I wish vs I am

[Anthony Simon]

People will have noticed I don't have a femme name. This is partly because I feel naming myself as a woman is tantamount to saying there's this part of me, well really a cohesive personality, that can come out in no other way than when I'm wearing the clothes (and makeup and etc) - a real person that is hidden in other words.

But I'm not so sure that what happens when I dress up is like that. I'm pretty sure that a large part of it derives from a wish to be a woman - and that, when I dress up, I allow myself to live out that wish. It's true that when I'm dressed I do (sometimes) see myself as a woman -and this (like it was last night, for example) can produce a really powerful sense of being a woman. But, at the same time, I don't know who this woman is. For all that I recognise a consistent persona when I see her in the mirror, I still kind of feel I'm willing (i.e a kind of wishing) her into existence -i.e not just letting her be. It's true that when I've been wearing the clothes for a longish while, she can just be there anyway - but that's not my core experience.

I don't think she's entirely a fantasy I've made up, because I really do feel there's lot of woman in me - and a lot of that woman stuff (like the tendency to be manipulative) I wish would go away. So when I dress up I allow myself to own that - and try and incorporate it. But more than that, this woman seems wiser than me. So I don't know...

Sometimes you get records (for example) where the surface is cohesive, but you're not too sure what's going on underneath. Like they've been constructed of lots of bits of other records, maybe. And maybe that is how this is with the woman I see is the mirror - like she's lots of bits. See, I don't really see her as a cohesive personality (or an original one, there's a lot of my mother and my aunt in there - and stuff I recognise from male me). More a locus where all sorts of things can happen - like a place where "I can play games with the inside of my head". Like a place where I can play about with the bits of woman in me and the bits of man, and reorientate them. I know it helps me to keep going and I have a distinct feeling it helps with my development. It's like there I can lose my personality (and all the problems that go with it) - like throwing a ball up in the air and then catching it - only to regain it again (and perhaps find that I've grown a bit).

The other thing is dressing up is a treat for me - like allowing myself to do something I always wished I could do.

[Erica S]

Anthony,

You put that very well, I kinda understand what you are saying. When I get the opportunity to dress, i get a different feeling about myself and am more relaxed. I wish somewhere inside of me that I was a women I think. To me dressing if far more than just wanting to wear the clothing...I think so. I would be curious how others feel.

Hugs,

Erica

[Davita]

hhhummmmmm... I can try to repeat portions of my Bio from my web site, but let's just link to it, http://davita-farley.webs.com/bio.html. Okay, now let me see if I can get it current...

I have had a lot of years not knowing who or what I was. And still I have had more years to know who and what I am. Lastly, I have been working to be a single, one, whole me. I have changed over the years; we all do. Life influences; our bodies influence us. Those mirrors we use to see ourselves somehow have their own powers of influence.... Mirrors lie by the way. Pictures provide a separation to me that adds some clarity. Although I'm not the prettiest woman in pictures, I see me -- just me, pretty much the right me.

Anthony,
Keep on wondering, pondering, thinking and feeling; it's all good. Just don't ever think anything about you is wrong. None of us girls and boys have anything wrong with us. We just have more to contend with sometimes.

[Michelle Miller]

I've used the 'Michelle' thing online for longer than I care to remember, it's just gotten attached to my 'femme side', but is who and what I am more than a made up name that has no bearing on my legal presence or identification? Of course...but I've made lots and lots of friends over the years who know me as Michelle, and I wouldn't trade that for anything else in the world, so in a way, 'Michelle' is just as much a part of me as Michael is....

[Anita]

Hi Anthony-
Naming something or someone can give it/them more power and definition. I could see that you might hesitate to give this part of you more power than it already has.

[Paula G]

The name Paula emerged when I needed an i.d. here, I just chose the fem version of my given name. I had played with names before, names like "Emerald" but they all seemed a little too exotic for everyday use. Although the name can out of necessity a person has begun to emerge from the name.

