Crossdressers-Haven.com

Two theories exist The oldest is we are Transvestites, which implies some form of compulsion or fetish driving our desire to cross dress which comes and goes. The other is that it is we are transgender or gender fluid and that it is our internal gender which drives us because sometimes we feel feminine or masculine and this leads us to dress so that we are more comfortable because it matches what we feel on the inside.

It is unfortunate that we have no definitive answer for this inner turmoil we feel inside us throughout our entire life from hour to hour or day to day or month to month depending...I do believe distraction in our lives does help but sometimes I am quite conflicted internally, torn at times about which way to go feeling stuck in an androgynous angst that is psychologically uncomfortable and can torture us for hours at a time. It can be physical because Stress can cause physical problems leading to a breakdown of our health, it's true and that comes out of my professional education as an RN. General adaptation to stress syndrome...that documents stress leads to illness over time, it is not a good thing.

We do go through phases..currently I am in a masculine phase, have no nail polish or make up on...fully masculine in dress...wanting to have my hair cut ... allowing feminine grooming to slip...

Just like the feminine phase it only lasts for an indefinite time but could last hours to years....or so it would seem but really it only lasts hours up to a week or two at most.

Even now I feel the pull of my feminine side...pulling me into that uncomfortable androgynous angst...Just thinking about all of this is unsettling and stirs my inner calm....

It could be there is a mix of the two ideas...some compusion/fetish and some gender fluidity involved. Who knows...


All that we can do is to accept that this is who we are...I have absolutely no problem living either way and I do live both ways the problem exists in the objections of others to who we are and from the psychological damage we have been subjected to because of it. But the best thing for us is to realize we cannot change what is past. We can only live in the here and now as we move into the future.

I do know finding a full acceptance of who I am, understanding myself and who I am as much as it has been possible for me and coming out to others as gender fluid as I live more openly with those around me has been the best thing I have ever done for myself.

I am not ashamed of who I am and as a matter of fact do not care that people who have seen me dressed one way and then the other and know does not bother me in the least anymore...I would just tell them yeah..I enjoy wearing feminine things and being feminine sometimes depends on how I am feeling inside...what's it to you? I am gender fluid and have been my whole life, it's just who I am and should not make any difference to any one don't like who I am then go away, I cannot help being who I am.

Though I may currently desire a short masculine hair cut with hair no more than 1.5 to 3. inches in length...I will not allow it...look at that avitar. Just as I know I am no candidate for SRS at lest I am 50% masculine all the time but probably more like 60% (wild guess) I also know and have recognized that I am 40% to 49% feminine so that part of who I am has every right to have the long hair I love when I am feeling femine, along with having my ears pierced..and it is time for a pedicure too... Tomorrow I go to the hairstylist at Regis and will show him the avitar and another with how I fix my hair when I am feeling masculine. It does take time to get over years of conditioning but I do like feeling even in masculine mode the long hair moving about my ears and neck...it's cool...It is a recognition of all of who I am, of reality regarding who I am inside.

Huh...women have phases...in a sense so do we, ours is merely psychological...and it is highly irregular in duration, intensity, and timing while theirs...driven by hormones tends to be on a regular cycle with a fairly fixed duration. Wonder if there is a hormonal basis for ours ... who the hell knows...I would think not but cannot entirely rule it out.

What's to say? You are not ashamed. Okay.... I say.... "thank you"
We are who are who we are. We got this way because of the theories and prophecies and bigotries and misinformation and lies and truths and and and ...... but..... we got here... we are who we are. Thank you for not killing yourself. Thank you for trying. Thank you for accepting. Thank you for just being......

Okay some of you are struggling some are not... Just thank you for being in my world. I am glad you are here even if you are not. All I ask is that you accept who you are. You don't have to understand it. You don't have to prove it; you don't have to do anything but like yourself for being any form of a transgender person ypu are because we all add to the value of the world.

AMEN!

Two great thought provoking posts Anne and Davita, thank you.

Yeah...sorry...I can't help dwelling on something. I have some need to do this to wear it out by considering and exploring it all fully, repeatedly until finally I move forward. I guess I am doing my absolute best to grasp and to understand it all fully before I move on to something else.

This awful tendency has been beneficial to me though with out it I would never have made the tremendous progress that I have. I know some like some twenty something gender fluid person...in my mind I am thinking about Seadresa...who calls herself Grace way down in New Zealand...who posts videos on youtube...what an inspiration! To be so young and to understand who she is and to be out there living with her girlfriend and without a worry in the world is something absolutely amazing to me. And there are teenagers doing the same thing, but it could be immaturity and something they will turn from as they find who they are...who knows. There are so many others who are out fully and living their lives...CEOs...Reporters...and others in many fields out and freely living their lives....

