Sexual Preferrence

[Karen]

Hi Leelo

I'm really new here, but in your original post you said that you are
recently seperated. Seems to me that just that alone could easily
get you a little confused and starting to think of all sorts of things.

I would think that allowing yourself a few more weeks would possibly
work wonders. Also that would give you some more time to
continue to get more ideas from everyone here at the forum.

Mainly, time should work wonders. BABY STEPS are called for.

Hugs

[Lily]

Hi Leelo,
Ask yourself if you really want input or if you are looking for someone to say it's okay? The question isn't a new one. When I first started dating I couldn't think why I would still want to CD if I liked women.

I’ve had many girlfriends ask me if I was gay when I told them I was a CD’er. I had no problem saying “hell no, I don’t find men attractive. I don’t even find myself attractive when I’m male. Why would I want to have sex with one.” lol

As I have been CDing more over the years I have felt the desire to know what sex would feel like for a woman, but having sex with a man would never show me that. Hormones aren't going to show me how that feels either.

There is just a part of me that is Fem. She needs to come out sometimes. I have been very lucky in the past to have had girlfriends who would treat me like a woman in the bedroom when I was in fem and like a man when I was in drab.

I don't want to be with men because I don't find them attractive. I think the question shouldn't be, should I have sex with a man because I'm a CD'er and I want to know how it feels, but are you Bisexual because you are attracted to men?

Then again these are my feelings. Only you will know your feelings in the end.

[Kittie]

Hi all

The big question?

I am struggling with my sexuality at age forty seven.
having recently become seperated I am becoming more and more Feminine.
i find myself crossdressing all the time and have recently shaved my body for that overall girl feeling.
Now i realize I will never be a real woman, but the more I experiment with my feminine side the more I have a desire to have sex with males.

Now I have always been hetrosexual and have never really been turned
on by big hairy men,but when I am dressed and looking quite passable(at least ive been told) I have this overwhelming urge to have sex with a sexy guy.

Does this make me Gay, Bi-sexual or sraight with a twist?

I realize this a complicated question, but any info would be greatly appreciated.

Leelo.

It is a vey difficult situation but you are not alone in anyway. Many of us ask that question and some will suddenly realise they are gay. Such a situatuion is a very natural one and with it comes a need to live with it.

[DanteCarrie (FTM)]

oh agree with lilly. it would be a bit weird to assume you might like men cas you CD. los of men are gay and don't CD doesn't make them straight.
if you find men and women attractive sexually then you are bi and good for you live your life whatever but i don't think CDing necessarily coincides with that. I CD a bit and I'm bi posiby connected possibly not

[Susan]

90+% of CD's I know are like me a completely heterosexual, yes a few are gay but in my experience the vast majority of us are not.

[Carolynn]

"Being bisexual means you have the opportunity to get rejected twice as often." Woody Allen

I believe there was a prior topic on the forum that asked the question "Are you attracted to men when you are dressed", but I am not going to try to search it out.

Rather I would restate the question of any who are pondering their sexual orientation. So now, as a TG/CD, "are you attracted to men when presenting as a woman, and to women when presenting as a man? "

Part of the complicating factors of sexual orientation vs. gender is that the two do not complement each other in predictable ways. Considering that both gender and orientation seem to be part of the same portion of the brain (the amygdala), that can be confusing for people to understand.

As I am sure you may know from my other posts, I am TS. At my 3-D support group we fell into a discussion over sexual orientation. Over half of my peers consider themselves to now be lesbian, and in the case of one, she says she was always lesbian, even when she had male parts. We also had one F2M TS who considered himself gay, as he preferred males as sex partners and wanted proper genitalia even though they do not work very well after the surgery.

However, genes seem to be present in the human genome that have extra lengths or that have jumped the traces to adhere to different parts of the opposite chromosome strand, and some think that when these are on the sex determining gene (the AR gene on the female strand in particular) this may be responsible for many variations of orientation and gender, and intersex. They seem to be common in the human genome, as population studies suggest that the proportion of gays and TS/TG have been relatively constant since early times. How cultures deal with the human variation is quite variable.

In our discussion of the subject, the question was brought up "If a person is TS (lets say MtF) and before surgery was attracted to men, and granted the supposition that gender is inborn, is the person attracted to men actually gay or not?"

Since our culture is not geared toward acceptance of anything other than the gender binary, socially people with such an attraction would be considered gay.

