the problem with those #@%! crossdressers

[Carolynn]

Uhmm, yeah. The distinction between how CDs and TS are viewed, not only from outside but from inside the groups. As I am sure I have said in other threads, I am pretty darn sure that the gender dysphoria that both groups, TS and CDer feel may be a matter of degree, with the TS having a more severe or more urgent form than a CDer. But then there is among CDers no consensus of what drives a person to be a CDer, to recognize or feel that they have a "femme side" in many cases, and yet have no desire to actually change sex.

Those who are TS, know their own narrative, and there is a lot of similarity in parts between individuals, and there is an agreement in a diagnosis that the drive to make body and mind congruent is nothing short of a genuine need that is often literally a matter of life or death.

I have been a member of this forum for some time, from before I decided I had to transition, and that death was my only alternative. I had hoped, due to doubts about being able to pass, that I could live in the closet with cding as my outlet. I was wrong on so many levels.

I have also been a member of a couple of TS forums for almost as long. On the TS forums, the focus is on transitioning, and then living life after transition and then getting surgery(ies), and then living life after surgery(ies). There is literally no mention of CDers on the TS boards, unless I try to start a narrative. And beyond others admitting that they tried the CDer route to deal with gender dysphoria, there is little response. Frankly, they are just not much interested.

Much of that attitude seems due to the plain facts that in order to deal with the stresses involved with transitioning and getting the money, if possible, to have surgery(ies) to make them more passable and other treatments, the transitioning person has to become selfish (often for the first time in their lives as they have put others first much as any other woman seems to do), focused and almost single mindedly pushing themselves through the hoops they have to clear. And it is a point of fact, that if in talking with a therapist they might mention they are curious about the difference between the two group, that curiosity could set them back in the therapy process since it is taken as uncertainty. So they do not profess any interest if there is any.

When the TS is post-op and living life as we feel we should have been able to, then there is a lot of relief and they mostly tend to close the chapters of their transition, including their sometimes forays into CDing. They tend to mostly drop out of forums they were on, as they cease to need them, though some remain to try to provide help or advice to those coming behind, or so we claim.

And then there is the lingering fear of being outed. There is always a degree of insecurity after supposedly being "through", and being around CDers who may or may not be passable might bring up questions and risk recognition, and this whether they are truly stealth, or just not mentioning their medical history (actually there are a number of CDers on this forum that are more passable than many post op TS). Not many post-ops go to things like BE-ALL Chicago, or Southern Comfort in Atlanta. They go in the first place to get information and consult with surgeons who will be there, and not so much for the socializing though some of that happens as they relax. I have written elsewere of the reaction of my intersexed friend who traveled with me to BE-ALL to consult Dr. Speigel to have her face rebuilt after a bad car accident, and she was freaked when she found that many of the CDers there were people with none of the femme characteristics she had come to expect, just men in dresses and often inappropriate dresses.

And as I suggested above, they do not understand. I find them kinda like gay men who think that TS women are just transitioning for the sex, or they are gay men in denial. Some of that kind of attitude is present, I think, among the TS population, when they state that CDers are just TS in denial. As I said above, I think that attitude is not so correct.

I have tried to not only get the members of this forum to ask questions of each other, and of themselves, but also to try to think about avenues of research. As I mentioned elsewhere, the one person who was doing doctoral work who was interested in doing something with CDers vs TS was directed away from that topic by her advisors. Part of the excuse was that in terms of theraputic visibility, CDers were not visible because as a group and individually, you do not ask for professional help. So you are invisible there as well as in the press and to everyday folks.

Relatively few CDers leave their houses for more than quick forays, often at night, and watching anxiously to see if someone they know sees them. CDers can't really afford the activist profile, as they feel unable to risk livelihood and family. They do not have the life or death need that a TS does, and live in silence. Support groups do form, but they seem to be more like social clubs, like Tri-Ess. TS support groups are transitory, not something to maintain after transtion.

And that means that the fringe gets the press, often mis-identified as crossdressers when they are actually talking about transvestites, or about She Male/non op prostitutes.

[Ralitsa]

I agree with you Carolynn, and I think the difference in the way the 2 groups are viewed reflects a real difference in who they are. Like Lydia, I have no interest in transitioning or becoming a woman. I am not at all attracted to men, so if I were to become a women then I would also have to be lesbian, and then it gets really confusing about what is really going on. So I am really a crossdresser, I really am male and I really do prefer to wear female clothes. On the other hand I wouldn't consider you to be a crossdresser because you are only wearing the clothes that are appropriate for the gender that you are. So I really understand why there is very little common interest between the groups and why they feel they have nothing in common.
Anthony said that we should build bridges to the feminists, since we share the same ideals, that of raising the social status of women. This is a very interesting thought. Some of the more hard-core feminists seem to think women should not be women but they should behave exactly like men. They might, if they really consider it, admit that they are basically doing what we crossdressers are doing, i.e. saying that "I am of this biological gender, but I demand the right to behave in the way that the other gender does." Probably they would not want to be allied with us, because it would be a political and public relations disaster and wouldn't help their cause. Maybe though they would agree to meet with us in secret, and instead of burning their bras they could let us have them.

