Travesti

When I first started going to Hamvention back in the late 1970's, there were very few female attendees. But since then, I have seen more and more women attending Hamvention each year (and I have done my part by attending as a woman since 2010).

The women I have encountered at Hamvention have embraced me as a member of their gender even those who are familiar with my roots.


A woman I had never met before and who is the wife of a prominent ham, came up to me after the awards dinner ceremonies. She introduced herself and then asked me if I prefer being called "Stan" or "Stana."

Once that was settled, she went on and on praising me profusely saying what an inspiration I was and how brave I was to do what I do. Then she added that the women at her table were very impressed with my makeup and wanted to know if I gave lessons. And then she invited me to her home. She lives 20 minutes from me, so I accepted the invitation and wait for her to get back to me to confirm a date.


One female ham I have known for many years and who is very familiar with my roots, lives in Connecticut, but I usually only see her in Ohio at Hamvention. She staffs a booth near my booth and we always meet up at one booth or the other to chat and catch up, as was the case Friday morning, when she stopped by my booth. After talking for about ten minutes, she had to go, but before she left, she said, "By the way, you look beautiful!"

I was speechless, but managed to squeak out a "thank you."

Then she added, "I really mean that!"


Now that I had been accepted as a member of the women's club, I decided to join the Young Ladies Radio League (YLRL), which bills itself as "an organization for women with amateur radio licenses and like radio itself, extends to women all over the world."

So I moseyed over to the YLRL booth, where I was greeted as an old girlfriend and encouraged to complete their membership application. The three women staffing the booth couldn't have been nicer and willingly accepted me as a member of their organization even one of the women who must have been familiar with my roots because she congratulated me for my award having seen my photo and bio in the Hamvention program.


With all the recent malarkey about bathrooms, I was a little nervous about using the women's restrooms during my trip, but I threw caution to the wind and used the facilities that corresponded with my presentation. No one called me on it and some of the women I encountered in the restrooms, smiled and/or greeted me with a "Hello," so I guess they felt I belonged.

The booth across the aisle from my booth always hires two or three 20-something women ("booth babes") to hand out stickers and literature during the convention. They always seem surprised that my booth has a 60-something booth babe (me), but they seem to accept me into their club. They were very friendly and were willing to chat about the biggest booth babe pitfall ― wearing high heels. For what it's worth, I was still wearing my heels long after those young whippersnappers switched to flats!

Wearing Caroline Constas.

An all-male cast performed Twelfth Night on stage in Buffalo, NY, 2015.

In my late teens and early twenties, I would occasionally take the train into Manhattan and explore The City. During one of my explorations, I was taking in the huge display of magazines and newspapers on sale at the newsstand in Grand Central Terminal, when what to my wandering eyes should appear, but a magazine titled Drag.

Now, this was not the typical drag magazine I was used to seeing back home ― magazines that featured hemis, gassers, headers, blowers, mag wheels, Garlits, funny cars, etc. No, this drag magazine featured guys in gowns, boys in bras, men in minis, fellows in fishnets, males in marabou, etc.

Wow! I had found a magazine just for me!

I looked around me to see if anyone was looking at me looking at the magazine sitting on the rack. The coast was clear, so I reached for the magazine and flipped through it quickly to make sure it really was a magazine about trannies and not trannies. Satisfied, I handed it to the newsdealer and paid the exorbitant (for circa 1970) cover price of $3 (that's almost $20 in 2016 money).

As the newsdealer put the magazine in a brown paper bag and handed it to me, he gave me a dirty look. No fan of drag was he, but I did not care because I had in my hands something I hoped would expand my knowledge of the world that I seemed to be part of.

Drag never showed up on the local magazine racks, so I did not buy the magazine unless I was in NYC and could dp so surreptitiously if I happened to have any company on those trips. As a result, I only acquired two or three issues of the magazine and cherished them until "The Great Purge of 1983," when they went out to the trash with all my other gurly paraphenalia.

