40 000 Hits!!!

Ok, I'll admit maybe 50 000 hits is probably a better milestone....but I just couldn't wait! Thank you to everyone who has visited my website and an especial thank you to the ones who keep coming back! Please continue to do so and I promise I'll try and keep things interesting.

I think most of those 'visitors' have come from people visiting different pages however as since I hooked up Google Analytics to my site on the 22nd of May I have only actually recorded 1356 visitors, although that in itself is pretty good in a little over then a month!

As we're quoting statzies, here are a few more:

• The majority of visitors (621) have come from the UK with over 300 coming from London alone. Manchester, Edinburgh and Birmingham follow but those three have only 74 hits combined.
• The second most represented country is the USA with 410 hits arriving from 45 different states. New York (64) and California (35) are where most visitors hale from.
• Visitors have come from 64 different countries with Germany (62), Australia (32) and France (32) all having good showing.
  
• The average time spent looking at the site is a little over 2 minutes (02:01) with 80% of those being from new visitors.
  
• The 1356 visitors have views a combined 3772 pages meaning that on average each individual hit covers 2.78 pages.
  
• The most popular day was June 13th when 120 people viewed the site.
  
• Nearly half (48%) of traffic was directed from HungAngels.com, a shemale/tg appreciation community site. 119 people have come across from the link in my tvchix page while 145 have come from blogger links (which I wonder if that means me clicking on the page to see how many new hits I have....)

So yeah, 40 000 hits, whooot whoooot whoooo! Thank you very much for your visit and I hope I'll see more of you in the future.

Aimee

TINT: cross-dressing vs transvestite

I decided to sign up for one of the more well known tg sites today. Tranny International, or TINT seems to have a bit of a following online so I thought I'd join to see what I'd make of it. Unfortunately I got stuck in the middle of the application process.

Now I know my own name and, at a pinch, I can describe myself, but the next part really threw me. The text "I am" is followed by a pull down bar with the options: Cross Dresser, Transsexual, Transvestite, Woman, Man, Couple. Hmmm tricky...

One day I'll get around to writing my thesis in full regarding my opinions on gender (to cut a long story short I don't believe it exists and if it does then it's based on little more than semantics) however it was the Cross-Dresser Vs Transvestite option that threw me here.

Ok, so a cross dresser is someone who crossed clothes right? A boy who dresses like a girl or a girl like a boy. Where as a *transvestite* is someone who 'trans' (crosses) 'vestites' (clothes). You know, i think I'll just tick the boy box!

Interestingly I've just noticed another tg site, tvchix, has just change their pigeon hole options. Previously they had had blue tags for male/female admirers, orange tags for transsexuals and pink tags for pretty much everyone else. (CD, TV or t-somethings). I had always been a bit envious of those orange tags but felt I couldn't switch over until I was living full time.

However I noticed more and more organge tags appearing of late, some from people who certainly didn't look transsexual. After closer investigation I noticed that the self-definition options had been change. Now as well as pulling male, female, couple or intersexed you can choose from a range of complimentary options including the traditional TV, CD, pre-op and post-op as well as the new t-girl and transgender.

Now I have as much idea about the distinction between t-girl and transgender as I do about TV and TG but it is nice that there are a few more options. Personally I tend to try and avoid defining myself but understand why sites feel they need to. To me t-girl or transgender seem to be the loosest definition and more obviously be taken to mean a number of things which is why I choose them if they are options.

I guess the point of all this is that if you want to know more about me ask me as there are so many different views on what these tag means that we would probably be having different views anyway.

Shopping Spree!

I spent so much time moaning about how my difficult personal situation makes it tricky to get out en-femme that's it's started to annoy even myself. It seems to be a major skill in the trans spectrum to find excuses as to why we can't do the things we want and so it's hardly surprising that this has led to a reputation of time wasting fantasists in the eyes of others. The Internet is proliferated by people who claim it's their heats desire to explore femininity or bdsm but get cold feet at the first opportunity. I am determined not to be one of those people.

It was partly for this reason that I was very excited to meet up with two girls from chix the other day for some shopping in mancs. For me it was an easy (although not without natural reservations) first step. I'd talked to both girls online for a while and felt like I knew them before hand, we met during the day in a public place and lastly we were all in boi mode. Being trans dressing is important but not as important as other people knowing who you are. I write this really because I want to encourage people who feel they are trans to try and do something about it. I felt for the longest time that my trans tendencies were some kind of secret perversion like looking at porn and masturbating that should not be shared with others. I wish it hadn't taken me till about the age of 23 to find that this wasn't so.

When I came out to my brother it seemed like that was the point where I felt I could be tg, he was the first person I came out to who really knew me. Sure, you may have lots of online friends who know the girl you, but until you meet in the flesh they only know one side of you. So in an effort to explore my femininity i went, dressed as a boy, to meet two other guys in a town an hour or so away.

Jenni and Chloe were wonderful genuine people, but then I knew that before I met them. There's a lot of nutters on the net but you can take your time to find people who you would be friends with even if you didn't share trans-tendencies. This was defiantly how I felt hanging out with them. We wondered around various clothes shops and I even managed to buy a few things I needed (some heels as the ones i use currently are kinda 'borrowed' and some girl trousers.) and basically just hung out.

I felt I got alot from the day just from *being* with other people. Maybe I've just been sitting around on my arse all day for too long. It reminded me a little of how things had been in Japan when I'd come out to all my closest friends there. I think for many people we *are* somehow ashamed of being trans and so put up a wall between us and others. How can you truly be close to someone with a barricade between part of you and them?

So this entry is in part a thank you for Jenni and Chloe for a great day out, proof that I'm not a lazy fantasist who isn't prepared to even take the tiniest of steps towards self exploration, and an encouragement to anyone who happens to read this. You have nothing to be ashamed of. People might react in different ways when you tell them you're trans, and I urge you to use caution and await the right time, but there are people out there who get you, people who you would be friends with regardless of you desires to dress or whatever, find these people and find yourself.

Fun with Flickr

I decided to put some of my pictures up on flickr recently and am very glad I did :) I've had lots of people looking and many making comment. I fell like such an attention whore but it's just so nice to know that people are enjoying my pictures. I even put up some naughty ones but decided to limit the access as I wasn't too sure about showing too much to anyone who fancies a peek.

I made a link on my flickr profile to my blog here so hopefully I have a few new readers, although I'm still waiting for people to make some comment on here.

I also popped one of my pics up on hot or not also. This was a little scary as it would be in amongst pictures of 'normal' people but I just couldn't resist. Currently I have a rating of 5.9, which actually I'm quite happy about. Ok, being marked 5 out of 10 isn't the best result but I am up again people who were born with boobies and the fact that I've not been given a 1 by everyone for being a bloke in a skirt, so 5 out of 10 isn't too bad. I wonder how many people realise that I'm a tgurl from my pictures, does everyone know, or am I fooling all the hotornotters? Who knows. There's a link to my page on here too, so feel free to vote for me on there too, hehe.

On the subject of voting I'm getting my pictures rated on tvchix as well and been getting alot more 10's which makes me happy. Slowly I'm creeping up on my ratings and am wondering if I'll be able to make the top 25 this month.....exciting times.

Lastly, I'm still waiting on that job. They should have gotten back to me by now *grumble grumble* The fact that I was in the last two though means that they're going to ring me whatever the outcome, so no news is not necessarily bad news....