Before Paula had a name she was limited to being him in a dress. Now Paula has her own sense of style, her own tastes, her own personality. None of this is very different to Paul, but slightly, distinctly different it is, softer, less aggressive, maybe, just more feminine, maybe the other side of a coin or the female twin, however a lot less experienced a lot younger. We would be the similar wouldn't we after all we have the same parents etc. etc.

I think we (both cds and civilians) are all an amalgam of our experiences and our forebears, certainly I feel a lot closer to my father now that I am a father myself, and frightenly when I look at Paula in the mirror sometimes I see my mother looking back. Life is complex, ours are just a little more complex than most.

[Susan]

I never had a femme name until I went online in 1994 - I picked Susan as it is a name that has featured large in my life.

I think it has coloured my development - I think all those Susans would like this Susan if they met me.

Susan is definitely a different person to Bob. She is a lot calmer and more balanced person. This may be why Bob needs her so much.

[Leeza]

I have been told that Leeza is a different person than Phil. She is more careing and fun to be with.

Leeza didn't have a name till she found a web site about 5 years ago.

Leeza

[Anthony Simon]

With the naming thing, I was always aware, looking at online communities that people seem to have "femme" names. It just wasn't something I thought applied to me until I went to buy a wig in a specialist store and the woman there said "what's your name". I said my male name and then she repeated the question, saying that everywhere else her (CD) customers were x and y (male names) but when they came to her were a and b (female names). Later on she came back to the thing of a femme name and I think I gave some sort of response to the effect that I didn't know how far I wanted to go with the CDing and giving myself a femme name seemed to be kind of "making it official", accepting it into myself in a way that I wasn't sure that I wanted to do.

She was very pushy about it - like that was the way things were done in the (CD) community - and that in itself put me off. So, coming here, I've got that in my background - like a determination not to give myself a femme name just because that was "the done thing". But, at the same time, the problem of just how far with the CDing I want to go.

I think you're right, Anita, about giving that side of myself, which already is so powerful, more power over me. It's alright - there is a sort of fragile balance in my life - while I retain the sort of self-doubt about what I'm experiencing while I dress up. Then I can cope with all the womanly stuff I see percolating to the surface (and really enjoy). But if I were to let go and give up to "her" totally, I feel I would be lost. I mean lost in the sense of having given up my sense of self in a permanent kind of way. This is what's so disturbing about the woman I see in the mirror, the lack of a sense of who she is.

This is actually the most scary thing to me, Paula, the loss of the sense of self. I do completely understand it being scary seeing your own mother looking back at you in the mirror - that sort of thing seems to freak me out too. Actually every time I look in the mirror and I seem to look more female, it does. But then I find that life goes on and I get over it.

I don't know if this really fits in here, but I've noticed that recently, the more I've been feminine when I get into the clothes, the more I've been upset when I've got out (just generally). I'm inclined to think that that's me dealing with more pain by going more into the clothes, but I don't know. It's like I let myself have more of the wish to be a woman to cope.

[Davita]

Anthony,
I'm thinking you are putting too much emphasis on the names and the clothes. They are just additional representations of who you are. For example, my close friends quite easily ignore what I wear or which name I'm going by because I'm dressed or not. They treat me as the one person I am.

With respect to that wig lady, I certainly can see why that left a bad taste in your mouth. But as you see here, we (that I know of) have never made demands of you to have a fem name or do anything to make you more or less who you are have we? Every community has a mix of all types of people. I think, here, we tend to want folks to be comfortable with themselves and naturally to have happy lives.

Anthony,
I cannot say I have gone through all that you're going through, but I can say I did a bit of beating up of myself as you seem to be going through. I questioned it all at one time. It took awhile (years and years) to simply decide that it's too much work to deny the inevitable and suffer on the way, the whole time.

