For years I used the name Kasey when I dressed in my beloved miniskirts, stockings, heels, and the other stuff I used to wear. It was the product of my first and last initials and made sense. The thing was, I was struggling to figure out who I was, on many levels, at the time, and I just went with the most obvious choice.
Being a halfsie crossdresser who dresses like a pirate from the waist up and wears skirts, stockings, and boots from the waist down isn’t all that I am. It is a part of the whole picture, but it is an important part of my identity. It doesn’t define me, and as someone who has no intention or interest in transitioning, it is a part time kind of thing. Still, it matters. It matters very much. I became Captain Sally Sparrow because I came to realize I wanted to blend my male and female sides into one and have fun with it. In part this was because I spent too many years struggling with it, not being happy with my female side, and never feeling completely comfortable with who I tried to be.
Why? This is another question we ask ourselves often. Why do we do the things we do and want the things we want? Why do we want to do something so many others consider weird, sick, twisted, or straight up wrong? You can spend a lot of time with a therapist on these questions, but the most simple answer is that if it wasn’t a very real part of our identity we wouldn’t do it. There is a need so strong within most of us that to stop dressing, to stop being who we feel we truly are, leaves us feeling empty, unhappy, and often depressed to the point of turning to things like drugs and alcohol to cope with not being able to live the life we want to live.
One of the problems that results is we become so fixated on the goal of presenting as female, or becoming female, that we forget about all the other elements that make us who we are. I have seen girls like us go down the rabbit hole of obsession over realizing their female dreams that the rest of their life suffers.
We are a complex human machine with many working parts. We have a wide variety of wants and needs and sometimes the pursuit of one acts as an eclipse of others.
Think of your life as a novel you are writing in which you are the protagonist. As each chapter unfolds, more events happen, more changes take place, more challenges are met, and the action moves on to a new chapter. Each of those chapters is important. They took you to where you are now. Rejecting the past for a variety of reasons, including a rejection of your male past, tears out the roots of the story and leaves you as a piece of driftwood. All those experiences, all those people, places, and things, are important and relevant. You can’t dismiss the past any more than you can obsess over it or try to change it.
Rejecting parts of yourself because they no longer fit the mold of who you see yourself as because you have followed a difficult path into the world of CD/TG is just as damaging as rejecting that part of you. It isn’t all that you are. It is part of the whole. All of a sudden you emerge as female and you are happy and excited and then after a while you are wondering where the story goes now.
Hold onto the things that are part of who you are, even if you transition to female and feel like you must now abandon the more male oriented things you always enjoyed. The world has made huge strides in this area over the past decades. There are women who play football, race cars, work as mechanics, fish, eat steak, barbeque on the grill, drink beer while watching basketball, and everything else imaginable. You don’t have to prove you are female by adopting only traditionally female activities and hobbies.
You are who you are, not who someone else thinks you should be, and not someone who has to fit into a narrow definition of what you are supposed to be. You can have your own opinions, you don’t have to support something just because other CD/TG folk do. You can be you, a unique individual with a wide range of interests, likes, opinions, hobbies, friends, etc.
This is your life. This is the story you are writing, a novel about yourself. It isn’t the sequel to someone else’s life. It is a stand alone book about you. It is about your quest to realize your hopes and dreams. It about your triumphs and failures. It is about how you learned from your mistakes and became better for them. It is about falling down and picking yourself up and moving forward.
When you finally figure out how to write your life story the way you want to, then you become pretty much invincible.
More Articles by Dionysus (Captain Di) The Corsair
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I like your observation of blending the male and female identities into one. This is one reason I love the character of Red Sonja, a mix of physical feminine beauty and the mindset of a warrior.
Yes, Renelle, that is part of it. You have your own identity and discovering that is important.
A great article – thank you!
It is important to remember that you are ‘you’, and nothing will really every change that. Transitioning to female in the physical sense doesn’t need to mean you forgot who you are, where you came from and everyone and everything that was/is a part of “you".
Thank you, Tiffany Anne!
Cap’n , I LOVE this article. I don;t want to forget my male side ’cause that’s where the beautiful children I have came from! And as you noted, each step is important in getting me to where I am today. I would not trade any of it because it is a part of of who I was and am. I like the fact that you point out that one does not have to “toe the line-you can still like the things you did before transitioning. I love sports still and am(cover your eyes 🙂 ) a libertarian conservative. That doesn’t… Read more »
Yes, I think the entire opinion part is also very important. There are a lot in the LGBT community who push the idea that you have to think a certain way and support certain causes as a necessity to being who you are. For example, I have a gay friend who has lived with his partner for 30 years and who is opposed to gay marriage for a variety of reasons. People think that is contradictory. He doesn’t. It is who he is.
Thank you for such an insightful article. There are many sides to me, and I have passed through many stages in my life. You’ve reminded me to remember all that I have been through, to accept all that I am, and to be open to whatever the future holds for me. I need it all to be complete.
Thank you, and you’re welcome Kayla. I try to point out the things that sometimes get forgotten along the way.
Ahoy Captain! Aye! Captain, I really like the advice you give about finding ways to keep morsels of the past. You’re right, we are now who we are because of our past. And sometimes, a few areas where our past angers us (like having to hide crossdressing or not being understood) can easily overshadow all the other important pieces of our past, our interests, our family/friends, and those who were family/friends. It really is a novel, or a pirate story…in some ways, my feminine side feels like a pirate going against the established, dominant masculine side…a pirate looking for a… Read more »
Thank you, m’lady. I am glad to be of service!
Great article Captain, i desperately want to get back to doing things i used to do, certainly enjoyed your thoughts. if i reject my past i lose whatever foundations i built to support my current life. It becomes something i cannot support or sustain. Thank you for reminding me.
Thank you, Petra. I look forward to yours when it posts (although I may have already read it!).
It’s often intriguing that some of us come to hate our ‘male side’. I did for quite a while but for all the wrong reasons. My maleness represented my inability to express who I wanted to be, how I wanted to present. Since coming out to my family I realise how wrong that approach was. It was blatantly ungrateful My ‘male me’ got me to this point in my life. Among other things, he paid for all my clothes and continued to work to restock every time I purged. Without him there would be no ‘Jane’. We are who we… Read more »
Thanks, Jane. I may be… sleeping with the Editor-in-Chief. You never know…
I agree wholeheartedly sally. To ďeny your past is to deny the essence of who you are now. Thank you for this post.
Brilliant article Cap’n , it really makes you think about yourself, and consider everything about your life. I have been and still are going through some tough times, times when you wonder if ever you can be happy again. I know I’m not alone on this sight with problems, and I’m sure others will find this article enlightening.
Thanks Cap
Captain Sally, I’m sitting here today in a skirt, hose, blouse, no wig. no makeup and I didn’t shave this morning. It’s quite a mix. And you know what, it’s OK. Do I dress up fully? You bet and and I enjoy it. But sometimes, dressing some is OK too. And not dressing fem sometimes is OK too. Your article brings home a great message: Be you (I think personally you do you wonderfully, Captain. I’m guessing you’ve had years of practice..). Cyn made a great point that that our male side has wonderful pieces that we should not forget.… Read more »