My expectations have been to be more of myself rather than a man or woman per se as myself is a combination based on feelings and emotions.
My expectations have been to be more of myself rather than a man or woman per se as myself is a combination based on feelings and emotions.
Second star to the right and straight on till morning
It is really what ever makes you happy. My generation was taught that there were men's roles and women's roles. In the 60's it was just how things rolled in rural America. As long as you feel the way you want to feel while taking care of your wife, more power to you. I am still working and taking care of the house and my wife. Coming home and being able to slip into something pretty makes the evening chores more palatable.
Hugs
Ellen Jo
Somtimes the light's all shining on me, Other times I can barely see.
Lately it's occured to me.....What a long strange trip it has been.
Truckin by the Grateful Dead
When I retired about 3 years ago, I started wearing panties 24/7, a bra daily, and I started to wear a nightgown to bed nightly. I also started to keep my body completely hair free.
In addition, I started to decorate my apartment in a progressively more feminine manor.
Since I now live alone, it's all easy to do.
Basically, at home, I now live as a women.
Every day when I'm through my errands and I know that I will not have a visitor,(which is not that often anymore) I always can not wait to change into all female clothes......bra (with breast forms) , panties, full slip, dress/skirt and blouse.... etc. Many times I will also wear panty hose or stockings and garters.
I have a collection of vintage day/house dresses, feminine house coats, slips .... etc.
I also have penchant for full cut nylon "granny panties ".
Sometimes I change as early as 2;00 pm but other times it may not be until be until 6:00pm but, it is every day.
If someone does indeed ring my door bell, I feign sleeping.... I am 67 years old after all.
I have indeed come to think of myself more and more of a woman which I find very natural and peaceful.
Last edited by Barbara Jo; 10-13-2014 at 09:41 PM.
I,too have had a similar experience since I retired before my wife. For eight wonderful years I was able to experience all of the beautiful things that a woman is able to do when living alone. I loved being able to try new things like sewing and experimenting with different styles of clothing or makeup.
Sorry! You look fabulous, as always.
I think you missed my point. You criticized the OP for using feminine symbolism (housework) while doing the same thing yourself (dressing in "women's" clothing.) Just as there is nothing inherently feminine about doing housework there is nothing inherently feminine about makeup and skirts. In the OP's defense, for tens of thousands of years and until very recently, the primary occupation of women has been homemaking. Wearing makeup and shaving legs and underarms is very recent. Excluding ruling class types, of course.Anyway, you already solved your own problem here, I don't claim to be more of a woman or to have any more of a female gender identity just because I (try to) present as a woman. Similarly, I would be the last one to say that a woman is anything less than a woman just because she doesn't dress as a stereotypical cross-dresser (i.e. skirt hose heels).
For me, cross-dressing is about trying to find the right balance between (my own interpretation of) an idealised femme .of me and what people expect to see nowadays. Sometimes, I (deliberately) fail.
Fair enough. Ultimately, hardly anything is inherently feminine or masculine. As society changes, so does what it considers feminine and masculine, and that was kind of my point regarding housework. Doing housework isn't tied to your gender anymore, but wearing skirts or makeup actually is where I live. The fact that I actually do wear skirts and makeup makes me a cross-dresser. Doing the dishes doesn't.
Anyway, I would never claim that (my) cross-dressing is free of any sexism or hypocrisy in the first place.
Did your identity switch or was it the family role?
The big problem with that concept is, that everyone gets lumped into either one extreme or the other. Just like so many other things, there's a huge gray area in the middle, and not everyone who has gender identity issues will suffer from significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning. I'm sure that I'm not the only one here on these boards that doesn't fit that description; yet, I don't ever feel quite right as a male, either; there's always this vague feeling that something's not quite right as I go about my day to day life, living and carefully behaving ONLY in stereotypical male ways, never letting any feminine anything show to the rest of the world. It's definitely GID; but it does not impair the rest of my life, nor make me so miserable that I can't function.
Just as previous generations of mental health professionals used to think being homosexual was a disease state, there WILL be changes made in it's definitions in future iterations regarding GID.
