dresses

Saturday May 4th, 2024.

People have asked if I have ever been involved with any type of queer support groups in the past.

No.

No I haven’t.

I don’t do well in groups.

Never have, never will.

I’ve always been on my own.

In Toronto as a kid I would always sneak down to the Pride parade but I would always enjoy it from the periphery.

Even though homosexuality wasn’t an outright criminal offence in the ’80s, the police were still mostly of the old school.

And of course there was the fear that I’d be caught in the vicinity of one of these parades or events.

I guess that I was carrying around the teaching of Terry.

I went to a few pride parades in Vancouver during the ’90s. Again just watching from the periphery.

What I always loved about the early parades was how “in-your-face” they were. It’s like the participants in the parades were wiping off all of the shit that society had thrown on them and were throwing that shit right back in the face of society.

But then the double aughts came.

And the pride parades started to become more corporate, more generic, and less offensive.

2006 was the last parade that I went to watch and the last pride event that I went to.

To be honest, pride events were never too appealing to me because of the overt presence of alcohol.

When my doctor and I first started discussing my desire to transition into something other than male he proceeded to give me a list of groups that I could join.

The thing is I don’t want to join a group.

I have been on my own all of my life.

I function better on my own.

I can’t see myself willingly becoming part of a group.

So…… off I go on yet another adventure.

Transitioning from male to not a male.

Anyways, time to head off and get my nails done.

I’m thinking something of a hot pink shade this time.

This time next week.

Well, this time next week things will be a bit different.

At this point next week I’ll have had estrogen coursing through my body for just over 24 hours.

And for the first time in my life since I was about 12, I’ll be experiencing diminished levels of androgens.

Tiresias transformed into a woman
by Pietro della Vecchia

“Take a little trip back with father Tiresias
Listen to the old one speak of all he has lived through
I have crossed between the poles, for me there’s no mystery
Once a man, like the sea I raged
Once a woman, like the earth I gave
But there is in fact more earth than sea”
From “Cinema Show” by Genesis from their 1973 album
“Selling England by the Pound”.

The goal of this is not to become a woman.

The goal of this is to get as far away from being male as I can.

XY syndrome is a life altering disease and humanity should be searching for a cure for the defective “Y” chromosome.

Through my entire fucked up crazy life there have always been a few constants.

The first is that I’ve never felt like this body is my body. It’s always felt like it has belonged to someone else.

As I said in other posts, since I was young I was always certain that I was going to have breasts.

When I hit puberty and my hips didn’t widen it felt odd. I know it’s hard to explain, but starting at puberty and even existing to the very day is the odd sensation that my hips are not where they should be.

And the junk that I do have has always felt foreign to me.

And even though genetically I am a male, men have always been a source of fear for me. I have never felt okay around men. And that was well before CFB Namao.

Yes, I did often make pleas to the imaginary friend in the sky to make me into a girl when I was younger.

And there were times as a kid that I wanted to be a girl so badly that it was eating me up from the inside out.

Through my teen years and my 20’s and my 30’s I had always but my desire to me a woman off as being a side effect of the sexual abuse on CFB Namao or my involvement with Terry.

But, as I got towards my my 30s I began to realize that my desire to be a woman and the feeling that I was in the wrong body was not shaped by the sexual abuse on CFB Namao or my involvement with Terry.

These feelings and these desires have been with me for as long as I can remember.

I really hope that things go as smooth as I want them to.

If I don’t have any bad reactions to the androgen blockers and the estrogen I’ll be very happy.

I can’t help but wonder what my brain and what my emotions will be like with the removal of androgen from by blood stream.

What will it feel like to have estrogen flowing through not only my body, but my brain as well.

Will my way of thinking change?

Will my view of the world change?

If everything works out fine I’m really hoping that I can go for bottom surgery. As I’ve said before, I just want to get everything removed down there.

I don’t want anything added to or created.

No penis

No testicles

No scrotum

All gone

Nothing but a smooth scar closing everything up down there.

A small hole to pee from.

But nothing else.

The male curse will be gone.

Banquished

Never to haunt me or traumatize me anymore.

Hopefully the male craziness and insanity are washed away from my brain.

Saturday April 6th, 2024

On Monday I’m back to work.

