1.4 KiB
Gender Performance
Similar to many other trans women, I put on a strong performance as a man, or what I thought a man ought to be. Not so much by hypermasculinizing myself (I never felt particularly masculine in the first place, didn't see the point in trying to appear so, and didn't care enough to put in the huge effort needed to try), but by trying to play the masculine role I thought I was meant to fill. As a boyfriend, as a husband, as a breadwinner, and as a bit of a prick. Maybe that's part of why it was so crushing when I lost my job in 2009. I felt useless, emasculated, unwanted, and broken. It was in that low period of my life, while I was stuck in my apartment alone while Jen (just my girlfriend at the time) worked to pay our bills, that I really started exploring and finding comfort in Closeted Cross-Dressing.
Jen would say I acted like a whole different person when I was presenting as a woman back then. That never sat right with me, I felt more like myself if anything. Perhaps that was coming from her having only ever known me as the man I was trying to be, the performance. How could she know the real person underneath, even if it was still just me, when I'd only just started to shed the costume?