Jorja, congratulations. Your clear, concise, comprehensive, and completely coherent explanation of that which creates guilt on the part of males wishing to express their femininity is exquisitely profound... thank you!Originally Posted by Jorja
Jorja, congratulations. Your clear, concise, comprehensive, and completely coherent explanation of that which creates guilt on the part of males wishing to express their femininity is exquisitely profound... thank you!
Thank you. Sometimes things just come out the way I intended.
Jorja, congratulations. Your clear, concise, comprehensive, and completely coherent explanation of that which creates guilt on the part of males wishing to express their femininity is exquisitely profound... thank you!
Yes, sometimes i do, but the feeling is starting to fade.
I do feel guilty time to time, mainly because I know a lot of people wouldn't like me doing this. It's a bit of a conflict I have
Hi Lucy,
I think, "je ne regrette rien" except for;
1. I regret I didn't dress fully earlier in life.
2. I wish I could afford to shop in Wallis in the UK more often.
Seriously, I did regret CDing when I was at the fetish stage earlier in my life, it just seemed so sordid I suppose. However, as time and acceptance of who or what I am dawned, I just enjoy being! I fully understand your guilt feelings but many here will also have felt this, it's just that old gits like me no longer worry.
Reb
This is actually more natural that we'd like to admit. In my own case, I started playing with girls starting about 2 years old, and it was just natural as we got into grade school for the girls to trade clothes with each other. It was only when one girl's mother came home and found me wearing a pretty dress, tights, and mary-jane shoes that she decided that this little 5 year old boy was a "disgusting pervert who should never be allowed to play with girls again", and made sure that her feelings were known to the principal, the PTA, and the faculty. By the time I got back to school a few days later, the teacher was telling me I couldn't play my friends (all girls) anymore, and that I had to play with the boys (dreaded enemy). The boys took great delight in having me join them, telling me to throw dirt clods at the boys across the yard - about 20 feet away. Suddenly, after we had all thrown a few clods at each other, the people on "my team" suddenly moved away from me, and the other team started throwing hard rocks the size of golf balls, quickly joined by the boys on both sides. Several rocks to the head, one cutting me just below the eye, left me crying and running to the teacher as the boys were chanting "sissy! sissy!...".
Previously, the boys had tried this taunt, and in class the teacher pointed out that "buddy" was a nice way to refer to someone as being like a brother, and "sissy" was a similar name for someone who is like your sister. As a result, the word had no power to upset me, until they added rocks and stones being thrown very accurately at my head. I had to ride the bus home, and when I got off, the boys started picking up sticks about the size of baseball bats and started beating me with them as I ran to my house, they followed me all the way up to the door.
I began to think "I can't be a girl anymore and I can't let them know that I'm a sissy". Not "I can't be a sissy anymore". In that moment, I literally had to split my personality into two. The girl was hidden, protected, safe, but couldn't play with her friends anymore because it was bad for boys to want to be like girls. The boy had no friends, hated boys, and couldn't let the girls know he wanted to play with him. He had no friends. I isolated so badly that I couldn't even read aloud in class anymore. I went from being an A student to a poor student barely making the effort to get C grades. My mom got my a library card and I started reading far above my grade level, but refused to read aloud. I knew math, but didn't want to share in class. I had to keep the most loving, caring, tender, and even successful part of my life a deep dark secret.
One night, when I couldn't sleep, I did the usual 5 year-old trick of making a monster out of something in the dirty clothes hamper, and so I got up, went to the hamper, to see what it really was. I started trying to empty out the over-stuffed hamper and found my mom's pretty church clothes. I tried on her girdle, stockings, bra, and slip. I liked the smell, the feel, and I kept remembering those wonderful times with my girl friends. I never wanted to take them off, but I knew I had to so I could go to sleep. I found it much easier to fall asleep after I had dressed. Soon, I was getting up in the middle of the night and getting all dressed up, sometimes for an hour or two. I heard my mom get up and locked the bathroom door - because I was afraid that if she saw me - she'd beat me up for being a sissy. After that, I would lock the door and get dressed up whenever I was feeling lonely or scared. Sometimes, I would even do it rather than watch television. But I was terrified that I would get caught and my mother or father would beat me up like the boys did.
