Horrifying experience as a child

[Kris Avery]

I searched the forums and didn't find anything similar to this so I'm starting a new thread.

I'm really going out on a limb here and sharing a very personal story.

As I think back to the causes for my CD and in general part of a definite larger GD issue I have.
There is one childhood memory that very clearly comes to mind and sticks out from all others.
Wow, that says a lot doesn't it?

I had cousins living in South America in the late 1970s and several family members had
gathered at my grandparents house for a reunion. They had all brought clothes
for my cousins and it was all going to be gone through and decided what would be sent.

One of the mornings before breakfast my strong willed mother decided that I was going
to try on my female cousins clothes to make sure they would fit before paying the huge
postage to mail a large crate of clothes that far away. (We were known to be the same size)

I, being strong willed myself, dug in and said "no way".
I was quickly told that I wouldn't be eating until I did so.
There was great crying, grinding of teeth, and temper displays over the next several hours.
They all sat down and ate without me and wouldn't give in.
The smell of a country breakfast at a grandmothers house was agony when I was not allowed to eat.
Past experience told me that my mother was strong willed enough to go on for days - if required.

However, after about 2 hours, I finally relented.

It was as if something snapped inside me and I just gave up and had to made peace with the idea.
I ended up trying on (and was made to model) all the clothes for my mother to pass judgment on.
Many of the items were dresses and in any case - were definitely female clothes.
I don't recall, even now, if the experience (once I gave in) was pleasurable or not.

Looking back at "the incident" 30+ years later, I am quite sure that a wall came down
that day and that I no longer had the "mental block" that your average guy has regarding
female clothes or wearing them. I'm drawn to them more than male clothes - for certain.

As a teen, it's further irony that I developed Anorexia and it was clearly associated by professionals
in lengthy therapy as the only form control I had with my dominant mother - being able
to manipulate my intake of food.

I'm most interested in other's opinions and if anyone has a similar story to share.

[Katey888]

Wendy - that's honest of you to share that experience, and I can imagine it must have caused some old and potentially unpalatable feelings to resurface... I'm sure it could have had something to do with your feelings and desires later - tough one to say how much... but well done for sharing the history...

My opinion..? Our parents and older generations had some majorly screwed up ideas about how to motivate children and other people... It probably wasn't true of everyone's parents, but combine the simplistic and (relatively) harder lifestyle and values of an older generation with a dominant personality and you have a recipe for abuse, which is what this was... I do feel for you babe... It's always difficult to feel that any parent has done something wrong and be honest about that, and that's a cruel thing to have done to you...

Maybe you've identified your 'trigger' incident here...? And I hope it doesn't impact your self acceptance... whatever caused it: it's not wrong and it's not your fault...

Katey x

[Anna H]

I had something similar.

We lived in a place where there were very few kids around, so
I rarely saw any others for a long time. When I got in first grade
at about 5-6, there were some boys roughing it up at recess.

They were all shoving and being rowdy and I got pushed into a little
girl...(whom I adored...so pretty and nice). She got knocked down.
She wasn't hurt but it wasn't a good thing to happen...

I somehow got the blame for it..and still to this day have no idea
why it was me who got singled out. But I did.

The teacher told me to go into the coat room and there was a dress
hanging in there that I was to put on.

I'd always liked the girls much better and would rather have been
friends with them, but the idea of being in the dress in front of
the whole school scared me.

Anyway, back then (very early 60's), if any adult told any child to
do something, it was Law. There was no getting out of it. It was going
to happen.

The dress wasn't there. My teacher told me she'd bring it the next
morning. So i had the whole night to get used to the idea that I was
going to be wearing the dress in school the next day.

She didn't bring it and nothing else was said about it that day, but
for a long time, I waited for her to show up with it. I fully expected
it to happen sooner or later. The adult had said it was going to, and
i sure believed her. I guess i visualized it and got a bit used to it...
waiting for it to happen.

I've *always* wondered what the dress would have looked like. I took
notice of dresses the girls wore a lot more while waiting. I liked
some and didn't like others. I just hoped mine was going to be one
of those I liked....lol!

Maybe at about 7 years old, I got tired of waiting and went and
found one my own! heehee!

