Hi all,

Yet again I find myself wondering if I've posted in the right place with this one.

This is a question that's been buzzing around my head  ever since I joined SAAFE. I read the history section on the home page and noticed that the site was set up and is run largely by, to avoid confusion, born females. I am, as a few of you might know via my previous posts, a transsexual female. From my earliest memories I have always felt that I was 'trapped' in the wrong body and have been slowly transitioning for the last eight years. When I wake in the morning I feel female for want of a better way of putting it and live 24/7 as a female. I have been taking hormone replacement therapy for the last two and a half years and will be going for gender alignment surgery as soon as I can (this will mean the end of my escorting career so timing is everything, it's complicated). From April this year I will apply for my Gender Recognition Certificate which will change my Birth certificate to read female. My friends and family, as far as I can ascertain, regard me as a woman.

My question is quite simple really. Do or will the ladies here consider me to be on an equal footing gender wise or will I always be something of an interloper where my gender is concerned? I'm quite nervous about putting this question to the forum and will understand if the answers are not what I'd like to hear but I'd like to hear some honest opinions as you can imagine this is a really important issue for me.

Having lived in Brighton for some time, I can honestly say that those who are trans-gender tend to have more of an issue with identifying themselves with a gender than others who don't feel they were born the wrong gender.

What's female to you?

And by the way, I've no problem with it as long as you don't.

 

Having reread my original post I do feel that I worded the thing in a rather clumsy way. I do understand what Anika meant when she said "I don't feel like there's a connection I have to every other woman in the world", but I was asking in the context of the people on this site being my peer group. I should have quoted the specific parts of the history of SAAFE.

These are...
1) You may notice that all who are involved in Saafe are not only all women, but all working girls.
2) There is, and has never been any male involvement in this site.

It's where I stand in relation to these statements in the eyes of the people who I regard as my peer group ie women who are working girls? Please don't read this as I want to muscle into somewhere that I may not be welcome but merely as I have said before to understand how I am viewed by you as individuals. Some of you may know that transsexual women are not regarded as anything more that men in dresses by certain women's/feminist groups. I obviously respect their views and until such time as things change, to these groups I will always be an outsider. Living as a female for quite sometime has given me some insight into the female experience and indeed in many ways I feel robbed of the childhood and teenage years I should have had. I have experienced some of the negative things that make up the life experience of many women from the little things such as men believing they can just talk over you through to being raped. Of course there are things that I'll never feel like having a baby. As a brief aside, my experience of being female, for me, has been overwhelmingly positive. I was never much good at being a man lol.

I think Annabelle that the issues trans-gendered people have with identifying as a particular gender stem largely from the fact that once an individual has entered one of the 'gender reassignment programmes' they are constantly pushed to conform to the expectations of the 'gatekeepers' who are nearly always men with rather odd ideas of femininity. For instance, jeans were frowned upon until recently. Some of the stories I've heard from the old days would require you to behave and dress like a 50's housewife  The other thing I suppose is the issue of social acceptance. I have to say though I am very happy with my life (would have been a lot cheaper to have just been born female though  ) and am really glad that you have no problem with me either.

I think Emily rather hit the nail on the head regarding what I was in my own somewhat inept way asking. As a TS woman who happens to earn her money in a job which a good deal of the general population would class as unusual 'How am I viewed by my peers?'  I do understand that gender isn't a huge issue for most of the women here but it does have quite a bearing on the way other interact with you. You are so right Emily when you say "being a woman is about so much more than the physical gender attributes you may have been born with". When I started to take hormone replacement it really didn't have much to do with my physical attributes. It was a totally psychological thing. I don't pretend to understand the mechanisms involved but mentally I went from being a total basket case to the happy, and even if I say so myself, balanced and optimistic  little soul I am now. Nothing to do with growing breasts or fat redistribution.

Sorry, I've rambled too much but thanks for the comments so far they do give me a far better perspective on how others view me.