One day, I had gone home and gone down the street, supposedly to play with a boy, but also with a girl who still liked me. She let me dress up, and her brother was even nice to me. We were playing with some kittens that were about 6 years old. Somebody said "A cat always lands on it's feet" - and we started throwing the kittens higher and higher to see if they really did always land on their feet. Eventually it became obvious that the kittens were hurt. The mother came home from work, saw me in the dress, and actually started to beat me, then stripped me, spanked me, then told me to get dressed and go home. When I got home, she called my dad - to tell her what I had done. He was so upset that he didn't even tell me what I had done wrong, grabbed me by both ankles and started spanking me harder than he ever had before. I was screaming as he slapped my back, my butt, my thighs, and even pounded into my back with his fists. I thought he was punishing me for wearing the dress. It was only AFTER the spanking that he explained that I had killed 4 of the cats (I got credit for all 4 even though the other kids were also doing it). I never knew whether he knew that I was dressed or not, but after that beating (the last one he ever gave me), I decided that I should NEVER let him find out that I was a "Sissy", because he might beat me like that again.
Even when my parents did find out, they gave me no support, and told me that I had to keep it a secret and couldn't tell ANYONE, especially my fundamentalist Christian grandfather. He had used a razor strap on my mother and she was afraid he might do even worse to me.
Therein lies the paradox. When we are dressed, looking the way we REALLY want to look, dressed the way we want to dress, and truly being who we want to be, even if only in the privacy of our own home, but there is also that fear that if the wrong people discovered our desire to dress and act like women, to BE women, that something terrible would happen. Our parents might throw us out of the house. Our classmates might violently assault us, even severely enough to cause permanent disability. Our employers would fire us. Our wives would divorce us. Our children would not want to see us. We might not be allowed to see our grandchildren. We might not even be buried in a catholic or Jewish cemetery.The main problem is I keep going back to it. When I am dressed I feel so great, and, dare I say it I think I look quite good but this head thing is really making it difficult.
The guilt comes from protecting our "secret" at all costs. We often go to great lengths to keep our secret, living a fundamental LIE - denying to everyone, friends, family, wives, children, parents, and others who care about us who we are at the deepest and most fundamental level. And then, in the privacy of a locked room, we get dressed and try to imagine what it would be like to be accepted in this form we've come to love so much.
Not alone at all. For me, the situation got so intense and the conflict got so intense that it lead to numerous suicide attempts, alcoholism, drug addition, even severe mental health issues. The really sad part was that when I actually did tell EACH of the therapists I was working with about being "a girl trapped in a boy's body" - they told me that I couldn't talk about that, because it wasn't going to happen. Often that would be enough to trigger yet another suicide attempt. I even got creative and tried to provoke others into killing me, especially when I was really intoxicated.Am I alone in this or does anybody else get these doubting feelings.
It was only when I started doing 12 step work that I was finally able to work up the courage to tell the girl who was living with me. When she said she was OK with it, I decided right then and there that I would marry her. When she started making it clear, shortly after the marriage, that she was NOT OK with it, I began to drift further and further away, spending more and more time at work, at 12 step meetings, and generally NOT at home with her. When the children were born, I would take the kids starting Friday night, and on Saturday, I'd make sure my wife could sleep in, we'd watch prerecorded video together (so the kids didn't have to get up at 6 AM to see their favorites), we'd go shopping or do something fun, then we'd come home about 3 PM and find out if mommy wanted to join us.
When I finally quit smoking, something she had asked me to do when she first found out about the dressing, I started buying street clothes, so I could go out dressed on Halloween. That was when my wife told me that I could either move to Colorado IMMEDIATELY, or I could come and visit the kids when it was convenient. I realized after the move, that she had been planning the divorce for a while, and the move to Colorado, where there was ONLY no-fault divorce, was so that she could get a quick and easy divorce.