I Loved that teacher! ♥

[Gillian Gigs]

Extreme experiences as a child do burn deep into your psyche. One of my punishments as a child was being dressed up in girls clothing. The first incident in my memory was at the age of 4, being put into panties and then being teased my two older sisters. Between verbal warnings of it happening and it actually happening, too many time to count, it took place many times over my childhood years. Sometimes it was just a threat, sometimes it was being dressed, there was plenty of girls clothes with two older sisters around. I don't remember exactly when it stopped, but I went back to it on my own, around 13, maybe 14 and the rest is history.

[Requal Jo]

A beautiful story Wendy. Yes adults were LAW in those days. What told the child did, no questions asked.

If you tried to hang out or argue back the punishment got worse or you suffered longer.

While not associated with my dressing, I too remember going to bed with no dinner on occasions when not doing as I was told by my parents. (That is over 60 years ago).

[Jenniferathome]

I wouldn't describe this event as horrifying or even traumatic. One time, when you were a kid, your parents made you do something you didn't want to. Next. I can't buy into your hypothesis at all. I think you are looking for an explanation as to why you are a cross dresser to justify something to yourself. "I am a cross dresser because.... happened." Rather than,"I am a cross dresser."

[BethanyAnn]

I had a similar experience but it developed differently. My mom had me try on a dress for my cousin when I was around 3. I didn't care but found I loved the dress! My mom then told me that I could have a different dress and after going through all my older sisters dresses I found one that I liked even better. When my aunt and cousin came over the next day, we both wore our dresses all day. That started what was a 2-3 year period where we got dressed up and played house and barbies, etc. I balled my eyes out when my mother told me I couldn't dress up with Cindy anymore. I started on my own in the closet then at 8.

[Kris Avery]

I wouldn't describe this event as horrifying or even traumatic. One time, when you were a kid, your parents made you do something you didn't want to. Next. I can't buy into your hypothesis at all. I think you are looking for an explanation as to why you are a cross dresser to justify something to yourself.

Jennifer,
I'm quite happy with my life and my SO is as well. We both wouldn't change a thing; CD related or otherwise. She actually enjoys it a large percentage of the time and is quite often even turned on by her girlfriend so 'yay' for us that we found each other and have a great thing going.

While sharing my story/experience here may seem to be some kind of odd justification to this odd behavior....it is not. I do not feel like I need something to point to at this stage in my life. I'm sorry if you see this post as a justification for a behavior. You are certainly entitled to your opinion, I solicited your response, so thank you.

I was looking to see if others in this group also might have suffered this type of punishment (which is darn odd BTW) since it 'might' in theory possibly be related; should here be a large number of us who suffered this indignity in their formative years.

I can also appreciate you not knowing the depth of the constant overbearing demands and indignities that my mother made on me, and still does- to some extent, on my life. I will spare you and the others here any other stories from my childhood. Suffice it to say, I was punished often, not this one time and the punishment was always 'very creative' and not in any way socially acceptable by today's standards.

This example was just one story, one single page in the thick story book of my childhood.

[devida]

One of my very earliest memories, perhaps my earliest, was a traumatic event which happened when I was 4 or 5. I was dropped off by my parents to a Christmas play at my school in Geneva (we had moved to Switzrland when I was 3 years old). I was dressed as a goat. Apparently my parents had the date wrong and I remember wandering the empty halls in tears, no doubt bleating like a baby goat, until a kind caretaker found me and eventually contacted my parents.

Now I have no idea if this memory is real. It happened probably too early for accurate memory formation. But I vividly remember my feeing of confusion and abandonment. I no longer have any way to verify the memory. But the memory is part of the story of my childhood, which is rich in my perceptions of being neglected and abandoned by my rich celebrity parents. As such it is part of the life story that I have used to define myself. I did not choose to define this trauma as causing a lifelong dislike of theatre or of goats or a fear of large halls, a hatred of missed dates, or a love of kindly caretakers. I chose to focus on my abandonment by clueless and neglectful parents.

