And as the weather is warming up, it’s time for me to change my tires back to my summer tires. So yesterday morning, I loaded my tires (on rims) into the trunk of my car, while wearing my Kate Young dress from Target. In hindsight I should have worn my tank top and yoga pants. Nevertheless, I drove out the tire shop that I usually go to north of the city. I walked up to the counter. He asked me for my licence plate number, which I gave him. He then asked for my ID—no one has ever asked for my ID, the whole purpose of getting my licence plate number was just to bring up my records on file. Being a part-time woman, my driver’s licence of course had my birth name on it.

He then, very loudly, called me by my male name, “It’s Tim, right?” I felt a shiver down my spine, as all the customers started to look at me. Did he just out me on purpose? I thought. Keeping a straight face, he continued, “Are the tires on rim?”

“Yes, they’re in my trunk.” I replied, trying to compose myself, but I felt my voice quivering a bit. “And the nuts for the alloy rims are on the backseat.” I’m sure that I was clear. But he acted as if I was mumbling.

“Pardon me sir?” He said. I repeated what I said…three times. Each time my voice was raised louder, until at the end when there was no way that I could have sounded feminine anymore. Still all eyes were on me; I felt my arms shake a bit. I wasn’t certain whether I was upset or scared.

He muttered, but not quietly: “Oh, a strong guy like you should have no problem loading them…” I felt tears dripping down. “Look, sir, we may have to take all day. You can wait in the waiting room in the back, grab a snack, water or coffee, watch some TV, and the men’s room is to the left.”

I went to the back room, sitting there quietly. There were a few men in the room already. Do they think that I am man? An older woman (not that she was old, she was just older than me) sat down right next to me a few minutes later. She was behind me when everything was going on. She looked at me for a few seconds—which initially made me nervous. Is she going to make fun of me too? But then she said, “Oh you poor girl, don’t cry.” Only then that I realized I was sobbing. She put both arms around me and continued, “Let me give you a hug.” And she didn’t let go of me for the longest time. The lady took me by my hands, and dragged me to the ladies’ room to help me clean up the mess that was my face; my hands just weren’t steady anymore. While she was doing my mascara, she said, “I know they called you Tim, but no matter what your driver’s licence says, you’re still a gorgeous woman.” And then with a bit of a smirk, she said, “I want to shove my boots up his ass, but I got something better.”

She held my hands and marched right up to the counter, demanding to see the manager. In a very loud and very affirming voice, she said to him, “Your staff has been very rude to this young lady here, and we don’t want to do business with you anymore. Please give us our keys back.” The manager, quickly apologized, gave us our keys, and tore up the work order. Two older men who had been waiting also left. On of them told me outside that even though he doesn’t know anything about “this gender stuff”, the way I was treated showed that the staff were idiots who didn’t know how to deal with customers.

I sat in my car for a long time before I was able to drive home. I went to bed very early last night, so I’m well rested and much calmer today. Hopefully my research work will take this episode off my mind, and that I’ll recover some confidence soon. I posted something on my Facebook and Google+, and so far the responses have been encouraging.

My tires are still inside my trunk, and I’ll definitely be visiting another tire store from now on. Just not sure if I will ever show up en femme again.

My high-school years was very confusing. We had just moved from Hong Kong to Vancouver. While I spoke English quite well—except for some reason, I spoke with a mysterious English accent—I knew absolutely nothing about Canadian culture, and I foolishly assumed that it was similar to the Southern USA culture I experienced when my family lived in Texas. I went from a talkative child to a very shy teenager.

On top of that, the girls around me were growing up. Quite literally they were turning from girls into women, right in front of my eyes. Almost everyone of them was drop-dead gorgeous in my opinion. They were developing womanly figures, and they were exploring their sexuality, on what it means just to be female. It seemed like an exciting journey, and I wasn’t invited to participate. I compensated by not revealing about my love of most things girly; instead I tried to make life work as a boy. It wasn’t too difficult, as I was also interested in most things that guys were interested in: sports (i.e. jocks) or computers and Star Trek. (Geeks! My kind of people!) But no matter how hard I tried to fit in, there was something that made connecting with other guys difficult. I was sensing that even the least masculine guys (some of the geeks)share qualities with the overtly macho jocks that I don’t share. Both the geeks and the jocks talked about the pretty girls in school, and judging from the way that they related to them, I knew I was different. They were lusting over them, I was envious of them.

