What's in a name?

I have written that I, somewhat reluctantly, adopted the name 'Xena' when I met up with my straight friend for crossdressing sessions. But it did not feel right and I went along with this to humour him.

When I stopped seeing him, I dropped the name and went back to being a bloke in lingerie. I did nothing to increase a sense of femininity - I had bought a wig, a long blond thing but more because the lovely shop assistant in 'Transformation' in London seemed unable to accept a need to dress as a woman without attempting to be 'convincing' than from any real desire of my own (and see the terrible result in a picture below this entry) - so I had no makeup, no clothes, only lingerie and a pair of heels.

However, one develops and, as for so many, the internet was to be my teacher. The chat rooms... how often I sat silently in front of my computer and read all the buzz of femininity in the tranny chat rooms! I never dared contribute myself. Occasionally, one of the girls would attempt a conversation with me, usually addressing me as 'Honey' or 'Hun'. But I was so inhibited and little adept at even pretending to be someone I felt I was not. I still felt I was a bloke who happened to like wearing lingerie. I know this is common, especially among straight guys.

This all changed when a man initiated a chat with me. To his sympathetic ear, I poured out my story. Somehow, over a period of months of many chats and emails, I loosened up; somehow he uncovered my neurotic denial; somehow he gently led me to understand what was happening to me; somehow he was uncovering my sissy side to me! He encouraged a femininity in me that I had never dared or wanted to acknowledge. With him as guru, I began to choose a wardrobe...

Then, with his guidance, I came to see that I needed a name that would be 'me'. Now I can see clearly that in most of my dressing I was always hiding from myself. And I assumed I was doing this as a way of dressing for others. I was dressing to satisfy men, assuming that no man would want such a mincing sissy as I am. 

Yet when I think back over the past few years I see that when I was totally alone, and not dressing for someone else, then it was the mincing, little girl sissy that I always turned to in my mind and my imagination. I had just been in denial about her for a very long time – I suppose all my life really! Yet, I could not repress her – and this is why when I chose a name for myself as a result of those chats with Tom, I chose the name that had haunted me from early years. Nancy. I was a nancy boy. In choosing it I  came to feel that I was reclaiming the word for myself, deflecting its sense of being an insult in the way that blacks have reclaimed the word ‘nigger’ or gays the word ‘queer’. I am not just called Nancy – I AM a nancy and now want to accept it as an integral part of myself. I realize now that usually when writing to someone I sign myself as sissy nancy, not just as Nancy. This particular voyage I embarked on had been a long time coming and only now do the signs from the past make sense as I now have the courage to look and see their true meaning.

Ultimately, a name loses some of its sense of the unusual, the curious; it ceases to stand out. In a sense we become our names to the point whether it is no longer a matter of whether we like the name or not. Thus, I AM Nancy!


He still guides me and I value that. He is always there to remind me what I was always destined to be.