I am thinking a bit aloud here..... By far the most difficult aspect of my sexual and gender identify is that of being a crossdresser. For some reason, being a bisexual never produced nearly the same level of confusion and uneasiness in me as does the sentence: "I am a crossdresser". This is a side of myself I always wished would go away. But approaching midlife I am starting to realize, that it will always be a part of me, and that repression does not work. So I want to find a better way to deal with this. For most of my life, my crossdressing have been very fetichistic, i.e. centered around sexual arousal. So I gathered I was just a worthless freak with some weird sexual fantasies. It seemed so utterly pointless and disgusting. It turns out, that there is way more to it than just being a pointless sexual fantasy. As I am becoming more accepting to my feminine sides, this is all starting to change. No, I do not want to become a woman, as I feel fine with in my male body. But.... I just need something more in life. I was never born to be either masculine or feminine, but to be both. So my crossdressing is now more about exploring and expressing something that was already present in myself. In the dating world, many people talk about polarity between genders. I am more interested in having polarity within myself. I feel somewhere between being bigendered and androgyne. In my best moments, I think of crossdressing as a bold and daring embrace of my own femininity, and the crossdressing fantasies was a gateway into something more important. Getting dolled up is after all just the tip of the iceberg. Long post for sure.... but I'd like to ask my fellow crossdressers if they have found any meaning in it?
Really interesting. I already explained a lot of times my story, so I'll just brief it here. I've spent 19 years of my life crossdressing in secret, and without letting myself think directly on it, because too early I understood that a boy using a skirt and wearing a bra wasn't a"good" thing for other people. Being a child, I just tried to supress it, but after 19 years, I faced myself and gave up. And then accepted myself. Having said that, I started crossdressing at 6. Upon reaching puberty, I started to crossdress using only intimate clothing and ocasionaly bathsuits; masturbated, and then "dressed back" before any member of my family returned home. When I first accepted myself some months ago, I considered to be simply fetichist, but decided to experiment to see what it really was. Then I discovered that all this time I masturbated while using those clothes, was for a practical reason. Since I had little time to crossdress, and after masturbating I "turned down", it became easier to "dress back" after that, than doing it just because someone almost retunred home. And then I started to do it every chance I got, and then, I had to move out of my parents house, so I could do it at every moment I was not on the office. And I'm happier now. I found that I really enjoy using those clothes, and not on a sexual level (nowadays, I can't even masturbate if I'm using my feminine clothing, I feel it will "taint" my feminine side), I found I really want to be treated as a woman, to be called like one, to be one. And, of course, the clothing is just the door that leads to the highway I need to take.
Thanks for your thoughtful answer. Some very interesting parallels, especially regarding considering oneself to be a fetichist. I will look more into your post and your history
Yup! I'm happy to share my experiences! At risk of sounding like a salesman, I wrote more about my story in my blog, you can go there whenever you want.
Very interesting reading, and a few of the things you say resonate with me. I've always felt like being 'not straight' (best way I can think of describe myself) is comparatively easy to admit to myself and other people, not that I'm saying that it was easy. Trying to add crossdressing to the mix adds another load of things to explain and so far I haven't told many people about it. In the past I think I tried to split off and for the most part ignore the crossdressing side of me but lately I'm trying to integrate into my life as a whole but I've still got a long way to go.I'm still trying to work out my gender identity and what it means for me in my life, sometimes I feel like I might be bigendered or something along those lines. But like you say I'm comfortable as a man so don't wish to transition, there's just another side that needs to be expressed at intervals. There is a fetishistic component to it but that seems to be becoming less prominent as time goes on. And like you describe there are times when I feel a strange kind of pride at being able to express my feminine side in this way. I don't really understand what meaning it has for me yet, it's extremely difficult to arrange my thoughts in my head and even harder to express them coherently to others.
I have been looking at your story in your blog. Interesting. ---------- Post added 18th Nov 2012 at 03:10 AM ---------- This seems so much like me. It is rather comforting to know that I am not alone in this, and that I am starting to be able to make sense of this. Thanks for your answer.
This is really cool, and I'm glad you posted it. I just like crossdressing. I identify as a man, but I still like gender play. I really like feminine performance. I don't really find special meaning in it, but I am glad that you do. It sounds like pretty deep and important, too.
Now you mention it the play aspect is also a big part of it, as I also enjoy dressing up for events like Halloween, and not just if my costume is in any way crossdressed. I think it's something about the costume allowing me to 'step outside myself' and giving me a license to try behaving in a way that I wouldn't normally because of inhibitions because in a sense I'm not myself, if that makes sense. There's a quote I read somewhere that puts it better that I'll try to dig out.
Good points. I can also identify with this. Getting dressed is in a way to step out of oneself, in order to temporarily look and feel different, but also to exhibit a different behavior. It's like drinking from an undiluted source just to try the full taste, without actually wanting the full taste most of the time. I also tend to like the subversive element of going against stereotypical masculinity, but that's another story...:icon_wink
