I generally know when I'm going to dress (at a trans-friendly event, burlesque shows, that sort of thing), so I'll do body hair removal the day before. For most guys, this is virgin territory, but I'm sure any women reading this is thinking "Yeah, I know all about this." Hate to break it to you ladies, but not like this you don't. Do you know how much Nair it takes to leave Bigfoot silky smooth? Of course, there's multiple ways to get rid of the mess, and frequently I will just shave, which in my case means legs and chest and pits (plus tweezers between the eyebrows to eliminate any stragglers that might hint at a unibrow).

So I went through years trying to convince myself that I wanted to live as a woman, even though I'd never felt wrong in my male skin. It also took quite a while to come to an understanding that dressing to feel sexy didn't make dressing sexual. Since my only frame of reference was bad jokes or sexual fetishes or gay men, I thought "Well I must be at least bisexual," so I spent a lot of time trying to fit a square peg in a round hole before finally being able to separate sexual orientation from gender identity. Obviously not all of them are hostile, but I think that many of them have a violent gag reflex at the thought of being associated with someone who is "just" a man in a dress. They've obviously been through plenty of shit to get to live as the women they feel they are, and I get not wanting to be belittled by some dude who they see as doing it for fun or attention. And even they tend to make the assumption we talked about earlier -- that if you're not gay or transitioning, then it must be a sexual kink. Online (where everybody feels safe to throw shit) I've been told flat out, "You're not even transgender, so stop acting like a woman," as if there's some sort of entrance fee on femininity that I'm trying to skimp out on.