Hello Ladies,
I say that because the phenomenon we call crossdressing is almost exclusively a male endeavor. Mostly because women are not persecuted for crossdressing. It is perfectly acceptable for women to wear men's anything. From underwear to a suit and tie.
When I first came out of the closet I went to a crossdresser forum. I didn't know that there was a difference between crossdressers and transsexuals. I thought it was the same thing. Transsexuals crossdress. I thought those who claimed to only do it once in a while, were just in denial, something I knew a lot about.
I spent a great deal of time arguing with crossdressers and offending many of them as well as their SO's by proclaiming they were all headed for transition eventually. That like me, they would let go of the denial eventually, and just admit they really wanted to transition. But as time went on, I started reading and learning about transsexualism and crossdressing and learned that crossdressers are indeed something different.
Many like Cathy Anderson had used Jungian psychology to explain crossdressing as part of the "male anima" which contains the female part of our psyche. After all, we are all the product of the union of a male and a female. But when I read this material, which many crossdressers swore by, it just was not what I was feeling. I didn't feel another part of me wanting out.
"Jung's Anima Theory and How it Relates to Crossdressing"
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/cathytg/anima.htmThen I started listening to crossdressers talking about how they started dressing. Unlike me, almost all were sexually motivated, at least at first. Most had a long history of crossdressing, I had only done it a few times and it was not to get off. It was to feel like a person. Finally I figured it out. I was not a crossdresser at all. They were completely different things.
During this time I had been in a crossdresser forum. I had heard crossdressers talking about other sites and being demeaned by "true transsexuals". I could not believe that anyone who had gender issues would demean anyone else simply because their gender expression was not the same as theirs. But when I stepped into the transsexual world, crossdresser became a bad word. I mean, would I be labled as a sex crazed ->-bleeped-<- dressing as a woman just to get off, thereby putting a stigma on transsexuals?
Indeed I have been shocked and surprised by the way the transsexual community has demonized crossdressers as the source of all of our troubles. People vehemently denying they are a crossdresser to defend themselves against attack.
But I have to say, crossdressers are some of the warmest loving human beings I have ever met. I owe my life to a handful of them who held me up when I was too weak to hold myself up. I don't know what motivated crossdressers to begin with, but I do know that they have a feminine part of themselves that must be expressed. Some in public, for others private is fine. Still others are transsexuals who are hiding in the crossdresser closet unwilling to accept the real truth about themselves, like me.
Love always,
Elizabeth
