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Hello all,
Long time browser and occasional poster. This post has been edited for spelling and additional clarity.
I am looking for your thoughts on and experience with being outed due to your on-line femme persona.
I have been presenting en femme, on-line, for about the last sever years now.
Initially with photos only from the nose on down as I was still on active duty in the military and the potential career ramification could have been catastrophic.
After retirement a few years later, I began showing my face in portraits and full length photos, here and a few other spots I deemed reasonably “safe,” whatever that means. For clarity, that does not mean Facebook, Twitter or the like. I reasoned that the career ending concerns were less now, even though I still work directly with the military on a day to day basis.
I figured that most of the older conservative military folks I work with would likely never venture into the corners of the web I can be found, and if they did the chances of them recognizing me were very slight. My transformation is pretty complete when I “get my girl on.”
So the question is, do other share these same concerns, I’m sure there must be some who do, and if so, how do you manage those concerns?
I’d also be interested in hearing about how common being outed is. I know of no one who has, but then again my circle of friends, as point of departure, is quite small.
Thoughts?
Jessie
Hi Jessie!
I’ve had these concerns for quite a while, but over time my curiosity or need for expression has gotten the best of me. It hasn’t been without some anxiety and fear, but nothing negative has come to my attention from it. I started with pics form the eyes down, built up to full body including face, then onto selfies with focus on my face.
From time to time I’ll completely delete any online presence of mine that would include pictures just out of fear. Depending on where you post pictures, if someone does find you online, you have to ask yourself why they were on that site to begin with. Chances are if they wanted to expose something about you, they’d also be exposing something about themselves.
For what its worth, I don’t know of anyone that has been exposed or outed from their online presence (knock on wood). And though I’m not in the military, I do work in an industry with some public recognition so it would not be ideal if someone put two and two together.
I initially had some concern of being outed online. But after gaining more experiences out in public–with no recognition of my male ID without my consent–I estimated the odds of being found online are negligible. And as others have said, they would most likely be CDs/trans or allies themselves to find us here. 🙂
Some people has been outed because of others finding their Facebook page (or similar social media profiles) but mostly found out because they accessed from work computers (or schools) or because they left their pages open and somebody else needed to use their computer (or device).
One suggestion (on Facebook and others) is finding all of “his” friends and family and blocking them. But of course it depends on how being “outed” may affect each person.
HI Jessie – First, let me take this opportunity to thank you for making me aware of this site. I am enjoying it thoroughly and am finding it a very pleasant and affirming online “home”.
To your point, I have found that if I google my femme name, the public photos from this site will come up. This has not happened to me with the photos I have posted on two other sites. I assume it is because of the public nature of that part of this site. At this point in my life I do not care. I am retired, do not have to answer to any employer, and the only person that my dressing might affect -my wife – is aware and accepting. However, I was a public school teacher for 32 years and a private academy instructor for ten more. In that scenario, I might be taken aback. Like yourself, I do not think my femme persona resembles my male self very much, and given that you are also retired that may be enough to give you security – it is for me. Just consider the public nature of those photos if you are concerned at all.
Kris,
Thanks for our thoughts and you are very welcome for introducing you to this site.
I have not tried googling myself, other than my real name and it is so common that it takes quite a while to locate me for a number of fortunate factors. My femme name is also pretty nondescript, but I will Google it later to see what pops.
Thanks for your friendship .
Jessie
One time my (then wife, now) ex came with me and a group of other CD’ers and a GG who ran the group to go out to eat and then do a shopping trip. When we came back, we took a group photo and put it up on the CD group’s meetup page. Some time later, my ex’s sister found the photo and talked to my ex, saying something of her not approving of me dressing like a woman. If you wonder why she was on the meetup CD page, I believe my sister-in-law was doing an image search for my ex and the page came up. Now I don’t really case if my sister-in-law approved or not. Nothing was ever said again. But it shows that you just because it’s on a CD related site doesn’t mean it won’t be found.
I’ll give another example. I was searching for something that lead me to a porn page (gasp!). The video was very mild core barely porn (maybe a bit fetish or bondage but not raunchy). Now even though there wasn’t anyone speaking, I recognized the tile pattern on the floor and some things in the background. It was shot by a lady friend of mine and the video given to the participant who uploaded it to the porn site. If you don’t know the place, it is fairly nondescript. But if you recognize the background, it’s pretty obvious where the video was taken and a good guess as to who took the video, even though I don’t know the participant.
