Not such a good idea?

[Anita]

The message was I was a feminised=emasculated=useless male and so impotent as a person. This puts my Cding at the centre of my existence, amongst other things. She kept trying to tell me it was. But the thing is I don't think it is at the centre of my existence. My reading of CJs post is also that this is where I differ from her, in how central the Cding is for me. So, for me, it's much closer to Zari's position - as something that I have to get in balance with the rest of my life - or the rest of me.

This was quite a revelation, Anthony. I'm not going to rail against your mother; she was acting out of some kind of need that may not have been in anyone's best interest, but it happened. You dealt with it the best you could, and here you are today, moving onward.

When I was in my twenties I got rejected by just about everyone and everything - and that point the Cding fantasies became so relentless and oppressive I thought I was going to go mad. Like my life was so empty that, in desperation, my unconscious was trying to fill the gap with the CDing - something that it just wasn't up to.

No, CDing could not fill the gap. Especially because it's usually done in private/secret, where there's no give-and-take with others at all.

If CDing is done out in the world, it has a chance of helping fill the emptiness. I say, 'a chance,' because out in the world, it's a tool for relating to people in a different way. My woman self can reach out and touch people, for instance; my male self can't do that. Women talk to me differently when I'm presenting as a woman; I like the difference, and it helps me in ways that I never got in 50-some years of being male-only.

This doesn't mean that if you go out, everything will be wonderful and all wounds are healed. But for CDing to have any real meaning besides the private shame that all of us know about, it has to be "owned" in some way. My own experience was that I could only get benefit from it by using it out in the world.

As much as I would have liked to have kept it private, it did not feel pleasurable at all to do it that way. So whether for good or for bad, I was forced to take it out into the world. I still felt the same need as anyone else here does, but it could not be relieved by private dressing any more.
I know that this statement can make people reading it hold their breath--"What if this happened to me?"

Well, I felt the same way on hearing my TS friends talk about the day that they realized they had to transition, and become women fulltime. I had a lot of fear around that--what if that feeling happened to me? And finally I had to accept that it could happen at any time, and if it does, I'll deal with it just like I dealt with going out in public.

We CDs are a hardy bunch. We've all had to endure hardships behind this, and we're all still here, living and breathing. We're not going to give up on ourselves, right?

So really the moral of this post is I have experienced dark stuff to do with the Cding which actually originates elsewhere. But I do agree with Zari about the dark side of the drive.

Thanks for posting about all of this, Anthony.

[Anthony Simon]

When I was in my twenties I got rejected by just about everyone and everything - and that point the Cding fantasies became so relentless and oppressive I thought I was going to go mad. Like my life was so empty that, in desperation, my unconscious was trying to fill the gap with the CDing - something that it just wasn't up to.

No, CDing could not fill the gap. Especially because it's usually done in private/secret, where there's no give-and-take with others at all.

If CDing is done out in the world, it has a chance of helping fill the emptiness. I say, 'a chance,' because out in the world, it's a tool for relating to people in a different way. My woman self can reach out and touch people, for instance; my male self can't do that. Women talk to me differently when I'm presenting as a woman; I like the difference, and it helps me in ways that I never got in 50-some years of being male-only.

I have this idea somewhere (and it's a desperate idea) that because the world doesn't like me as a man, maybe I'd be better off as a woman (and I do have a lot of feminine aspects to me). But the thing is I'm not terribly respectful of the world. So therefore I try to keep going as a man, just because I feel there's stuff there that needs expressing. My fear is if I went into presenting as a woman - and kind of internalised the rejection by the world - I would end up rejecting that legimate male side entirely and go the transsexual route for the wrong reasons. My sense of where I was in my twenties fits with that, that I would have had to have gone all the way into transsexualism to contain the emotions (although I never thought of it like that at the time. But repressing a legitimate masculine side of oneself to the point of changing sex does sound to me like madness.). But, most of all, there is no drive for me to go out in the world dressed as a woman just now.

I don't know where this is going to end up, or if it will change. I am negotiating with myself all the time. I mean like things are happening of their own accord - and I am kind of giving the female more power within myself. As I've written, this is going to mean (if it works) that the feminine side of me does get out there in a sense, even if it isn't in terms of physical dressing.

This doesn't mean that if you go out, everything will be wonderful and all wounds are healed. But for CDing to have any real meaning besides the private shame that all of us know about, it has to be "owned" in some way. My own experience was that I could only get benefit from it by using it out in the world.

As much as I would have liked to have kept it private, it did not feel pleasurable at all to do it that way. So whether for good or for bad, I was
forced to take it out into the world.

Well, that's the thing. It does feel pleasurable for me to do it as I do. I can feel myself getting more into the role as I go along and that is kind of congruent with the way the feminine aspects are filtering otherwise into my life. It's like the two are going in lock-step. There is a distinct element of me "owning" my femininity to it, like letting it in. And there's a definite drive associated with this, whereby I feel the need to go and buy makeup and that sort of keys me to being in a feminine mode later on in the day - which, while it is expressed in dressing up, also gets expressed in the sense of me feeling pregnant with the stuff I'm writing. So there's like a creative development or growth thing associated with it.

I still felt the same need as anyone else here does, but it could not be relieved by private dressing any more.
I know that this statement can make people reading it hold their breath--"What if this happened to me?"

Well, I felt the same way on hearing my TS friends talk about the day that they realized they had to transition, and become women fulltime. I had a lot of fear around that--what if that feeling happened to me? And finally I had to accept that it could happen at any time, and if it does, I'll deal with it just like I dealt with going out in public.

