Like Erin I was in the orchestra for South Pacific in high school. I'd agree that it's horny lonely young men. Similar things happen on ships when they are a long way from home. I suppose that there is an underlying theme of what folks do for romance when they are away from home to that show. Since much is made of interracial sex and love I suppose there could be some covert messages about homosexuality as well with some guys assuming the role of women. Yes I know we are mostly straight..........
My answer has two parts. First the part about wanting to be like women. Which for me is not that much about dressing. I tend to relate to people in somewhat stereotypically female ways. Emotional, nurturing and so on. My wife sometimes says that women married to men not in touch with their feelings don't know how lucky they are. I think that's just the way I am wired, and wether it's due to genentics, life experience, or both, I don't know and don't care.
Then there is the dressing. Like many it started when I was about 8 and was an intensely erotic experience. Also I knew it was something forbidden. If throwing a baseball like a girl was bad, what was wearing a bra? So it aquired the power of a secret. As is common knowledge, secrets about childhood sexual experience are very powerful.
It wasn't till I had my own kids and noticed how terribly fascinated boys of that age were even watching me fold laundry when it had my wife's underwear in it that I realized how normal this all was.
For some reason I have a personality that gets stuck. Something happens and I stay there. I liked trains and ships as a child, I still do. I liked lingerie as a child, I still do. Trains are more socially acceptable. I suppose Freud would say a long narrow train piercing the horizon is phallic.......but they have other connotations as well. Going on a journey to somewhere unknown. But isn't that what sex is also? But still I never masturbated to pictures of trains.
Anyway for whatever reason part of me stayed where I was when I was 8. My shorthand for it all is if you can't be inside the woman be inside her clothes. As for it being odd that I react to clothing, it's not at all odd. After all lingerie and sex appeal are billion dollar industries.
Now I'm older- mid 50's. My sex drive is less. And just because something is sexual doesn't mean it's only about sex. So if making love to someone you care about is a good dinner, and casual sex with someone I don't know is fast food when I am hungry, dressing for me is a cup of herbal tea on the porch. Mildly sexual.
We could go off on another topic about the interaction of sex and everything else. Sex and love, sex and nurturance, sex and needs, sex and endorphins. We tend to want to dismiss dressing for sex as a fetish, and we tend to not want to admit the power sex holds for us even after we are out of our teens. But the truth of it is that without sex humanity would be extinct, and our requirements are correspondingly strong, and corresponding hardwired, even if sometimes they don't lead to procreation.
I think it is fascinating what happens to homosexual behavior in animals under certain conditions. I'm writing this with no disrespect to anyone. In crowded conditions, homosexual behavior increases. In conditions where population is decreasing it doesn't. I would wonder how many gay people, if placed in a long term situation where there is a dearth of new births, would find heterosexual impulses surfacing. This would suggest that something that seems as hardwired as sexual orientation may have an adaptive purpose and thus at some level be learned. I'm not suggesting that someone should attempt to "unlearn" their sexual orientation, or that it would even be possible under normal societal conditions. But I am continually impressed by our capacity for learned behavior. The famous experiment of mothering behavior among monkeys raised with all their physical requirements met but no mother is a great case in point (they were unable to care for their own young, suggesting that much maternal behavior is learned, and learned as an infant)
Absaroka
Why do we want to?
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Absaroka
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Erin somewhere I read that model railroaders and ham radio operators are vastly over represented among the ranks of crossdressers. As is the military. I suppose the military could be considered over compensation although it probably has most to do with wether we are having a war or the draft or something similar. But trains and radios......for me finding my inner woman is really about staying in touch with the boy I was before I became a man.
My wifes reaction to the parts of this I have told her was in the same vein. Not that I would someday want to be a woman, but that it was childish.
Absaroka
My wifes reaction to the parts of this I have told her was in the same vein. Not that I would someday want to be a woman, but that it was childish.
Absaroka
everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
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Robyn Katie
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Hi sisters ...
