The Dark Side

[Julie Gaum]

I read, when possible, your letters night after night that often refer to childhood experiences when you were encouraged in your journey by sisters, GFs and/or mothers, but not one mention of fathers who I believe often, due to bigotry, religious misconceptions etc.,called you (when you were a teenager) a "fag, queer, deviant" and so on and then ordered you out of the house. On your own various paths were taken to survive.
Would like to hear of the fathers' contributions to your life experiences.
Julie

[BarbaraTalbot]

was delivered mainly by my mother through an insincere public smile with clenched teeth, and hissed undertones.

My fathers contribution was his absence, his violence, and his demeanor on the rare occasion he was present. He was a child of a series of alcoholic stepmothers and thought his lifetime of abstinence from alcohol was enough. Frankly I wish he'd had a drink or two. (I don't drink myself either.) He was never on the wagon from being a work-aholic though. I played baseball only one season (3rd grade). He played catch with me I would say less than 5 times and complained that I was afraid of the ball and that was my problem with not being able to catch. (By the way I finally learned to catch, bricks on a job later where we put the bricks under iron mesh, those tosses afraid or not you keep your eyes on!) I enjoyed my "job" on the little league team. I "batted" 3rd. I was instructed not to swing. I was walked every time. No strike zone when you are under 4' tall. He attended not one game. When I wanted to sign up again with friends in 5th grade, instead of admitting that since he had knocked up my mother 7 times not out of a desire for children except for their value as obedient ornaments trailing behind a church elder, that he just couldn't afford the fees. Instead he said there was no point since I couldn't hit or catch. Turned out I accelled at distance. Despite my height (I took 3 paces to the other runners 2) I ran mile and two mile race in high school my sophmore year. Despite having a job where he set his own hours, he came to not one meet. School was two blocks from home.

Self esteem-wise he decided to give me a boost by anouncing to me at 14 that I had a handsome face and if I would hit the weights and put on some muscle girls would find me attractive. I'm still waiting for the bulges. Hours a day lifting weights and 5,000 calorie diets toned and strengthened me enough to defend myself from the bullies but no bulk. I found I have faster hands without the bulk.

And this is just childhood. It got worse. Once lured to the family business for my financial needs , and lured back when it suited his needs, both times ended in a devastating manner, both emotionally and financially. The last time, he hired me back, had me sign a just a formality agreement, then he and mom decided that they would like to enforce the non-competition clause after stealing all of my clients (which by then accounted for 85% of his business).

Yeah if he was my male role model, I don't really see anything positive about being a self-centered, god-complex, competitive, SOB.

A lot of therapy and introspection and futile attempts to completely root out traces of him in my own demeanor has helped me to understand if not appreciate him. He most likely could be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. He merely mimics what he sees as appropriate human behavior and emotive expressions, and his translation from what he perceives to what he presents is off. He is also Bi-polar with a very manic baseline. He sees everyone else as mentally ill because he fears others seeing his flaws, that he dares not acknowledge to himself lest they become real. His latest version of this is he crusades against Alzheimer's, he is terrified he will get it and he is convinced a grand cabal of food processors is trying to inflict it on him. Really he is to be pitied.

[Kate Simmons]

My Dad was never home. He was always either working or going to a meeting(he was in several organizations, ambulance corps, town band, American Legion, VFW, etc., etc.) and so spent very little time with me. He was a good provider and all but I needed his time and didn't get it. My Mom was raising 4 other kids and so had very little time for me(I was the oldest) and my Grandmother more or less raised me. She was an independent woman, so it is no surprise that I admired and wanted to emulate her. I was a boy, yeah, but really always considered myself a girl who was a tomboy but always had normal "girl" desires and dreamed of meeting the right guy and "shoes and rice" as I had planned on having a "sex change" as they called them back in those days when I got out on my own.
My Dad was always putting me down as a boy it seemed, calling me names I hated which I pretended not to hear, just as I pretended he really wasn't there. The "manly advice" he gave me consisted of sexual innuendo regarding bedding women and the like and I decided that if this is what it was to be a man, I wanted no part of it.
Despite all of this, I went In the Army and ended up in Viet Nam, always planning to get my transition when I got out and back home. After I got out, however, I met a wonderful woman who was to become my wife, as I had decided to give the "guy thing" another shot and soon after being married became a Father. How would I act? I actually helped a lot with the babies and in my heart very much wished I could be a Mom although being a Dad who was not afraid of showing feelings was nice in itself. I had determined, though, that what happened with myself would not happen to my children and they would be free to become themselves without all the stupid conditioning and propaganda that was forced on me growing up.
During all of this, my Dad never changed and was still the psuedo macho type who was afraid of expressing his feelings. He died fairly young at 60 (my age now) and even with all on the nonsense, I regretted that I didn't know him better. I knew there was a real person in there somewhere, just wish I could have reached him and I think part of myself died that way as well, the phoney male part.
As many here know, my wife and I have drifted apart since the kids have grown and moved out and while CDing was an issue in our separation, it wasn't the whole issue. I had to completely toss out the facade of manhood that I had learned while growing up and start building a new one. I had to really be honest with myself and get in touch with my feelings to do this and in essence become a "woman" so I could become a "man". This did not set well with my wife, however, as she was from the same nonsense generation that I was that "required" men to act a certain way and refused to see a different me.
My Dad was caught up in the stupidity of the world after World War II where men were supposed to be men and like it whether they really did or not. Even though I loved him, my Dad was the example to me of what a man should not be. I guess I should be grateful to him after all.

