Over on her Blog "My Life While Being Stuffed Back in the Closet" Arianwen has an interesting post on how we name ourselves. Like her most of my life my female side has been anonymous, this was fine since she never met anyone, pretty much staying locked in. I felt as though my taste for female garments was something "dirty" something I was ashamed of and naturally kept quiet about. The advent of the Internet made me begin to understand that I was not alone, at first I would just look around at some of the sites on line. It must be said that some of these sites did nothing to make me change my mind about the activity being "dirty". I'm sure most of you are aware of the sort of site I am talking about - their existence is one of the reasons I am determined that Paula's Place stays "nice"
Anyway I digress, it was when I decided to join and start contributing to on-line fora that I found I needed a name. I had experimented with a few I had been Babara on Second Life, I had fooled around with Emerald, but these seemed a bit too exotic, too rich for everyday use. So how to choose, maybe adopt a name from one of my heroines, like Prudence (Prue Leife), Jackie (Jacqueline du Pre) or Anne (McCaffrey) but none of these seemed to fit, me. Now because we grow up with the name that our parent's gave us we rarely think about whether it fits, we are just familiar with it, we become used to it, answering to it, signing it, it just becomes part of us, so choosing a new one is difficult. As I was registering to join a forum I had to make a decision and make it fast, it needed to be a female name and one that no other member had already taken (rules of the forum) I just used one of the feminine versions of my male name. Somehow I quickly became comfortable with this, and have been using it ever since. When I think about the alternative version - Pauline - somehow just would not fit me, Paula does. To a certain extent our views of a name are always clouded by people we have known with that name
What interests me here is that since having a name my female persona has become a person, she is developing her own personality, her own tastes and slowly her own style. There are things that Paula does that Paul doesn't and vice averse, Paula drinks Latte not Cappuccino, white wine rather than beer, wears mauve and pink rather than greens and browns, black shoes not brown. This all sounds a little superficial, yet I think t is an indication of something more fundamental. Since giving Paula a name she has developed as a person, this is just one of the reason why she needs to express herself to the world.
Edited for spelling
Paula's Place
2 comments:
I first gave my femme side a name when I was shopping in a CD boutique in New York and the proprietess introduced herself. It seemed polite to do the same...and I blurted out "Dani," a female variation on my middle name (I've never cared for the femme version of my first name). The "Pretty Sissy" part came when I began to write CD fiction.
I have experienced that shame and self-hatred for most of my life too, and can say that self-acceptance has been a gateway to all-round better health. To have and express a richness within your personality that you have been forced to hide under a bucket brings a joy that you cannot possibly explain to others who have been congruent in their sex all their lives.
As for a name, it is a powerful thing. Never underestimate the effect of a name. Personally, "Halle" has come to symbolize a strength within me that I could never have guessed. While it is unlikely that this will be a name I live with if I transitioned, I will never abandon it inside.
There is nothing superficial about the different choices we make once we recognize who we really are Paula.
Halle
xox
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