Feeling pretty this morning with a scarf in my hair and my heels on ... Elizabeth, that's a big point about pretty. Now, I ask myself, what deep instinct underlies that male desire to feel pretty?
Hmm ... male plumage, like birds? In the animal kingdom, as often noted, it's the guys who parade their lovely decorations ...
Makes me wonder whether some aspect of our transgender desires relates to that old male-plumage wiring, but displaced onto the feminine because we want the feminine so much that it has swamped us?
Do we, as a group, have more people who have always been more needy of, admiring of, head-over-heels about women than the average male? I.e. is this partly an expression of extreme love for women? (With many exceptions of course.)
Let me think this through.
We genetic males (GMs) were set up by Mother Nature to want, love, need females for our own completion: female companionship, love, emotional resonance, nurturing, imagination, personality, presence, all sorts of aspects relating to sex, and founded in the sexual instinct.
In some fashion we TG-minded GMs have slid over from
1. Wanting females ... through
2. Wanting femaleness (an aspect of #1) ... to
3. Wanting to be, or seem, or feel female. In other words, wanting femaleness, not just *for* ourselves, but *in* ourselves.
Like I said, sounds obvious, but the implications are so myriad that I can't get any farther than that for the moment.
***
Erin and Absaroka, I think my example of South Pacific was poorly chosen. But putting aside the librettist's original intent, the image remains powerful.
Can we forget South Pacific as such, and just look at the image: what deep instinct might make "horny young men" adopt coconut shell bras and grass skirts as an expression -- in other words, what makes them choose female imitation rather than some male equivalent?
(You can substitute Boston's Hasty Pudding Club for the Pacific beach if you like; the principle is the same.)
I think in this example it's sympathetic magic. The female is absent. You bring her presence into being by imitating it. Which suits the horny urge.
Absaroka, your whole post is very thought-provoking. Your suggestion of "the power of a secret," especially the secret about childhood sexual experience, is very powerful. And when you talk about living conditions (crowding in your example) having influence on sexual impulses, I think you've hit on something really big.
I want to think about that some more.
Sorry this post is all over the place and doesn't hang together very well. It's the best I could do on a morning full of bits and scraps. Make of it what you can, please, and try to ignore its flaws.
Love, Robyn Katie
Feeling pretty this morning with a scarf in my hair and my heels on ... Elizabeth, that's a big point about pretty. Now, I ask myself, what deep instinct underlies that male desire to feel pretty?
Hmm ... male plumage, like birds? In the animal kingdom, as often noted, it's the guys who parade their lovely decorations ...
Makes me wonder whether some aspect of our transgender desires relates to that old male-plumage wiring, but displaced onto the feminine because we want the feminine so much that it has swamped us?
Do we, as a group, have more people who have always been more needy of, admiring of, head-over-heels about women than the average male? I.e. is this partly an expression of extreme love for women? (With many exceptions of course.)
Let me think this through.
We genetic males (GMs) were set up by Mother Nature to want, love, need females for our own completion: female companionship, love, emotional resonance, nurturing, imagination, personality, presence, all sorts of aspects relating to sex, and founded in the sexual instinct.
In some fashion we TG-minded GMs have slid over from
1. Wanting females ... through
2. Wanting femaleness (an aspect of #1) ... to
3. Wanting to be, or seem, or feel female. In other words, wanting femaleness, not just *for* ourselves, but *in* ourselves.
Like I said, sounds obvious, but the implications are so myriad that I can't get any farther than that for the moment.
***
Erin and Absaroka, I think my example of South Pacific was poorly chosen. But putting aside the librettist's original intent, the image remains powerful.
Can we forget South Pacific as such, and just look at the image: what deep instinct might make "horny young men" adopt coconut shell bras and grass skirts as an expression -- in other words, what makes them choose female imitation rather than some male equivalent?
(You can substitute Boston's Hasty Pudding Club for the Pacific beach if you like; the principle is the same.)
I think in this example it's sympathetic magic. The female is absent. You bring her presence into being by imitating it. Which suits the horny urge.