BTW, on a slightly fun note... When my mom saw pictures of me, she said I looked like her mom. Just so happens, I thought my grandma was a nice looking lady. Now when I look in the mirror, I see my mom. If mom was alive now, I wonder how the two of us would look together if we went out somewhere.

[Anita]

Anthony wrote:

More a locus where all sorts of things can happen - like a place where "I can play games with the inside of my head". Like a place where I can play about with the bits of woman in me and the bits of man, and reorientate them.

I have used my gal self in this way, or a similar way. As a man, for instance, I felt that I could not physically touch people in day-to-day interactions. I saw that it didn't seem to be welcome, that both men and women can be afraid of being touched by men, (for different reasons of course).

But when I begin to venture out as a woman, I almost automatically began to touch people in casual ways--on the arm, on the shoulder, and certainly more hugs. And people did not flinch or move away--they saw a woman in front of them, and it seemed OK with them. It was as amazing as if I'd learned to fly. "I" was still inside, watching this happen, but the things that were happening were way outside my normal experience.

Yet I could only do it by re-arranging the "self" of 50-some years. My male self had never figured out a way to do that, and I had no idea I even wanted to do such a thing. I had long ago accepted society's limitations on what men can and cannot do.

Those limitations are very real; a man can't just toss them aside. There can be much fear and anger if he tries that, and I can understand it. I found a way around those 'rules,' and it's not something I could have ever figured out intellectually. I took apart the puzzle and put it together in a different way, and it was no longer the same picture I'd always accepted as the only reality.

See, I don't really see her as a cohesive personality (or an original one, there's a lot of my mother and my aunt in there - and stuff I recognise from male me)

I have been surprised at who I have "seen" in the mirror when I look at girl-me. My mother is in there, and some of my three sisters. There were some things that male-me added to the blend, but not much--Anita was already there, in many ways. I didn't feel that I had much hand in making her up.

I fought off my CD needs for years, by living vicariously through my girlfriends. Then there came a day when I couldn't do it anymore; I had to deal with becoming my own version of a woman. To most men, this would be a horror story, and I can't say that I liked the idea either. I was upset, scared, and unhappy, thinking that my life as I knew it was ruined. Well, it was, in the sense that the old way of being was radically changed.

But that's really another story, and it's not appropriate here. You're seeing that the woman in the mirror could change your life in some unexpected ways. Maybe it will become more apparent how that can work as you go along. It can't always be a smooth ride, but I wish you the best in pursuing it.

[Ralitsa]

Even though I call myself Ralitsa here, I really don't feel like her. For me, this is just the name I use here. When I am wearing obviously feminine clothes, like a dress or skirt and blouse, I do feel different, and am treated differently, but I don't feel like a different person. I know that I usually don't fool anyone into thinking I'm a woman, but many times they treat me as one anyway, which confuses me a bit because I'm not expecting it. I don't really have different tastes, nor do different things, nor consider myself to "be Ralitsa" when I'm dressed up, and all my credit cards and IDs are in my real name. For me crossdressing is not something I do, it's really who I am and it's not a woman inside me trying to express herself, it's myself and what I want to do.
I like what Anthony said about a bunch of bits and pieces just mixed together into a not-so-cohesive whole, and that's what I feel like. Not just with the feminine aspects, but even with the typical male bits. There are a lot of pieces that wouldn't seem to fit together, but nevertheless they do. So I'm a walking contradiction and I've just given up trying to make it make sense. Anyway, I don't buy in to the whole notion that certain personality traits must be associated with other personality traits, and gender is a determinate for personality and behaviour. In some cases, maybe even the majority of instances, there may be some association, but an observed association does not prove causality. So I feel like there is one single me, and I am complete and consistent internally, but very much unlike what the rest of the world is expecting. Sort of like a duck billed platypus.