When I think of those who are living their lives without a worry in the world...and then I think about those who are stuck in a closet as their youth, then their prime, and into middle age and some even into old age struggling to open that closet door even a little bit allowing a very narrow vertical beam of light to enter their dark, hidden and very fearful closet. It makes me very angry...it's a tragic thing.

Why have I been in this group? Why have I lived nearly all of my life into late middle age struggling so hard to come out into the open light of day? I am so angry at the Christian, Religious overbearing moralism which has so heavily permeated out society that it has managed to put a large padlock on those who do hold the key to their own closets.
What a tragic outrage! We allow Christian Moralism, our own fears and lack of understanding to shame us into hiding and locking away half of who we are only allowing ourselves to live half a life, never fully happy inside or relaxed because we know we hold and hide half of who we are within ourselves.

I want to reach out but we can only do this for our self. No one can do this for us. But it is so important that we come to understand who we are so that we can open that door. We must overcome unfounded fear and shame insert the key we hold in the lock and let ourselves out of our deep dark prison so that we can come into the light that we all deserve to have as human beings to live freely and to be who we are as people. We will never be truly happy until we allow ourselves to fully live and be all of who we are inside.

I guess I carry a lot of anger against all that holds us back.

We do have to fight, Our society resists even denies the truth that those who are transgender are not perverted sinners against a false god...this is who we are, it is how our genetics stacked up and we have every right to live because we are human beings, we have every right to live and to be who we are.

I hate all of what has held me back until I am on the brink of old age...what a waste...but hey...you cannot go back in life. We have the here and now...the present and we have our future and none of it has been written yet so it is important to allow ourselves to live open that lock throw it all away and set the closet on fire! Go forward and join the living.

Anne Bonny wrote: We allow Christian Moralism, our own fears and lack of understanding to shame us into hiding and locking away half of who we are only allowing ourselves to live half a life, never fully happy inside or relaxed because we know we hold and hide half of who we are within ourselves.

To blame anyone for who or what we are is a total cop out to be polite. The piece I have quoted above says more than anything else. It is our own fears of discovery that keeps so many in the closet and shadows. Yes the lack of understanding and tolerance of others has a piece in that but those are only an issue as long as we fear discovery.

From many of your posts Anne I sense for the most part you have had few issues other than with your son. The fact you view yourself as gender fluid is wonderful and I am sure there are others here who wish they had the freedom to be as you are. I know when I came to the realization of what I was it was a very liberating experience. It removed the fears and feelings of guilt we have all gone through.

Live your life as you desire and are comfortable and let others be damned! As for your periods of masculinity or femininity well that is who you are! Treasure yourself and enjoy your life as you wish.

I have a few thoughts on this that I will just throw out there.

First, you have come a long way Anne from where you were several years ago, trying to deny who you are, and hating yourself. I'm glad to see that you are now accepting yourself, and learning to like who you are. I know this has been a very tough time, and the situation with you wife just piles even more stress onto you. But you've been strong through it and toughed it out and here you are. You're doing great and I think you have reason to be proud of how far you have come.

Religious / moral repression is just one sort of regulatory framework in which we must live. Any society must have and does have various forms of mores which prescribe acceptable behavior, in general I would argue they do mare good than harm. An interesting example, when I was in Saudi Arabia one of the guys I worked with taught me a bit about Mohamed and the origins of Islam. One of the principle "sins" that Mohamed was fighting with the polytheists over was the practice of burying alive in the desert their baby girls, because they didn't want girls. So we hear a lot about how terrible Islam is but I'd say that it resulted in a huge improvement in the behavior of the arabians, considering what they were before Islam came along.

The next point is a Thomas Jefferson principle: the world belongs to the living. So we have these standards, mores, traditions, or regulations but we can also change them. The change isn't, and shouldn't be easy. We don't want to overthrow traditions long established for light and transient causes. So we can change them, but it takes a huge amount of effort, suffering, and occasionally dying. The situation for us today is a whole lot better than say 20 years ago, and that's because of the courage of those who were out there ahead of us. Now it's our turn to get out and fight for this. To get angry with the established societal norms is not sensible. (getting angry with narrow minded bigots is another issue) We can't expect that we will automatically be accepted, it's going to take some effort.

The last point is that I think our struggle is largely accomplished. The young kids you've mentioned who are out there living as they like is proof of that. I know some people who really, really, really don't like the idea of my wearing women's styles. Most people don't care at all, not in the slightest, and quite a few think it's weird but write it off as me being crazy and then don't worry about it. When you see the stories in the news, and it rarely makes the news any more, the conversation is no longer about whether it's ok, but about how to accommodate it. It is almost getting to the point now where it's fashionable to be LGBT or gender non-conformist in some way. I have a good friend who's daughter told her that she needs to be more accommodating to the gender fluid, which is very ironic because she is already one of the most accepting people I know in this regard. So people who were on the leading edge of this 20 years ago are now way behind the times.

