Crossdressers-Haven.com

Society view is that; "Most people look at a guy in a dress and think "you must be gay.'"There are estimates that 5 to 10 percent of the male population cross-dresses, but only a small percentage of them are gay or bisexual. Yet, the parallels between coming out as a cross- dresser and coming out gay are undeniable.

Often beginning with experimentation at a young age, cross-dressing can become the secret burden a youth will carry into adulthood. There may be attempts to suppress the impulse or deny its existence, but eventually the desire will assert itself. Solitary exploration comes next, and for many, especially in decades past, the practice remains behind locked doors and drawn shades.

For others, a process of self-education begins. Exposure to information, role models on television or in movies and books help teach that they are not alone. Then comes sharing what has been hidden with a close friend or family member. Sometimes, by choice; other times, by accidental exposure. Often the revelation is greeted with reluctant acceptance: Do what you want in private, but we don't want to talk about it, witness it first hand, or have our friends find out. This is where a group like Crossdressers-Forum plays a vital role.

When coming out, finding people who feel the same, who accept us without explanation, rockets us toward self-acceptance and into the sense of community we all need. For gays and lesbians, that path has been more clearly marked, and even if you live in a rural area, there are ways to make connections with other gays and lesbians.

The path is not so clear for those who cross-dress. Many are straight, so simply wandering into the gay community presents an awkward solution. And even for those who are gay or bisexual, the transgendered, despite a long history in the gay community, are seen by some as a new addition, and acceptance may not be as quick or complete as it should. Role models in the media are starting to appear, but they resemble the early attempts at portraying gays and lesbians: based on stereotypes, used for comic effect, secondary to the straight characters, or with so many other issues they provide a negative interpretation of what cross-dressing is really about.

Crossdressers_forum provides a safe haven where, like others and and myself can break away from the isolation and share their lives openly, receiving respect and understanding in return. The time has come for me to test my own ability to give and receive these things in return.

We can share our positive experiences with others in the hopes we can ultimately contribute a means, that will allow others to achieve fullfillment and acceptance in their lives.

Love

VickiCD



P.S. I'm finally back.

Hi all,

Vicki,

Great (Canadian) minds think alike!

While you were posting this, I was posting a poll to allow people to express what it is they feel they're getting from membership to this forum. Well, you've certainly answered that question, girl! I also agree with everything you say.

Love,
CJ

P.S.
Welcome back!

Well said Vicki!

Thanks CJ and CDKathy for your input.

Education is the key towards understanding others and oneself.

Love

VickiCD

Very nice thought Vicki.....

I think you hit the nail on the head..... internet forums are not companionship, but they still provide a source of outlet, compassion and acceptance.

What a great post and thoughts

I know for me that this forum was a landmark in my journey. Just to know that "I am not alone." I posted other places, but I thnk we are helping a lot of folks find there way and that is GOOD! "God Bless us everyone."
Deborah

Education is the key towards understanding others and oneself.

True and the more I understand myself, the better I am able to understand others.

Hi Vicki,

I couldn't agree with you more. There is no better place to learn about ourselves than here in an environment free of all the negative perceptions that are out there. This is certainly a site whose time has come.

Jenn

Thanks Ladies for your feedback.

Education is the key to knowledge and power, it is a process that involves both research and time. Part of this process involves historical research a time where the origins of crossdressing began.

Crossdressing and impersonation of the opposite sex occurs in every cultural and historical study of sexual behavior. One's sexual organs have never been a universal, definitive, essential insignia of gender. In some societies, gender is an achieved characteristic not one that is automatically ascribed to a person and has more to do with tasks performed and costume than anatomy.

Historically and culturally, there is a wide variation of feminine and masculine behavior. The only invariant being childbearing and nursing
While crossdressing plays a role in many pre Christian religions, it is Christianity that emphasizes the importance of putting men and women into different categories and setting appropriate gender behavior for each.

Theoretically, the basis for these rigid definition is Deuteronomy 22:5 which says, "A woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall amen put on a woman's garment, for all that do so are an abomination unto the Lord thy God." [It is pretty much accepted now that these proscriptions were not specifically directed at cross dressing but at keeping women out of the temple and men out of the women's quarters.

The sense of the passage was changed sometime in the homo phobic-sixteenth century when the King James version of the Bible was created.] While the proscription has been strongly enforced against men, it has almost never been enforced against women. In fact, women have always been encouraged to become more masculine. This is, in part, because women were regarded as biologically, intellectually and spiritually inferior to men. [The ancient Greeks believed that women were "inverted" ?there's that term again? men. As such, however, they were treated with the same respect as ~normal" men. It was with the growing certainty that women were, in fact, a completely different sex, that the denigration of women reached its peak.]