Yeah, kinda realised when I re-read my post that what I wanted to say really wasn't conveyed in that message but I was a bit drunk when I wrote it and too lazy right now to properly correct it.

As far as being a working girl goes, being transgender is pretty much a niche market I would have thought; like BBW, goths, BSDM etc. Anika Mae put it beautifully: we are all hookers. You can fulfil a need I'm sure I can't and I think that's true of all working girls otherwise there wouldn't be a market of any kind, so to speak.

And I have to say, I feel for you somewhat; isn't the hormone treatment effectively going through puberty twice?! Christ, once was more than enough for me and the people I was around; that's definitely something fromt the "good ol' days" I'm never going to be willing to repeat!!

Bloody hell, I think it terrible that you feel you have to ask the question - and it is not you I am railing against, its society.

But I do understand where you are coming from, it is always difficult to now where you stand when you feel a bit of an oddity, I should know - I'm Chinese, brought up as westener, all things Chinese are as alien to me as they are to any brit. I look more Japanese than Chinese, thanks grandad. I'm a BBW, but have comparatively small boobs and a tiny arse. LOL. If I carry on I'll give myself a complex here.

You have gone through a hell of a lot, psychologically and physically to be the woman you always knew you were and deserve to be accepted as woman  and that's what you are to me. End of! 

As an aside I received a mail from the revolting Punterlink people. They have asked me to keep their views confidential possibly because if I posted it it would make them sound like the ignorant Neanderthals that they really are. They, by the way, contacted me in response to the post I made in this forum but for some reason didn't want to respond in the public domain.

Thanks for posting this, Fallen Angel. 

This isn't an easy situation to be in. Speaking as someone who will soon advertise my site, it makes me think twice about whether I'd like to be listed with them or not. The business part of me says: absolutely, I need to be visible to clients. My opinionated self says: why on earth should I suck up to trans/homo phobic directories? 

The business part of me says: absolutely, I need to be visible to clients. My opinionated self says: why on earth should I suck up to trans/homo phobic directories? 

This is a problem generally. Even in the gay male escort sector, you have gaydar as somewhere with an enormous share of the market but which is somewhere that in my experience puts getting the money first, way above escorts' safety, even though it charges escorts much more than other paying 'members'.

I do know exactly what you mean.  The attitude of many of the larger, market dominating directories seems to be that the escort is expendable while extracting as much money as possible. This is why although I am listed on many directories and have thought about agency work I still prefer to remain largely independent. This gives me the opportunity to take as much effort as I can to do my own security checks the best I can.

You're quite right here, and yes it's sadly true about agencies too. The latter I think are almost worse because they do like to portray a 'family' kind of thing to new girls during their interview, going on about how carefully they look after all the girls on their books and how they would never, ever entertain a booking request from a known nutcase. In the end, though, it's not uncommon to find that their most regular clients are absolute wackos and the agency knowingly sends new girl after new girl into weird situations without even warning them beforehand. That was my experience with two different agencies and now I feel like a bitter crone when I hear new girls here on SAAFE talk about how excited they are about their wonderful new agency - I know how they feel, like you've been selected to join a group of great friends who want you to have so much fun! - but want to warn them that ultimately, only YOU are looking after yourself. And so you must take it all very seriously and be boring, work hard, and not jet off to Saudi Arabia with the first client who asks, with nothing but condoms and bikinis in your suitcase.

Sorry for that tangent! Fallen Angel, reading this thread and hearing about your experiences with Punterlink et al makes it clear that gross prejudices and ignorance still run rampant everywhere, even amongst people who would cal themselves 'sex-positive'. People who say we are in a post-racial/sexual/feminist society are so horribly wrong! I've been meaning to put an ad on Punterlink since I started as an indie but now will not bother. It's so awful that not only do you (and all women and escorts) have to deal with the big, immediate potential dangers of walking into a trap like you describe, or even a lone booking with a psycho, but also this insidious crap from what is essentially a bunch of gits running an agency or listings website, making a ton of money from us and staying snugly safe at home while we do all the real work.