Do you have any insights/precautions about people like us making friends in the online community? The obvious is to be careful about identifiable information about our male side and location of where we live, are there more to this?
Like so many parts of our lives, it’s important we don’t get lost in the pink fog. It is easy for us to make decisions without thinking things through or considering the consequences. This can take on a few different forms, such as buying a dress instead of groceries, but in this case we may be so excited to connect with another girl like us that we disregard common sense when it comes to what we share online.
There are the big ones, of course. I would never, EVER give out my cell phone number. I would never tell anyone where I live. I would never go to someone’s home. I would never meet someone in their hotel room.
Sure, you think you can trust them, but again, we may be so lost in the fog and eager (or lonely) to meet someone like us that we do things we shouldn’t be doing.
I recommend setting up a femme email account. I have two email accounts for my boy life, one for my work email, and two email accounts for Hannah. This helps with keeping communication with my gender identities separate. It also keeps my boy name private.
If you are looking to friends do hit the mall with, make sure you spend a lot of time getting to know them before you agree to meet up.
I wrote a little about this for En Femme recently so I would recommend checking that out, too!
Related reading
Love, Hannah
Have a question for me? Oh yes you do. Ask me here!
Hannah McKnight 
Best advice is make sure you have a clean email address with correct owner name . Seen too many gil emails with owners real male name.?? And build a relationship over time and , in non covid times , dont rush to meet face to face. Exchange up to date images so when you meet in neutral place you can spot each other . These days you can video chat first
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Great advice Diana
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There’s no perfect answer to this of course, but I’ve found over the years there are certain clues that can be helpful:
1. I am suspicious of people who give too much or too little information. I don’t need to know your real name or what street you live on, but if you are unwilling to tell me what part of the city you live in (assuming it is a larger one) or even if you live in the same place that I do, I’m not interested.
2. Will they meet in man-mode for lunch in a public location for a meet and greet? I know this is a deal breaker for some for various reasons. But it is a pretty sure way to thoroughly vet someone. If you are comfortable doing this and they are too, it usually means they are comfortable with who they are.
3. Do your other tg/cd friends know them and are willing to vouch for them? I realize at first this may not be possible, but once you develop a network of friends it makes it much easier to make other friends within the community.
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This is very good information for someone like me who just tip-toed out of the proverbial closet and into the online world. It will be a long ways before I step out out of my home dressed. Just curious, it seems that most of this would also apply to meeting face to face with others at a public T-girl event but are there subtle differences? Thanks everyone, the support has been amazing at this forum.
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One thing if you put your images on any form of social media (Facebook, Insta, Flickr, etc) is check that you have location info turned to OFF. I’ve seen a few tgirls on Flickr whose taken-at-home photos include the Flickr location map showing exactly where they live. Most social media have settings that let you opt out of including location info as the default setting for images you post, but they can be a bit hard to find.
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Good Point, I completely missed this. I am aware that not just cellphones but also many cameras have build-in GPS which tags all the pictures automatically with location info that are embedded in the picture files. So indeed, a picture is now worth more than a thousand words, it also include the location where it was taken.
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Just curious, it seems that most of this would also apply to meeting face to face with others at a public T-girl event but are there subtle differences?
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Always use you best judgement, but I would never tell anyone my boy name, where I live, and give out my phone number.
Love, Hannah
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