Crossdressers-Haven.com

KimberlyS wrote:Thanks for all of the great respones everyone.

The more i learn about CDing the more i want to slap the medical and mental health professionals. Well like with anything there seems to culture/learned part of cding; but for so many of us we just started, and started early before much of the learning kicked in. My counsolors have tried the "it is a sexual thing", but what is sexual at age 3,4,5,6,7,8, maybe 9,10 is pushing it.

What so many, including us, do not under stand the drive to CD. I know it is the 10 million dollar question.

But for so many of us to be so different, yet so the same is scary to a point. But with the medical information, development information, DES information and limited research, and limited statistics out there i think the facts are on the wall. And that gives me a sense of validity in my cding that I need.

KimberlyS - CD

For me, and I am not suggesting that this does or does not describe anyone else:

As a young boy I felt sexual attraction to my mother (along with a great many other women and girls) Just about every psychiatric theory there is says that this is normal and in fact good, that it lays the stepping stones for sexual attraction as it relates to affection and love.

I tried on my mothers clothes. They were sexual as an extension of her. It was a very sexual experience for me. It felt great and I wanted to do it again, a lot. Just the way many of us feel about sex.

I knew that society considered this to be wierd, that if the other boys knew they would tease me. Without being told I knew that I needed to keep this a secret.

Secrecy and fear, forbidden pleasures, gave this a great deal of power. And so I got stuck there and after a few years it just wasn't going to go away. To borrow teminology from another post, it became hardwired. Don't know if it started out that way but it seems to be that way now.

About the only harm I have done to others with my crossdressing is this:

Borrowing other peoples clothes without permission when you suspect they would say no if asked is a from of stealing. Guilty.

Keeping secrets from people who love and trust you and leading them to believe that you have no secrets is lying. Guilty

I don't feel ashamed of crossdressing. I do sometimes feel ashamed of lying to people I do not want to lie to.

Aside from not coming to terms with dealing with societies perceptions of me this is not at all a bad place to be stuck. No more so than a love of the outdoors or an interest in model ships which I also acquired at about the same age and still have.

To me it is about accepting who I am. Like everyone I have done things that I know are wrong and of which I am ashamed, things I would take back if I could, and have tried to make amends for those things. What clothes I wear is not one of those things.

I worked in the mental health field at one time. I know lots of people in various arts. I belong to a 12 step group. I know lots of men who talk about all sorts of "unmanly" feelings and have for along time. I enjoy that greatly. We hug a lot. (somehow hugging a man and saying you love him has become macho. how did that happen?)

The clothes express something in me obviously. But I keep coming back to it is not something neccesarily feminine in me, just something about me. It is lot less wierd than alot of other more "normal" things that I have done in my life. And I think that maybe it all has to do with something else that is hardwired in me. For example the fact that I have very powerful emotions-something in me just has the volume turned all the way up and I have spent alot of time learning to handle that. I go from 0 to 100 in a second in terms of emotions. So already I am attracted to people who like that side of all of us. Maybe crossdressing is just a result of me feeling something, I don't know what, that other men feel but not as strongly.

Here is another corollary. One of the great definers of who we are in our society, aside from sex, is race. And race, like gender, is a social construct with some biology going on but much more a question of societal "rules". If I enjoy the company of people of another race, to the point of wanting to be like my friends, dressing and talking like them, acting like them, taking pride in just possibly having my identity within social constructs being mistaken, is anyone going to bother trying to find a scientific explanation why this is happening? Is anyone going to wonder if there are some secrets in my genes? Of course not! And in my case does it have anything to do with childhood experiences that now seem hardwired? Absolutely!

If I figure out what my dressing expresses I will be sure to let everyone know. In the meantime the joy is in the journey, not the destination. And in life, understanding is the booby prize.

Hugs
Andrea

Guilt, maybe that is what I am feeling????
In a former life part of my job was to convenience people the best way to invest their retirement income and I was very good at it. I did not get 100% but the ones I did help have not been disappointed.
I feel guilty that after 27 years of marriage that I can not convience my wife that I am not some kind of socio-path because I am a crossdresser!? I thought I was well-educated, diplomatic and well-versed in the art of persuassion, but here I have evidently failed in what can be argumentably the most important facet of persuassion in my life.
Sorry about the self-analysis, I will not stop trying, however.
Moving right along, be cool!!! ,
Virginia

Hi Andrea,

Good post, however there is one thing I would like to comment on. And that is your statement that:

Keeping secrets from people who love and trust you and leading them to believe that you have no secrets is lying.

I have read other posts where you have drawn attention to you feelings about lying, and would like share my thoughts about this subject.

Perfectionism (such a heavy load) is what would be required to find someone who would not lie some of the time.

I expect my friends to have some secrets, I want them to, They need them to stay healthy. And I want to be secure enough to allow them there right to such things.

If someone should discover my secrete and not be able to cope with it. I give them that right to be that way. They are free to go their way and choose the kind of friends they desire. And of course the other side of that coin is I also claim the right to seek out friends who recognize the importance of having secretes, and are secure enough to allow me to have my secretes.

That is freedom as opposed to bondage. And that is the way I see it.