Absaroka, your whole post is very thought-provoking. Your suggestion of "the power of a secret," especially the secret about childhood sexual experience, is very powerful. And when you talk about living conditions (crowding in your example) having influence on sexual impulses, I think you've hit on something really big.
I want to think about that some more.
Sorry this post is all over the place and doesn't hang together very well. It's the best I could do on a morning full of bits and scraps. Make of it what you can, please, and try to ignore its flaws.
Love, Robyn Katie
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Michelle Miller
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Robyn Katie
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Hi Michelle and everyone, Happy Friday --
So female is hair? Lots of sumptuous, wonderful, shining hair tumbling down?
And female is fun? Sheer heedless joy of being herself?
* Girls just wanna have fu - un ... *
And male is just ... not? Not fun? Not getting there? Inadequate? Dull, boring? While female is all that's missing in our cramped male lives, beauty, dazzle, wondrousness?
I certainly feel that too. I keep coming back to that sense of wonder. Female is all I ever dreamt ... "somewhere over the rainbow." An Emerald City and all its enchantments, but like Oz, of course it has its terrors too.
Of course our idea of "female" in this sense glosses over how hard it is to be a real female, how much drudgery there is in it, etc. Our ideal vaults over the rainbow, just as Dorothy's ardent heart soared from grim colorless Kansas to a land of splendor and magic where anything is possible.
Being male is entirely too Swiss Family Robinson, all dreary plugging away and boring details and discipline and duty. Worse yet, it can be Samuel Butler's Way of All Flesh, imprisonment in the straitjacket of being a harshly disciplined son in a world of ugliness, who can only dream of being a laughing, draperied, dancing daughter instead.
Being female is Oz! It's everything imaginable by the most fertile and irresponsible imagination, it's the whole wide world and the sun, moon and stars too.
Still not sure what makes it so. But girlness is surely linked with that sense of infinite possibility, the sure knowledge that anything is possible, anything at all. Female is liberation and liberty, to make of what we will ...
Including Michelle's hair. And endless fun. And beauty, and gloriousness, and heedlessness, and sexiness that bops and never drops ... or your own personal variant of the above ...
That's me right this minute. Hope it lasts!
But the thought comes: it's way more than just compensation. Compensation is only a fraction of it. There's more, lots more. I try to think what ...
Love, Robyn Katie
So female is hair? Lots of sumptuous, wonderful, shining hair tumbling down?
And female is fun? Sheer heedless joy of being herself?
* Girls just wanna have fu - un ... *
And male is just ... not? Not fun? Not getting there? Inadequate? Dull, boring? While female is all that's missing in our cramped male lives, beauty, dazzle, wondrousness?
I certainly feel that too. I keep coming back to that sense of wonder. Female is all I ever dreamt ... "somewhere over the rainbow." An Emerald City and all its enchantments, but like Oz, of course it has its terrors too.
Of course our idea of "female" in this sense glosses over how hard it is to be a real female, how much drudgery there is in it, etc. Our ideal vaults over the rainbow, just as Dorothy's ardent heart soared from grim colorless Kansas to a land of splendor and magic where anything is possible.
Being male is entirely too Swiss Family Robinson, all dreary plugging away and boring details and discipline and duty. Worse yet, it can be Samuel Butler's Way of All Flesh, imprisonment in the straitjacket of being a harshly disciplined son in a world of ugliness, who can only dream of being a laughing, draperied, dancing daughter instead.
Being female is Oz! It's everything imaginable by the most fertile and irresponsible imagination, it's the whole wide world and the sun, moon and stars too.
Still not sure what makes it so. But girlness is surely linked with that sense of infinite possibility, the sure knowledge that anything is possible, anything at all. Female is liberation and liberty, to make of what we will ...
Including Michelle's hair. And endless fun. And beauty, and gloriousness, and heedlessness, and sexiness that bops and never drops ... or your own personal variant of the above ...
That's me right this minute. Hope it lasts!
But the thought comes: it's way more than just compensation. Compensation is only a fraction of it. There's more, lots more. I try to think what ...
