If you ask any number of competent actors what they consider to be the secret of their ability to portray some person other than themselves, whether it be their own sex or not, with such conviction that other people believe totally in the authenticity of the character represented, they may all place different emphasis upon different aspect of the art of acting or role playing. However, the one element that will be common to virtually all of them will be not simply the skill to pretend to be, or to look like the character in question, but the ability to get inside it - to intuitively sense the very essence of the person in question to become that person, as it were. Of course, many actors will also tell you that a walking stick, or a pipe or a handbag, or an umbrella, or almost any 'prop' you care to mention, can also help to give you a deeper insight into the character, at least from a physical point of view. Transvestite How then does this appertain to a transsexual or a transvestite? After all, they are not actors, surely. But, on the contrary, that is what they are. They are role playing just as an actor does or, for that matter, essentially every human being to some extent. The added difficulty for the transsexual or transvestite is that he is simply playing another character, but also another sex! The main reason why this is so much more difficult is that, where as the actor is able to call upon all sorts of life experiences, the transsexual or transvestite can only call upon observations they have made of the female sex. Therefore, if he is to successfully become a woman he has to call upon all his imaginative powers to project himself as completely as possible into his feminine persona. All this has to be done by him without any actual experience upon which to call. He has to become female through his imagination, and to sense his understanding of how a female feels and reacts. Attitudes Needless to say, this an is an extremely difficult thing to do, and is useless to pretend otherwise. Woman have spend their own lives exploring and practicing their femininity, helped by their mothers. Indeed, their entire environment from birth has conditioned them into femininity - the pretty clothes they wear, the dolls they play with, the help they give their mothers in the house, the wariness they learn to develop towards men. All this helps to condition them to a totally different attitude to life to that developed by boys.
    Men, likewise, have spent all their lives exploring and practising their masculinity, which is widely different to the female experience. They learn to play aggressive games, to look upon girls as 'sissy', to be assertive, to fight, to be very 'physical'. Now, whether the boys enjoy all these male attitudes or not is irrelevant, the fact remains that he is instilled with them. Thus, for a male to create a genuine female persona needs both hard work and endless practice to eradicate all the main conditioning from birth and to make up for the lack of actual female experience upon which to draw. But all is not lost. The one great advantage the serious transvestite or transsexual has is that he will already have strong feminine tendancies and an overwhelming desire to develop and amplify his femininity. These tendencies he will probably have had from a very early age, possibly from birth, and although he will probably have had to hide them from the outside world in order to survive, they will have been secretly working upon his personality. Indeed, in very many cases, the feminine urges will have been stronger than the male ones. Thus, in spite of being subjected to male conditioning from birth, the secret feeling of inner femininity will have inevitably produced a deep and lasting sensitivity towards an understanding of the female urge, together with the all consuming desire to be accepted as female, which produces the sort of strong motivation which cannot help but be a good starting point. However, it is important to appreciate that this is only a starting point. Dedication and endless hard work is still needed. Never forget that practice makes perfect, that if you genuinely want to be acceptably feminine you are going to have to work at it, and seek out constructive criticism when and where possible, accepting it in the spirit in which it was offered. To take umbrage, for example, because somebody suggests that your make-up is too heavy, or that your heels are so high that your walk has become grotesque, is only to bury your head in the sand! You just have to learn to accept help where ever it is offered. Whilst, of course, we all know that every human being is different, there are certain general characteristics and attitudes common specifically to the female sex.
    Feminine For example, most men tend to be much more aggressive and arrogant than women in their attitude to life. Similarly, they are almost always condescending towards what they see as the weaker sex, the sex that drives badly, that can't mend a puncture, that can't mend a fuse, that can't do anything mechanical, and so on. Now we all know that these attitudes are bigoted and usually untrue. However, they exist and they are bound to condition the female attitude towards men and life. If you are to have any chance of successfully playing the feminine role your starting point has to be a real understanding of how the female's life is influenced and conditioned by the male attitude towards her. Just remember, most women's lives revolve around men, and are likely to continue to do so for the foreseeable future, whether we like it or not. Females, because they are so much weaker physically than men, are always vulnerable to physical attack sexual, or otherwise. For this reason, whenever possible, they are careful not to antagonize men. It is just common sense, after all. To counter this handicap they have learned to wheedle rather than demand, to respond to anger or annoyance with a gentle smile rather than any sort of deliberate confrontation, whenever they see the danger signals beginning to flash. In other words, most women do a great deal of smiling in almost any situation, particularly where men are concerned. Of course, this can often be a mild form of flirtation, but more often than not it is a form of self defence. You have to train yourself to smile much more and to be more gentle and sympathetic in your general outlook on life if you wish to join the female ranks.