Female feelings, female thoughts, female desires?
Okay, you all share your makeup tips, post your photos, talk about how to create the illusion of a female form. So below the surface, what lurks that makes you feel female? What aspects of your person, beyond the obvious, make you feel female, make others' perceive you as female? I really want to know. Please be as honest and detailed as you can. Thanks, in advance, as always for your candor and willingness to share.
hugs
kew
The Perception of the Feminine
Great Thread (and great post Tris.... going to be a tough act to follow)...
Hmm, the way I see it, many of us act and dress in the way that we perceive femininity, or in other words its our take on what we consider feminine. That being said I can only speak for myself.
There's a part in Kill Bill II where Bill's character is speaking with Beatrix on the topic of superheroes. He was most fascinated by Superman, in that Clark Kent was his critique on human beings, what with he being an outsider. I think that as crossdressers we/I dress and act how we see femininity, but we approach it from a different angle than women do. As much as women have many joys that men can't share in (or in some cases aren't allowed to share in), such as childbirth (well, the joy AFTER labor), the donning of a wedding dress prior to the trip down the aisle, etc. etc., there are also many trials and tribulations that many men will never have to deal with, such as menstrual cramps, the threat of rape, walking the fine line of what is empowering/sexy and what is unacceptable to society (such as how men are players, but women would be considered ****s), equality, etc. etc.
As crossdressers, particularly Male2Fem CD's, we can only lightly fathom the many things that women enjoy/endure, and many times we only see the bright side, such as the short skirts, the whistles of appreciation, the feeling of being pursued rather than having to pursue. En femme, our CD alter-egos are simply our interperetation of the female gender. Howerver, with few exceptions, we dress to celebrate women, rather than to mock them, as Clark Kent's interperetation of humanity would. As a result, many of us see women as representing that which we aspire to have. En femme, do I feel empowered? Yes. En femme, do I feel more sensitive? Yes. etc. etc. Although as much as I THINK I'm more feminine, there's times when I'm still at a loss. When my SO is grieving, I react like a guy... either divert the situation with a joke or try to pretend like there's nothing wrong. Works with my guy friends, not with my girl friends. As a CD do I still miss anniversaries? Yep. Birthdays? Yep. But at the same time I feel more empathy than I would if I were just a run-of-the-mill guy.
A while back I realized that I can either see myself, the CD, as either a sissy guy/ugly girl, or as a whole that is a little fem, a little bit stubble, but somehow more whole than I would be if I only chose either.
OD
p.s. Tris, the few times that I've had, er, relations, with my exSO in drag I often felt a bit diminished as a man and often suffered from an emotional double vision... on the one hand I was a guy, and the other en femme, so it caused a bit of confusion... almost like trying to process seeing two pictures simultaneously. Don't think it would fall under the same category, but just wanted to express solidarity.
My thoughts on being female...and male!
Very, very good question Kew. I have known since adolescence I guess that I was somewhat different than other boys were. Although I grew up in a predominately male environment and had a true male childhood in that regard, something inside me was manifesting all along and telling me that there was more to it than this. The crossdressing, I believe, may have started out as a curiosity, but then as time went on, it began to represent in me something that needed to come out and be expressed and realized. I still believe that the first time I got fully dressed and made up and looked in the mirror and "saw" Christine, I knew what my destiny was going to be from then on.
So externally, I am a genetic male then. Internally, however, I feel almost totally female with the exception of how I think. I still feel that I have predominately male brain wiring, although there is no question that as time has gone on, my feminine personna has even entered into my thought processes more and more. Still, I can honestly say that I don't feel totally like a woman trapped in a man's body, and for this reason, the age factor, and many others, progressing beyond HRT to do GRS just isn't where I see myself headed. The negatives of that far outweigh the positives for me. Now then, if I was a much younger person, say in my 20's for example, well I might be at least exploring the possibility of it more...and even then I'm not sure that I would ever do it.
I can't compare my overall CD/TG experience much to many other's either. When I saw my first therapist at the age of 41, I had already been a CD for 29 years and had not told a soul. I literally had nowhere to turn to and even had suicidal thoughts from time to time. Seeking medical help was really a last resort for me, but it at least made me realize that I was not many things that I had previously thought I was (gay, abnormal, perverted, etc.) and also that I was certainly not alone in all of this. My therapist, still, had a difficult time trying to figure me out. I didn't fit into a standard cookie cutter description of what a CD was supposed to be like. I still don't, even being a TG now too, which I believe I have been for probably much longer than even I had realized.
When others say..."well I don't WANT to be a woman...I just like to wear the clothes"...I can understand and appreciate that...but that is not how I feel about myself. I mean...internally, I already feel that I AM mostly a woman...probably another reason for not needing to have the surgery done to just reaffirm the obvious. I still have a male exterior and personna...I don't necessarily hate it...it just doesn't do a lot for me emotionally other than be a sort of protector and bodyguard of my feminine self. I guess I kinda fall more into the she-male description...and I want my exterior to look more feminine and match the female personna that I believe predominately is me. And yet I really have no desire to lose my male parts either. I don't even have two distinct and separate personalities...they are more or less integrated into one...sort of two sides of the same coin. My female side, as I have gotten older, has become more dominant, but there is still basically one personality only.
I think that I have been extremely fortunate in life to have been able to fully realize some of the very positive qualities of the feminine experience...the loving, caring, nurturing nature. The way females bond by building relationships, where your inner thoughts and feelings are more easily expressed and shared with your best girlfriends. That kind of thing. Men can be very basic, shallow, and superficial. Not an awful lot going on up there mentally most of the time. It is really not the most cerebral of genders. Jeff Foxworthy pretty much nailed it in his comic routine. We want a beer and we wanna see something NEKKID! While the simplicity of that can be rather "liberating", it sort of limits your ability to explore all that you can truly be as a human being, in my opinion.
Men, in my opinion, have been brutally conditioned by society for decades...even centuries! So much so in fact, that half of our humanity as a human being has been socially conditioned right out of us since childhood. Men really do have the capacity to nurture, to feel emotionally, and freely express that to others, and to laugh and cry at the same time and know the reason for it. We are taught at a very early age in life to not be that way. You are not supposed to outwardly exhibit traits that suggest a feminine nature...because, according to society and it's strict "rules" of gender behavior...this is WRONG. Well...no, this NOT wrong. What IS wrong, however, is society's incessant NEED to define male and female roles and keep that carved in stone forever. The sooner we, as members of society, can breakdown this stereotypical thinking of how the sexes are "supposed" to be, and act, and think, and dress, the sooner we all will get to the level where we can all interact with each other as the fully developed and realized HUMAN BEINGS that we were meant to be and are capable of being. That is how I see our existence and purpose for being on this planet. Of course, that is just my opinion...I could be wrong.
I hope that this helps to clarify things a little bit more for you Kew, from this T-girl's perspective anyway.;)
Love,
Chrissie:)