Love, Robyn Katie
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Robyn Katie
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Pampering occurs to me. A fundamental need?
What male ever gets pampered in the wildest, fullest sense, from spa to gifts, from admiration to the sweet snickers of secrets being shared, being made much of? And yet women do, at least now and then.
That glorious irresponsibility is blameless. Sure, a girl, a woman, is encouraged to demur modestly, "Oh, that's too much ... I don't deserve all that ..." But she secretly knows she does. It's her birthright as a woman.
Feelings come with this that are very soothing. A (temporary) absence of guilt. A sense of deserving. A whole world of craving satisfied, at least in implication.
Pampered. What Absaroka said about childishness ... maybe it really does go far back, into infancy -- the last time a boy remembers ever being truly pampered, loved unconditionally, swooped through the air with laughter and kisses and nothing in the world lacking ...
And it was women who made this happen. Women who were there. Women the guiding spirits and fountainheads of all that fun.
Granted girls don't get a lot of pampering past childhood either. But maybe their feminine role allows them to make a keepsake of it, and cherish it close to their hearts as a belief in themselves as innately pamper-worthy. Whereas guys get cast into the outer darkness where you have to work for every morsel?
Is this part of the real truth of Eden? The exiled male's view of psychic reality as a garden of femininity from which he's forever shut out -- unless he can pretend otherwise?
Whew. Can't think more. Brain's breaking. Anyway, gotta run. Thank you all for making this thread such a fascinating voyage. Can't wait to hear more ...
Love, Robyn Katie
What male ever gets pampered in the wildest, fullest sense, from spa to gifts, from admiration to the sweet snickers of secrets being shared, being made much of? And yet women do, at least now and then.
That glorious irresponsibility is blameless. Sure, a girl, a woman, is encouraged to demur modestly, "Oh, that's too much ... I don't deserve all that ..." But she secretly knows she does. It's her birthright as a woman.
Feelings come with this that are very soothing. A (temporary) absence of guilt. A sense of deserving. A whole world of craving satisfied, at least in implication.
Pampered. What Absaroka said about childishness ... maybe it really does go far back, into infancy -- the last time a boy remembers ever being truly pampered, loved unconditionally, swooped through the air with laughter and kisses and nothing in the world lacking ...
And it was women who made this happen. Women who were there. Women the guiding spirits and fountainheads of all that fun.
Granted girls don't get a lot of pampering past childhood either. But maybe their feminine role allows them to make a keepsake of it, and cherish it close to their hearts as a belief in themselves as innately pamper-worthy. Whereas guys get cast into the outer darkness where you have to work for every morsel?
Is this part of the real truth of Eden? The exiled male's view of psychic reality as a garden of femininity from which he's forever shut out -- unless he can pretend otherwise?
Whew. Can't think more. Brain's breaking. Anyway, gotta run. Thank you all for making this thread such a fascinating voyage. Can't wait to hear more ...
Love, Robyn Katie
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Michelle Miller
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Anita
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Hi Robyn--
In some fashion we TG-minded GMs have slid over from
1. Wanting females ... through
2. Wanting femaleness (an aspect of #1) ... to
3. Wanting to be, or seem, or feel female. In other words, wanting femaleness, not just *for* ourselves, but *in* ourselves.
That's how I experienced it. That transition became clear during my time with my last girlfriend. Before that, the impulse didn't have"critical mass," so to speak. It makes me wonder just how widespread this progression is. Is it something that ALL men might experience if they lived long enough? Just some men? A small minority, which includes some of us? It's really puzzling.
It is a big point. Since I was a performer, I experienced the "rewards" of being seen as a good-looking man, from time to time. It somehow did not do much for me; it was a a compliment that didn't go very deep. But when I'm seen as an attractive and/or pretty woman, it brings out something primal in me. What is that all about? I'm grateful for the chance to experience it, though. My non-TG friends do not understand it at all, and I don't talk about it around them.Elizabeth, that's a big point about pretty. Now, I ask myself, what deep instinct underlies that male desire to feel pretty?