It’s been a fun 15 days away from work.

Still have 20 days left of vacation time.

I think the first 7 days I barely got out of bed.

Dreamland is such a pleasant place to visit, so much nicer than reality.

The rest of the time I was getting out of bed super, super late.

Tuesday I’ve got an appointment with my nurse practitioner. I’ll have a pretty interesting decision to make.

He’s kinda apprehensive. He wants to know if I’ve ever had any involvement in the trans community before. I told him that I had been involved with some groups in the mid ’00s, but the fact that I’m a socially isolated loner meant that I didn’t stick around them for too long.

Beside, I don’t want to transition into a woman. I want to transition into neither. Not male. Not female.

Sex has been an unmitigated disaster for me.

To officially be neither, but to have bits of both intrigues me.

My NP has warned me that I’m pretty old and my masculine features are pretty hard set. I told him that I’m fine with that, that I’m not looking to be female. I just don’t want anything associated with male.

He cautioned me that people might not be too accepting.

I’m covered in tattoos from head to toe.

I have a lot of facial piercings.

I wear dresses and heels.

I work with trades that are normally dominated by “Real Manly Men….. Grrrrrr(tm)(c)”

At work I put up with people who won’t give me the time of day due to the way I am.

Having breasts and less muscle mass isn’t going to be much of a game changer for me.

And really, I’ve seen guys with bigger breasts than I intend to have. They usually call those “Molson Man Tiddies”…… but I digress.

The NP says that there is a risk of blood clot and stroke with taking oral or intramuscular Estrogen at my stage in life. Fine, dermal patch it will be.

The lawyers are still working away on the class action, nothing to report on that front.

I am beginning to accept that the DOJ and the DND will succeed in their endeavour to hide this mess from the public.

Sometimes I wonder if things would have been better off and if I listened to Richard’s warning to me about sticking my nose into this shit. Sure, knowing the truth about Canadian Forces Base Namao is one thing. But knowing the truth really hasn’t changed anything. Pedophiles and child molesters who had successful careers in the Canadian Armed Forces prior to 1998 and who got away with their crimes due to the 3-year-time-bar flaw and the summary investigation flaw get to enjoy their retirement knowing that they can’t ever be touched by military or civilian tribunals. And the victims of these perverts get laughed at by the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence because neither of these agencies can be compelled by any civilian authority to admit that these flaws impacted children living on the bases.

Until next time……..

What’s next?

Well, now that M.A.i.D. is off the table until 2027 I’m going to pick up on an issue that I wanted to deal with prior to 2011 when I sent my email to the Edmonton Police Service.

I don’t really think my complaint with the BC Human Rights Tribunal will have much effect on the government, at least not in the short term.

And I don’t expect to hear anything from the DND and the DOJ until at least 2030. They’re gonna want to ride this matter out for as long as possible.

In 2008 I legally changed my name.

This was done for two reasons.

The first was that I had decided that if Richard wanted nothing to do with me, then I wanted nothing to do with him.

The second was that at the time I was considering undergoing gender reassignment.

For all of my life, up to that point, I had never felt like I was a male.

I never connected with “male” things.

I loved dresses as a kid and feminine things. Once I got my first apartment in New Westminster around 1994 I started buying dresses on the sly and wearing them in my apartment.

As a kid I used to get the shit beat out of me on CFB Downsview ’cause I acted like a girl or walked like a girl or cried like a girl, etc.

The teachings of Captain Totzke were still fresh in my head that I had been sexually abused by the babysitter because I enjoyed having sex with boys.

But then in 2011 I had to go and try to get justice for what the babysitter had done, so that derailed my plans.

And maybe that was a good thing in a way.

See, I had fallen into the same trap that most of society has fallen into and that is there were only two genders. If you’re not a male, then you have to be a female, and vice-verse.

As a kid I had always wanted breasts. I was so certain that I was going to develop like the other girls, but that never happened.

I was around 12 when I realized that I wasn’t going to develop breasts. And I was fucking devastated.

I had always felt that my hips should have been larger, but they never grew out.

And on top of that I had Captain Totzke drilling into my head that I was a “homosexual”. Which wasn’t clearly explained to me what that entailed, but it was bad apparently.

So, I never really knew what I was.