We tell stories about ourselves to give us a sense of continuity and meaning in our life. The evidence is that most of the memories we have of our childhood are very inaccurate and, like all memories, are reformed and relived to an extent every time we remember something. There is no cell in which memory is kept like bits on a hard drive. We recreate every time we remember. So I have become a bit wary of my childhood memories, in fact I am cautious about most of my memories. I know that most of the time I am telling a story to myself and others to make my life easier to understand, to explain why I am the way I am to myself and others. I'm not criticizing this behavior. It's just human. But I do remind myself that my stories are probably just a useful fiction. I do this so that I can make sure that the story is of practical use to me today. Does the story help me become a happier, strong, self confident and more loving and integrated human being or does it feed into that shadow part of me that is fearful, abandoned and alone in a random universe over which I have no control.

I liked your story Wendy O. To me, because that matches my story, the most important part of the story is your domineering and callous mother, your determination and your reluctant surrender to a greater and inexplicable force, the baffling adult. You have chosen to see this story in what seems to me a more positive light, using it as the origin of your gender non conformity. You say the incident broke down a wall, which suggests you find cross gender lines to be liberating. I think this is exactly the way we should use the stories we tell ourselves, as examples of how out of sometimes just awful circumstances we have succeeded in becoming caring, competent and content mature human beings.

[Roberta Young]

Hi Wendy, My story goes like this. Went to catholic school and I believe it was the 5th grade. The nun there thought it was a good idea to have a Christmas play. Boys and girls were selected for different roles. I raised My hand and said I could build a switch panel for flood lights and music effects.I figure I would be under the stage out of sight. The nun instructed everyone to come in with very dark RED lipstick the day of the play.She said it would show up well under the flood lights. So I had to walk to school in the morning with a bright pout. To this day Im a red lipstick Girl. Hugs Roberta

[Rhonda Jean]

Sounds reasonable to me that this was an influencing factor.

I had quite a bit of latitude as a kid when it came to clothes, hair, etc. There was a kind of a watershed moment with my mother, too. I won't go into it here, but it wasn't abusive, Quite the opposite, really. And, no, it wasn't sexual. Decades later I admitted this to a therapist. She said that although there wasn't anything really wrong with what she did, that she crossed a boundary. This incident isn't the reason I'm a crossdresser. I was already on that path. But, it was different after that. If it wasn't already indelibly imprinted on me by then, it certainly was afterward.

My watershed moment was very different from yours. I was willing, you were forced. But the "crossing a boundary" issue still seems accurate. I also thing that despite your protests, something made you susceptible to that. You reacted differently to it than someone without that predilection to crossdress. It probably didn't cause it, but it caused you to feel differently about it.

[Dena]

It's interesting how these relatively minor events can be such a big deal (I don't mean to be dismissive).

I had a similar experience. I was going to go ice skating with my sisters when I was maybe 7 years old. My long underwear was in the wash, and my mom had me wear a pair of my sisters' tights. I had a fit, but put them on anyway with the help and amusement of one of my sisters. Of course I found I liked wearing them...

[Confucius]

Thank you Wendy for you personal story. Yes, I can see where you identified a psychological trigger that created a mental approval for cross-dressing. However, i would also believe that there were other factors, including biological factors such as neural connections in your brain so that your brain interprets cross-dressing as actual contact with a female. Your brain releases neurotransmitters that make you feel happy when you cross-dress, and "normal" males just don't get those sensations.

In my case, I have an older brother who was something of a bully, and when my mother was pregnant with me, she was praying for daughter. She was convinced she would have a girl and even prepared for a baby daughter. So when I was born, my mother was disappointed. But she was a good and loving mother to me anyway. About six months after I was born, she found herself pregnant again. Once again she hoped and prayed for a daughter. Then on Christmas morning my sister was born. My mother would often tell the story to us, and how this was the happiest day of her life.

So my sister was pampered and treasured as my mom's little princess, and I was clingy, jealous, and always trying to get my mother's attention. My mother would tell us about how hard those days were. She had to carry me in one arm while she held my sister in her other arm. About the age of three or four, I started rummaging through my mom's closet and playing dress up. I would pull out her best clothes and tell my mother that I was playing "mommy". Well, my mother didn't approve of me playing dress-up because I was ruining her clothes. Now my mom was a very good seamstress, so one day she started making a dress - just my size. She would have me try it on while she worked on it. It was a party dress, shiny and with a built in petticoat. When it was about done, she had me try it on and it was wonderful. I would twirl around and around to make the skirt rise, and it made me and my mother both laugh. Just then my older brother walked in to see what the laughter was about. He looked at me and he fell to the floor laughing and pointing at me. Immediately my feelings went from joy to humiliation. "Take it off, take it off," I cried. I was in tears. Just then my father came in and there was some loud discussion. I never wore that dress again.. I was banned from my mother's closet too. The dress was given to a neighbor girl across the street. I would see her later at church, and my brother would point her out. "Look Linda is wearing your dress," he would say as he punched me in the arm - a sort of aversion therapy.