Love Darlene.

PS. I will lie in a heart beat if I think that I will unnecessarily hurt someone by telling them the truth.

I know Darelene's secret, I know Darlene' secret !!! .
I ain't tellin no one what it is either, well maybe if I just post it here no one will see it!? OK here goes!
Darlene is a .......................................... sweetheart!!!!!!!
There, now everyone knows!
Love ya, Sis,
Virginia

Thanks girls for your responses. Definitely more food for thought. To tell the truth (more of it anyway) after I found this forum and started reading how the deception is what upsets many SOs the most I started to think a lot more about this.

Another question, maybe one that would be better as yet another topic. I put something really personal in my first post in this topic here, something that I really thought twice about including. And it had nothing to do with the crossdressing.

It was my thoughts on race. My feelings about this are something that would take along time to explain but one way of thinking about it that makes sense in this context is that just as I like to try to transcend gender sometimes I wish I could figure out how to transcend race. Is this just another example of fascination with "the other" and wanting to be more than what I am or different than I am? Partly. Of course the main part is just frustration with the invisible elephant in the living room.

People pass in the context of race sometimes also.

Does this sound familiar to anyone else?

Hugs

Andrea

Hi Andrea,

Thanks for giving us a heavy insight to who you are and where you are today. That was a very good read.

About the question you're asking, can you be more specific? I think I understand, but I'm not sure you mean in adulthood or when I was in my teens when I wanted to be like my friends, from jeans, to hair, to religion.

Thanks again for opening up on the forum. That shows mega growth!

Beauty

Virginia wrote:I know Darelene's secret, I know Darlene' secret !!! .
I ain't tellin no one what it is either, well maybe if I just post it here no one will see it!? OK here goes!
Darlene is a .......................................... sweetheart!!!!!!!
There, now everyone knows!
Love ya, Sis,
Virginia

Hi Virginia,

You're a nut!
(I borrow that phrase from a web friend I don't really talk to much anymore, but every time I say it, I only think of her)

Beauty

Sis nuts like Virginia are kind of unique, they come with their own special blend of flavor. I love ya too.

Thanks hon.
Love Darlene.

Hi Beauty,

I guess it is another place where I got stuck. I am a little less clear as to how it happened but it did.

I guess what I am asking is that just as folks here try to transcend gender including things like presenting as female, or considering becoming female, does anyone here ever feel that way about race? Like when I watched 8 Mile I felt a deep envy of Eminem for the ease with which he moved through boundaries.

A lot of this feels fine to me. Like choosing to raise our children in a community where no one group is a clear majority. It is really just trying to do the right thing for our kids. But I learned a long time ago that I have motives for everything that don't look good under a spotlight. Sometimes I feel that I am the equivalent of a "fag hag" only in racial terms (I really hope that term doesn't offend anyone here and if it does please delete it)

Where did it come from? I suspect that just as somewhere along the line I bought into some sort of a mystique about women I bought into another mystique about Black people. Having a gigantic crush on a Black girl when I was a teenager while having a lot of violently racist White friends might have had something to do with it

I feel funny talking about this in mixed company. White people have it so easy, how dare we have racial issues? But the truth of the matter is that it was white people's racial issues that got us in the mess we are in today, so maybe they need to be discussed.

So anyway I guess the point of this is that does anyone see a correlation between the crossing of the two great dividing lines in our society?

Thanks
Andrea

Hi Andrea--
Several points in your post strike me. Like you, I recognized that I had sexual attraction to my mother and my sisters. I didn't intend to act on it; it was just there, and I didn't put myself down for it. They were all attractive women, and there was no switch inside myself that I could flip so that I wasn't aware of this. Because of this, I have always had sympathy for people who get obsessed with any kind of off-limits feeling.
I wasn't obsessed, but neither could I talk about it with anyone.

I don't feel the same desire to pass as another race. But since I have had such a strong need to pass in a similar category (gender), I can easily transfer the feelings to race. In fact, I have sometimes used that analogy to emphasize that CDing is not just "wearing clothes" for me--it's another identity. And I say, "It's more like I suddenly changed race. That's how different it is. I can go places and do things that I could never do as a man."

But I think there must be many who feel as you do, Andrea, especially now that black culture is the dominant popular music. I know many musicians my age (54) who wanted to be black, because they liked Stax and Motown recordings so much--they really identified with them. I liked hard rock, so I identified with other white boys who played loud guitars.

But "passing" as other than what you normally are seems to be an important part of everyone's life. The January 11th, 2005 New York Times had an article on the need for a "secret" life, and it talked about this as a wide-spread desire in people's lives--a need for a second identity, of ANY kind. Reading that, I was again reminded how grateful I was to already have that second identity in place.

The link I have written in for this article has not worked. The date, New York Times, and "secret lives" will get you there.

Thanks Anita

I really liked the idea that many of us pass in someway or other in our life. I remember reading part of that NYTimes article.

Like so many things it is ahrd to know where the positive leaves off and the negative begins. It is a simple I think as liking yourself and others vs disliking yourself and others. Or forgetting that the focus of my fascination is another human being.

Andrea