Women who acted like men were much admired within the early Christian church. There are more than 30 female saints who, while they were alive, were thought to be men. The fact that they "passed" so successfully is one of the major reason they were made saints. Conversely, there are no male saints who lived as women. And, of course, western history is peppered with accounts of women who passed themselves off successfully as soldiers, sailors, businessmen, politicians, physicians and many other "male" pursuits.

What is evident is that the box created for women by the Biblical injunction has never completely confined women and in our modern society is even less confining than ever before.

What is now most interesting to observe from a historical perspective is that male crossdressing in the past never existed on the same scale as female crossdressing Transgender men are almost nonexistent in western society before 1800. This does not include the crossdressing associated with the early theater. But, that too, was frowned upon by many. Puritan critic, William Pryne, writing in the seventeenth century, held that a man "doing: what a woman does leads to "being" what a woman is. He was convinced that "locked away" within each man was a woman only waiting for the appropriate attire to announce and show herself.

This loss of masculinity underscores the status loss of crossdressing but also hints at the fear that men are not all they are cracked up to be. For example, emerging groups of homosexual men in the eighteenth century formed "molly" clubs and proclaimed their sexuality by crossdressing as women. Crossdressing or Drag is still associated with homosexuality today.

During the nineteenth century, Romanticism discarded intellectual rationality for passion and emotion. In spite of the Victorian standards of public modesty, Romanticism was pro-sex and encouraged the violation of social norms. What was taking place was an appreciation of female qualities, a raising of woman's place to a higher value, an "effeminism" if you will.

The counter-reaction to this growing effeminism was a rigorous athleticism, which we still see today. This athleticism was embodied in the United States by Theodore Roosevelt and the result was a whole series of institutions devoted to develop and encourage masculinity, e.g. the Boy Scouts and the YMCA. What was happening, then, was the Romanticists, who adored the feminine qualities of women, were being driven underground, giving expression to their needs by crossdressing

This phenomena becomes more and more evident in the last part of the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth. By then, Hirschfeld had recognized and classified it as transvestism. In his scheme of human sexuality, transvestites were gender-intermediates as homosexuals were sexual-intermediates.

Just how pervasive crossdressing was at this time cannot be known since only a few ever came to the attention of analysts. There is evidence, however, from biographies, autobiographies,fiction end press coverage. Interestingly enough, female crossdressers were dealt with much more even handedly in the newspapers than discovered male crossdressers.

The numbers of male crossdressers seems to increase steadily during the twentieth century and even more rapidly post WW II.


Love

VickiCD

Hi all,

Vicki,

Interesting observations--very enlightening. We have to remember also that the early Church was very much a man's affair. The history of paleo-Christianity is peppered with buried accounts of female apostles, followers, saints (who were traditionally depicted in paintings and mosaics as standing up, palms turned skyward, when praying--as opposed to the prostrate men, bowing before a terrible sky god). The characteristics of Jesus's personality were, themselves, what many today would consider feminine. This patriarchical ascendence sent the feminine principle (Sophia, in the Bible) underground. It's a shame, really.

Love,
CJ

"God is a great mathematician." The complex nature of our "spacesuit," coupled with the appearance that "we" make decisions about our welfare with only personal determination, leaves me to wonder just how much we are really in control, if at all.

I agree with a great many things in this thread. One would be foolish not to find agreement. But, I want to point out that as a culture, we are in a continous state of change. Nothing is set in stone. While the male/female relationship appears to be this way, it has been in "motion" as much as 40,000 years ago. We do not hit women over the head anymore, and drag them off to our cave, ha ha LOL.

We must always be careful of not falling into the "thumper" mode of existence. "If you can't say something nice,.......," a very group think means of agreement.

We seem to have a rather dificult time in learning from history. After all, we seem to go to "War" at the drop of a hat. Be it withour neighbor next door, or a Country half-way around the world.

Organized religion has always been about "birds of a feather," providing people of like thinking or those searching for "meaning" a place to gather in like mindset. Beware of lock-stepped thinking, even that is a form of organized control.

I am very pleased to have read the material from VickiCD. It is clear that she has taken the time to advanced her self on the road of education. We can always use clear headed thinking, concise and meaningful, that provides a better path to understanding among those that come in contact with her words.



