transdykerescue

The purpose of this guide is not to help you transition. If you want to transition, and you honestly don't know where to start, e-mail us at... and we'll do everything we can to help find you someone supportive. This is for rescuing girls who can't admit they're girls... or who can but can't bring themselves to tell anybody. It's for trans lesbians who know how horrible it is to live like that and want to save someone from a similarly horrible fate. It's for cis lesbians who know the value of womanhood and shudder at the thought of a woman living through forced boyhood another day. It's for women who love women so much, they can't stand to see them trying to be men.

This project is the best attempt of the authors and those sympathetic womyn they've interviewed to determine those attributes that would tend to indicate that the male-presenting person you're dealing with is a trans lesbian. This project will try to show you how to identify, how to broach the subject, how to help her feel comfortable confiding in you, if she is trans, and how to make her feel comfortable enough to transition. Remember, first and foremost that this is her transition, not yours. She will react to different elements of transition with different levels of comfort. For example, introducing bras may be liberating for some and triggering for others at the same point in transition. This is probably the most frightening and most wonderful thing she will ever do in her lifetime.

A trans dyke's womonhood is a part of her integrity which has withstood all the pressures that men have placed on her, but, that said, she is not invulnerable to those pressures. At a given point, she may well push back, go into paroxysms of self-hate, and those oh-so-familiar dark-narcissistic fantasies of being the only trans woman who isn't really a trans woman, and how it's a complete fucking tragedy. Tears are pretty common through transition, from every trans lesbian narrative we have ever heard. But most importantly this book will try to show you how to be there for her. Remember that she will not transition to be a womon, but to be herself. Don't try to change her. Just help her discover herself.

The first part of the project will focus on identifying likely pre-transition trans women: There are signals which indicate a latent transsapphism, and we refer to these as pink flags even though, yes, girls wear bluejeans too, it was considered to still be a good shorthand that didn't use overly Diannic language, examples include, for example, complaining about the impracticality of women's clothing, not for her, but for women in general. There are signals which indicate a comfortable male identity, and we refer to these as blue flags, such as promiscuity as pertains to intercourse, for example. And finally, cues which will explain someone's fairly masculine behaviours, but, which, when taking their presentation into account, would seem plausible reasons for a stalled transition, which we call blue ropes. Body image issues come to mind, which may lead to a focus on comfortable, loose, fairly dowdy, non-revealing clothing, which, will, at first glance, appear masculine, or at least somewhat butch. But again, these are built on conjecture and anecdotal evidence from a number of trans women's narratives. Your mileage may vary.

We stress again that none of these signals are 100% accurate, there are, to refer to our previous three examples, trans dykes who have never had any moment of genital discomfort in any setting, been very sexually active, love impractical and objectifying clothing on a woman, and who wear very flattering, if male, clothing, for example, but these cues should give one something to work with. What we would like from our commenters, are suggestions of possible ideas in these areas of inquiry, and, if you're not too squeamish, giving some personal narrative behind why you may have presented one of these signals.

The title is meant to draw some search engines by the way...

I, valeriekeefe and my girlfriend marjaerwin are, well, writing a blog, and hopefully, eventually, a book, to help women who want to rescue girls who end up saying things like that. Women too... but, as has been the experience of many trans lesbians, one often has to be comfortable being a girl (if belatedly so) before one can be a woman.

This post, however, is for someone looking around trying to transition and not knowing how, or thinking she can't. A pre-foreword, if you will.

You can do this. There is a beautiful, sensitive, woman waiting to get out. You don't have to look passable in feminine clothing today. (Because not all women are conventionally feminine) If you want to, then do, but it will come. No, unless you're one of the lucky few who is male assigned but seems to have escaped your endocrine system acting up, the, fundamental, most important thing, is that you get yourself on testosterone blockers and estrogenic hormones.

Everything else can come in due time, if ever, if you're ever comfortable with it. But what would you want to put your emotional energy towards? Feminization that lasts a day, like makeup, that lasts a week to a month, like body-hair removal? Or would you rather do the things that, even if you decide, you're not really a girl, make you look like a more, well, boyish, man? Would you rather have the stubble permanently blasted off your face so you don't get razor burn anymore? Would you rather work on your voice so that you strengthen the muscles that have been holding onto your girlvoice? Would you rather thin the body hair that's growing on you now? Stop new terminal hairs from forming? And never, ever have to worry that you did it wrong and it would somehow give you away?

Yeah, I thought so.

"But Valerie! I have to dress up for a year without any of that before I get hormones!" No, no you don't. If you live almost anywhere in the developed world, there are excellent grey market pharmacies that source their meds from the same companies who supply your neighbourhood pharmacy. Also, you don't have to live full-time for a year anymore to get HRT. WPATH, they're the fairly conservative trans health professional organization, says that 3 months of therapy or 3 months of full-time are what they require.

Go to walk-in clinics, get a second opinion, but never, ever, feel you have to do any of this in anything but jeans and a t-shirt if you don't want to. Just be clear about the anxiety you have about dressing high-femme, or your disdain for it. Tell them that it makes no sense to try to make a woman visibly suffer from testosterone poisoning for another quarter of a year while she transitions. If you feel you need to, tell them it's little more than hazing, and it kills many women who attempt it, and many more who don't. List off the health effects of the medications you're asking for. Go get a second opinion if the physician in question refuses to treat you... You don't need to dress up to be a girl.

You don't need any meds to be a girl, for that matter, you always were. Whether you're actually sort of comfortable with your genital arrangement down there, or at least, too apprehensive about surgery. (according to Lynn Conway's estimates, about one in two women are...) If you like girls, especially if you like girls! (Did you know trans women and men are several times more likely to be lesbians and gay than the general population?) If you don't feel particularly femme, there are all kinds of womyn and all kinds of trans women and sometimes it takes transitioning to help you uncover what best expresses yourself.

I want you to see your happy smile the day you feel your body blossom, the day you stagger to the mirror in a t-shirt, just having woken up, and see a girl in the mirror, instead of someone that wasn't you. I want you to one day understand why you seemed to constantly crush on the lesbians in school, or why you haven't been kissed yet.

Focus on the big stuff. The cosmetic stuff will follow, if you want it to. I'm tall, I'm fat, and all it took for me to get ma'amed on a regular basis was voice work, testosterone blockers, and laser hair removal (oh, and plucking my eyebrows helped, but they were already pretty thick.)

And you may be wondering if you'll know if you're really a girl. What I want to tell you is that when you start putting your body chemistry in line with your identity, you'll know. Removing testosterone, in the average male, would, for example, make them feel less energetic. It did the opposite for me.

Start by removing the poison, then you'll know how much makeup to put on the scars, or if there really are any. Bonne Chance.

The rest of you girls who were unconvinced by this entry or didn't find it? We'll do everything we can to find you.