In some fashion we TG-minded GMs have slid over from
1. Wanting females ... through
2. Wanting femaleness (an aspect of #1) ... to
3. Wanting to be, or seem, or feel female. In other words, wanting femaleness, not just *for* ourselves, but *in* ourselves.
That's how I experienced it. That transition became clear during my time with my last girlfriend. Before that, the impulse didn't have"critical mass," so to speak. It makes me wonder just how widespread this progression is. Is it something that ALL men might experience if they lived long enough? Just some men? A small minority, which includes some of us? It's really puzzling.
That's exactly what my twelve-year-old self figured out. A fantasy girl was needed, and I set out to create one.I think in this example it's sympathetic magic. The female is absent. You bring her presence into being by imitating it. Which suits the horny urge.
Yes, that's very interesting. I remember reading about that study with the rats. I'm intrigued by whether gay men would feel the need to keep the species going in a severe crisis.And when you talk about living conditions (crowding in your example) having influence on sexual impulses, I think you've hit on something really big.
It keeps the thread going quite nicely, Robyn!Sorry this post is all over the place and doesn't hang together very well. It's the best I could do on a morning full of bits and scraps. Make of it what you can, please, and try to ignore its flaws.
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Azurielle
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For me it's the expression of my repressed gentle and caring feeling who otherwise wouldn't be socially-acceptable. It's those feelings that make me seek out The soft embrace of the female garb and mannerisms. Besides, I look absolutely gorgeous in them. 
Also, l've always had a mechanical view of things and honestly, out of social context, female clothes are better than mens' for every application except physical labor. It's sad that most guys will miss out on the experience.
Also, l've always had a mechanical view of things and honestly, out of social context, female clothes are better than mens' for every application except physical labor. It's sad that most guys will miss out on the experience.
''We are strong, yet we don't belong. Born in this world as it all falls apart.''
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Absaroka
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My wife would tell you that men get pampered all the time, and I suspect many women would agree with her. What else do you call having the tv to yourself so you and your buddies can watch the game, drink beer, and eat chips. Of course if you are wealthy and powerful you can have harem girls or their western equivalent also.
Personally I find being a guy to be fun. Pretending to be a woman is fun in a different way. And after all I am just pretending so what do I know?
Running as fast as you can and catching a fly ball at the last moment is one of the best feelings in the world. Sure girls can play baseball too-my eldest daughter did. She felt the same way. But if it was to be categorized it would be considered a masculine thing. She enjoyed it, just as most of the girls in the neighborhood she lived in till about age 10 enjoyed fighting (not exactly your typical suburban area but we loved it) but these were masculine things insofar as society labels them.
Absaorka
Personally I find being a guy to be fun. Pretending to be a woman is fun in a different way. And after all I am just pretending so what do I know?
Running as fast as you can and catching a fly ball at the last moment is one of the best feelings in the world. Sure girls can play baseball too-my eldest daughter did. She felt the same way. But if it was to be categorized it would be considered a masculine thing. She enjoyed it, just as most of the girls in the neighborhood she lived in till about age 10 enjoyed fighting (not exactly your typical suburban area but we loved it) but these were masculine things insofar as society labels them.
Absaorka
everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon
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Robyn Katie
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Hi Absaroka,
I've been mulling your point about "men get pampered all the time." It's hard to answer, especially from a hard-working wife's point of view, who's been "waiting on that gang hand and foot and working her fingers to the bone" etc. It's certainly got truth to it.
At least for the average male.
The TG-minded male, though, is a horse of another color. For him/her, the male thing may just not work: buddies around the TV being waited on by the "girls," boisterous biceps-pounching football camaraderie, the hunting camp "It just doesn't get better than this" atmosphere, Swedish bikini team etc. It may work for a day, or a week, but as a life plan it fails, because the TG consciousness just outruns it.
I don't mean to take the considerable masculine pleasures for granted. Like you, I have rarely had a pleasure quite so pungent as that last minute catch in the outfield—or for that matter, scooping up a hot smash to short and sidearming it to first for the out. Baseball addles my head and body delightfully and always will.
