Hi...I don't exactly know how much is customary for this intro, but I've been having personal breakthroughs of acceptance and understanding about who I am, so I came here to just find a place to kind of spill, so I hope you don't mind.
I'm a twenty one year old biological male, born and raised in the white-collar, heavily-caucasian and Republican cradle of South Carolina. In truth, my childhood was pretty ordinary, and I wasn't made miserable by who I am, or how I looked, or anything like that. I was a boy and I got along well enough with that; I was content.
But, from as early as maybe seven or eight, I've been fascinated with the female form and essence. I've always been attracted to it, as any boy should, but what separated me from everyone else, in my secret mind, was my burning desire to emulate that beauty too. This desire has always been there. It's always at the back of my mind, and is a force that is just as fulfilling in regards to 'wholeness' as it is sexually stimulating.
This desire has influenced me as an person; I relate to stereotypically feminine things as easily as I relate to the stereotypically masculine (for example, I take real pleasure in looking appealing and primp constantly, but I am an assertively competitive person, etc.). I admire females physically as well as men. I keep my hair long and love to straighten and style it, and I intentionally watch what I eat so I remain slender and androgynously figured (I have a 28 inch waist). I secretly revel when people tell me I'm 'pretty' instead of 'handsome.' And of course there's a thousand other things.
However, the conflict is: the way of things is that I value the life I have as a male, the friends, the reputation, the path I have laid before me; I am an actor and a performer, and have relative success with that career and intend to follow it through (moving to Chicago in the fall to form a pro troupe with some contemporaries). I do really well in social situations, get along just fine with the circumstances I'm dealt with, and fit in as a male just fine.
So as happy as I am most of the time as a male, I am urged to be feminine. It's really hard to pinpoint...I fantasize about being presumed and accepted as a female, to be pretty enough to mistake for the fairer sex. I don't necessarily feel I was born the wrong gender...I just feel I would have been just as happy as a girl.
So, I crossdress and take pictures. Kehehe. Sorry, I kind of blurted...I'll save the rest for the forums.
I'm still on a self-discovery journey.
So, after a lot of research, I associate myself as an androgyne, so far. I looked up stuff by Richard Blanchard (I think) and sort of fit along the lines of his "autogynephile," but I've noticed his theories are despised by the TG community, so I'm still unsure about it.
Well, just wanted to intro! Hope you all weren't bored to death. Here I am!
~Gav