Images taken by phones and by some cameras can have geographic location (latitude and longitude) in the EXIF metadata unless you specifically turn these off or use a special EXIF editor to remove them. If someone downloads the photo and examines the metadata, they can put the location into an online map program to get the location where the photo was taken.
So it is possible to be outed because of others in your picture or because of something in the background.
Anecdotally, it appears CDH strips geolocation data from the photos we upload. Can one of the media ambassadors confirm this?
Emily,
I’ve posted a few pix on another site where they’re available to members only. Before sending them in, on my Win10 PC, I right-click on the photo, click “properties”, click on the “details” tab and on the bottom click on “remove properties and personal information” and then choose what to delete.
That’s true. It’s possible to manually remove metadata from a photo with any recent version of Windows or MacOS. However, many girls upload direct from their phone. Removing metadata on Android appears to require a third-party app. The stock photos app doesn’t support that functionality. Not sure about iOS. In any event, it looks like CDH removes metadata that might be included in a photo.
I can confirm it Emily. Once the images are in our servers, when anybody may download them, they don’t have any metadata anymore.
I do have that concern. Recently I googled my femme name and BOOM all my public pictures I’ve posted here appeared. It really freaked me out and I deleted them so they would be dead links. I will probably upgrade my membership so I can post private pictures because I really did enjoy having pictures of me available for my CDH friends to see. I appreciate others having pictures posted too so I can associate names with their pictures.
Hello Ladies,
It would seem to me that for those of us who are not fully out of the closet, there is always some danger of being outed. Perhaps it even adds to the thrill and excitement we experience. We could get caught dressed, have our clothes discovered or even talk in our sleep for that matter. Adding pictures should be a personal choice entirely dependent on whether an individual wants to take that risk or not. I choose not to until I have resolved my issues with my SO.
XO – Julia
When I posted pictures on the public photos it didn’t occur to me that they would be available outside this forum. About 20 years ago I subscribed to a crossdressing lifestyle magazine, over a couple of years I sent in a couple of articles or letters with a picture and some of those pictures appeared in the public domain. If I had known this I wouldn’t have sent in a picture as I was not out as such back then. Obviously I look nothing like my male self and it would have to be a keen eye to see the link and maybe by background or something within the article may give a clue. The other side of it is why would they be looking there? If you had a very public role and some one was ‘digging’ for dirt then it would be quite a chore but for us mere mortals the likelihood of being found is small and no one has outed me yet.
It doesn’t really matter now as I am very much out and retired. Some of my ex colleagues knew before I retired and more now know after, it doesn’t matter what the organisation thinks as this is who I am and all have been accepting. There is a small circle of friends I mix with who don’t connect with other friends or family who I would rather not know. It is unlikely they would find out but if they did I would deal with it as it wouldn’t be a complete calamity. I am perhaps very lucky as I understand that for others it would sadly be a calamity if it got out.
In your case Jessie if you were found out I would have thought that the military have moved forward in attitude and acceptance. I accept there are dinosaurs, but if you have a job to do then that is what you are there for, your skills, experience and knowledge, not what you do in your spare time. If it were me after retirement I would be going in dressed. If they have a problem it’s their problem. After all isn’t retirement the time when you do all the things you have promised yourself no matter what others think?
It is a concern for me in that I am widowed, and I do not want to lose family and friends. I have however chosen to socialise on the Internet as a safer option than going out. There is of course a risk however wearing a wig is a good disguise so I generally feel safe. I am not sure I would risk it if I were still working though.
Hi Jessie
Thank you for the wonderful statement.
I am relatively new at this and a late bloomer (73) and yes my biggest fear is being discovered unless by other crossdressers or maybe women who like and accept us.
I live on The prairies and is the northern version of redneck country. I lost a lot of friends because of covid (No they didn’t die) and I would surely lose the rest if they knew I liked this new lifestyle.
I feel so good when I am dressed but have to admit that I stay away from the mirror because I will never look feminine.
If it wasn’t for this site and the wonderful girls here I probably wouldn’t have come this far. I have lots of friends here but only a couple I chat with. Like everything else in life they become names in my friends list but not much more.