My only regret is that I denied myself the satisfaction of living as I like for all those years.

Thanks...that was very insightful, helpful because we all have blind spots. I am doing my best to understand...but it does come down to fear/shame/ and potential losses of friends, family, work, any who know us if they decide to cut us off because of who we are inside. When we find acceptance it makes up for those who cut us off! Christian moralism permeates our society it is an overbearing and suffocating influence on every single one of us, our family, friends, neighbors, society at large and work so I do believe that is a valid point in that we would find more understanding and open willingness to accept us if not for a belief system that states there are no other possibilities except for male=masculine, female=feminine and anything else (disguarding reality for this very limited and arbitrary binary view of gender) is a sexual perversion, or compusion because any of the possibilities in between do not exist in their view because they see the two genders above as absolutes created by a ficticious god.

We do have to contend with the overbearing priggish prudes and their false and arbitrary view of morals and of the world, their belief that "sin" rather than human nature exists and that everyone is bad because they are "sinners" rather than people with human nature striving to be their best self. It is a system which runs on guilt and a very negative view of everyone... I am free of that because I am agnostic...but I am not free of the environment which we were born into, raised in and a society permeated by a mythological belief system which is very very negative.

Still you are correct...it comes back to our having to contend with the reality which confronts us. We know perfectly well who we are...I have accepted myself...but fear (not shame...I am not ashamed of who I am) holds us back and we hold the key to our closet. Some of the fear is unfounded as society is changing and hence if we go out in a dress for example most will not be concerned and will simply allow us to go our way, some will not but they are few and some of them can be of concern if they begin to cross a line verbally or physically but that is fortunately rare.

I suppose I am angry because I do not want to have to be any more concerned than when I a male go out in male attire...but when I go out I feel I have to be on my guard constantly and I am just so sick of it!!! But! I am doing it...going for a pedicure today, had my hair done at Regis few days back...I have been outside in bright sunlight around my home openly wearing a dress. I can dress however I desire and can go out in public but when I go out I do have to be aware...why!?

I suppose the more I go out around town dressed in feminine attire perhaps in time I will be no more concerned about that than I am when I a man go out in male attire...

I am growing I suppose.

Hi Ralitsa, Looks like we were writing at the same time...hum. Right Society is changing I am on the front line we are all ambassadors for who we are in a sense. How we act can set opinions of those watching us for a long long time....
I could regret the first hidden 56?? years...I am now or soon will be 59 but it is best to live for today and to look ahead...hey I am taking very good care of myself...the hair stylist asked how old I was...perhaps I am doing something right!? I believe I have a good shot at living on for another 28 years, and probably the next 15 without any deficits or decline at all.

Hi Anne,

Since joining this board I have been reading through your posts. From what I can tell, you have been coping with this for some time but seem to have made a tremendous amount of progress. Good for you!

You make several good points, not all of which I can touch on right now, besides... you seem to have a pretty good handle on these questions and a lot of support here, but for me, the following point really stuck out:

Anne Bonny wrote:I suppose I am angry because I do not want to have to be any more concerned than when I a male go out in male attire...but when I go out I feel I have to be on my guard constantly and I am just so sick of it!!! But! I am doing it...going for a pedicure today, had my hair done at Regis few days back...I have been outside in bright sunlight around my home openly wearing a dress. I can dress however I desire and can go out in public but when I go out I do have to be aware...why!?

I'm not sure if this is what you meant or not, but when I first told my SO about my CDing, one of her first questions was "why"? This is way before I even fully realized who or what I was... I was still in the very early stages of my own self acceptance with far more questions than answers. "WHY?" Who knows... but she went on to explain the daily struggles of women. Which includes always having to be aware, always having to be on guard... Why would I want to put myself through that? I would never, ever be able to understand that risk that women face everyday, she told me.

I suppose if we want to blend in, part of it includes being aware of where we are, who might be behind us, etc... Just like many of the GG feel I suppose (and based on comments made by my SO way back when...). Again, not too sure if this is what you were talking about exactly, Anne... but I think the sad reality is that this is a risk we take for being who we are. This risk is significantly decreased if we choose to go out in male mode, but when presenting ourselves as female, that risk increases. I suppose the underlying cause is society itself and you have every right to be angry. Until society changes, this will always be something to consider when stepping outside en femme.

I had never given much thought of what my SO said back then - figured it was because she was so upset, but I have come to develop a greater understanding in the past few weeks.

I understand that feeling to want to get out, I really do! We cannot help who we are. It is a struggle at times, but if we can overcome these struggles, it just makes us better, stronger... embrace it!