This seems like a terribly important point to me. That sense that the drive to dress up, the drive to go out and present as a woman and the drive to transition are kind of all one. I do believe that (or sense it). It is like you say, if it comes to you that it's right for you to become TS, then you have to deal with it. But I would lying if I said that I thought there was a path to me becoming like that.

We CDs are a hardy bunch. We've all had to endure hardships behind this, and we're all still here, living and breathing. We're not going to give up on ourselves, right?

For me, really the hardest part is getting enough energy to make the jump into a not terribly pleasant unknown. I feel the CDing is a faithful companion in that, but something I don't want to take for granted. That is it should be treated with respect, even while the world disrespects us for it.

[Ralitsa]

A lot of interesting thoughts here Anthony.
So it seems like you don't really fit in with the world, and are thinking that presenting more of a feminine persona would make you more acceptable. But I think that the masculine side is more of the rebellious sort. The "not fitting in" is pretty typical of a certain sort of male, and I believe that the CDing is in a way a result of that, not the cause of it.
This doesn't sound to me like a reason to transition, it seems to me like the explanation for why you crossdress in the first place. Myself, I don't CD because I want to become female, I am unquestionably a guy, I think and act like one, my predilections and tendencies are all male. But I don't really like to associate with other men, I prefer to be around women, and really I don't fit in with any group. So CDing for me is on one hand an acknowlegement of those characteristics I enjoy, but at the same time a rejection of all the stereotypes I ridicule.
But the fundamental principle of my position is really one of challenging all the preconceptions, and in that regard I make myself an adversary of both camps. I sense that it is largely the same for you. So tending more to one side than the other really doesn't matter when you are the adversary of both. In this situation, I think it's much easier to identify as a guy, since "rebel" is a perfectly acceptable male role, whereas it is not so accepted for women.

[Anthony Simon]

A lot of interesting thoughts here Anthony.

Thanks Ralitsa.

So it seems like you don't really fit in with the world, and are thinking that presenting more of a feminine persona would make you more acceptable.

It relates to something I do anyway. When I talk with people (men and women) I quite naturally fall into the 'receptive', passive, listening role where people tell me their stuff and I respond. It seems like I give off that vibe of being willing to, and liking to, listen - while at the same time prodding people (perhaps and maybe) a bit in what looks like the right direction (something that I try and work out instinctively from what is being said, rather than my preconceptions). To me, this is a classically "female" role and I do it a lot.

I also find that with women, there is sometimes a de-sexualised sense to it, where it's like they're talking to another woman rather than to a man (I even got one occasion where a woman kind of assumed, in the way she was talking, that I could have babies).

It seems like people are put at ease when I'm in that role - and I like it - and to me it is an essentially female one. On some level I'm wishing I could "always be like that, so that people would like me". But that's just putting other people perpetually first rather than being female.

But I think that the masculine side is more of the rebellious sort. The "not fitting in" is pretty typical of a certain sort of male, and I believe that the CDing is in a way a result of that, not the cause of it.
This doesn't sound to me like a reason to transition, it seems to me like the explanation for why you crossdress in the first place.

There is a part of me that is a kind of constant rebel. Like I have a really big anti-authority streak. I think you're right: There is an element of the CDing that comes out of that, though I hadn't thought about it before. It does relate to a certain sort of "rebel without a cause" masculinity on the level that I'm so fed up with standard, useless, expectations of "being a man" (Like perpetual, mindless, aggressive competition) that I revolt and go the other way.

But there's another part of it, to do with "safety" and the sense of being held - and that's a very big thing for me. I do feel contained when I dress up. And I need that. This is crossdressing in the sense of going into the female zone and being held there, as though by some generic female - the stuff in the para above is crossdressing in the sense of crossing over into the "wrong" part of town because you think there's something wrong with your part of town, or the town in general.

[Edit added later: It just occurs to me that the holding that happens includes the holding of my rage. In this iteration of the CDing that's vital to me. But I know that I've had rage from the year dot and felt it couldn't be contained by people. So...]

Myself, I don't CD because I want to become female, I am unquestionably a guy, I think and act like one, my predilections and tendencies are all male. But I don't really like to associate with other men, I prefer to be around women, and really I don't fit in with any group. So CDing for me is on one hand an acknowlegement of those characteristics I enjoy, but at the same time a rejection of all the stereotypes I ridicule.

My second analyst said to me that I never really wanted to be a man, and that's probably right, thinking about it. I have all these wishes to be a woman - and plenty of woman in me. But, actually, I am a man - and, when push comes to shove, do tend to act like a man.

But the fundamental principle of my position is really one of challenging all the preconceptions, and in that regard I make myself an adversary of both camps. I sense that it is largely the same for you. So tending more to one side than the other really doesn't matter when you are the adversary of both. In this situation, I think it's much easier to identify as a guy, since "rebel" is a perfectly acceptable male role, whereas it is not so accepted for women.

I'm bloody-minded and just try and stick to being me - it's not really an intellectually-thought out position, more a result of me trying to hang onto "me" as I negotiate my way through the world. I kind of end up as an adversary to people as a result - because they keep trying to force me into this camp or that camp and I always experience that as an ultimatum that I should give up my sense of self. I guess you could say this is a pretty standard "male" role.

[Edit added later: Though there certainly are examples of women ostentatiously dressing in a "masculine" fashion as a way of poking away at gender roles (I mean from ?early 20th c, that sort of time).]