Hello 
I'm Siobhan Curran/Kisa Naumova, and this is my weblog. I tend to write about stuff like crossdressing, Macs, code, cats, wine and Second Life, but in general it's just an ongoing conversation about all sorts of stuff. If you'd like to know a little bit more about what this all is, I recommend starting on this page which has a little bit of info on who I am, and what I'm trying to do — or you could dive into my five years worth of archives if you like.
Otherwise, feel free to close this box and explore...
SLalextric
photo secondlife scalextric racing
For the record, I fell off at the first bend, and plummeted 700m to the ground :/
When Labels Attack
As I've said before (although it's worth repeating, because — believe it or not — some people haven't read through every single one of my posts 
) I've been dressing up as a girl for pretty-much most of my life. The first actual memories I have of it, involve clomping around my bedroom in some high-heels, a pink nightie, and a floppy hat that were in the dressing-up box that my brother and I used to play with, when I was about 6.
I don't — I must admit — have too many well-formed memories about things like that from when I was young. Most of it is a vague blur of seventies' university buildings and summer holidays in the Mournes, but I'm pretty sure that throughout my childhood I had a blithely naive approach to clothing — a disregard (or an unknowingness) about 'appropriate' outfits.
To be honest, I find it hard to think back and pin things down from that time. It's a big mush of developing fetishes, self-awareness, and confusing overlaps. For example, I hated the idea of school uniforms, yet I would scurry myself away in my bedroom trying them on — trying to get used to the idea.
Confusing as this is (and as pointless as it seems), what I'm trying to suggest is that for much of my early childhood I had no idea that I was a 'transvestite' — dressing up as a girl was just something I did.
It wasn't until I saw the word, that a lot of the confusion in my head began.
...
Continuing this 'memory mash-up' (so to speak), there are two possibly distinct moments that I've somehow managed to combine into one fragment of the past. I must have been about thirteen at the time, and I don't know why my head places me in the undergrowth around our garden, but I can picture myself sat there with a battered porn mag, staring at a photoset of a woman gradually taking off a tuxedo and feeling the first stirrings of adolescent discovery.
Twenty-five years later, for some reason my brain has frozen that moment in my head as being synonymous with me realising I was a tranny.
I'm pretty sure it didn't hapen like that — chances are I'd heard the word "transvestite" used on telly (or something), had looked it up in a dictionary, and suddenly realised there was a name for what I did.
But hey, our minds do odd things to us, do they not?
...
The thing is though, regardless of how I 'discovered' the word, armed with the knowledge that I was categorised by the world as a transvestite, my attitudes towards myself changed. Instead of frolicking around in frocks, utterly carefree, I suddenly found myself ladelled with the notion that (a) there were things I should do because I was a tranny, and (b) that the world was judging me because of it.
I stopped doing, and started being.
Suddenly, it was no longer about self-expression, it was about conformity. To be a 'good' transvestite, I had to take my cues from what others did.
It is, perhaps, entirely plausible to suppose that had "transvestite" not been so enshrined as a "bad thing" — or a "humourous thing" — then I wouldn't have felt so much guilt about it while I was trying to come to terms with what I had discovered I was. But the point I'm trying to make is that that is (in this context) completely irrelevent. It was the very specific definitions that I found myself encountering that had a negative impact only my 'transvestic development'.
Our community is very fond of pigeonholing ourselves into little boxes. We like to categorise — draw up boundaries and distinctions. We like to compartmentalise our behaviours, and create hierarchies based on expressions.
We like rules and classifications. "You do A, B and C", we tell new trannies as they emerge onto the scene. "Therefore you are X".
Aside from the observation that that's a very male thing to do, it's a hideously stunting thing to impose on people who's very nature it is to smudge the lines between 'acceptable' behaviours.
