For new and returning members
A repost:
When did you realize you weren't the only TG person in the world?
When I was dressing up in my mom's clothes well before puberty, I believed I was the only person on earth like me. As I grew older, I found ads in the back of my dad's secret collection (hidden in his private office behind the garage) of men's magazines for a company called Michael Salem Enterprises who sold products for transvestites (I first heard the term "cross dresser" maybe a decade later and at first had no idea of what it meant...). I ordered the catalogue and it contained lingerie items, books and some padding items. It was printed on bright red paper. (I wish I had kept it.) I never ordered anything from it but it gave me the confidence that I wasn't the only one who wanted to be feminine despite being born a boy. For years this catalogue was the only contact I had other than Johnny Carson's jokes about Christine Jorgensen on the Tonight Show.
Nearly twenty years later, I met another TG, a post op transsexual named Cyndi (maybe I knew others, but they weren't anymore out than I was...)
It's so different today, when I Googled "Transvestite", I got more than a million hits, including Trannyweb.
Best,
Melody