Didn’t enjoy relationships with women, but I didn’t enjoy relationships with men either.

So………….

After having been kicked and beat by the Canadian Forces since 2011, I’ve had a lot of time to reflect.

And reflect I have.

I don’t identify as anything.

I’m not male.

I’m not female.

Not gay.

Not straight.

I’m nothing.

And I’m cool with that.

So, I’m going for an appointment with my physician in April.

Even though I don’t identify as a woman, doesn’t mean that I can’t have breasts.

Breasts will work nicely with my wardrobe.

And as I’ve said, I’ve always felt like I should have had breasts.

I’m pretty sure that I will enjoy having breasts.

Hips?

Nope, not at this stage of life. My pelvis has been exposed to androgens for too long.

The junk I was born with?

Never have liked it, it’s always felt like it never belonged down there.

What do I plan to do?

Well, the first thing will be to start on anti-androgens and then start on a estrogen.

Due to my age I more than likely won’t be able to oral estrogen, I’ll more than likely have to stay with dermal patches.

The nice thing about going on estrogen is it will reduce my muscle mass. My body has always felt foreign to me. The mental image that I have of my body is much smaller than what my physical body actually is. My body has always felt like it belonged to someone else.

If the anti-androgens and the estrogen have the effects that I desire, then I intend to go for orchiectomy. That is I intend to have my testicles removed. Castration basically. Absolutely no more androgen production.

And then a penectomy. That is, the complete removal of my penis.

But no, there will be no vaginoplasty. I got fucked enough as a kid, I don’t need anymore penises inside of my body. Besides, as I said, I don’t truly identify as female. It’s just I don’t identify as male.

And I want to get rid of my male junk.

How will I pee? Good that you asked.

Same way that guys who have had penectomies due to cancer urinate. My urethra will be connected to a new opening and I’ll urinate through that.

What will I look like? A Ken doll…….with a scar.

Isn’t that a bit drastic?

No.

As I’ve said, I have always despised the junk between my legs. It’s always felt like a punishment.

So, I get to get rid of it finally AND I get to have the breasts that I always wanted.

In 2008, just after I legally changed my name, I sent my father a letter explaining why I had changed my name. I was very clear with Richard this was something that I wanted to do and that he was losing a son that he didn’t want and was gaining a daughter that he wouldn’t have wanted either.

I guess this is why he told the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service in 2011 that he knew that I had changed my name, but that he didn’t know why I had changed my name.

He knew why I changed my name. I guess that having a homosexual son was bad enough, but now having a gender non-conforming son was even worse.

I had called him during the 2011 CFNIS investigation. I asked him for help with the investigation. Not once did he return any of my calls. And he plunged the proverbial knife into my back in 2011 when he gave his statement to the CFNIS in 2011 in which he denied the babysitter looked after my brother and I and in which he denied that grandma was raising my brother an I on CFB Namao.

So yeah, I guess his gender non-conforming son was an insult that he wasn’t willing to wear.

I do wish that he was still alive.

Just so that he could see me in my dresses, with my breasts…….. that would have been priceless.

But Bobbie, you have no hair!

Yep, that’s cool. There are a ton of awesome looking bald women. With tattoos to boot. In fact, the reason that I started shaving my head back in 1990 was Sinead O’Connor. She looked powerful with her 0 buzzcut.

One thing that I do wonder about, what would things have been like had I come out as gender-queer and gender non-conforming on a Canadian Armed Forces base when I was a kid back in the ’80s?

Sure, the civilian world wasn’t that too receptive yet, but the civilian world was far more accepting than a Canadian military base would have been.

Would I have survived?

Or would I have quietly disappeared either at the hands of my own father or at the hands of another member of the Canadian Forces disgusted by a person like me being “out” on the base.

If I had told my father or even Captain Terry Totzke between 1980 and 1987 that I identified as a female, I think I would have encountered a tragic conclusion.

Anyways, enough about the past, I’m looking forward to my April appointment.

I thought that everyone knew

When did Bobbie start wearing dresses?

I didn’t realize until December of 2013 when I tracked my mother down and went to see her in Calgary that I had slipped into my friend’s dresses once or twice on CFB Shearwater.

My father wasn’t around, so he never found out. Which was probably a very good thing.