We've made progress, but we're not there yet; mostly because far, far too many in the mental health field stop learning when they step out of school, because now they have their masters/doctorate, and then of course believe that they know everything.
Some causes of crossdressing you've probably never even considered: My TG biography at:http://www.crossdressers.com/forums/...=1#post1490560
There's an addendum at post # 82 on that thread, too. It's about a ten minute read.
Why don't we understand our desire to dress, behave and feel like a girl? Because from childhood, boys are told that the worst possible thing we can be, is a sissy. This feeling is so ingrained into our psyche, that we will suppress any thoughts that connect us to being or wanting to be feminine, even to the point of creating separate personalities to assign those female feelings into.
at this stage of my life I do more than half of the housework, I too grew up in a family with very clearly defined male and female chores. Housework was not something a male did. Now I would do all the housework dressed or not if not for other chores considered to manly for my wife. Of course while doing housework I prefer to be dressed. Oh to be a 1950's housewife.
This was my response in another recent thread:
I don't get into every single layer of cross-gender expression in every post. There's too much to talk about. So I address my comments to the situation at hand. In his thread, I was addressing the OP's idea of "switching" from male to female. People don't switch. They are one, the other, or both. A further complication is when someone confuses innate gender identity with a strong desire to look and behave in a stereotypically female manner.
Reine
Hi Cheryl Ann,
Well I can't say my identity has switched one way or the other. I know I have a distinct female identity (Isha) and I express her in as close an approximation to a woman as I can (e.g., clothing, make-up, hair, mannerisms, voice) but my likes, wants, hopes and dreams are still the same regardless of which identity I am presenting (male or female). Do I like housework more as Isha? Nope . . . like it about as much as I do "en boy". Do I prefer cooking as a boy or a girl? To be honest it doesn't matter, I love to cook (always have) and it makes not difference which identity does the cooking. I still love to do renovations, still hate yard work, love to build computer cases, am an absolute neophyte when it comes to fixing cars and so on. My identity does not change my core personality it only changes the presentation for me.
Hugs
Isha
I don't think that I would say that mine switched. 'She' has always been there, so its more like I've allowed my female identity to emerge in the last year, rather then change. Partly because circumstances have allowed for it, and partly because I've overcome some guilt issues with it.
I've never really thought of my identity as the tasks I do around the house. I've always done a lot of the cleaning and laundry and so on(as a boy or girl), never did much cooking because I never took the time to develop that skill, and couldn't fix a car if my life depended on it. My wife and I never approached dividing tasks by gender, only by who liked doing it(or least minded doing it), or who was better at getting it done. Its also varied at times because of work or illness or whatever.
Margot
In our home the division of responsibilities falls not along the lines of gender, but who is best qualified or best able.
Having been raised and socialized as a male in the "automobile capitol of the world" during the 1960's, I developed a skill set and mind set quite different from my wife. Those make me the obvious person for tasks we generally but inaccurately identify as "male".
My wife was recently promoted to management. I am a retired manager who cares for our home and one of our grandchildren while her mother works. This is not an uncommon role reversal.
To succeed in this new role, I have added domestic skills to my set.
I am still the best qualified for "male" tasks, but increasingly choose to execute those with a checkbook rather than a tool box.
Today, I get more satisfaction greeting my wife at the door of our freshly cleaned house with a tasty meal on the stove than I ever got from any work day.
Does that mean that I enjoy feminine tasks more than masculine tasks? I suppose it does.
We never had gender-based tasks at home ever since my wife and I stated living together. I'd say we do things we do best and there's a large blurry area that both of us fit in.
Right now, I am staying home with children while my wife goes out to work. So I am one of those stay-home dads and I'm enjoying it to the fullest, though I would not say it has much if anything to do with my CDing.
One of the greatest things of 21st century is that we have a lot more freedom to everything than we ever had before. And I would double Kate's comment, that it's more about being one's self than anything else.
As I grow older, I find that so-called feminine activities such as cooking, sewing and house cleaning are sometimes a pleasant diversion. I still love working in my workshop doing woodworking or repairing things. If I had a choice, I would prefer to be a woman doing both.