However, if the mental/gender portion was allowed to be the primary determinate, then the TS would be female (never mind the physical characteristics pre-op) and an association with a male might not be considered a gay relationship.

The discussion arose as a result of thinking about how we can be considered female only after we have a neo-vagina constructed, yet it may not change sexual orientation (i.e. a ts who is attracted to females before surgery remains attracted to them after surgery, in roughly 38% of the cases studied nationwide, while some 40+% prefer males after surgery).

Age also seems to be a factor. Younger transtioners who have transitioned by their early 20's are more likely to be heterosexual after their surgery whether they felt "gay attraction" before or were asexual before. Older transitioners, especially those who have been married, are more likely to be lesbian in orientation. Some who transtitioned later in life find they are attracted to other MtF TS, others to GGs. Older transitioners who are asexual before transition and surgery are more likely to remain asexual even after surgery.

On the other hand, most FtMs have been in lesbian relationships (often committed relationships) prior to surgery and they aren't as prone to switch orientation after surgery (less than 5%), of course. I have toyed with the idea that it is because they were in accepting relationships before, and they communicated their desires to their partner well before their transition, whereas older MtFs keep their needs buried for years out of shame and guilt. On the other hand, the partner who has accepted themselves for years as lesbian sometimes have difficulty with who they are after their partner transitions (are they still lesbians or are they suddenly straight women?).

Confusing isn't it?

Carolynn

[Anita]

I hope that Leelo is still around to read these new responses, although they're useful to everyone irregardless.

I was glad that I had experimented with bi-sexuality long before my girl-self made her presence known. I found that being sexual with men didn't interest me very much at that time, and part of it was because I couldn't understand why another man would be attracted to male-me.

Fast-forward to me presenting as a woman--suddenly, I understood why men would be attracted to me. I had always been attracted to women, and I knew what men liked about women. So if I was presenting many of those same qualities, men were going to like that. I understood my role, as a version of a woman.

It didn't matter that I wasn't 'real,' even though outsiders would think that would be very important. It really isn't, and many straight men are surprised to find themselves attracted to trans women. It isn't necessarily because all these straight men are really gay men in denial. It's because they're attracted to feminine presentation in general.

It's true that this makes them bisexual. They have to be open-minded about the subject. But I hope that as the decades go on, straight men can relax just a little about any fascination with non-op trans women. Male DNA is hard-wired to respond to female cues. Non-op trans women can do a good job of presenting these cues. Why wouldn't men be attracted to them?

[Leelo]

Well, yes Leelo is still around.

I have now had the chance to experiment with my sexuality, and have found that yes I am quite attracted to men in a sexual way.
The kicker is this, it only turns me on when I am fully dressed fem, the thought of having sex with a man dressed as a man just doesnt seem to do it for me.
So in conclusion, i suppose I am Bi-sexual and the world of crossdressing has allowed me to go and sample the other side of the buffet so to speak.
In other words " where's the beef "

Giggle.

Leelo.

[Anita]

Hi Leelo-- It's good to see you back.

I get amused and puzzled by all the theories about how transgender / transsexual women are just gay men in denial. I get the feeling that this theory is very intellectually satisfying to many people, because it's quite prevalent. There is no easy way to demonstrate that the theory is right or wrong--there is only anecdotal experience.

Now that I've been online for thirteen years, I know that your experience is a very common one. That is, I read a lot of TG people's experiences, and I see this same observation--attracted to men when presenting as a woman, not attracted in day-to-day life as a man. I feel the same way; I'm not interested in men, as a man. Years ago, it was one of the indicators (for me personally) that this femme self of mine involves more than just dressing in women's clothes. I can believe that a majority of crossdressers are heterosexual. At the same time, I'm part of a group that is doing more than just crossdressing; I do have a female identity, and I like for that part of me to be recognized.

The word "denial" gets thrown around casually, as though it's something that's easy to fall into or do. For me, denial is very hard. There are extremely painful things about my life that I wish I could somehow deny or rationalize, and I'm not successful at doing that. So it gives me a measuring standard--I'm probably not in denial about being a gay man, either. Especially since I did my own experimenting long before I knew about an inner woman named Anita.

If being Anita is a device I use to be in denial, then one would think that I would have "discovered" her at that point in time. Instead, I just stopped the experiment for 19 years. Since I was a high-visibility musician at the time, it was easy to attract both genders. It did not feel good to attract men if I was not really interested in them.