The next time I wore dresses was actually on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach. I had a female friend. Her parents were very traditional in the sense that girls had to wear dresses. So she and I would slip off base, swap clothes, and hang around for a while. This of course was during the time I was in the care of military social worker Captain Terry Totzke for my “homosexuality”. So this would have been in the period of 1981 to 1983. Again, I don’t think my father ever knew.

There was an incident on CFB Griesbach that caused me a lot of conflict though. I knew it would have been after I was placed into the Westfield program by Alberta Social Services. Sue, my stepmother, was going to take my younger brother to Dairy Queen for ice cream. I asked Sue if I could come. Sue, who was only about 12 years older than me, looked at me and said “Retards don’t get ice cream”. She was obviously referring to my involvement with Westfield and the problems that my untreated depression, anxiety, and other issues were causing for my father and her. Anyways I started crying. She came over and grabbed me and looked me straight in the face and said that if I didn’t stop crying like a little girl that she was going to take me to Sears and buy me a dress and that I could cry like a little girl all I wanted too.

This caused me great conflict for three reasons. 1) I hated being called a retard. I was getting teased and taunted enough on base having to take the short yellow bus to school, but now my own stepmother was calling me a retard. 2) I despised [brother] for how he could cause all sorts of shit in the house but it was always my fault for not looking after him. 3) I really wanted a dress. I was kinda hooked on Alice’s dress from Alice in Wonderland.

As things had become way out of control at home with Richard and Sue and as Richard was blaming me for “fucking with his military career” and dishing out the physical abuse to go along with that, my desires for dresses took a back seat.

The only type of glimmer that I had in my teenage years of the fascination I had with dresses as a kid was when I went to see Ridley Scott’s Legend in the theatres. I wanted Lilli’s “Black Evil Dress”.

It wouldn’t be until I had my first apartment in New Westminster around 1995 that I started to buy dresses on the sly and wear them in my apartment.

Because of my time with Captain Totzke and my father’s attitude I knew that this was probably due to my “homosexual perversion”.

It wouldn’t be until I got my union job at St. Paul’s in 2005 that I really got into dresses. First it was skirts. Skirts that could conceivably pass as “kilts”.

But by 2008 I was mainly wearing dresses.

My wardrobe at this point is mainly dresses and skirts. I do own a couple “utilikilts” and one pair of jeans.

Why do I wear dresses?

I think that on CFB Shearwater it was just childhood curiosity. When you’re under 5 I don’t think that you have a clear understanding of societal gender roles. Don’t forget, it was very common up until the early 1900s for boys under the age of 7 or 8 to wear dresses. When a boy turned 7 or 8 they were “breeched” and given their first pair of trousers / pants as well as their first haircut. Toilet training and the lack of mass produced clothing would account for this.

This is Franklin Delano Roosevelt wearing a dress.

Historians have had to go back and reevaluate paintings from the Medieval and Early Modern Eras as a lot of the paintings depicting girls in dresses may have actually been both boys and girls in dresses. To tell the two apart boys tended to wear plain dresses while girl’s dresses tended to have small amounts of finery attached to the dress.

But I think that from CFB Griesbach and onwards my desire for wearing dresses had more to do with my gender identity having been destroyed by my sexual abuse on CFB Namao along with the “conversion therapy” that I was receiving from Captain Terry Totzke on CFB Griesbach.

At the time my IQ was evaluated using a professional psychiatric test. I was evaluated to have an IQ of 136 +/- 6.

Maybe this figured into my desire to wear dresses. Dresses don’t have genders. They’re clothing.

As Richard would often say, maybe I was too fucking smart for my own fucking good.

You don’t become a woman by wearing a dress anymore than a woman becomes a man by wearing pants.

Don’t forget, but society heavily frowned upon women wearing pants right up until WWII when women were then required to work on the assembly lines to build weapons and aircraft.

Dresses are comfortable and easy to wear.

And the less things I have touching my body, the happier I am.

I think the destruction of my gender identity also figures into my desire to wear dresses.

I don’t identify as male or female.

I have no desire to be a woman.

But I also don’t fit into society’s definition of a man.

Therefore I’ve never felt locked into society’s demands that I wear specific clothing.

I have no attraction to women, but I also have no attraction to men.