If I try and compare the tranny of my youth — the unsuspecting flamboyant ten-year-old in heels twenty sizes too big for him — with the stilted, repressed, check-listed tranny of my late teens — trying to piece together the bits of equipment that he had come to believe he 'needed' — I'm left with a great sense of wondering what would have happened if I hadn't labelled myself?
The ideal state, for me, in my head, is one in which I wear whatever the hell I like — based only on whether or not I feel (and/or look) good in it — regardless of what others around me might think.
And I can't help but notice that I had that once, when I was young, before the urge to define what it was that I did was.
We like rules and classifications. "You do A, B and C", we tell new trannies as they emerge onto the scene. "Therefore you are X".
I agree absolutely — and I have said something similar on my blog before. I think the thing about labels is an indication of all that is wrong with forums and the whole trans-whatever scene. All the help and support they provide seems to come at a cost — that of implicitly "training" people into appropriate behaviour.
Ignoring all the personal attacks and justifications and rationalisations, intellectually the whole debate is vitiated by three kinds of ignorance.
1) If you begin with commonplace, unexamined assumptions about human nature and the differences between men and women, then your ideas about transgender are likely to be just as limited.
2) The history of transgender typology is quite frankly appalling. At best the terms devised have been ad hoc and simplistic.
3) There has nevertheless been a fair amount of more nuanced work on gender variations in recent years. I've yet to read a single comment in a labels' debate that shows the slightest awareness of any of it.
The labels' debate strikes me as being rather like taking astrology seriously — the same arbitrary division into types with the same irrational consequences: "Oh, you're the typical Aries" — "I could never go out with a Scorpio" etc etc.
...what would have happened if I hadn't labelled myself?
I think you would have probably ended up in pretty much the same place. Here's why: I didn't have any of the 'external influences' you did, all I had was my 'label' and its dictionary definition. So I just did my own thing, bought and wore the things that I liked (in private, you understand); before discovering the on-line community, relatively recently. Since then I've done more research; and what's amazed me, reading blogs like yours, is the number of times I've thought, "Yep, did that, and that; that too." and only occasionally do I think, "Hell no — never felt the urge to do that!" ("Hmmm, I wonder if I should...", occurs even less). I guess what I'm saying is that I think a lot of the way we develop as trannies is governed by 'nature' (our own personalities) rather than 'nurture' (peer pressure etc). As always, Y.M.M.V. 
Deprincess
(In other words, my mother is unexpectedly turning up at my door in a matter of hours)
Missing:
Ruining the picnic
Sculptie/Maya stuff from Qarl Linden
[snip]
Despite the endless meaningless rhetoric spam...
Conformity is over-rated. It's something we indulge in, when we don't know any better. (I'll leave the definition of "we" to the reader.)
One thing that's struck me about the "TG" (damn, it's difficult to type with all the band-aids Felix the cat has forced on me. It's like a new fashion statement!) is that it's basically insecure guys with varying sexual fantasies, dictating what is and what is not "feminine". Not always, of course! (I hasten to add!!!) But the essential element of truth is in there: what's to be gained with conforming to the expectations of others? Nothing. Not even "their" approval.
Be yourself. It's easier.
Carolyn Ann
I don't know the ins and outs of transvestite culture and the sub-divisions but I do know it's not just a male thing — both gay and lesbian communities do the same, as do all flavours of the BDSM community. The pagan community does it too, with incredible precision, so I rather strongly suspect it's a human thing.
Labels are a mixed blessing I think. It depends on how they're used. "You know Eloise, she's a lesbian sub" can be a useful short-hand (and tell vanilla males they don't stand a hope in hell — although not always). The danger comes when people generalise from their experience of other lesbian subs to assume I act the same as any other one they've met — to paraphrase from Robert Anton Wilson, when they assume the menu is the meal.
And yes, you're 100% right with your last two paragraphs. It's incredibly hard to do in this world, but realising it's what you wish to do, you can start to move back that way and be yourself, and not give a damn about the neighbours. Good luck on the journey!