I live in the country alone so can be female as much as I like and have a long driveway so I can do a quick change back to my man self.
Thank you again because I need these forums to help me cope with myself and my feminine self.Sara
There is always some level of risk in being “outed.”
What is your particular level of tolerance, in case of being outed? My personal situation might have some similar details to yours, maybe?
I served 22 years active military, in constant fear of losing my compartmented limited access security clearance, similar to what would happen back then to gay persons. Thankfully, all that has changed for the better now.
When I left active duty, I was employed in the federal civil service. Gay persons and even cross dressers had much less to worry about in the civil service, and times were increasingly becoming better yet. I thoroughly researched OPM regulations and knew what my rights were. The only problem was what the “local” office conditions were. Office gossip and working around fellow military retirees could be a problem and a challenge. Wagging tongues could be vicious and cause problems.
My wife and I were once spotted at a formal event, both of us were in evening gowns. It was a secretary from my office who “guessed” it was me, since she recognized my wife. Rather than wait for the Monday morning gossip, I challenged the secretary early Monday with, “My wife tells me you were at such and such an event Saturday evening…” Was I there? Not really, at least not as my male self.
I checked my femme name on the internet and did not come up with anything unless I included “crossdresser”. So, given the above and (obviously confidential) other “security measures”, I should…..?? be ok
My wife knows that Helene exists, I have got to the stage where I dont really care if I get outed. I live in a country that is reasonably liberal in its approach to gender and sexuality. I actually want to come ‘out’ some time soon. I’m sick of living for other peoples short sightedness. I dont cause anyone harm and bring myself a lot of joy with my crossdressing. When I came out to my wife, she panicked over what would happen if our friends found out, would they stop being our friends, I looked at it and thought ‘would I want them as friends if the way I dressed was a problem. I have a Facebook account and have never (and they dont exist) posted any shocking pictures, I have left a lot of groups due to ‘admirers’, I cant stand those slimey men creeping around making cheesy comments. I understand that for a lot of us that it could be damaging to our careers and income by involuntary ‘outing’ butI also feel its time to take our lives back, be captains of our destiny and own what we are, by being open we can normalise and force acceptance.
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I don’t have pics here on CDH but do on other sites without showing my ugly face. I don’t believe I have anything to worry about because my name is so common. I googled my fem name and got over eight and a half million hits. Good luck finding me in that mess!
Hi Jessie and thanks for the post. So far I have not been outed by my on line presence not that it really matters to me. My wife and all her family know about Trish, my family all know about Trish including my two boys. So that leaves neighbours and honestly if they know I don’t really care. If they wouldn’t socialize with me anymore well that’s their loss not mine. Like a bunch of the girls have said when I’m dressed as Trish no one including my own Mother would recognize that it was me. I’m going to google my fem name and see if anything pops up just out of curiosity.
I’m glad to see this discussion here. I was wondering a lot about the things being discussed here. I am very glad that the administrators here are making sure that the metadata associated with photos is stripped out if someone downloads the photo.
One concern that I did want to discuss is all of the posts doing google searches on their fem names, and some adding crossdresser after it. I’m not sure I want to try that, since google isn’t exactly concerned with anyones privacy, and are in the business of collecting data. I personally use a VPN in all my online activity, so at least some of the data is not able to be tracked.
id like to get anyone else’s thoughts on this, thanks,
I tend to agree with you there Jennifer. I don’t trust google or any other of the Social media platforms as far as privacy is concerned because if you search hard enough you can anything out about anybody without too much problem. I just look at how many times my Facebook page has been hacked and then all the garbage emails you get now.
I hope like you that the administrators here keep our information and our comments private between us all because letting it escape could and would ruin peoples lives and this is such an awesome site for the girls like us and especially the ones like me that just found it and all the wonderful girls I have met and hoping for lots more.Sara
Jessie, This is an interesting question for sure. Actually I have never considered this before. Since I have never posted any photos anywhere when I am not presenting as Genivieve, it seems unlikely that this would happen. For just about all of us, our feminine persona is not at all lookalike with our drab look. A few times for me when out en femme, I have seen and been seen by a friend who did not recognize me and never mentioned seeing me in subsequent contact.
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