[sandra-leigh]

Would like to hear of the fathers' contributions to your life experiences.

I had no interest in cross-dressing while my father was alive. I am not one of the cross-dressers who "knew" he was a girl, or who wanted to play with dolls, or the like. But I wasn't "one of the guys" either, in the social sense: only a few of the guys had time for me, and I got picked on in that way that kids have of picking on the kids who are different but not actually disliked. In those days, there was nothing like the internet, nothing cool about being smart, so if you were smart and poor at sports and "not much of a joiner", it could be a lonely social life.

My father... his contribution was to never try to push me to be something other than what I was, but to instead encourage my interests in a wide variety of areas, to form my own judgements, and to be polite and respectful (in the good sense.)

When I eventually (about 3 years ago) thought of cross-dressing, I already had a good foundation for going ahead and just doing it -- a life spent doing what I thought was best rather than a life worried about what other people thought of me. When you've grown up and into your 40's complete strangers yell "faggot" at you as they drive by, you either dive into the illusion of matcho and sexual orthodoxy (to show the world that "you're a Man, dammit") -- or, you learn to say "F* 'em, they are just ignorant; I don't care about their opinions and I'll run my life the way I want."

Would my father have approved? Hard to say, as it's been more than 30 years since he died, and perhaps he would have been one of the ones who grew more conservative as he got older. But my father's family has a long history of fighting for social justice; I think he would have continued to be fair-minded and open to all kinds of people.

[Mollyanne]

I really don't have a dark side per se. My dad traveled alot on his job so it was up to mom to raise my brother and & become both mom and dad. When my dad came home after after his road trips(selling) we didn't spend much time together(my school, football team, part time job etc etc) Dad was very opinionated and wouldn't hesitate to express what he thought(right, wrong or indifferent). My mom knew of my X-dressing and helped me and kept that secret and also took that to her grave. If dad knew there would be "hell to pay" he is 93 now and lives in Fla.

Mollyanne

[Melissa73]

My parents were divorced at an early age. And both remarried soon after. But as i saw my father every other weekend, he really wasn't in my life. But he knew of my dressing, as my mother told him. And he lectured me not to dress up anymore. But it was my step dad who actually caught me in a dress. He thought it was wierd, and called me wierdo at first. He even talked to me about it. He told me that he could even understand my curiousity, and asked me if i would like to go to school in a dress. I said no.......but years later, i regret saying no.....as because i really would have liked to go out as a girl (or just wear dresses on a regular basis.)

[angelfire]

As a kid, my mom was a stay at home mom, so I spent most of my time with her until I started school. My father was a workaholic, and still is. I would see him before I left for school in the morning, when I'd wake him up to say goodbye, then leave, and at night for maybe 30 minutes before bed. He'd often work weekends too, so not much time there either.

But, despite him not being around when I was younger, I do love & respect him a great deal. He did what he had to in order to support my mother and I, and he is a damn hard worker (usually too hard).

[Veronica Fallon]

My dad was a 'mixed bag' of positive/negative influence for me. He was a good provider, & although I had very few toys or possessions of my own, we always had a roof & food. He rarely spoke to me unless it was to correct or discipline me- I was always wrong. He was terribly strict, rigid, & severe with my punishments, but didn't knock me around or whip me unless he saw my actions as embarrassing to him, or as some sort of challenge to his authority. He could be giving when it suited his purposes (rarely) but mostly just ignored me. My mom worked afternoons/evenings, so I mostly only saw her on weekends. To avoid my father (safest thing to do), I learned by age 5-6 to eat my own dinner before he got home at night & then leave the house or hide out in my room. As long as I did my chores on time & stayed out of his way, he usually left me alone. I spent most of my time alone in the woods, or (in Winter) drawing in my room.

