Found this interesting

[Rik]

Came across this and found it quite interesting as it seems to describe me quite well.

http://www.jenellerose.com/htmlpostings ... heUrge.htm

Maybe it will be more suited to the new CD'er or at least ppl who are new to realising it.

[Elizabeth]

Hi Analise,

I remember reading that when I first came here too. It was during my first time of real self exploration. While it did make me feel guilty, I did finally realize that it's false logic.

I think that cross dressing has a "dark side." There are a lot of behaviors connected with it that aren't healthy at all. Aside from being fraught with secrecy, guilt and diminished self-esteem, a CD's life can get out of control. Many CDs become obsessed with their self-feminization. Some lose all sense of judgment, balance, and perspective. Some let their cross dressing jeopardize important personal relationships and responsibilities. Some let the desire to dress turn them into social pariahs who reject the straight world entirely and rely solely on other CDs for companionship, direction, and support. Some CDs come to swim in an exclusive cross dressing milieu. That milieu sometimes exhibits a herd mentality which uses peer pressure to challenge its members to press envelopes and engage in activities that aren't altogether wise or salutary.

I think this is the real setup for the rest of the paper. But it's an illusion. I have bolded the parts I want to talk about. The secrecy, guilt, and loss of self-esteem are blamed on the crossdresser as unhealthy behavior. But it is not the crossdresser causing those behaviors. It's a bigoted society propped up by religions such as Christianity and Islam.

The next is a claim that many crosdressers lose all sense of balance, judgement and perspective. And no one else does this with their hobbies? I have seen men mortgage their house to build a race car. I have seen men spend all their money drinking. I have seen women spend themselves into such serious debt they had to file bancruptcy because they can't stop using their charge cards. No, I am sorry, I can't buy into this one. This is just to make crossdressrs feel guilty. The mass majority of crossdressers are just regular people and keep their crossdressing well within the bounds of anything that one chooses to do for entertainment. People waste a lot more of their resources on things much less meaningful than fantasy clothes.

I love the next one: "let their cross dressing jeopardize important personal relationships and responsibilities". Here it lets the crossdresser know that it's their responsibility to conform to the beliefs of bigoted people, or somehow they are at fault. Well, many states like mine, have passed laws preventing employers or places of public accommodation from discriminating against crossdressers. One is not at fault if they lose the friendship of a bigot and that is what that paper wants us to believe. It's just flat wrong. Even if it's 100% sexually motivated, it does not make one a bad person. If others choose to break relationships because of bigotry, it is not the fault of the crossdresser for refusing to comply with the bigot in exchange for maintaining a relationship.

The next phrase is no better. "Some let the desire to dress turn them into social pariahs who reject the straight world entirely and rely solely on other CDs for companionship, direction, and support" Here the author tells us that the crossdresser that stands up to discrimination or will not associate with those who possess bigoted views, should just acquiesce to the will of the bigoted person(s), because they, the crossdresser are at fault. Again, it's all false premises based on the view that bigotry is okay. We stand together not because we reject society, but because society rejects us. It is not us rejecting society out of our intolerance for them, it is society rejecting us and forcing us together for support.

The next line, my response is the same as the previous paragraph. It's another meaningless statement about how wrong it is for crossdressers to join together to fight bigotry. The reality is that it's much more than that. We support each other and we help heal each other by telling our stories. That's all. Group therapy at it's finest. We don't encourage outrageous behavior. We encourage "baby steps". But we do encourage people to find out who they are without the fear of being judged. If one does a search of this forum, they will find that we talk about all the pitfalls and things that can and do go wrong. Relationships end, people kill themselves, or try to. It's dead serious and we treat it that way, more so than any of our detractors.

The last phrase, "exhibits a herd mentality which uses peer pressure to challenge its members to press envelopes and engage in activities that aren't altogether wise or salutary", has a grain of truth to it. Just a grain. Among those like myself who are more than crossdressers, those who are transgenderists or transsexuals, there is a great deal of pressure to transition. But one does not have to read here much to find that what is encouraged is for people to live their dreams. This is not done in some whimsical way however, it's done with the experience of those who walked the path. What happened to them. I have never seen anyone advised to do anything that they themselves did not first suggest was something they wanted to do. And even then, most are cautioned about what can go wrong.

The rest of the paper is just trying to show how these points are true, when in fact they are not. In fact I have always believed that this paper was "planted" on the internet by our detractors, although admittedly I have no proof of such a thing. I have a hard time believing that anyone who has experienced crossdressing could write a paper like that and even if they did, it was during a time of guilt or religious rebirth.

Don't let guilt be your guide as to what is right and what is wrong. No one has to lay down to bigotry. They make it easy. Just comply with expectations, and everything is forgiven. But you only get to live once. It's not a dress rehearsal. We never regret the things we do, but the things we do not do.

Love always,
Elizabeth

[Absaroka]

I read the whole article and thought there was a lot of truth to it. It's clearly about the sexual fetish aspect of crossdressing, not about folks who are transexual, and thus for some people at this forum completely irrelevant. But for those of us for whom this is more about fantasy and sex, I think there is a lot to consider here.

For me, it's a question of balance. Dressing is fun. It needs to be kept in that perspective. If I enjoy weeding the garden in a dress, so what? If my family is uncomfortable with this, then I need to ask what's more important, my enjoyment of weeding in a dress or their discomfort. And for me, their discomfort destroys my enjoyment, so I don't do it around them.

I thought the article perhaps tried to cover too much ground. There is the teenage boy/sex part, there is the cultural baggage part, there is the shame and guilt part, all in a couple of pages where a couple of books might not be enough. It's easy in that format to draw overly broad conclusions.

I have no plans to stop dressing, even though today I just don't feel like it. What these forums have done for me is let me know how un unique I am in this respect, and they have helped me eliminate a lot of my shame about it. But the question of how much importance is given to this by the crossdresser is one that needs to be continued to be asked, and the highly unclear difference between the transexual and the transvestite needs to be remembered.

Ialso thought one of the other articles linked, the one about family dynamics, to be very interesting. I had no idea how many women dress up their sons as girls. Although in retrospect I used to dress my daughters as boys.....
Zari

[Azurielle]

I agree, this seems more oriented towards the fetish-driven crossdresser than the average Jane.