By this time in my life (about 4 years old), I was envious of girls, believing that they had it better in life. I had already violated the gender barriers and I was learning that this was something that had to be a closely guarded secret.

[Kris Avery]

I want to take a moment and thank EACH of you for your comments.

It continues to amaze me that when we bare our soul to others - quite often it's when we learn the most about ourselves. (Wow, I think I just made that up but it seems very accurate)

Once again, a huge thank you for the comments that have been posted (every one of them) as well as the ones that will likely be posted in the future.

[PegyL]

I was brought up in a house of adults as my mother divorced my father after I was born and my mothers mother took me in. There were eight adults in the house and we lived on a hill with all adults living in the other houses. they all were out a great deal and I would be left alone. I had an aunt who was my size.I would sleep with her as I was so young but I would get up early and watch her in her silk nighties and such and wanted to feel her texture. I would rub up against her and pretend I was wearing them. When I was alone in the house which was quite often I would go in her dresser and put on the silk and lace panties and get dressed to the nines. That was many years ago, and I still dress today when I get the chance. What I miss today are older cd to chat with. PegyL

[SO1Adam12]

Wendy, to you and the rest who were intentionally humiliated as a child - I'm sorry this happened to you. I'm not willing to brush it off as a generational thing, it is flat out cruel. Yes, there were plenty of things that were done differently when it comes to parenting back in the day, but cruelty is cruelty regardless. I work with young children so I know that traumatic things can and do change a child in their formative years so I am by no means disregarding your point.

To put a spin on your theory I'm going to put this out there. Obviously there are CDing female to males out there. In fact, they are much more visible than male to female CDers because it for whatever reason more acceptable to society. I for one have 5 brothers and heck yes I got boys hand me downs, mostly jeans, sweatshirts, etc. As a teenager my brother would hunt me down for wearing his favorite pair of 501's and pink IZOD shirt. As a married woman I loved to wear my ex-husbands flannel shirts on a rainy weekend hanging around the house and I still have some mens t-shirts I wear when I workout or am cleaning. Does that make me a CDer? I can't imagine a girly/girl child would be so traumatized by being forced to wear boys clothing on one occasion that she would suddenly become a tomboy. Heck I have a tomboy daughter who loves dresses and makeup as well as getting dirty on the softball fields. My point is, if a childhood trauma can make a male into a female CDer, why would it not do the same for a female to male CDer?

[Madilyn A.]

I recall at about 7 through 10 yrs. of age, having to put on a dress while my mother would measure it, pin it up and adjust the hem. I recall at first protesting and acting "upset". but I already had begun crossdressing by this time. I must have had to assist her about 6 times or so. I wonder if she ever knew ? Especially as I grew and stretched out many of her things and put runs in her stockings ? I have so man times wanted to engage her in conversation to find out if she really knew or suspected.

[Anna H]

My point is, if a childhood trauma can make a male into a female CDer, why would it not do the same for a female to male CDer?

Well, i don't personally think of mine as a cruel or humiliating life changing
thing that happened to me. I had nothing to make any comparison with
at a young age, so it was "just the way things are".

I don't add my story to say that it was a cause. I do add it for those
who love to analyze what we do. If it helps...Great!

There are a few things that happened in my life before that minor event
that were more likely a "cause"...if there can be a "cause".

I tend to think I was just predisposed to it. Nobody's fault anywhere.
It's just a natural...although unusual...thing that happens to some of us.

So many of us think for the longest time that we're the "only one".
For years. A big secret. In most all cultures, all over the world.

So all of us so independently of each other turning out as we are...
there's something more to it than social/upbringing factors.

It's none of our faults.