I have had sex with both earlier on in my life.

During the late ‘80s and into the ‘90s I was mainly with men, but it always felt mechanical.

But don’t let this sound like I was involved with 1,000s or partners.

Maybe about 10 guys total.

Maybe about 2 or 3 women.

And I haven’t been with anyone since the early 2000’s

My attraction to men is stymied by the fact that I’ve lived all my life with the knowledge that homosexuality is a mental illness and that it is inherently evil. Having sex with men always brings back memories of my father, of Terry, and of [baby sitter / accomplice]. This cannot be escaped.

My attraction to women is stymied by the fact that I’m not really attracted to women.

What am I?

I identify as “queer”. Not gay. Not bi. Not straight. Not trans.

Just queer.

Maybe I am gay, but unfortunately that was taken away from me back in ’78 through ’83.

When I legally changed my name in 2008 I chose Bobbie specifically because this is the unisex spelling of this name.

Bobby = male

Bobbi = female

Bobbie = unisex.

I hated the name Robert as this is a boy’s / man’s name.

Anyways……………..

The fact is I wear dresses ‘cause I like dresses and I don’t identify with either gender.

A lonely existence.

Yeah, my childhood after CFB Namao was a very lonely existence.

I guess the trauma and the shock of what I had been through on Canadian Forces Base Namao at the hands of P.S, along with the dysfunctional household that I was growing up in really fucked with my emotional well-being.

Being involved with Captain Totzke couldn’t have really helped with my self worth very much.

My father had convinced anyone that would listen that I was how I was because it was all an act so that I could shirk the responsibility of allowing the babysitter to molest my younger brother.

The fact that most of the kids on CFB Griesbach knew who I was and what I had done didn’t help the situation very much.

The nice thing is that most people who got to know me saw that there were problems and they weren’t all mine.

And at age 50 I can see why people like Captain Totzke and my father did what they did.

As a child you simply can’t understand the biases, the prejudices, or the politics at play.

Even still, I find myself at age 50 completely unable to make friends. Sure, I’ve got co-workers and superiors and subordinates at work. I also deal with contractors, trades, and suppliers at work. But these are professional relationships.

I’ve met many people on my journey to receive justice and acknowledgment for what happened on CFB Namao. But other than the fact that we were all sexually abused on Canadian Forces Base Namao by the same two people, I can’t relate to anyone.

It’s not that I’m a loner by any definition. I like being out and about. I like going to coffee shops, and malls, and events.

I still can’t properly read or express emotions properly. When people appear to be upset or angry I get scared and afraid. That’s probably one of the reasons I hate any type of conflict at work. Maybe that makes me too accommodating, I don’t know.

I take no pride in my work. And by this I don’t mean that I don’t take care with my work. It’s just that no matter what I do all I can hear is my father yelling and screaming that I have to stop showing off, that I’m a stupid worthless piece of shit, and that anyone could do what I do, that I’m not special in any sense of the word.

So yeah, at age 50, what is going to be fixed?

The time for fixing these issues was 30 to 40 years ago.

The time for banishing Captain McRae, P.S., Captain Totzke, Colonel Munro, Richard Gill from my skull was years ago. Trying to evict these fuckers at the age of 50 is almost pointless.

And that’s the thing, my whole life has been nothing but enduring the self doubt and self hatred caused by these people.

If I didn’t listen to Richard’s negativity for the majority of my adult life, could things have been better. Probably not as there would have still been lots of issues given to me by the others.

If I didn’t listen to Captain Totzke’s thoughts on the apparent homosexuality I had exhibited when I had been molested by P.S. and Captain McRae, would my gender identity and sexual orientation been less fucked up? Possibly, but there were still a shit load of other issues fucking me up.

And that’s one of the problems. There wasn’t just one thing fucking with my psyche. There were numerous issues fucking me up and robbing me of a future that could have or should have been mine.

Dealing with these issues in the here and now may unleash fresh new self doubt, self hatred, and regret.

In other words I think I just have to make peace with these issues.

I’ve got my dresses, my tattoos, and my bicycle to keep me company.

Speaking of tattoos, I finally got my right ankle finished.

My goal is to have all parts of my body covered with ink by the time 2023 / 2024 rolls around.

