I knew a post-op who told me she used to get off looking at clothing magazines. Now, post-surgery, she just looks at the clothes. She is happy. I also have a sexual component to my dressing. I also have dysphoria. How much do you think the sexual component matters? Trying to peel back the layers.

When I was younger, like teenage, dressing caused a bit of arousal.  It is not the reason I dressed up, but I will not deny that it held a bit of a charge.  By the time I reached my 20's, the clothes were just clothes and arousal really had nothing to do much with it.

Fast forward to starting HRT and that had nothing to do at all with sexual activity.  My sex drive started to wane soon after I was awarded custody of my kids.  It was the lowest priority to me.

I have friends who have healthy sex drives and they have told me that they really enjoy sex.  It seems hard for them to imagine that I could be almost non-sexual.

At least in those with a penis (I guess I am extrapolating from myself, since we don't discuss this very much LOL), arousal happens easily and is not necessarily linked to sexual excitement. I can get aroused, at least somewhat, by thinking about something non-sexually exciting or fun, by sitting in a certain way, by handling my penis, by needing to pee...  It happens many times a day and usually catches me by surprise. I remember once watching a neutered horse get an enormous erection when he was eating his oats.

All this just to say that you can be excited by dressing, just because it's fun or non-sexually exciting, besides being a sexual turn on. So you need to think a little more deeply about the cause than just knowing that you are getting aroused. Maybe it's unimportant "why", but the question was asked and it's a good one, since probably many of us go through this.

Oddly enough...  My first experiments with cross-dressing (outside of dress-up with the other girls in kindergarten before they rejected me) was when I was 14 and 15.  I had a good friend who would let me dress in her clothes around her house.  The whole family accepted me for me and I didn't trust anyone else at that point.  Somehow they all knew, while I was still kinda clueless.  There was nothing sexual about it at all while I was there. 

At the same time I was ditching school pretty much all the time because I got jumped by a group of jocks for wearing a skirt to school one day for a drama project.

I stopped going to school because I was terrified they'd kill me if I was caught there so I would stay at home while my mom was at work and steal time wearing her clothes...  Which were a turn on at that point, I think because I was alone.

By the end of my freshman year my mom asked me about the cross-dressing and I freaked out, became ashamed, became really angry at everything, and started to hide.  Pushed everything down and stopped dressing...  From that point on, however, my imagination regarding being female was almost solely restricted to sexual fantasy (usually auto-abusive in nature thanks to a history of abuse in my past).  It was an easy way, I think, for me to assume it was just a kink and the result of unresolved issues concerning the abuse I suffered.  Great freaking excuse, actually.  Ugh. 

I finally hit the wall and took a good long look at my past fairly recently and figured it out.  I'm trans.  And Poof!

I have no more random thoughts about sex at all.  The desire is gone.  I CAN be aroused if I try.  But I have to try.  It's weird.  My feelings of being female are really, really strong and constant...  And there's nothing sexual about those feelings at all.

Everyone is different I suppose.  But to your question:  I think it may matter some because who we are as women or men can be intertwined into our sexual attractions.  But it doesn't have to be.  I used to conflate the two but now I don't.  Who knows how all that would work for you?  You would be the only one who can answer that.

Just my two cents, for whatever they are worth.  Take care!  <3

I'm not sure if the clothes themselves were turn ons to me.
I know pre hrt when I would dress, I felt I could see my feminine features and it was a huge relief... it was a sort of a high to the point that it became super depressing presenting and being "male".

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There may be something deeper to this arousal-
My trauma therapist explained that people often mistake masturbation as being tied  to sexuality. Children also do this for pleasure, to learn about their body and as a way comfort themselves.

I am a survivor of childhood psychological and sexual abuse with Dissociative Identity/Multiple Personality Disorder. My mind developed a female alter to cope with the abuse. Womens clothing and makeup are the norm for her. Another part of my mind is triggered into sexual arousal by them.  She has dressed this way 2 days a week for nearly ten years.  A complex response intertwined with having been forced to wear my grandmother's clothes when I was raped, the sexual response only comes on a handful of time a year. I am not far enough along in therapy to understand the circumstances that trigger it.

It doesn't do anything for me on a sexual level. Intimacy does and will continue to do so.

I would not worry overmuch about having some arousal linked in to your female presentation.  If you've got boy bits, and the wiring in the brain that goes with it, and male hormones in your system, I don't find it peculiar that you would find something erotic about presenting en femme.  If arousal was the sole impetus for doing so, and you have no desire to present feminine if you're not aroused, that might be different.  But it doesn't surprise me that it would exist as a side effect.