Perhaps the boys around me have sensed something too, because I was teased a lot. Luckily no one called me hurtful names (e.g. “faggot”, “sissy”, etc), but the teasing didn’t stopped until Grade 12. The fact that I was one of the school’s best 400m sprinter didn’t change people’s perception. If I were a girl, my slim track-athlete figure would have attracted the attention of a lot of people. As a boy, not so much. I fought back the bullying as best as I could…including one episode when I chased down my tormentors with a pipe wrench after school. I thought that the sheer rage would make me appear more manly. It didn’t. (Well, it did for a few weeks, but then things went back to status quo.) The other “advantage” I had over my tormentors was that because I played the violin, the left side of my neck had a mark that looked like a hickey (we actually call them the violin hickey), and when I was teased, I could point to it and retort, “oh yeah, at least I’m getting some action!”

Many years later when I was talking to a friend, he mentioned that as a guy, I seemed very emotional about things, and he has only known women like that. I’m not sure if he realized what discovery he has just made. Also, I found another person with almost identical personality to me. She’s a woman.

In any case, University turned out to be quite different from high school. There I finally went to class en femme for the first time in my fourth year.  Sitting in a lecture hall with 450 other people inside, I realized that absolutely no one cared who I was, what I was, or how I was dressed.

I want to leave with you another picture from last week’s romp around downtown Toronto. This one is taken outside the Old City Hall. I wasn’t always this confident woman with this big smile, but I’m glad that through all the struggle I went through in life, I am able to be that every now and then.

• Both Randy and I noticed that when other women walked past me, they often stared at my shoes. Initially I thought may be it was because that’s just what women do, checking out other women’s shoes. Then I remember that this rarely happens to me.  In fact, it has never happened to me before Monday. Then I suggested to Randy that perhaps it was because they read me when they see the shape of my legs. Nonsense, he said, they can’t possibly read you, especially from this distance and this light. Wishful thinking perhaps, but not improbable. Then we pondered the idea that it was because my the soles of my shoes are leather, and when I walked, they made a very distinct sound that only expensive shoes make, so perhaps the women are curious about what shoes I was wearing. We left the discussion at that.
• The second observation was one that Randy made: I never let anyone open doors for me. He kept trying, but I kept stepping in front of him to open the door myself. I realize that he was absolutely right on with that observation. Men—complete strangers—are always trying to open doors for me, and I never let them. In some ways, I am thrilled knowing that men want to treat me like a delicate woman that deserves to be pampered. On the other hand, I am not a delicate woman that needs to be pampered. I can take care of myself, and I’ll naturally do just that.

I’m eager to hear about other people’s experience with opening doors for women.  Let me know your thoughts! Lastly, here’s another picture from Monday. My legs don’t look too masculine, do they?

Anyway, for your viewing pleasure, here is another picture from my “outdoor adventure” with my friend.  I did indeed have a lot of fun roaming around the city.

A considerably more famous Kate Young

Anyway, I stopped by the store yesterday while going home, and I picked out a new dress. I was supposed to have done all the purchasing planned until well into the summer, so I had no intention of buying anything for another few months. But when I walked into the store, the idea of wearing a dress that has my name on it (alright, the other Kate Young’s name) is just too irresistible. So even though at $50 CAD, it was a bit pricey, I decided to buy it and wear it immediately. I went out in the evening with my friend Randy, and he took this nice picture for me in my new dress with my trusted Canon DSLR:

I had previously agreed that he was going to help me take some pictures, but we never worked it out until yesterday. He was at first not very comfortable with my DSLR camera, but he proved to be a quick learner, especially after I changed some settings to make it easier for him. At one point, I changed the camera to “high-speed continuous shooting” mode, and even told him that it’ll freak him out…and it still did.  (I didn’t tell him what I did to the camera.)  This is my favourite picture from yesterday, taken at Toronto Eaton Centre:

All and all, we had a great time.  We walked for almost 3 hours, and took pictures all over downtown Toronto, before grabbing a take-out dinner at the Loblaw’s at the Maple Leaf Gardens.  Some of those pictures are already on my Facebook page, but I’ll be posting the high-resolution ones on my website shortly. and I have posted them on my own web gallery.