The real freedom came when I realized that we were going to get divorced whether I liked it or not, regardless of what I did, and my new sponsor suggested that I start coming to 12 step meetings dressed as Debbie (finally gave the girl a name). I did lose my job, but soon found a new job, my wife had her affair and eventually had to divorce me so she could marry him. I never missed a child support payment (which made paying for transition impossible), and eventually started the steps toward transition, including electrolysis, waxing my face, and living all non-work hours as a woman. I soon met a woman, with a 2 year old child, who LOVED Debbie, and soon she had a girlfriend who liked both of us. I ended up coaching 4 women through labor, which gave me a new nickname as "The Fairy Godmother".
The freedom comes when you finally realize that you don't HAVE to keep Lucy or Debbie a secret. When I can let anyone know what I am, and how I got there, I can be free, whether I'm wearing the dress or not.
Debbie / RexLucy
The guilty feelings have gone. So simple really. Many great comments and lots of support makes it so much easier to feel right about what I am. Lucy
I don't feel guilty at all. I worry about being more isolated because of it and the lack of acceptance, that I may be harming myself in that way...
Debbie, your story sounds a lot like mine. I only wanted to play with the girls across the street from me. Barbies, dress up, paper dolls the works. I did that from about 3 years old until about the third grade. I never got in trouble for it but my older brother always called me a sissy for playing with dolls. One day they moved away and all that was left was the boys. They were mean to me and beat me. They called me names just because I didn't enjoy the boy games they played. I became a loner for a long while until the 70's came about the time I was a teenager. Suddenly it was ok to wear long hair, necklaces, bracelets....I was finally able to be a little like what I wanted to be but it might have been a bit late. Society had been able to convince me to act like a boy so I ended up getting married and having kids. All the while in secret I was dressing up when I could. The expectations of society are strong and I still have come out to only a few.
Your story is much sadder than mine but the progression is similar. I hope you can end up happy.
I don't feel guilty at all. I CD because I enjoy it and it provides a relief valve for stress. I don't take pictures of me because it's not something I feel compelled to do. That said, I'm not "out" to the world, either.
This site helped work me through the guilt I was feeling at first.It changed the way I feel about fear and possible lack of acceptance from others.I learned that my emotions don't have to be be extinguished by the way they think,nor do I need anyone's stamp of approval.I think being here was the key to learning that this is a journey and we grow with it,we arrive at a place finally where we accept ourselves and others inevitable disapproval.
Been there done that, spent years dressing, and suffering guilt for having done it. But then I also felt even more guilty when I didn't dress, because I became sullen, filled with rage and treated people like crap, and I didn't like me very much. So I started to enjoy my time dressed, I became a very contented person, and started treating family and friends much nicer, and became a better father, and husband, and less a sullen drunk. I learned to accept myself for who I am, and I have no guilt about who I am. I dress to fill a need, it makes me a better person, and it feels good, what is there to feel guilty about?
Tina B.
Magic is the art of changing consciousness at will.
no more than I have guilty feelings about being right-handed
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been there, done that, bought the ...
No regrets oe second thoughts, dressing female is me and I'm proud.
Fulfilling a Lifetime Dream of Living as a Woman in My Adult Years.Ten Years Living 24/7 as a Mature Lady
My Love of Cat's Eye Frames, Bangles, Red Lipstick, Nails, & Cheeks, Comes From My Mother - An Irish Beauty
I'm Always Rainbow Proud
No regrets. It's simlply who I am.
I never believed crossdressing was wrong or sinful—so I felt no guilt on that score. However I did feel my closeted crossdressing was deceitful in the sense that I was hiding myself from others. I was fooling with their perceptions, and it made me sad to fool my friends. I felt guilt from it. Now, while still somewhat closeted, I've discussed my crossdressing with my wife and I am more open in public with my androgynous style, so the guilt feelings have largely gone away.
Yes when I crossdress and afterwards yes for sure. Doesn't seem right sometimes. Maybe that is where the guilt comes from. Others say it is because you are denying yourself from acceptance of what you are...a crossdresser. Well, it goes both ways depending on the crossdresser. There is no rules or guidelines to any of this. For me its because I crossdress and feel I shouldn't. I don't know. I'm not. You are definitely not the only one that is for sure.
Victoriana
With my tail between my legs and I'm afraid...this is not me!
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