[SIZE="2"]“One day, a man with a pointy hat walked into town carrying a large yellow briefcase. He was also carrying a wand and a very large bottle of... homemade syrup.” (from a children’s story printed in the local newspaper, under the heading “Imaginations Work!”)
I don’t really know what that means, but since its Friday the 13th I thought I would write a little about superstitions. Thanks to deep-seated childhood traumas and assorted encounters with superstitious individuals, even I, an educated adult boy/girl who should know better, feel a tweak of something when Friday falls on the thirteenth day of the month. Perhaps I’m replaying an old joke in my head. According to the Urban Dictionary, “A person who is superstitious is a person who doesn't require evidence to believe in something. A non-superstitious person does require evidence. Some people require proof to believe something exists. Others require less than that. Those others are superstitious.” I don’t have the superstatistics to back up this diatribe, so you can see this as an experimental exercise in free association, as well as unbridled verbosity. Please bear with me, my superstitious friends...
I’m wondering if people see crossdressers (in this case MtF CD’ers) through the eyes and minds of their own relationship to superstition – they believe in supernatural causality, and we are outside of that belief, so we cannot be welcomed, or even tolerated to any degree, since it may upset whatever it is they’re trying to achieve in life. Most people are interested in survival, and I’m no different – I want to keep living, in fact I want to last as long as possible. I could live on through my children and grandchildren, but there won’t be any. All I have is me, NOW, so I have to make sense of my own existence. That may be impossibility, but others use superstitions to get through life as best they can, clinging to an imaginary framework of beliefs or attitudes that are consistent with what is generally considered by society to be true and rational. I exist outside of all this, by choice I might add, so I can be seen as a walking superstition...
Yup, it’s Friday the 13th everyday with me, as I go against the grain, swim against the tide, and turn society on its collective ear. I require evidence to believe in something, which frees me to do as I like, in this case wear some REALLY interesting clothes and feel good doing it. One thing I’m not is over-scrupulous! I never knock on wood, I don’t cross my fingers, and I pay little or no attention to spurious dates on calendars. I’m happy, but they (the public) don’t like me, mainly because I represent something dangerous – I’m a product of free thought, unencumbered by any and all superstitions. Indeed, how can you be superstitious and dress contrary to your birth gender? Maybe this is what the problem is – we’re held back by guilty associations, burdened by beliefs in one thing or another, and we simply cannot relax and enjoy the panties! We should look into this idea of “rationality,” and think about our own rationale for crossdressing...
It makes good sense to crossdress, and I insist it’s the product of sound judgment, justified on all counts, reasonable in the extreme. Why not? If we can’t sit down with our “self” and work out what we’re going to do with our lives, then we are at the mercy of those superstitions that exist through lack of reason. “I shouldn’t be doing this,” you might say to yourself, or “This is so wrong...” Says who? When you believe in yourself, everything else is possible, in fact you will soon be standing over your OLD self and beside your new “self,” if we define superstition in a literal sense. Since you’re a MtF crossdresser, a boy who likes to wear clothes meant for girls, you are doing something consistent with the laws of nature – you’re human, and curious, and if you’re male you’re not as far away from being female as you might think. That’s another superstition you may want to bury in the backyard – I’ll lend you my shovel...
Let’s get back to that gentleman who walked into town wearing a pointy hat, carrying a yellow briefcase – what if he transformed into a she, and she was wearing a wig, and carrying a yellow purse? Would it be considered superstitious to write about this event, or even acknowledge that it actually happened? Let’s say I‘m the tranny in the story, and I have some explaining to do – after all, I’ve upset the apple cart of societal mores by doing something “naughty,” and I have to explain my rationale for dressing this way. Can people get past their own superstitions, or those implanted in them since childhood, to even understand WHY a male would wish to dress this way and abandon masculinity for greener pastures? I think not, which is why I do not care to dump my well-reasoned lifestyle on those senseless individuals who cannot see past their own prejudice – even if I pour my bottle of sweet syrup on their unexciting waffles (this is Little Sweden, you know) in a gesture of submission, I will always be seen as a societal aberration, or worse. Our known “facts” will never jibe, no matter how eloquent my words are, or how elegant my presentation is...
To others, I am engaged in something called “improper worship.” Since I worship the “self,” the only thing I truly have, and I worship the closet (in a peripheral sense), I’m seen as selfish and irrational. But, hang on – my vain observances in daily life have a lot to do with being amazed (or awed) by what I can accomplish with a little imagination. I have survived my battles with superstition, and I’ve lived to tell about it – there’s no reason why you can’t crossdress and feel GOOD about it, case closed, and let’s get on with the joy of living! You can do your own “partial reinforcement effect” (look it up) by behaving contrary to superstition – your actions create reinforcement, and actions will always speak louder than words. You will remain alive and living, and that’s the whole idea of existence, isn’t it? This lifestyle may be expensive, but it’s not unreasonable – I wish all those purveyors of superstition would stop thinking that what I’m doing is foolish and silly...
Almost automatically, without reason, Friday the 13th is mentioned, usually accompanied by a nervous laugh. I never really thought about superstition, and it’s relation to intolerance, until I looked at the calendar this morning. Outside, the world goes on, and I detect no change in the proceedings. I live in a town that was recently described as “a clean, open, safe place – it’s so friendly and people are so receptive.” Perhaps, but I cannot go forth in my anti-superstitious garb and expect a warm reception from fear-loving people with closed minds. I suppose I have the right to crossdress in public, but I’m sure that my so-called “right” will be abrogated by superstition. Meanwhile, IMAGINATION is encouraged to flourish (see the quoted text), but there is a shelf life on that cute idea – soon, superstition will constrain any child’s (or adult’s) dreams, and it will become much more difficult to do anything truly imaginative with one’s life. That is undeniably senseless, as well as unreasonable and irrational, wouldn’t you say?
Just once, I’d like to read a story where an angelic, magical fairy comes to town – she whips out her pink magic wand, taps a worthy, imaginative boy on the head, and turns him into a girl. Voila! And "she" LIVED happily ever-after, the end. I don’t expect to ever see such a story during my lifetime, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed...
Are you superstitious? Really?
Oh, BTW – WARNING, long post...[/SIZE]
Hugs!
If you don't like the way I'm livin', you just leave this long haired country girl alone:
Originally Posted by Lea Paine