[Anita]

Carolynn wrote:

As I am sure I have said in other threads, I am pretty darn sure that the gender dysphoria that both groups, TS and CDer feel may be a matter of degree, with the TS having a more severe or more urgent form than a CDer.

It does seem to me that the gender dysphoria itself might be similar in both groups.

But then there is among CDers no consensus of what drives a person to be a CDer, to recognize or feel that they have a "femme side" in many cases, and yet have no desire to actually change sex.

This is where a lot of confusion comes in, both for outsiders and for those of us here on the forum. Motives are all over the map, and there is no easy explanation for CDing. There are also some real hot button issues, as to what motives might be, and the biggest one is attraction to men.
CDers who aren't attracted to men get very angry and upset to be stereotyped in this way, but there's not enough info or knowledge about CDing to dispel notions like this.

And beyond others admitting that they tried the CDer route to deal with gender dysphoria, there is little response.

Some transitioned women look at crossdressing the same way they looked at growing up male--it's something they don't want to ever think about or talk about again. This may be an extreme view, but it is expressed by some.

Part of the excuse was that in terms of theraputic visibility, CDers were not visible because as a group and individually, you do not ask for professional help. So you are invisible there as well as in the press and to everyday folks.

On this forum alone, I've read a number of accounts of CDers talking to therapists or marriage counselors. So it does happen, and it's not considered newsworthy that it does. It remains an invisible problem.


Ralitsa wrote:

Anthony said that we should build bridges to the feminists, since we share the same ideals, that of raising the social status of women

That's a tough issue. My oldest sister identified as a feminist, and taught gender studies at Lehigh. She doesn't see CDers as having any credibility at all, when it comes to women's issues. I'm not saying Dina speaks for all feminists, but I know from reading that some feminists even have a hard time with the idea of transitioned women. A lesbian friend of mine got very angry when a TS woman talked about oppression. My lesbian friend said, "You didn't grow up as a woman--don't talk about oppression to me!"

I hope the CDers and the TS women can see more of what they have in common. I hope the feminists and the MtFs of all types can see what they have in common, too. There's a lot of anger and bitterness that gets in the way.

[Carolynn]

I have mentioned in another thread that there is a genitic basis, at least a correlation, between certain genes and being gender variant. The gene is one of the CAG with a normal average of 22 base pair repeats. The more the repeated base pairs, often up to 30 or 40 or more, the less binding there is between testosterone/androgen, and the numbers of estrogen receptors vs. androgen receptors in the brain and throughout the body vary more. There is a strong correlation between having >22 repeating base pairs and being TS and IS. This gene affects development of AR (androgen receptor) and ER (estrogen receptors) in the brain during fetal development, and throughout the body as development continues.

The geneticist stop short of making causality statements at this point, but this has not be known but a few years and more research repeating studies and lookin at other genes is taking place. Basically, some suggest that the more base pairs of this gene you have, the greater likelihood of one being IS or TS. It is likely that it will apply to CDs as well.

There is a different gene that males who are gay have in common, and yet a different one that lesbians have in common, but they stop short, so far of making causality statements there too, as they do not want to be premature. It should be noted as well, that different parts of the brain are affected depending on presenting as TS, Gay or whatever.

Yes, many feminist view CDers and TS with derision and anger, claiming that we are men who are again trying to take over womyn's space, as they claim (with some justification) men have done for years, using and abusing them. I do not think you will find they will take you seriously if you try to suggest we be allies. They may be willing to use you for that they can get from you, then toss you away when they have sucked you dry. Thats what they expect from men to do to them, and I think they would enjoy doing it to you. I hasten to add that I have only discussed this with a few feminists, and they are very jealous of their space and keeping CDs and TSs out of it.

[Anthony Simon]

Ralitsa wrote:

Anthony said that we should build bridges to the feminists, since we share the same ideals, that of raising the social status of women

That's a tough issue. My oldest sister identified as a feminist, and taught gender studies at Lehigh. She doesn't see CDers as having any credibility at all, when it comes to women's issues. I'm not saying Dina speaks for all feminists, but I know from reading that some feminists even have a hard time with the idea of transitioned women. A lesbian friend of mine got very angry when a TS woman talked about oppression. My lesbian friend said, "You didn't grow up as a woman--don't talk about oppression to me!"

I hope the CDers and the TS women can see more of what they have in common. I hope the feminists and the MtFs of all types can see what they have in common, too. There's a lot of anger and bitterness that gets in the way.

The anger and bitterness is a primal force which "professional" feminists have targeted as a base. It gives them an immense and terrifying strength, but it is also essentially negative in that however much you as a male (CD or otherwise) may agree with its validity, it leaves no room for negotiation or moving forward except through a form of moral bullying.

