girl-for-pay?

Trigger Warning for dysphoria (but it has a happy ending)

So, as some of you might have noticed… my gender identity has shifted.

Although to be more exact, it has become refined.  It hasn’t actually changed that much, but I’ve found better words for describing it.

I’m less confused now about the parts of me that are gendered and my preferred pronouns have settled down quite a bit.

I now use male and genderqueer pronouns with family and friends.  I identify closest with FTM Femmes, although the genderqueer title will remain a strong descriptor for me.

The pronouns are still new enough that I have to do a lot of correcting, which is difficult… but really, REALLY good.

I’ve also learned more about my dysphoria which has meant that in some ways I feel it a lot more than I used to, but I also have better tools for managing it.

I’ve also found a renewed love of all things femme.  I had to really accept the male part of myself first, because although I like femme things I am very upset by the idea of people thinking of me as female.

I’ve also started regular camming again through KinkLive where although I use female pronouns, I still get to keep the name Oliver (YES!!!).  this causes a lot of confusion sometimes, but its SO worth it for me.  I only use the female pronouns when camming in so much as I don’t correct people when they use them on me.  I still don’t use them to describe myself to other people.  For example, if someone asks me, “Were you a good girl growing up, or more of a naughty girl?” I will answer with, “Oh, I was mostly good… I think I thought I was good.  I seem to be learning that I’m a lot naughtier than I thought…”.  Or something like that.  When I repeat questions, I remove references to my own gender.

Its something I’ve gotten pretty good through being a semi-closeted homoqueer in retail and sales jobs.

I also shift my presentation up a little for camming.  I wear bows (made by sissa <3), I put on hella make up, and I femme up my mannerisms.

Oddly enough, I’ve found I’m WAY more comfortable being a girl-for-pay in camming and porn than I am being a girl for normal jobs.

In the normal jobs I’ve had, I found that coworkers would ignore me if I showed up in dapper tomboy clothes, but be friendly if I showed up looking like a girl.  I got to use my gender neutral nickname most of the time, but it always felt REALLY icky and gross when people used female pronouns to describe me.  I felt like I was having to lie about who I was all the time and it was difficult enough that I usually came home feeling completely depressed.

But somehow, camming and adult work in general hasn’t felt like this.

I’m beginning to piece together why that might be.

For one, the camming is much more explicitly about performance.  In retail jobs, people assume you are being at least mostly your authentic self… or this is at least the illusion.  The camming I do, especially at KinkLive is mostly fantasy based.  Most of us are mostly being ourselves, but a fantasy version of ourselves.    I feel like most consumers get that its performance.  I at least feel like my coworkers get it, and that helps a LOT.

There are also a lot of trans people working at Kink, and this has done a great deal to help me feel more comfortable.  There are only two gender-segregated bathrooms in the whole building, and they’re hard to get to from where I cam.  This means that I don’t have to worry about feeling safe whenever I need to use the loo… even if I’m in high butch mode.

I remember when I was Nurse Rebecca for medicaltoys.com (<3 <3 <3 <3 <3) that somehow that didn’t trigger my dysphoria even though it was much more female than the professional culture girl version of me for my normal retail job that triggered me LOADS.

I think this might be because for both being Nurse Rebecca and being a girl in the dungeons of Kink.com, its exaggerated femininity.  Its performed fantasy.  I’m explicitly performing explicitness more than I am performing gender.  It also has a time limit.  Retail jobs are typically much longer hours for less pay than being explicit.  The higher compensation for performing girl-me definitely helps.

very, VERY NSFW... unless you have a really cool job

Being an explicit girl is also different than being a normal professional culture girl because I’m pretending to be normal for professional culture.  That very well may be the sticky wicket.  Pretending to be a wild girl is MUCH easier than pretending to be a normal girl.  Normal girls are natural girls.  They don’t get to be boys.  This is at least what my dysphoric brain weasels tell me.

And then there’s also little things.  At the moment, my boobs only trigger me when I’m being myself.  When I’m being myself, I can’t stand to have them touched or even to feel them jiggle when I move.  Today I forgot that I wasn’t wearing a binder and went running down the halls and just felt completely gross afterwards.

But the good news is, I like not being myself sometimes… and camming is a GREAT outlet for that.  The KinkLive dungeons are a fantastic escape from reality.  So long as it comes with an end date, I seem to be ok, and I definitely love the attention they can get.  My boobs may not be what I want but, hey!  I can do tricks with them!

(insert nipple-clamped booby jiggle)

So yeah.  I enjoy being a girl sometimes as an escape from the reality of my trans body.  It helps that I’m a swishy pretty boy.  I’m not fording a massive river of gender, I’m just a crossing the streams a little.  The fact that I’m a pretty boy also might explain why its taken a while for me to sort everything out.  I didn’t see myself as trans for a long time because I’m not and don’t want to be a macho man.

There’s also little things, strange things, that trigger me.

Like bras.  Can’t stand them.  Even though I can play with my chest with no problems in the porn world, bras feel really weird.  I think it might be because they make me feel my boobs more like boobs?  They make me more aware of them as boobs as opposed to just my chest that happens to get attention and do tricks.  There’s one exception though.  I have this one bra that fits loosly and is very soft.  It looks incredibly minimizing on me (takes my DDDs down to what look like B cups).  It also doesn’t support them, meaning it doesn’t make my chest look like boobs.  In fact, it makes my chest look LESS like it has boobs.  I found a pretty matching strap on harness at good vibes and, damn.  100% WIN!

Long fingernails are out.  They’re just a bit too far for me.  This isn’t a problem since they only get in the way of paid self-pleasure anyway.

Long hair is also out.  We found a short but girlier than me wig that is kinda fun, but even that one is really pushing my boundaries.  Luckily, I don’t have to wear it…. so I just don’t.  Sometimes I wear it on my own when I’m feeling particularly brave and cross-dressy.

And normal girl clothing is out.  It makes me feel WEIRD and uncomfortable as hell.  I recently got a gift card for forever 21 and it just felt awful.  All of it was just odd on me.  Even when I like performing girl, its just unnatural feeling, and I feel like others are going to see me in it and think I’m trying to be a normal girl.

I think its because I’m finally accepting that I don’t want to be a girl, but thankfully I don’t feel like I have to throw out all of femininity in order to achieve that.

So, I end up taking a few pages out of the books of fierce femmes I know.  The kind of girls who perform femininity while somehow still breaking all its rules.  When I want to perform girl, I try to perform it in this way.  Following the letter, but breaking the law.

Its something I don’t think I’d get away with in a normal job.  But it seems to be in high demand in adult work.

I think the most surprising thing is that I’m not just surviving sex work despite my transness, I’m pretty much thriving in it.  I mean, a lot of my weird boob power struggles had been ok in my earlier sex work forrays because as much as I don’t like having boobs… I really like boobs!

Sometimes in my head I’m like Fry in Futurama when they put his head on Amy’s body.  Did anyone else catch how he missed playing with boobs when they put him back on his own body?

But now that I understand my gender a little better, I’m understanding that its more about how people see my gender than about how people see my body.  My body and my boobs don’t make me a girl.  My gender does.  And my gender isn’t girl.  What becomes triggering is when I feel trapped, when I feel like people will only ever see me as a girl.

Now that I’m slowly getting resources and allies, now that I’m feeling brave enough to ask for my preferred pronouns… I feel less trapped by my female body but also somewhat more dysphoric because now I know what I want.  The part I don’t like is being seen as a “real” girl… but I’m being compensated for that.

In the short term, it means I feel more comfortable in my body… sometimes.  It means I *can* have fun in it when I need to.  But it also means I’m getting much more serious about transition.