"Can children be transvestites?"

[spacial]

And you know the mind of other children? You can account for your own childhood, not others.

Possibly. But that suggests I was particularly unusual.

Given the numbers of people who recall similar notions to myself, that means there are quite a lot of unusual people. Now when thre are quite a lot of unusual people, it stops being unusual.

Perhaps there are just those of us who are socially, genetically and generally superior and those that are not.

Which kinda accounts for our long held belief that we are special. 

The rest can line up to bow.

[Hermione01]

Possibly. But that suggests I was particularly unusual.

Given the numbers of people who recall similar notions to myself, that means there are quite a lot of unusual people. Now when thre are quite a lot of unusual people, it stops being unusual.

Perhaps there are just those of us who are socially, genetically and generally superior and those that are not.

Which kinda accounts for our long held belief that we are special. 

The rest can line up to bow.

Just as I thought. 

[Iskandra]

Scuse me for dragging out old horses constantly..  But being one myself they are the only ones that will play Well ok, more that I am new here, New to my acceptance and mindchange (read: cocoon - butterfly or moth, maybe more appropriate)..

My view is that a child/all children have innocent minds, they do not think about clothing male or female being right or wrong, they experiment, they emulate.. during which they discover 'comfort'... physical and or mental...
So if a boy finds comfort in girls clothes or vice versa it is not a sexual or arrousal thing.. at least maybe not until 'adult taboo' sets in...
How many teens started smoking or drinking because it was not allowed?!
We are all born and live innocent for the first part of our lives... So why is it that we lose it, why is it that we end up instilling rules we once knew not, disliked when we learnt them on our own young?! (society as a whole not speaking for or about anyone here)

Being innocent and accepting of anything new and strange is exciting, why give it up and why make others give it up?!

No children can not be transvestites... They are only just developing a sense of gender, labels at this point have no meaning...

I..

[sfem]

Children, adults, seniors, household pets. They can all be transvestite (cross-dresser definition). Without trying. Since the label is defined and applied by others, not by the children, adults, seniors, pets, etc. If they could find a time-travel machine, they could change being transvestite to not being transvestite all day long just by picking one way of dressing, and then hopping back and forth in time without changing location.

As for choosing to label themselves, I would dearly love to think only those around them can even give children the idea of doing such a thing. And they shouldn't.

As a topic for public school, this unnerves me.

Bowing now...

[Iskandra]

I so did not understand the timetravel bit.. 

As for the labeling, I do agree, but then I also think that (specially) young children don't put much value in 'labels'..
A child may play with any other child, and not care or even 'see' a difference of sex, race or religion etc.. Not until someone else teaches them there is a difference... If us adults stopped that teaching (preaching) then perhaps there would be more equality and acceptance..

Interesting thought though, If we woke up tomorrow, and all clothing was suddenly unisex, sold as such, labelled as such (or not labelled at all), worn as such...
How many CD's would lose interest in CD for what ever reason, and how many non CDers would start wearing something currently labelled as fem wear?!

I..

[cynthialee]

I so did not understand the timetravel bit.. 

As for the labeling, I do agree, but then I also think that (specially) young children don't put much value in 'labels'..
A child may play with any other child, and not care or even 'see' a difference of sex, race or religion etc.. Not until someone else teaches them there is a difference... If us adults stopped that teaching (preaching) then perhaps there would be more equality and acceptance..

Interesting thought though, If we woke up tomorrow, and all clothing was suddenly unisex, sold as such, labelled as such (or not labelled at all), worn as such...
How many CD's would lose interest in CD for what ever reason, and how many non CDers would start wearing something currently labelled as fem wear?!

I..

They would wear period clothing of the pre androgyny days.

[Genevieve Swann]

It depends on the definition pf transvestite. Some psychologists consider transvestism a fetish. If so then a child can not be a transvestite. However, children do crossdress. Many us of started in early childhood.

[Genevieve Swann]

Writer Ernest Hemmingway while a young boy wore a dress. In that era among certain parts of society is was common to dress a young boy in a dress. You can look up Hemmingway on the net and find a photo of a cute little girl. I doubt anyone questioned transvestism.

[Taka]

Writer Ernest Hemmingway while a young boy wore a dress. In that era among certain parts of society is was common to dress a young boy in a dress. You can look up Hemmingway on the net and find a photo of a cute little girl. I doubt anyone questioned transvestism.

some still do this today. i have a friend whose little brother was dressed more like a girl and had long hair. but that only lasted till he cut his hair on his own. the family are catholics, but never considered this "transvestism". it's just a matter of practicality and tradition

[kate durcal]

I would like to know what kind of school would even contemplate to have a debate about whether children can be transvestites? Sounds bogus to me. 

Transvestite is one who derives sexual pleasure from dressing in clothes of opposite sex.   

The debate, if it actually happened, was definitely crossing the line.

Actually the term is "fetichisti transvesitsm" and it is not part of GID, it is a paraphilia. By defention cannot happen until a person reaches sexual maturity, and thus does not apply to children who cross dress.

Children who cross dress are usually diagnosed as having GID. Most but noty all TS cross-dressed as children.