I went to the Drill Hall, a very left-wing venue, in London once. I was supposed to be meeting a woman who stood me up, but in the process of finding that out I wandered through various rooms. In one there was, what I guess was, a woman's self-help group (this was the 70s). At that point my image of feminists was determined by the above image of women driven by anger and bitterness, so I was scared going in there. But they were even more scared, it turned out. They were just perfectly ordinary, nervous women who had gone there basically as a way of propping up their self-confidence. They didn't expect to see a man there and their barriers were down and they were vulnerable. I'm sure, if they'd been prepared, I would have got a very different reception, full of self-righteous rage, about how I'd been corrupting their space.

But it does strike me that if women are lacking in self-confidence a perfect way of boosting up their egoes is to draw on that anger and bitterness - so as to present men with this image of "strong" women who canot be gainsayed. So you could argue that, maybe, underneath the "scary" image the feminists provide is an acute lack of self-confidence.

FWIW, when I went out of the room, I noticed a CD sitting there, excluded. It seemed like there was an unbridgeable gap between that CD and women inside. Both, in their different ways, cut sad figures. For, after all, the women were still excluded by society and, IMO, that was - and is - the reason for their lack of self-confidence.

[Carolynn]

Congratulations Anthony. You did just what they claim men always do -- you invaded their space, as you say, when they were most vulnerable, and you made a snap judgement without ever knowing any of them. You lived up to their expectations in a most fabulous way. Many who are not diehard feminists but looking for answers have been abused by men --, fathers, husbands, preachers and others, and you invaded their "safe space", just the same as any other man.

Maybe instead of making the judgement that they are just insecure women, you might consider that they may have really good reasons for the insecurity, and they need to find ways to build lives and have some self esteem. When they look at a CD or even a m2f TS they see someone who they consider terminally male and trying to infiltrate their spaces and control their lives.

And they have some reason for the paranoia. Men have always been so jealous of women, and paranoid about what they may say about their precious prowress (or lack of it) as a lover, since those whispers might therefore challenge their view of their manhood. I think that fear is the root of a lot of the abuses toward women, and some do it just because they are physically more strong and they can.

Sexual abuse can be relatively minor, men getting together at the water cooler and make adolescent sexist jokes; men getting together to drink in a bar, look around and see a woman they want to "hit" on (even the language is abusive); a boss putting pressure on a female employee for favors for advancement to a better position or more pay, especially if they are single moms; preachers or other religious functionary offering a divorced mom with three kids free rent for a month for sex (yeah I witnessed that happen when I was a kid). Many men are predetors (and before you say it, no not all) and perceive all women as potential prey. So femininsts often can point to their reason.

I have heard both sides of the paranoia, and women usually have more justification for it than men. More men rape women than the reverse, and more men kill women than the reverse. And often the killing is by beating. I will never denigrate feminists for trying to put themselves in a better place, though I may be saddened by the lack of communication between those who would be allies.

[Anthony Simon]

Congratulations Anthony. You did just what they claim men always do -- you invaded their space, as you say, when they were most vulnerable, and you made a snap judgement without ever knowing any of them. You lived up to their expectations in a most fabulous way. Many who are not diehard feminists but looking for answers have been abused by men --, fathers, husbands, preachers and others, and you invaded their "safe space", just the same as any other man.

FWIW (again) I did actually try this anecdote out on a group of women about 10 years ago. This was an email list for women jazz musicians (and a few others). They basically identified as feminists, I guess you'd say. I told it pretty much as I've told it here, though I used it to make a different (if related) point. I didn't get any negative responses - which I did manage to get on one occasion - It was taken relatively positively.

[Anne Bonny]

There are so many bad images, not to mention people just talking and making things up based on bad information that our image is dirt before we even get a chance. But We know who we are, we are a cross section of society, good citizens, honest and except for our gender variation most would find no problems with us, infact they are family, neighbors, co-workers, clients and coustomers of ours. This may only be improved one person at a time the problem is this is nothing most of us are willing to share for obvious reasons. We need a public relations expert to help us change our image. Where is Ed Wood when you need him: Glen or Glenda? - funny movie - Pull the String! Pull the String! You had to see the movie...

[Absaroka]

I read Anthony's post completely differently from you Carolynn. What I read was that underneath feminist anger is fear, which is not surprising. Anger is almost always a secondary emotion, with the underlying emotion being fear. And women have historically had a great deal to fear from men.

I really liked the initial post in this thread. It gets at something I've written about a lot here, that there are a variety of dynamics going on in our choice of clothing. I do think it's interesting how in this forum the sexual aspect of this gets downplayed, i.e. the crossdressers vs transvestite dichotomy. As I've said before, using an either/or approach to my mind is sometimes like asking is fishing about catching food or not. The answer often being simply both.

I think a lot of the posts concerning feminism fall into the same trap. Feminism is a very large area with a great many different viewpoints, and we need to beware thinking all feminists think alike.

Zari