The pampering I mean is specifically a girl-to-girl kind of thing—way different from guys lying around goosing each other and yelling at the TV screen while the wives bring the brew and chips. And (to me at least) it's way better.
But what is so much better about womens' pampering of themselves and each other? It's hard to express. The following is guesswork, I'm not sure of any of it. But here are my thoughts.
It seems to create its own private world of safety and mutual enchantment, in contrast to men's raucous, more publicly celebrated ceremonies attended by competition, insult and risk.
That female private world is sealed away from prying eyes, so that it can come as close to perfect as possible. Very self-protective and utterly accepting and reassuring—qualities different from those available to guys. (Stemming, maybe, from millennia of needing a safe haven away from male domination.)
Guys being waited on know they're on sufferance—they'll pay for this tomorrow. Girls being pampered create a sense of eternity. Yes it will end, but the moment is the thing, acceptance is agreed on, and there's no blame. Trust rules, because mistrust has been suspended till further notice. Within that trust, a sudden new freedom blossoms. Shame and regret are temporarily on hold. No having to pay later, or make up for this. It is everything in itself. And it will be there, unbroken, the next time they enter it.
In other words, comfort, sweetness and utter security. Interestingly I think that's (in a way) the world we CDers have created for ourselves in this forum. Acceptance, mutual protection, reassurance, privacy, affection, trust. All qualities rarely available to males but cultivated by females for their own sake.
Kind of a cosmic pajama party, all fun and excitement and no care. That's roughly the definition of female-to-female pampering, realistic or not, that I had in mind.
So I guess we could say the two sexes each have their own type of pampering they prefer and know about. But being Martians and Venusians, each sex often, when attempting to pamper the other, gets it wrong. As in: Why a backrub rather than sex? or vice versa.
Excuse this being so jumbled. It's very hard to put in words and, like I said, it's guesswork. But I think that's the beginning of an answer to your question.
Love, Robyn Katie
I've been mulling your point about "men get pampered all the time." It's hard to answer, especially from a hard-working wife's point of view, who's been "waiting on that gang hand and foot and working her fingers to the bone" etc. It's certainly got truth to it.
At least for the average male.
The TG-minded male, though, is a horse of another color. For him/her, the male thing may just not work: buddies around the TV being waited on by the "girls," boisterous biceps-pounching football camaraderie, the hunting camp "It just doesn't get better than this" atmosphere, Swedish bikini team etc. It may work for a day, or a week, but as a life plan it fails, because the TG consciousness just outruns it.
I don't mean to take the considerable masculine pleasures for granted. Like you, I have rarely had a pleasure quite so pungent as that last minute catch in the outfield—or for that matter, scooping up a hot smash to short and sidearming it to first for the out. Baseball addles my head and body delightfully and always will.
The pampering I mean is specifically a girl-to-girl kind of thing—way different from guys lying around goosing each other and yelling at the TV screen while the wives bring the brew and chips. And (to me at least) it's way better.
But what is so much better about womens' pampering of themselves and each other? It's hard to express. The following is guesswork, I'm not sure of any of it. But here are my thoughts.
It seems to create its own private world of safety and mutual enchantment, in contrast to men's raucous, more publicly celebrated ceremonies attended by competition, insult and risk.
That female private world is sealed away from prying eyes, so that it can come as close to perfect as possible. Very self-protective and utterly accepting and reassuring—qualities different from those available to guys. (Stemming, maybe, from millennia of needing a safe haven away from male domination.)
Guys being waited on know they're on sufferance—they'll pay for this tomorrow. Girls being pampered create a sense of eternity. Yes it will end, but the moment is the thing, acceptance is agreed on, and there's no blame. Trust rules, because mistrust has been suspended till further notice. Within that trust, a sudden new freedom blossoms. Shame and regret are temporarily on hold. No having to pay later, or make up for this. It is everything in itself. And it will be there, unbroken, the next time they enter it.