Hugs

Dr. Danielle Marie La Belle, Ph.D.
University of Central Florida. USA
Engineering Sciences & Gender Studies
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Excellent post, Vicki!

Education is most definitely the key to self-acceptance and tolerance of one another.

What saddens me about contemporary society is that there just is not enough emphasis placed on true education. And herein lies the problem. Because with education, hate cannot thrive. Everytime a TG person is harassed, accosted or murdered, it is a result of hate which itself is a result of lack of EDUCATION. That is also why a part of me has always felt that it is up to each and every one of us to do some educating of our own, whenever and wherever possible.

In fact I have given myself the personal obligation to pick up where our over-sensationalistic media has left off, on a much smaller scale of course. I will educate whomever I see and shake hands with on the street. Sadly our media is not doing their job of educating the public. They are too obsessed with selling sneakers and soft drinks, strangers marrying strangers, strangers sharing houses, celebrities in court, hotel heiresses and tone-deaf teenagers to care about what really matters in this life - EDUCATION.

Lorna makes a very good point. We are all safe sitting at home behind the computer monitor. How many really go out in public and, as Lorna says, "Shake hands" with whomever may come along.

Yes, that may be a rather dangerous approach. Even "Jay Leno" has someone "screen" people first in his "sidewalk" episodes. Not that anyone would want to harm Mr. Leno, but hey, it is just common sense to screen people first before any interview.

So, do we just go out and meet strangers, do we have someone else screen them first? I often have the opportunity to speak to college students in class about gender studies and their definition. Many have remarked about casual, stranger meetings as a sure opportunity for something to go sorely wrong.

I must admit, while it may not immediately provoke someone, surely, in time, the law of averages will catch up with you and put you in harms way. I think that this is part of the difficulty in introducing "John Q. and Mary M. Public" to our particular lifestyle. Our particular penchant to appear as women.

I often think how strange it would be for my Mother and I to be standing in the ladies room in front of the same mirror. This thought always brings me back to reality and the concept that we are still, an alien community among our species.

You know what they do to "aliens!" Kill'em first, ask questions later! Until we can change that sort of mentality, we are always going to be in danger anytime in public. More so than as our "sex" preferred selves. Difference breeds contempt among those that cannot comprehend the reasons for such difference. A pear is a pear, a peach a peach, that is the current rule that our society goes by. We have already seen the political response to scientists playing around with the genetic makeup of our food supply and "Stem cell research." We can "abort," but we cannot use the renderings from such an awful killing of human life to help improve the very life species that we purport to be.

I believe that this is called the "conundrum" of our modern social presence.


Hugs

Danielle

I agree with Danielle. All very good points. But I have to ask, isn't it possible to start the educational process by simply becoming visible to the public? Is it necessary to shake hands with strangers? Can we not simply go about our own business wearing what we are comfortable in and allow the public to view us, at least initially, as harmless eccentrics?

Crossdressers have been going out in public in their full femme glory for many years. That cannot be disputed. The public is well aware that we are out here. They just don't have a clue how many of us there are or who we are.

I am also seeing more and more posts from CDrs who are just wearing the clothes without the makeup or wigs with no repercussions other than a few giggles or strange looks. Granted, those of us who do so are fairly conservative. Common sense tells us that the world is not quite ready for a "man in a dress" or even a skirt.

Perhaps if more of us would take that step out of the closet and allow the world to see us for who we are, and when asked simply be honest and say we prefer these styles, the public might just allow us to live as we choose.

There will always be those die hards who will never accept anyone who dares to be different. Some of us are sure to take a few lumps or possibly worse. But did that stop Gallileo? Or Columbus? Or even Einstein?

The public will never learn about or accept that which it cannot see. So why don't we make some "small steps" toward introducing ourselves? Many of us already have. The rest of us should.

Danielle,

You are always remarkable in your posts. You have this quiet confindence that just radiates from you.

Danielle wrote:

I often think how strange it would be for my Mother and I to be standing in the ladies room in front of the same mirror. This thought always brings me back to reality and the concept that we are still, an alien community among our species.

But you have outdone yourself with that profound bit of reflection, if you will excuse the pun. My daughter was polishing my nails today and I was telling her how my hands looked very feminine, exactly like my moms in almost every regard. I was so close to making to where you did, but I did not. So? thankyou for taking me there. I remember being a young boy and being in the womens restroom in front of the mirror with my mother. I was too young to go alone, so when we were out shopping she always took me in the womens restroom. It instantly flashed into my mind. I remember both of us in the mirror. How strange. I have not thought of that since I was a kid.

Love always,
Elizabeth