[natalie edwards]

Hi Wendy, My story goes like this. Went to catholic school and I believe it was the 5th grade. The nun there thought it was a good idea to have a Christmas play. Boys and girls were selected for different roles. I raised My hand and said I could build a switch panel for flood lights and music effects.I figure I would be under the stage out of sight. The nun instructed everyone to come in with very dark RED lipstick the day of the play.She said it would show up well under the flood lights. So I had to walk to school in the morning with a bright pout. To this day Im a red lipstick Girl. Hugs Roberta

Wow! Me too but in first grade in Catholic school. I wouldn't do it though and tried to convince my parents I was sick. They still made me go. I told them why I couldn't go and instead of letting me stay home, my mother put lipstick on me and they drove me to school!
Once out of the car I tried my best to get it off and pretty much did. But when I got into the classroom the nun told me to put it back on. Some girls had some but I wouldn't do it and hid under my desk. So they got some girls from 8th grade to drag meout, hold me down, and put it on me while the entire class laughed at me.
Years later when 8th grade graduation came and classmates were creating a journal of our years together they included this event.
Looking back I have to wonder how much of that was just about seeing little boys in lipstick.

[Tinkerbell-GG]

My point is, if a childhood trauma can make a male into a female CDer, why would it not do the same for a female to male CDer?

Best guess? Different brain wiring and testosterone. There are quite a few compulsive activities that men engage in that women don't. I honestly don't see why crossdressing should be placed in a different box than these? They sure start off the same way and most seem to take a similar path of progression etc. But because non gender crossdressing looks exactly the same as those who dress to correct gender dysphoria, confusion should be expected.

As for my H, he was forced into his sisters clothing as a very young boy by his mother (he got his clothes dirty and she only had spare girl clothing) and through counselling my H dealt with this event and how mortified it made him feel. He started crossdressing literally the next day. There's little doubt this was the catalyst as he remembers never even being a tiny bit interested in girl clothing until this moment. Amazing how insignificant this must have seemed to his mother yet the impact it had on my H will last a lifetime.

I carry spare boys clothing with me everywhere now!

[Gillian Gigs]

Quote,"There's little doubt this was the catalyst as he remembers never even being a tiny bit interested in girl clothing until this moment. Amazing how insignificant this must have seemed to his mother yet the impact it had on my H will last a lifetime."
After the first day I was put into girls panties, I had re-occuring dreams, thoughts about how this felt. It was like I became obsessive about it, these thoughts that never really went away. I would wake up in the night because of these childhood dreams.
Quote,"Best guess? Different brain wiring and testosterone."
As I entered puberity, and as the testosterone started to flow, the thoughts, fantasies, and obsession grew. This obsession lead to wearing lingerie first, then the other clothes, which lead to my first ejaculation. Once this happened, it was like falling off a cliff into a chasm that I have never been able to climb out of.
Some may say that I didn't want to climb out, but I did try many times, only to fall back a little deeper each time. Looking back, some would say how many times did you purge, to many to count. Then you get to the point of accepting the things you can change, and accepting the things that you can not.

[LilSissyStevie]

One theory out there concerning the origins of TGism identifies childhood emasculation trauma as a likely trigger. I know that the theory fits me to a "T" and the narratives in this thread tell me I'm probably not alone. My whole childhood was one long emasculation trauma, for example, my grandmother used to beat me until I cried. She wouldn't stop until I did. Then because I cried she would call me a sissy or a crybaby and tell me I was acting like a girl. At some point I realized that if I really was a girl, I wouldn't be treated like that. I felt that masculinity was something beyond my grasp. I could never be a Real Man™ and quite frankly I didn't want to be one and I fantasized a lot about being a girl. When I reached puberty, my anxiety about masculinity was such that I couldn't deal with the idea of assuming the male role sexually and I began to also fantasize about being either a female sexually or a sexually submissive male. My first orgasm was to one of these fantasies. This has re-wired my brain to the point that I'm scarcely capable of performing in the male role and I get no real enjoyment out of the times I do. If anyone wonders how someone could start with non-sexual cross gender fantasies at 4 and and end up as a fetishist, that's how.

