I hope your all well and in fine spirits.
A new question,nothing too deep.
Is it easier for you to hug a male while enfemme,compared to when you are in male mode.
I'm assuming that you would offer a handshake as a greating,when in male mode.
I have made a few observations of our club members,they have no hesitation whats so ever to give someone a hug and kiss on the cheek.
Hi Penni—
It’s much easier. It’s one of the more astonishing things I learned about myself. I have always wanted to touch people and have more contact with them. As a man, I couldn’t do that. Oh, I know some men here and there are able to do it, but for the majority of us, it’s just not allowed. People will misinterpret it, take it the wrong way, or be scared of us.
So it was such a relief to suddenly find my female self was spontaneously reaching out to people, because I could sense they were no longer afraid of me. I can touch and hug men or women, and they don’t appear to have as much resistance to it.
Although I remain private in female mode I hug lots of men while in male mode. In some circles at this point I think hugs between men are actually considered somewhat macho. THey are however different than the way I would hug a woman I was close to.
Absaroka
everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
Yes, it is easier...absolutely! For me, this is one of the real "gifts" of being transgendered. As a man, I simply do not hug people. (Well, okay, members of family excepted, but others: no.) In fact, as a male high school teacher, I have been trained not to hug, or even touch my students so much as on the shoulder. But truth to be told, the "training" was really unnecessary. As a male, "not touching others" was ingrained from earliest childhood. I remember, for instance, as a small child, standing next to a woman wearing a luxurious mink coat. I longed to just reach out and feel it, but I did not, because touching other people was "rude."
When I went to Esprit (a TG convention) last May, for the first time in my life, I had the opportunity to live enfemme 24 hours a day, for several days. I was amazed at what I discovered about myself: including how easily I was able, as Karen, to reach out and touch someone, to hug someone when she needed it, to listen to someone who was in pain and reach out to comfort her just by taking her hand. I didn't have to stop and think: "Now a woman would do this, so if you are going to act as a woman, you must do it, too." It was automatic and completely unselfconscious. That was what amazed me: I didn't know I had that capacity inside me. I just didn't know, which gives you an indication how powerfully that male inhibition (or perhaps prohibition) can affect us.
I recall reading once, that male babies actually are more emotionally in tune with their mothers than female babies. That they crave more physical contact, and are more affectionate than their female counterparts. I don't know if it is true, or how someone would measure this, but it certainly rings true. This, of course, is trained out of us in early childhood: "Don't cry. You're a big boy;" "Suck it up;" "Get over it," and so on.
There is an unacknowledged hunger in men for intimate physical contact. Is it just testosterone? ("All men are obsessed with sex," and all that. We've all heard the cliche.) I don't think so, certainly not entirely, but the longing for gentle, affectionate touch is so vigorously repressed that we have forgotten that we have the need, and the capacity for it still.
An aside worth considering: when men are denied the opportunity for touch by society at large...and they are...this forces them into dependence upon their most intimate partner, who must meet all their needs. Think about the consequences of this situation for a moment. Think of the pressure this puts upon her: she must be his best friend and lover. She must be "everything" to him, an almost impossible situation. If the relationship is a troubled one, she is expected to give what she cannot, and he is utterly dependent upon someone who rejects him, with all the hurt, frustration, and sometimes rage which can turn against her, or inward against himself. (And remember: men are trained to be independent, to be able to stand alone and not to be needy in any way. To be conscious of need is to be conscious of failure. And what must follow? A consciousness of inadequacy, deficiency, and shame.)
When I am Karen, touching someone comes so easily, I can hardly believe she and I are the same person. What comes so easily to her seems utterly natural and wholesome. That sense of inadequacy, deficiency and shame simply drop away. I am whole again, and healthy. And it is a gift for others as well as for me.
Jessica_Karen wrote:
For me, this is one of the real "gifts" of being transgendered. As a man, I simply do not hug people. (Well, okay, members of family excepted, but others: no.) In fact, as a male high school teacher, I have been trained not to hug, or even touch my students so much as on the shoulder. But truth to be told, the "training" was really unnecessary. As a male, "not touching others" was ingrained from earliest childhood.
When I went to USA, as a student, it was strange for me, an spaniard, that nobody touched others. We touch each other very much. Men hug, a man usualy kisses his father or uncles. It is usual that a man and a woman kiss each other when introduced for the fisrt time by a friend ...
So, for CDs in Spain, the diference when "en femme" is not hugs, we are used to it, but kisses. We can kiss each other, two kisses, remenber that when you come to Spain, a kiss in every cheek, just as girls do.