[Gillian]

As someone once said, "what's in a name". I started off in this forum using a non-female name, and as I got more comfortable, I changed it. To me one of the important things in life is to reconcile the parts of me into the whole of me. There is a part of me that I do not understand, and I may never know the why's and the wherefore's as to all of it. I choose the name Gillian for many reasons, one being that I never knew a Gillian growing up. I had no preconceived picture of what a Gillian would look like. When I look in the mirror, to be honest, I see a guy that is making a horrible attempt to look like something else. What can I say, why do I at times wish that I had real breasts. They would not go well dressed in male mode, which is where I spend most of my life. Why do I prefer to wear womens underwear and underdress all of the time. I think that it is more comfortable, and I like the feel of it, or is it my deep seated wish of wanting to be a girl coming out? It would create problems for me, if my habits and nature were to come into the open. Reconcilling all of my quirks and habits to who I really am has been a life long event. My SO looks at me sometimes, and says why do you want to wear pantyhose, they are the most uncomfortable thing that a woman wears. She doesn't like to wear pantyhose, and it makes no sense to her why I love to.

One comment struck me as being the sum of why I dress. "The other thing is dressing up is a treat for me - like allowing myself to do something I always wished I could do." If I did not enjoy getting dressed up, then I would not do it. There is something about the look and feel of lingerie and womens clothes that keeps me coming back. Just like my love of chocolate ice cream, I keep coming back to it.

[Paula G]

It is interesting how different we all are, even though we all share this same "gift". Like most of us I often dwell on the whys of cross dressing as much or more than the hows, sometimes I wonder if I have some sort of split personality with Paula being that bit different to Paul (a small bit different other than gender that is), at other times I wonder if this is a way of dealing with stress by taking a holiday from being myself. Sometimes I think it is curiosity, trying to find out the impossible, i.e. what it is like being someone quite different. Maybe this is the only way I can express the feminine side of my nature having been brought up in quite a masculine oriented world, the feminine aspects of my nature were suppressed and could only surface and be expressed through the donning of female attire and through the separate personality of Paula.

Since embracing the name Paula, Paula has become a more distinct personality but I still think that this is an aspect of my (Paul's) personality rather than a totally separate one. Maybe an expression of being in touch with my feminine side. I find the whole issue of gender identification complicated because it is not a constant - for me at least - so the dressing aspect of it, some of it is self expression, some of it is forbidden fruit, some of it is - yes still - sexual, some of it is that I just like the clothes.

These days I am mostly just accepting that being a cross dresser is something I am rather than something I do, accepting that this is not going to change and dealing with the complications and implications of this.

Of course this might all be "bull" and I just like dressing up, Hey what do I know?

[Anthony Simon]

For me the scariest thing about getting dressed up, like I said above, is the way the person I know from "real life" seems to disappear to be replaced by this woman who I can't get a handle on. There is a lack of self - but then in "real life" I know that there's a part of me that "isn't there". And just to complicate matters, I've never really been able to get a handle on my mother, the person I most seem to emulate when I dress up.

But there's another aspect to this. When I was replying to Carolynn's thread (The Ultimate Curse) I came up with this song "That Kind of Love", which matters a lot to me - and I think it's about selfless love. Another person who often seems to turn up in "my woman" is my aunt - and to me she exemplified selfless love. It's actually her body shape I'm most trying to emulate - quite heavy and maternal - but that also puts me in a mood where I sort of merge into the clothes more.

It just strikes me that maternal kind of love is selfless - and, moreover, not having a self and being selfless are kind of related things. Maybe two ways of dealing with the same problem. At any rate, there are parts of my life where I can use that selfless love. And looking at myself in the mirror, I can see how some of the pain I talked about can be integrated into that sort of maternal thing. And she does look pretty mature, something I can't always be accused of being.

So if "I'm playing games with the inside of my head", I do seem to be arriving at some sort of place that might work. Maybe an integration. Like a place I can take back into the "real world" as a kind of version of a woman on the inside, even if it doesn't involve presenting as a woman on the outside. Maybe it's a "duck-billed platypus" kind of place, like Ralitsa says, but who cares...