I wear dresses, got a problem with that?

So, I’ll spend a little time talking about my preference for dresses.

I started “playing around” with dresses at a very young age.

When I lived on Canadian Forces Base Shearwater as a child, I do remember on more than one occasion going out to play with my friends, whom were always more than likely girls than they were boys, and I would come home wearing one of their dresses.

I don’t ever remember my father catching me in a dress, as he was almost always off on exercises. My mother on the other hand was never really upset, but she made it known to me that boys don’t wear girls clothes.

As a child, I could never understand why boys weren’t allowed to wear dresses. As far as I was concerned, they were far more comfortable and functional than pants, or even shorts. And besides, girls were allowed to wear pants, so why shouldn’t boys be allowed to wear dresses.

My family left CFB Shearwater around the the spring of 1977. I didn’t get to wear a dress again until somewhere around the summer of 1981 when I was just shy of my 10th birthday.

There was a girl named Megan who went to Major General Griesbach School on CFB Griesbach. On more than one occasion we swapped clothes and went to the local malls off base.

This was during the time when the fallout from CFB Namao was fresh and I was getting counselling from the military social worker to help deal with my apparent “homosexual tendencies”. The counselling only served to make my dress escapades that much more delicious and dangerous.

Even though my father was at home more often, he never once caught me wearing dresses. He came very close once though. Megan and I had swapped clothing and went over to Lake Beaumaris mall which was just north west of the base. We were walking around on the second level of the mall when I saw my father, my stepmother, and my younger brother heading towards us. Megan and I ducked downstairs to the washroom to change back.

There was a time around the summer of 1982 when Sue, my stepmother, had threatened me that if I didn’t stop crying that she was going to take me to Sears and buy me a dress. I really wanted that dress. Imagine, my own dress. But I also realized that she wasn’t buying me a dress as a gift. She was threatening to dehumanize me and humiliate me by making me wear a dress.

It was then that I realized that there was something really fucked up with who was allowed to wear what clothing.

I was given an IQ test as a child when I was around 9 years of age and I scored 136 +/- 6, which wasn’t too shabby. Maybe, just maybe, this IQ allowed me to see that there was absolutely no logical reason that I shouldn’t have been allowed to wear dresses.

Wearing dresses didn’t make me want to become a girl. It was just comfortable clothing that I loved better than pants. I’ve always despised pants. I don’t like the way they touch me, or bunch up behind my knees, or crush my crotch, or squeeze around my hips. Dresses just hang nicely from my shoulders. They don’t really touch me. They don’t bunch up behind my knees. They cover my body without causing any discomfort.

I never wore dresses again until I was into my 20s.

As much as I loved dresses, and still wanted to wear them, I mostly had precarious employment through my early 20s. I sure as hell didn’t have a family that I could fall back on if I found myself between jobs due to my preference for clothing. I couldn’t risk my employers discovering that I liked to wear skirts and dresses. And let’s be honest, the ’90s were nowhere near as liberal and open as the ’00s.

Still wearing dresses was kinda like a “dirty secret” that I kept behind closed doors.

It wasn’t until in the late ’90s when I gained more secure employment that I would start wearing “woman’s clothing” in public. It would start off as skirts on the odd occasion. Then I worked up to dresses.

By the time I started working for my current employer in 2005 I was wearing dresses or skirts, even kilts, almost exclusively.

I wear pants at work (yech), but the work I do would chew up a dress. I do wear dresses to and from work, so it’s not like anyone at work doesn’t know that I wear dresses and skirts.

I’ve never felt at risk or in danger in the Metro Vancouver area.

What type of dresses do I like?

Nothing fancy, just plain Jane work dresses. A-line and fit-and-flare dresses are my favourite dresses to wear.

Nothing too “femme”. Being a guy who wears dresses has introduced me to women who absolutely hate dresses, and women who wear dresses, but absolutely detest “femme” dresses with buttons and bows and frills.

One thing that I have discovered is that a sizeable portion of women will never wear a dress as an adult as they despise them because they were forced to wear them as children.

I don’t have the lumps, and bumps, and curves that dresses are usually designed to accentuate, so I’m more happy with a loose fit. And as I said, I strive for more of a fit that doesn’t touch me on constrict me.