Are you TS or TV? Are you Full-time or Part-Time? HRT? Plans for SRS? Are you transitioning? Straight or Gay? Autogynephilic?” If you venture out into the community, much less the world at large, you may be asked these questions. I chuckle every time I come across a T-Personal website and see some girl list herself as a “Pre-Op-Trans-Lesbian”…..Excuse me?..:) The quest to categorize and compartmentalize apparently never ceases.

It’s not that there is anything malicious or wrong with these questions or the questioners. I have never felt any of my questioners were being any more than genuinely or [at least] politely interested in my situation. I do however find it somewhat amusing that perfect strangers would ask about a t-girl’s sexual history and preference, two minutes into an initial ice breaking conversation. I guess if you venture out in a dress the world feels everything else should be laid bare open…:)

I’m not against giving answers either. What I am concerned about is the interpretation of the answers. There are three basic reasons why I choose not to categorize myself by casually answering these types of questions to non-intimates.

The first reason is that I decline on principle. As t-girls we strive to first overcome society’s notion that there are only two groups of people we can belong to, male or female. We are told we must be in Column ‘A’ or ‘B’ and we don’t even get to select which box we are put into. Once we [if ever] as individuals overcome societal induced guilt of not fitting either box, we try to convince others. So basically I see a situation where we spend so much of our energy leaving society’s existing boxes. Once therefore self-extricated, I have no desire to place myself in another box that may not fit my situation.

That leads me to my second objection. Parts of transgender community have its own limited choices of boxes you can be put into. If you are transsexual, TS, supposedly you have always wanted or through time discovered that you are not happy as a male and wish to correct the situation. If you are a transvestite or cross dresser, TV/CD, you supposedly dress for sexual pleasure. Neither of these groups fits me too well. Again I’d like to eat at a restaurant where I can take a little off of each menu…:) I consider myself somewhere in between these two boxes so I’m not really sitting squarely in either one of them at this time. As I touched on elsewhere in this site, being a t-girl is dynamic so I will not be foolish enough to predict if any box will ever fit me. But right now they don’t make a shoe my size.. :).

The last reason is simply because I wish to avoid facing possible discrimination by a very few narrow minded members of our own community who employ caste systems by proclaiming, as self appointed experts, who is and who is not a “real woman”. I do not wish to raise ire here, so I will let it drop at that….:) As I said elsewhere on this website, the transgender community is for the most part a great inclusive mentoring group. But all groups have some wackos and fruits.

So if you see me out on the street…just call me Janine “T-Girl” for that is how I view myself..:) But yes I do think of myself as a real girl..albeit a part time one...:).