[Stephanie47]

I've always explored in my mind "Why am I a cross dresser?" I was never dressed in girl's clothing. My punishment was always a belt across the back of my thighs and butt. If there was any one incident that may have turned me into a cross dresser was the day I cried my eyes out because I felt my mother did not like me because I was NOT a girl. Her idea of a perfect family was husband and wife and son and a daughter. The first born child was my BROTHER. My dad's sperm did not deliver a DAUGHTER. It was not my fault I was NOT a girl. I heard her say tooooooo many times I was suppose to be a girl. One evening at bed time I put on one of her long nylon nightgowns when I was crying. That was the only garment that was readily available. She consoled me and told me that she loved me. She said she would stop saying I was suppose to be a girl. She did. However, she still whipped my ass with a belt. I was all boy. I got in trouble at school all the time. I played any and all sports. Years later I found myself fondling my mother's nylon slips as they hanged dried in the bathroom. I eventually started trying the slips on, and, slid down the slippery road to cross dressing.

Personally, I feel there was some predisposition in my genetic makeup that lead me to cross dressing.

[mariehart]

Interesting stories but as a counterpoint I can say there was nothing in my childhood to point the finger at. Once my mother got me to wear my sister's panties because all mine were dirty. I was reluctant but she said not to be silly no one will see. So I did and that was that. No drama.

I started trying on girls clothes when I was about 12. It just felt normal.

[sometimes_miss]

I was dressed up as a girl when a toddler; mom had wanted another girl, and used 'economizing' as a reason to use my older sister's clothes on me as hand-me-downs. Mom carefully avoided my dad ever seeing me in any type of girl things for several years. As I was too young to know any better, it didn't seem to affect how I saw myself gender wise.

Eating disorders; something I know quite a lot about. Mine started within a month after the sexual abuse started; I had been a normal skinny boy until that, afterwards, my weight would fluctuate for the rest of my life. Children do not have access to any other substance abuse, only food. So thats what they use to control their minds.
Theory. Combination of Freud's defense mechanisms, Maslow's heirarchy of needs, and probably some other stuff. I didn't study psych to teach it, so i didn't memorize all the theorists names or the technical names of the theories. But i did put it all together. We use some thought processes to suppress the ones we can't accept or deal with. Example, someone's upset, they go to the gym to work out, and put whatever upset them out of their thoughts for a while. Now here's where it gets interesting. What thought processes take the most priority? Well, let's see. Breathing; if you can't breath, nothing else matters now, does it? So that's #1. highest priority thought process. What's next? Safety. If you're being chased by a nut with an axe, worrying about next week's meeting isn't even in your mind. and so it goes. Shelter, thirst, hunger, sexual needs, etc.. When your mind wants to push an uncomfortable thought out, it starts up a higher priority thought process. An easy example is smoking; but it's not the tobacco; it's the process of focusing on breathing that helps people feel relaxed because focusing on the most important thought process we have, pushes all the other problems out of our minds for a short period. But it only lasts for awhile, until those uncomfortable thoughts return, and then the desire for 'a smoke' (but really any activity where you focus on breathing, such as meditation) returns. next up is drinking and eating, and using drugs. I spoke with a former addict; and confirmed what I believed; when you're using drugs, or eating too much food, it actually seems like a good idea when you're doing it. Deep down, we know it's not good for us. But when we're in defense mechanism mode, our brains need to use those high level thought processes to suppress others that we don't want to deal with, so our minds convince ourselves that it's a good idea; then we indulge in whatever it is that our minds chose to use. Adrenaline junkies that like high risk activities can be doing the same thing; I'm not saying everyone who seeks that type of activity is always using it as a defense mechanism, but surely some of them are. So, smoking, dangerous activities, eating disorders and other substance abuses, all are used to fend off thinking about uncomfortable or unacceptable topics, such as, being sexually abused, subject to danger (such as about to be deployed into combat) or maybe even just an exam the next day.
I'm not a psychiatrist or psychologist. But reading all this stuff for so many years, it all starts to come together. Then the pieces fit, and it all begins to make sense.
I crossdress for several reasons; one, like pavlov's dogs, crossdressing is attached to receiving the only affection I knew when I was a kid, and also during the time I was dressed as a girl, I was safe from being beaten up by family and other kids in the neighborhood (I was either with someone older who protected me from other kids, or I was alone, either way, safe from being beaten). Two, repeatedly told that I was really supposed to be a girl, god made a mistake, so I should try to learn to be the girl I was supposed to be. So crossdressing fits some of the top thought processes; safety, and affection (or, being conditioned to believe affection will be received if I crossdress).
Hope that gives some others a clue as to why they feel like they do.