Another aspect of the sexual component:
Sexual fantasies about becoming a woman, the need to dress as woman, extreme guilt related to masturbation, gender confusion, sexual confusion, and/or dysphoria about their genitals are all common to cigender men who experienced childhood abuse and are easily mistaken as symptoms of ->-bleeped-<- and Gender Dsyphoria. One in Six men are sexually abused so these are all quite common in cisgender males and are not necessarily related to ->-bleeped-<-. There is an excellent discussion group on the Male Survivor website at: http://www.discussion.malesurvivor.org/board/ubbthreads.php?ubb=cfrm

Is it possible that the feelings of relief and freedom of true expression can manifest as arousal?

Quote from: gingerViktorKay on August 29, 2018, 07:49:27 PM
Is it possible that the feelings of relief and freedom of true expression can manifest as arousal?

From the things my psychologist has explained to me about masturbation, this makes very good sense.

When my female alter misses her regular time to enact while we are traveling or have a conflicting engagement, my mind is so overjoyed at her next opportunity to do so it often brings the body to spontaneous orgasm.

Quote from: gingerViktorKay on August 29, 2018, 07:49:27 PM
Is it possible that the feelings of relief and freedom of true expression can manifest as arousal?

I believe this, very much so!  Euphoria manifesting.

In my therapy thread, I stated that my therapist doesn't think I'm a candidate for transition. I agree in theory, yet, I wonder. Part of me thinks maybe my transition story isn't finished.

Quote from: amandam on August 30, 2018, 12:15:15 AM
In my therapy thread, I stated that my therapist doesn't think I'm a candidate for transition. I agree in theory, yet, I wonder. Part of me thinks maybe my transition story isn't finished.

Not a candidate huh. Did the therapist explain why?

I dont think I got an actual explanation. I think the concept of the gender spectrum is new to her. Also, my desire to transition has a bunch of if's attached to it. I think most of her other patients just seem to know they are women.

Amanda, the question you ask is one that is important to me as well. But I'm as lost about it as you are.

Quote from: Virginia on August 29, 2018, 07:43:28 PM
Another aspect of the sexual component:
Sexual fantasies about becoming a woman, the need to dress as woman, extreme guilt related to masturbation, gender confusion, sexual confusion, and/or dysphoria about their genitals are all common to cigender men who experienced childhood abuse and are easily mistaken as symptoms of ->-bleeped-<- and Gender Dsyphoria.

But for those of us who were not abused, what does it mean?

Quote from: Jennifer M on August 30, 2018, 11:24:57 AM
Virginia wrote:
"Sexual fantasies about becoming a woman, the need to dress as woman, extreme guilt related to masturbation, gender confusion, sexual confusion, and/or dysphoria about their genitals are all common to cigender men who experienced childhood abuse and are easily mistaken as symptoms of ->-bleeped-<- and Gender Dsyphoria."

for those of us who were not abused, what does it mean?

It will take introspection and therapy to unravel.
The mind's ability to protect us from things that are too painful to know is astounding. That dissociation enabled me to become a graduate level engineer, have a successful career, marry and live a normal happy life for 48 years without having ANY memory of the sexual and psychological abuse I experienced as a child...Is Beyond My Ability to Conceive. Yet all of these things were eventually verified by my mother, proven out in the family albums, and the memories and feelings I began to recall as I progressed in therapy. By allowing us to remember some things and not others, and keeping enough distance between the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, the mind creates a very different picture from truth that is too painful to see.

My fantasy has always been that I was, what would amount to a super model. I used to buy Cosmo for my wife and I was the one that would look at the pictures etc. There weren't a lot of "super" models back then. Susan Blakely, Cheryl Tiegs. I would tell my wife I was going fishing and then rent a room for a couple days and dress up. Stop at the market and pick up a couple trout. I like to over dress and wear pretty clothes. I know it's probably not appropriate for my age, but I like looking hot. I think there is a subconscious component that I secretly want to be ravished. One thing I have now that I didn't is that I can do my makeup in about thirty minutes compared to several hours in the old days. And I don't have to rent hotel rooms.

When I was young, in periods when I felt unable to wear female clothes, the prospect of doing so did arouse me.  However, during periods when I was able to live as a woman full time, mainly while house sitting for people, I felt no arousal, just a sense of relief and almost absolute calm.

I think this varies so much with everyone and I don't think there is a right way, only how to deal with those aspects of our changes. The period in life where I really had any interest in kink was pretty brief and certainly nonexistent after HRT. The ability to experience arousal from clothing was even briefer and likely limited to my teen years. Clothes and presentation to me have always been an expression of myself, sometimes it is a struggling expression as I am going through now, other times it is simply my style.