never will. Overall, though, it's so much fun and energizing to be living life to the fullest. Emma