Wednesday, July 28, 2021

A Rose by Any Other Name

Tommy Dorfman
Tommy Dorfman

Another “celebrity” came out as trans: actress Tommy Dorfman, who came out as a transgender woman.

I am a trans woman. My pronouns are she/her. My name is Tommy.”

What struck me was that she retained her male first name, Tommy, rather than adopting a female name.

When I started crossdressing, I did not adopt a female name. I did not even consider it. It never came up (and why would it since my crossdressing was closeted).

Only when I joined Genderline, the crossdresser group on CompuServe, did I adopt a femme name. And I only did so because the male-to-female crossdressers on Genderline had adopted female names. In retrospect, it made sense for my personal security back then (circa 1977) because I was still closeted and out to nobody. 

Fast forward four decades and I am out to almost everybody. And a lot of those people are civilians who knew be by my male name before they knew me as trans. Most of them don’t even know my femme name and still call me by my male name.

In this day and age, parents are naming their newborn girls with names that were previously considered male names, for example, Jesse, Taylor, Austin, Jordan, etc. According to Babycenter, even “Stanley” is a girl name, as well as a boy name – not a popular girl name, but a girl name nonetheless. So I feel motivated to jettison “Stana” and start going by “Stanley” full-time and complete the circle. 



Source: Venus
Wearing Venus


Rianna
Rianna modeling in a fashion show in the Lindale Mall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa

3 comments:

  1. IIRC she said "Tommy" was her uncle who died shortly after she was born, it's a sign of love and respect to keep it.

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  2. First - I have had a female name from the first time she ventured out of the house. Since that First Outing was to a Drag Club in LA (Dratstrip 66) I fell into the drag style with the full name "Julie New-Ma'am" (inspired by my idol, Julie Newmar) then shifted to "Julie Shaw" to make me feel more like my female expressed self and not a drag queen. (Shaw is similar to the first part of my Family Name. I still am not out to most of my friends/family, and my last name is VERY unique. So, to keep some sense of annonymity . . . ) Now that most of Julie's friends know her and love her as "Julie" I'm inclined to keep it as is.
    And Second - and I've said this before - it'a not often that the Femulate Her photo is something I would actually wear. But this skirt. Wow! I'll take 3 please - black, tan and white!

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  3. I am delighted your surgery went well.

    May soon become popular to name newborn boys really traditional girl names.

    ReplyDelete