In other words, comfort, sweetness and utter security. Interestingly I think that's (in a way) the world we CDers have created for ourselves in this forum. Acceptance, mutual protection, reassurance, privacy, affection, trust. All qualities rarely available to males but cultivated by females for their own sake.
Kind of a cosmic pajama party, all fun and excitement and no care. That's roughly the definition of female-to-female pampering, realistic or not, that I had in mind.
So I guess we could say the two sexes each have their own type of pampering they prefer and know about. But being Martians and Venusians, each sex often, when attempting to pamper the other, gets it wrong. As in: Why a backrub rather than sex? or vice versa.
Excuse this being so jumbled. It's very hard to put in words and, like I said, it's guesswork. But I think that's the beginning of an answer to your question.
Love, Robyn Katie
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Robyn Katie
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And:
I also think men's eternal quest for pampering—from turning wives into drudges up to and including keeping harems—is a restless, never-ending search for that enchanted ideal women seem to keep.
Few men find it, though, because it's almost impossible to find in male terms.
Some (not all) TGers and CDers long for that enchanted state ... and, by falling into female terms, a few even manage to find it.
Again, it's the original Eden, however brief our stay there. That, after all, is the truth of Eden: it can't be permanent. As with Goethe's Faust, the minute you fall into the trap of pleading, "Moment stay, you are so fair," you've created your own personal hell, because every moment passes.
Unless you turn it into a state of mind, a state of being. Nirvana anyone? I think somehow some women (not all) have managed to preserve a little fragment of that for themselves. And that's part of our fascination with them and their ways of being.
...
I'm afraid I'm just getting more and more tangled in my own feet as I try to think about this. But like I said, I'm groping. This is hard to think through and even harder to express. Thanks for your patience as I struggle with it!
Love, Robyn Katie
I also think men's eternal quest for pampering—from turning wives into drudges up to and including keeping harems—is a restless, never-ending search for that enchanted ideal women seem to keep.
Few men find it, though, because it's almost impossible to find in male terms.
Some (not all) TGers and CDers long for that enchanted state ... and, by falling into female terms, a few even manage to find it.
Again, it's the original Eden, however brief our stay there. That, after all, is the truth of Eden: it can't be permanent. As with Goethe's Faust, the minute you fall into the trap of pleading, "Moment stay, you are so fair," you've created your own personal hell, because every moment passes.
Unless you turn it into a state of mind, a state of being. Nirvana anyone? I think somehow some women (not all) have managed to preserve a little fragment of that for themselves. And that's part of our fascination with them and their ways of being.
...
I'm afraid I'm just getting more and more tangled in my own feet as I try to think about this. But like I said, I'm groping. This is hard to think through and even harder to express. Thanks for your patience as I struggle with it!
Love, Robyn Katie
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Anita
- Miss Diamond Goddess
- Posts: 3068
- Joined: Mon Jan 05, 2004 2:55 pm
- Location: Burlingame, CA (San Francisco Bay area)
Hi Robyn--
Male bonding activities, like camping and sports and so on, were great when I was younger. The older I got, the more I started to feel their lack of meaning for me.
What was worse was that I found myself feeling emotions that would take me "beyond" the logjam that I and the other men were experiencing, BUT... those emotions were unacceptable in male company.
And as I say that, I realize that in mixed groups, men often rely on women to take the experience to another level. The women understand how to bring meaning into whatever is going on, and the men "go along with it," with the presumption that the men are only doing it to humor the women. But secretly the men are glad that they get a chance to participate in this move to more meaning.
I went through this ritual again and again, and I got very tired of it. I wanted to throw off this myth that only the women could take us to this small Eden; I knew how to do it, too. But reading your post, I now see that neither men nor women could accept me doing it as a man. This ability, whatever it is, is just not done in male mode. Even gay men who act femme don’t do this function, at least, not the way I wanted to do it.
I’m making it sound like I understood all this, and decided to start dressing as a woman to solve the problem. I didn’t understand any of this at the time, but it makes perfect sense now. I just knew I was in pain because of my seeming inability to act on something that I knew I needed and wanted, and I didn’t know what to do about.