My posts might be more appropriate in The Journey Beyond section of the forum. At first I thought this might be the "Do you understand?" section, but now I see that it's part of a section that's open to everyone. So I will put a disclaimer on it: while this is part of some of our experiences, it certainly isn't universal. Both Jenny Boylan's and Deirdre McCloskly's books quote the statistic that only one-third of transitioning women find themselves attracted to men. So even taking female hormones doesn't guarantee a change in sexual preference.

[DanteCarrie (FTM)]

I think it is really bizarre to say a crossdresser or transexual is a gay man in denial. so what he becomes gay and doesn't need to crossdress anymore then, right?
Nearly all my friends are gay and lesbian (being head of our LGBT and apart from that notgetting out much lol)
and none of the men i know crossdress soooo they have no connection to CDing. most of these guys are100% gay and have ZERO interest to wear womens clothes. are gay men just crossdressers in denial heck no so the opposite is not true. I heard a woman say to her kid once gay men are women inside men's bodies. what rot if that was true they'd have a sex change or CD and most don't.
a few CDers are gay and a few gays are CDers but most CDers are straight and most gays don't CD.
That being said i notice a small correlation between genderbenders (CDing and androgynous clothed people) and being bisexual and having bi urges but then again i also notice a correlation with bisexualism and being gothic in style so its all rather random.
I do think being a CDer makes it more likely you are bi i think being bisexual seems to make people myself included more curious and bendable about their gender presentation and tastes in general. Hey if you like vairiety in one aspect of life you are bound to in your clothes and tv tastes too lol.
But being a bisexual and a CDer is nothing to feel bad about just cas most are straight. I don't think one should fear it or force it on themselves. I've always found bisexuality simple if we date transexuals are sexuality doesn'tchanged in fact i often think we are the most fixed. and its a huge widespectrum description its not black and white where you must like both genders equally if you only like men dressed then great. I have a bondage fetish but don't want to do eat all the time
anyway goodfor you Leelo

[Rikki]

Well said, Dante! In this whole big bowl of life we're mixed up in, there is no black, no white, just a whole bunch of gray mixture that keeps getting new flavors added every day. Makes everything much more interesting if you keep an open mind and accept the differences we all have.

Amen (and Awomen)!!!

Rikki

[Absaroka]

Leelo I can only answer with what is true for me, and it may have nothing to do with anyone reading this, or they may relate strongly.

For me crossdressing is about being a heterosexual male. I guess you could say it's a way of being inside a woman in a different way than sexual intercourse.

There IS something else that goes on that I can't explain, a reason why I prefer to do yard work and walk in the woods in a dress. I can't find the words for it, but it expresses something in me that is not sexual and sometimes I wonder if it even has to do with gender so much as with imagination and theatricality. It is in the truest sense of the words playing dress up.

But that's just me.

I do strongly believe that the sexual aspects of many things are not either or. That is that it is either sexual or not is a false dichotomy, it can be sexual and other things at the same time, just as fishing is about a lot of things, one of them being eating.

Good thread and lots of interesting answers. I think the key concepts are mostly having to do with self acceptance.

Zari

[Sandy]

If I were to label myself it would be transgender mtf queer since I am drawn to men and not females in a sexual way.

[AnnMarie Sweet]

This is an interesting question.

My sexual preference - in a real-life scenario - is heterosexual. That said, I would like to have an adventure with another CD (but under quite-specific conditions with regard to 'dress code' and feminine behaviour); I would also like to entertain a CD while I am in male-mode. These two scenario's are the ones which I think I could handle in real-life; but being with a man (fit and tattooed), while I am dressed is something which appeals only at 'fantasy level' because I am not in any way attracted to males on an everyday basis. Odd, isn't it, that I find ladies with bulges incredibly appealing while a male with a bulge is a separate, unappealing, thing altogether?!

I guess that the real trick is finding a truly compatible friend with whom one is entirely comfortable within the wide spectrum that is classified as 'crossdresser'.

[Mattie]

I had this experience. I confided in a male friend of mine since we were 8 years old. He asked if he could see me dressed. I told him I'd be back in 20 minutes. I did makeup (best of my life) got my wig and forms on, and put on a nice long skirt, heels, and top. He was stunned. I became a woman he wanted and he put moves on and things happened. I was treated as a woman, and I loved it. We meet up often, now. With that said, for me it is heterosexual because in that phase, I am female. I acted female and felt female. I had a lot of fun and feel very comfortable with this.