Kate D

[Taka]

Children who cross dress are usually diagnosed as having GID.

i'm not too sure about this. my experience in childhood says that most children who cross dress are playing. those who continue to (want to) cross dress when the other children stop doing so should be the ones who might turn out to have gid

my own daughter insisted on being a boy for about three weeks when she was 3-4 years old. this was around the time she became aware of gender roles, and she also stopped occasionally calling me daddy because she realized all other kids' dads were men (her own dad wasn't around when she was little). i've a feeling the only reason she wanted to be a boy was that kids at a certain age start sometimes refusing kids of the other sex to play with them. the "only boys can be pirates" and "only girls play with dolls" type of thing. my kid stopped cross dressing when she figured it was more important for her to look cute and wear the pink skirts and dresses she'd always loved, than to be able to play pirate with the boys whenever she wanted to

[Da Monkey]

THIS!
I was a highly sexual creature as a child. Probably more so then, than as an adult.
EDIT: However cross dressing did not become part of my sexual exploration until much later in my early teens, I knew I was trans by the age of 9. (I just chose to run from that all my life.)

Really?? That's actually interesting. What age group? I guess anywhere from 10-12 makes sense but I can't imagine being any younger?

I always hung out with the boys but never dressed in boy clothes since I didn't have a brother or any access to them. I remember complaining to my mom as early as 4 that I wanted to be a boy though. I only wore what was handed down to me and didn't start dressing in men's clothes until I was 13. I can't say that it was a sexual thrill, but it was a relief to feel right in them. I wouldn't connect it to anything sexual.

[spacial]

Really?? That's actually interesting. What age group? I guess anywhere from 10-12 makes sense but I can't imagine being any younger?

I always hung out with the boys but never dressed in boy clothes since I didn't have a brother or any access to them. I remember complaining to my mom as early as 4 that I wanted to be a boy though. I only wore what was handed down to me and didn't start dressing in men's clothes until I was 13. I can't say that it was a sexual thrill, but it was a relief to feel right in them. I wouldn't connect it to anything sexual.

Like others, I am naturally cautious about any discussion involving children and sexuality. But I too was precociously sexual. Much younger than 10 or 12.

If you and anyone would like to continue further with this interesting aspect/perspective, we should all be aware of the need for restraint and very careful wording.

[Amazon D]

I always thought a transvestite to be a male who dresses as a woman and hangs out on street corners around 2am trying to pick up drunk men for sex? 

However, after starting to transition in Phila i saw young black trans walking the streets selling themselves but then they didn't seem to be transvestites. They were doing it for money to be able to transition to female.

so no you have to be an adult male who tries to trick drunk men after 2am well maybe earlier too 

[tekla]

we should all be aware of the need for restraint and very careful wording.

Perhaps, but that restrain and 'careful wording' is why so many people have such vast misunderstandings about the topic.

[cynthialee]

I became sexualy active around 5 or 6 and around 8 it really dawned on me what we were doing and I became a perv until my mid 30's.
I had cross dressed many times as a child starting around age 4(?). Adding cross dressing to sexual exploration was a short lived thing when I started to develop sexual fantasies in my early teens. (and a handful of times in my mid thirties) I found it to be too frustrating to cross dress and be sexual. The reality of my actual body configuration would become inescapable, no amount of dress up could mitigate my physical reality. (I abandoned that activity and primarily saved cross dressing for personal private time, mostly just to see if I looked cute or too escape being male on occasion.) As a result I buried myself in male sexuality and basicaly tried to screw myself into manhood. I figured that being sexualy active and being with many partners would somehow verify my manlieness and all that silly crap that comes with masculinity. I tried to f*** myself into manhood.
Turns out you can't make a man out of a woman no matter how many people you have sex with.

back on track....
I do not see how a child would be imune from a diagnosis of transvestic fetishism if the child actively engageing in sexual cross dressing. Kittens are still cats.

[Taka]

I do not see how a child would be imune from a diagnosis of transvestic fetishism if the child actively engageing in sexual cross dressing. Kittens are still cats.

can't really argue on that. i myself started waking up to one of my weirdest fetishes when i was very young, don't remember the age but at least it was less than eight. i didn't relate it to anything sexual at the time, but i probably would have recognized it for what it is much earlier if i'd only met more people with cool scars when i was a kid..

the only sexual activity i was involved in as a kid was some experimenting with oral sex when i was 4-5 years old. one of the boys in the neighborhood had learned the theory of ">-bleeped-<ing" as he called it from his older brother. i didn't think much of it, totally missed the whole point about pleasure, and only became sexually aware after hitting puberty at age 10

[kate durcal]

I am very uncofortable with some of the posting in this thread.

Some evil people may get a hold of them, take them out of contest and claim "you see TG/TS sponsoring pedophilia.

Personally I strongly disagre with ascrbing sexuality to children.

I strongly suggest this thread be deleted immidiatly.

Kate D

[edited by Padma to remove unsupported and inflammatory statement]

[Padma]

I think this is another of those discussions that inevitably revolve around people's differing definitions of the same term - "transvestite" in this case (and different health practitioners' definitions of the same term, too, since there's no "official" definition that's globally accepted). It seems possible for "transvestite" to mean a number of widely different things to different people, so please take this into account before telling anyone "you're wrong, it's not that, it's this".

It also seems clear from people's experiences in this discussion that dressing in "the clothes of the opposite gender" can have quite differing significance from one child to the next, so it's not possible to make big generalisations and simply say "children do this because of that" unless "that" is a very long list of options .

[Sarah Louise]

I question the use of the term "transvestite".  Crossdressing might be one thing, but by my understanding of the term TV my answer would be No and to suggest otherwise makes me question your intent.

We need to be very careful how we treat a thread talking about young children.  It would be easy to misinterpret our statements.

What class/teacher would even suggest the topic?  Is this something you came up with yourself?  If so I suggest you look for something else to debate.