Anyway, until (at least) this summer, I have to remember: No more buying new clothes!

On Good Friday night, I went out on the “late-night ladies outreach” for sex workers with another woman (in case someone is wondering, I’m usually dressed as androgynous person when I’m out), and had two interesting things happen to us. First, one of the girls in the high-track area “S” was being harassed by a potential john who wanted to get her service without paying her. “Don’t you just want a good-looking guy like me fucking you? I’ll make you feel goooooood.” he said. You see, he was probably the ugliest man I have ever seen, and I didn’t just mean that he looked unattractive. Consider this: “beauty is skin deep, but ugly is to the bones.” He was ugly to the bones. Just seeing him made me want to be a woman that much more. S skillfully dealt with that man, but I’m sure he didn’t appreciate us being there.

Also on the high track area, as we were wrapping up the night outside a Mac’s convenience store, waiting for the coordinator’s van to pick us up, a taxi pulled up, and a girl known to us “M” got out with a customer and went inside Mac’s, while the taxi waited. I have never seen anyone so incredibly drunk and still be able to walk; he was the first. Once they were inside, we chatted about how he was to perform at all…having paid M at least $100 (apparently, according to another girl on high-track, the “minimum” going rate). Minutes later, the man came out, but instead of going back into the taxi, he wandered away with a blank look on his face. A minute later, M also came out, and waited for the man inside the cab. After awhile, even M went looking for the man.  Eventually she found him, and brought him back to the taxi. But once the taxi driver saw him, he shook his head in disgust, and left (without being paid).

Overall, the outreach had much more drama than usual.  But that’s not all.

This is not the safehouse!

The Christian group that I worked with is housing a few young women that we have “rescued” from the sex trade at an undisclosed location. This weekend was my turn to go and spend the nights there (sleeping on the couch) to keep watch. On the first night, I had a bad dream, and as I woke up, I kicked the coffee table very hard. I must have screamed pretty loud in pain, because I pretty much woke everyone up. Thankfully, the women wrote it off as a laughable event and I didn’t scare them. And yes, I can’t wear heels this week because of the bruises on my toes.

I was sleeping very soundly on the second night when I feel off the couch completely and my butt landed squarely in the space between the couch and aforementioned coffee table. The laughter from the young women when they found out was even more precious than the first night.

In between the two nights, I spent some time at my church for an Easter-related event. Or so it was the plan.

I arrived at church and found a man wandering outside. I asked him if he needed any help, and he replied that he needed someone to talk to. I went looking for my pastor, but he was nowhere to be found (it was actually his day off, but I didn’t know that at the time). I saw that he was in quite a bit of distress, so I volunteered to chat with him. As it turns out, he was going through a rough patch in his relationship with an ex-girlfriend. We chatted for an hour—thus completely missing the whole gathering—before I was convinced that it was safe for him to leave. He’s a Muslim from Iran, and how he ended up at the doorstep of a Christian church is still a mystery to me. We did manage to get him to speak to my pastor last night for an hour, and we’re trying hard to find him help these days.  He gets very emotional when he’s speaking, and his hands and legs would shake uncontrollably. We are still worried that he is suicidal.

At another church where I also conduct the choir, Easter was also our minister’s last day. It was very emotional, and a bit sad because of the circumstances of him leaving the congregation. But since it was his last day, we had communion together, with him serving the bread and wine to everyone (a couple of hundred people) all by himself. It took a long time, but no one seemed to mind. We were just sad that he’ll never preach there again.

Work is not terribly busy this week, and outside of work, I’m going out to a dinner with some friends on Wednesday, and attending a concert at the University on Thursday, and hopefully I can arrange to meet with another friend that I had originally met online. Perhaps some of those will be worthy of writing about later.

