How long is it with cross-dressing do you become FEMININE

[Stacy M]

I really felt a sense of being a woman recently and it shocked me. It felt so good but it made me wonder why I don't such strong emotions from my religious life and I stepped back from CD'ing for bit.

But I think CD'ing is s very emotional experience and can't easily be compared with other parts of our lives.

I am also taking Adovart as a protective measure because of a possibility of getting prostate cancer. The female hormones appear to have reduced my male libido and may be affecting me.
I don't think I can talk about this wi\th my doctor so, I will have to search on google.

[Davita]

And why can't you talk to your doctor? The doc presumably has answers or can find the answers and be able to translate them. I think I'd rather try a fairly reliable source than trust the Internet and my own guesses.

Are you worried about what the doctor will think? ummmm why?

Is the doctor family or friend? There are Federal rules in the USA about "sharing." Couldn't you just ask the doc to respect your privacy and not tell anyone you mutually know? Is the person that untrustworthy? Does everyone know about your prostrate troubles?

[Anthony Simon]

It's not necessarily anything to do with drugs (the feeling like a woman so much and liking it so much). I just recently had a similar experience which also shocked me and I'm not on any medication. It did help me to talk about it here a bit - and get responded to. I still feel I'm still kind of at the same kind of level, but some of the urgency seems to have gone out of it. I know when I go to a new level with the CDing it tends to freak me out for a while and then I get used to it.

I'm not religious and can't comment about that except to say that we don't really have a whole lot of control over large areas of our lives. But, even if I feel out of control, there's often some process happening and I have to keep my nerve and follow it through (I find this helps me with the CDing).

[Anita]

I can speak to one aspect of this that affects me right now. I've said that when I'm out as a woman, I'm mentally saying to men: "I've laid down my weapons. Won't you do the same?" But now I'm out performing as a man almost all the time. I don't have that girl time available to me as much.

I have a need to be more open and vulnerable than my male personality allows me to be. I spent 30-some years trying to figure out a way that my male self could pull this off, and nothing worked. No matter how 'sensitive' I might appear to be as a man, it wasn't enough to work for me. I sensed that if I acted the way I felt, and I did it as a man, people were going to be really uncomfortable.

Maybe some men have figured out how to do this, IF they have that same need. I think gay men are able to do it. But I was not going to benefit by acting like gay men do; it didn't fit my way of being male at all.

For me, openly being a woman was a huge relief, as I could finally be that vulnerable self in a way that made sense to ME. Not all women are this vulnerable, even, but I needed to be seen as female for it to work for me personally.

Now I'm back out in the world as a man again, trying to perform and relate to other rock musicians as a guy, all the time. And it ain't easy. I'm running up against those same blocks to openness and vulnerability.

I'm going to have to trust that I can bring what I've learned as a woman into a more macho world. It's a blend I couldn't get right the first time around. Will I get it this time? I find myself retreating into a 'tough' shell to protect myself again, and that's not it.

I actually had to will myself to come out of that shell the other night, and it helped some. The men around me do respond to openness; I just have to figure out how to do it. Older rock musicians are tired of the macho games, too.

[Kimberly Kael]

Every individual seems to have a different experience, and I suspect it's because dressing doesn't really change who we are - it just gives us a way to express it and reflect on what that means.

I've never felt particularly masculine. I went with an androgynous look for so long because I felt that was all that was available to me, but as I took my first steps out dressed as a woman it became pretty apparent that it resonated much more strongly for me than any of my prior modes of expression. I took to it like a duck to water not because it represented a change, but simply because it suited me.

That said, it's still interesting to see how something that feels natural still requires practice. Getting out of the habit of thinking of myself as a feminine male didn't come overnight. Nor have a lot of other habits. Gender appears to be part nature and part construct. Having access to the former gives me incentive to pursue the latter, but lack of experience means I still have a lot of catching up to do. The shift from dressing occasionally to doing so 24/7 has accelerated the process significantly but I am definitely still a work in progress.

[Paula G]

If all goes well while I am out dressed I do become in some way a woman, indeed I sometimes feel that this more than an expression of a feminine side to my personality, it is almost as though I am a different person. Certainly during this state I have different emotions, and sensations, but I also have slightly different tastes, and of course significantly different behaviors. In some way I do feel that it does change who I am, and maybe that is part of the point for me.

Since I have been going out and Paula has had a name she has been developing a personality away from and separate to "him". It's easy to point to quieter, more sensitive and all that stuff, but why does Paula drink different coffee to Paul? On my recent trip to France as Paula I found that I was eating and drinking differently, I am not at all sure that this is just a gender difference. If quizzed I expect I would describe this as releasing a different side of my personality, but I wonder if there is more to it than that.

On the other hand sometimes I just enjoy the sensations of enjoying the clothing, on those occassions I am a "bloke in a dress" having fun