It's funny to think how my life would have been different, had I been born male.  My first sexual experience was with a woman who said that she didn't want a girlfriend on the grounds that two women couldn't be considered a family.  I was shocked and appalled at her homophobia, but it also hurt on a personal level.  If I had been a man, I guess I would have shrugged it off and continued with my day.  My first serious girlfriend was worried that it would be easier to have children with a man, rather than trying to use a sperm bank.  I suppose she would have eventually tried a sperm bank if I was ready to become an adoptive parent, but I wasn't.  I often think about what could have happened if I had said yes.  Would I have been happy becoming a legal parent at that age? Maybe... it's hard to say.  If I had been a man, we could have used my sperm at least. My last girlfriend left me for another woman.  I suppose if I had been a man, maybe I would have been more hurt by that, but as it was it didn't bother me that much. Shortly after that ended, I was married to a man, and we were together for five years.  When I met him, he told me he was gay.  I accepted that, but I worried that over time, he would blame me for not being a man.  Once, when I suggested that I should look into very economical penis surgery in Oklahoma, he surprised me by begging me not to do it.  He told me I should be proud of my body just the way it is.  Since then, the surgeon in Oklahoma has retired, so that option no longer exists, even if I wanted it... and with what most surgeons charge for penis surgery, being upwards of $50,000, there's no way I could ever afford it.  (These days, my ex-husband has a boyfriend.  They don't have a sex life, and the boyfriend blames me for turning on my ex to vaginal sex.  Oh well, I never intended to heterosexualize my ex!) There were several jobs I would have kept and progressed in, had I been a man.  At one point, I worked as a carpenter's assistant, planing wood on a machine.  My boss was an extreme sexist, and one day he grabbed me from behind.  I stormed off and quit.  He was the father of a friend, so I decided not to press charges.  If I had been a man, I highly doubt he would ever have dreamed of touching me. My current boyfriend says he doesn't believe that patriarchy exists; I told him he wouldn't last a day in a woman's shoes.  

I keep getting messages today that someone in cyberspace thinks I was born male.  Well, I wasn't.  And no one who's seen me naked would ever mistake my clitoris for a penis.

Feels good to be back in the Bay Area.  Tomorrow I resolved to go through boxes of stuff in storage and getting rid of as much as possible in preparation for the eventual return to Europe.  By the way, if anyone wants to buy me a scanner, I won't stop you... Scanning will help me get rid of all the documents I don't need to keep in hardcopy.

Saw family and friends in southern Cal, most of whom I hadn't seen since 2010 or before that.  One friend I hadn't seen since 2002! We reconnected on Facebook, and she really made my day on Monday by picking me up at the main train station in L.A.  What a sweetheart.  She and her boyfriend just bought their first house, and she's so excited.  On Tuesday, I met up with two old friends who live in west L.A.  It was especially fun to reconnect with DW, who I haven't seen in about 7 years-- we went to an old-fashioned 1950s Jewish-themed diner and had pancakes for dinner.  

Submissives keep asking me for my phone number, which automatically tells me they haven't bothered to read my profile.  It's been listed there since I joined CollarMe.  Argh!