I also knew I couldn't keep relying on my girlfriends to do this function for me, either. For whatever reason, a TG woman feels a need to find her own way of doing it, whatever "it" is.
When the “solution” first appeared, it did not make me happy at all! I could not see what this sudden need to appear as a woman was going to accomplish. It scared me to death. But deep down, I was also excited by it, because part of me knew what doors I’d be able to open.
Your post gives me greater understanding why the members of my TG support group express such gratitude for the group. In there, we can create a situation such as you're describing, and there was nothing like it in our socialization as young males.
Thanks again, Robyn. You brought some more light to this.
This does resonate with me, and I'm not sure all the reasons why. Let me see...I also think men's eternal quest for pampering—from turning wives into drudges up to and including keeping harems—is a restless, never-ending search for that enchanted ideal women seem to keep.
Few men find it, though, because it's almost impossible to find in male terms.
Male bonding activities, like camping and sports and so on, were great when I was younger. The older I got, the more I started to feel their lack of meaning for me.
What was worse was that I found myself feeling emotions that would take me "beyond" the logjam that I and the other men were experiencing, BUT... those emotions were unacceptable in male company.
And as I say that, I realize that in mixed groups, men often rely on women to take the experience to another level. The women understand how to bring meaning into whatever is going on, and the men "go along with it," with the presumption that the men are only doing it to humor the women. But secretly the men are glad that they get a chance to participate in this move to more meaning.
I went through this ritual again and again, and I got very tired of it. I wanted to throw off this myth that only the women could take us to this small Eden; I knew how to do it, too. But reading your post, I now see that neither men nor women could accept me doing it as a man. This ability, whatever it is, is just not done in male mode. Even gay men who act femme don’t do this function, at least, not the way I wanted to do it.
I’m making it sound like I understood all this, and decided to start dressing as a woman to solve the problem. I didn’t understand any of this at the time, but it makes perfect sense now. I just knew I was in pain because of my seeming inability to act on something that I knew I needed and wanted, and I didn’t know what to do about.
I also knew I couldn't keep relying on my girlfriends to do this function for me, either. For whatever reason, a TG woman feels a need to find her own way of doing it, whatever "it" is.
When the “solution” first appeared, it did not make me happy at all! I could not see what this sudden need to appear as a woman was going to accomplish. It scared me to death. But deep down, I was also excited by it, because part of me knew what doors I’d be able to open.
Your post gives me greater understanding why the members of my TG support group express such gratitude for the group. In there, we can create a situation such as you're describing, and there was nothing like it in our socialization as young males.
Thanks again, Robyn. You brought some more light to this.
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Robyn Katie
- Miss Platinum Goddess
- Posts: 380
- Joined: Thu Oct 02, 2008 5:02 pm
Fascinating, Anita!
It seems we genetic men have managed to rule ourselves out of a role we hunger for. As TGs we suddenly have all these doors. Scary doors, but at least they are doors, whereas for the average guy they're nothing but a wall that hems him in.
Maybe this is part of the dimension women miss in men, and find they have to supply themselves—knocking themselves out trying to furnish us all those extra dimensions, and in the process, feel they're worn out from pampering us to death?
Whoo ee.
Thank you ... You are so good at cutting through the tangles to pull out the meaning!
I've learned to value your thinking very much. Just as I'm sinking into confusion, there you are, lasering through to the heart of it.
Love, Robyn Katie
It seems we genetic men have managed to rule ourselves out of a role we hunger for. As TGs we suddenly have all these doors. Scary doors, but at least they are doors, whereas for the average guy they're nothing but a wall that hems him in.
Maybe this is part of the dimension women miss in men, and find they have to supply themselves—knocking themselves out trying to furnish us all those extra dimensions, and in the process, feel they're worn out from pampering us to death?
Whoo ee.
Thank you ... You are so good at cutting through the tangles to pull out the meaning!
I've learned to value your thinking very much. Just as I'm sinking into confusion, there you are, lasering through to the heart of it.
Love, Robyn Katie