Over the years, I saw clippings from Drag on various Internet places and I even saw complete issues for sale on eBay at exorbitant prices that I was unwilling to pay. But last week, Diana of Little Corner of the Nutmeg State fame e-mailed me with some good news: complete issues of Drag were now available for downloading from Internet Archive.

So I plan to reverse "The Great Purge of 1983" and rebuild my small collection of Drag.

Wearing JustFab.

Two pretty femulators from San Francisco, circa 1970

Zoe alerted me to a Huffington Post article about a youngster who will dress up as his hero for Halloween. His hero happens to be Bob the Drag Queen and the boy's mother and uncle are lending a hand putting his costume together and making it as authentic as possible.

It is a nice story and I think you will enjoy it.

Sunday was an evening out for this girl as I attended a surprise birthday party for Audrey, one of my long-time trans girlfriends. The venue was Real Art Ways, a non-profit art space in Hartford, where I have attended their monthly "creative cocktail p...

Femulate reader Missy wrote, "Since you seem to me to be so very comfortable with who you are it would be great to read more about you. For instance, how do you maintain your confidence when you shop for clothes, shoes, ... I am always so intimidated I have ended up buying everything but pantyhose online and consequently not always getting what I want."

Shopping en femme is so much better than shopping online.

If an item doesn't fit, you put it back on the rack and try on another size. If an item doesn't look good on you, you put it back on the rack and try on something else. You don't have to deal with the time and expense that returning an online purchase entails.

Shopping en femme also is an affirmation of my feminine gender. Shopping among other women, I blend in and become another woman. Typically, the other women are concentrating on shopping and not on me. They may be aware of my physical presence, but will assume that I am just another girl hunting for a bargain.

While browsing through the racks, I always encounter other women doing the same. They may look up momentarily to see who the other bargain hunter is and when they don't recognize me, they return to the hunt. Sometimes they may offer a friendly smile or a pleasant "hello." Rarely am I the target of daggers aimed at a man in a dress.

My last shopping experience was typical. I spent about an hour in the Misses department of the local JCPenney's perusing the racks and going back and forth to the dressing room to try on my finds. During that hour, I encountered a lot of customers doing the same and I noticed none of the other bargain hunters paying any attention to me.

However, I did not go unnoticed. A few people who were not busy shopping noticed me. A woman, who had finished shopping and waiting to pay for her finds, checked me out while she was in line at the cashier. I also noticed two saleswomen checking me out.

Perhaps they were just checking me out because they were impressed with the way I look. Or maybe they suspected I was en femme and were trying to confirm their suspicions.

Whatever... although some salespeople noticed me, I have never had a salesperson give me a hard time. Their job is to make a sale, so if the customer looks like a duck, then treat the customer like a duck and everything will be ducky.

While on the subject of looking like a duck, while I am shopping en femme, I try to be as womanly as possible. I concentrate on carrying myself like a woman, speaking like a woman, acting like a woman. It is no time to fall back into my guy ways. And after making a concerted effort to pass, it begins to come naturally and I have to concentrate less and less on passing and just enjoy being a woman.

 As I was looking through the racks at JCPenney, a middle-aged woman (probably younger than I) approached me and asked, "Can I ask you a question?"

I had no idea what she was going to ask ("What time is it?" "Where did you buy your shoes?" "Are you a tranny?"). I girded my loins, smiled and agreed to answer her question.

"You're dressed fashionably, so I'd like your opinion about a pair of slacks I was thinking about buying."

Wow! I certainly did not see that coming!

We discussed the merits of the slacks. I did not like what she had picked out and suggested something with a bolder pattern. She admitted that she really did not like what she had picked out and liked my suggestion better.

I pointed out a skirt with a pattern similar to what I had in mind. Her eyes lit up as she said, "I saw slacks with that pattern. Now I just have to find them again! Thank-you for your help."

"Good luck," I said.

Then I took a deep breath.

“Oh, my God!” I screamed to myself, "I am a woman!"

(Caveat Emptor: This post is a repurposing of posts from the past.)

Wearing Intermix.

CoverGirl spokesperson James Charles