I first came across Ms Eve while watching the theatrical trailer from Star Trek: Into Darkness, which she purportedly plays the character of Dr. Carol Marcus. (Trekkies like myself will know immediately who the Carol Marcus character is.) I have not yet seen any of her other movies (She’s Out of My League, Sex and the City 2, Men in Black 3 and IMDB lists a number of lesser-known appearances of her), and aside from MiB3 I’m not that interested in the other ones, so I hope that she does in fact has some acting talents. The Star Trek trailer shows very little of her other than a shot of her screaming, and yes, she does appear in her underwear in the movie in front of Kirk…

Now, that’s a terrific looking bra and panties on a terrific body. A naughtier side of me is already fantasizing about making love with as her. In my fantasies, I’m always very eager to have casual sexual encounters with people, but I’m also certain that this will not be the case in reality, even if I do look like her. I promise to write about those fantasies before Armageddon, but I won’t not promise anything else, and I’ll be sure to leave out the naughtiest bits.

I do wish that there is a machine I can step into that will automatically “change” me into her “twin”, then for once I can really enjoy what it’s like to be drop-dead gorgeous. Then, may be I’ll want to spend a day looking like her, or may be a month, or may be even for the rest of my life! But of course, that machine will be no less fictional than Star Trek. But hey, if you want to pay for cosmetic procedures that will make me look exactly like her, I suppose I wouldn’t mind either.  Let’s see, that means massive amounts of estrogen, gender reassignment surgery, massive facial reconstruction to turn me from Chinese to Caucasian, reshaping my hip area…and I’ll probably have to lose 40 pounds. May be even that is impossible too.

(But if you have the millions of dollars and you want to try to turn me into her, let me know.  It’s still cheaper than inventing a machine that instantly changes the appearance of a person. Who knows, I just might turn out to be very eager to “reward” my benefactor.)

That said, I consider myself very blessed this year, not because of anything that I have won or gained, but for what I had been able to give away. It surprising how big a 600-foot condo feels when it’s not cluttered with useless stuff. There are still many things at home that are almost useless to me, but could make someone else’s life much more pleasant. Another thing that has made me feel very blessed is that I have the stamina and health to join a Christian group for their late-night outreach program to sex workers in Toronto. On Friday nights, I’d roam around with a bunch of other women to areas of the downtown where sex workers cluster. And one of the areas that we go to is called “Trannytown.” As the name suggests, that’s where the transgender working girls do their business. Most of the women I work with don’t have any contact with other transgender people aside from this outreach, so they don’t know much about transgender. Although most of them are quite jealous of the t-girls because they are all tall and leggy. Almost all the volunteers that I work with know that I’m trans, but most have never seen me as a woman before. To them, I’m just a less-than-masculine young man. Sometimes I wish my fellow (no pun intended) volunteers would discuss with me more about transgender issues, but I suspect that being a fairly-well-adjusted trans-woman like myself is very different from one whose livelihood is based on servicing men with oral and anal sex.

I remember the very first night that I joined the outreach, the volunteers were chatting with a trans-woman named L.  As we talked—L was very talkative, as was our volunteer coordinator—a man drove his white minivan around us 6 times.  Each time he drove by, the interval was shorter, and the last two times that I saw him before moving to another girl, I could see though the window that he did not appreciate us being there.  I thought he was going to run us over. I was also worried that he would take out his frustration on L, but thankfully, we did see L the following Friday night, and she was just fine.

Please pray for me as I continue with this work. The evil and suffering that I see and hear about are not for the faint of heart. But I’ll continue to reach out to the girls on the street because, well, that’s where Jesus would have been.

But are we?  Am I really more feminine than the women around me?

I find that hard to believe. Here are pictures of three exceptionally beautiful post-op transgender women, from left to right, Nong Poy from Thailand, Alicia Lau from Taiwan, and Kim Petra from Germany. If you Google their names you can find many more very impressive pictures of them.

So far, I have been careful not to express my own criteria for femininity, because I think it misses the point anyway. A person who makes fun of a trans woman for not looking like a woman pre-supposes a scale for femininity, that your appearance must be at least average to be considered a woman. The transgender advocate’s or the admirer’s response also pre-supposes that there is a scale of femininity , it’s just that us trans women lie somewhere else on that scale. But do you necessarily have to be feminine to be a woman? Or can we acknowledge that being a woman is far more than the stereotype: chef in the kitchen; lady in the parlour, a whore in bed. Don’t get me wrong, I want to be feminine, I’m just saying that it’s not the only thing that makes me a woman.  But what are your thoughts on this?