I think he loved me, in his way, but he showed it rarely & in very limited ways. I most often saw his disdain that I was 'too sensitive' or 'wasting my time doing girly-things' like drawing, reading library books, or making little houses out of glue & bits of trash, or that I simply couldn't do anything right. I think perhaps those 'anti-femme' projections made me suppress my true feminine nature until a GF brought it out in my early 30's.

...Too bad, I think my isolated life would've been enriched if I could have been the lil' girl who was hiding deep inside of me.


Melancholy Hugz,

Veronica

[Suzie Green]

My Dad was wonderful to me when I was a kid. He took me everywhere and exposed me to all sorts of stuff. Skiing, hiking, backpacking, bike riding, camping, traveling all over New England. I was a real boy, and I still love all this stuff.

My mom once caught me trying on my sisters clothes when I was about 8 years old. She punished and humiliated me for it, and forced me to attend a Girl Scout meeting and sit with all the girls for several hours. It was one of the most miserable experiences of my life, and I never forgave her for it. Looking back today, I see that crossdressing was in my genetic makeup and is probably DNA-based, but back in the 1950's no one knew that.

I hope anyone who reads this realizes that dressing is not something that you choose, nor is it something that you give up either. The sooner you can make peace with yourself, the easier it is to share your blessing with others.

[DeeInGeorgia]

My dad was pretty good to me. He was very busy, but when he could, he lt me tag along. For most of while I was at home, he was a draftsman / drafting supervisor for a small electronics and antenna company. But his true love was flying and he spent most nights and weekends teaching flying while building time to get on with an airline. He bought his own Piper PA-11 and taught flying and in the winter when it was too dark to fly, he would hold ground schools. I would help out at the schools as well as help maintain the airplane. I spent a lot of time at the airport when I could. He became my Boy Scout scoutmaster when my troop lost it's scoutmaster. He supported me going to a World Jamboree and paid for 3 of my 5 years of college.

The down side was where we lived, there were not that many people withing walking distance that had kids near my age to play with. I would spend most of my time playing by myself or with my sister and sometimes the girl down the road. I grew up jealous of the clothes my sister got to wear. She got to take ballet. I finally convinced my mother to let me take ballet for a year, but when I did poorly in school, my father made me stop taking ballet.

I was not athletic or very coordinated and a bit on the small side, and was most times not allowed to play softball with the other boys in my class because I was such a bad player. So I was teased a lot and the girls in school ignored me or hated me.

Neither parent would touch us kids except to spank us when we misbehaved. I took up dressing because of loneliness and lack of physical affection. The only gender related thing with me was when he had me stop taking ballet and also the day he killed a snake and I had to bury it and cried the whole time over it and my dad yelled at me over that.

Dee

[eleventhdr]

He was a professsional doctor so you might think that he would have some understanding about this so called condition but i do not think he does at all. Once when i did dress in female custome he siad he thought i was deviant to want to dress and be a girl.

I think my mom koind of suspects because she know's i did dress in custome several times at a scifi convention some years ago.

A few close friends know that i am a cd transgenered person.

But hardly anyone know's that i would chnage my sex if and when given the real chance my desire to be as close a real girl as possible at this point in time and space is still very strong.

it is my real belive that i was suppose to have been born female in this incarnation but something did go wrong and i am in a amle body yet again but i am a girl inside who just want's to really be allowed to come out and be who she really is I am realy here Suzy Ann and noone can take that away ever she is the real me and this mlae is secondary many of us are this way we are realy girl's trapped in male bodies oh well one of theses day we will finally esvcape and become who we really are suppose to be until that day and time i will continue to be suzy as best i can!

Suzy Ann! just one of the girl's!

[DonnaT]

No dark tales here. I was like my dad in a lot of ways. Fleet of foot, good with my fists once he taught us boys how to box, loved to hunt and fish and he taught us early how to do both.

I reckon the most traumatic was my fear of water. He would hold me and jump into the deep end, and hold me underwater. I thought I was going to drown a number of times, as I had double pneumonia as an infant and to this day can't hold my breath long.

It became tougher when he took us up the road where there was a swim team, and he joined us up. My Granddad was a great swimmer and diver, lots of medals. He knew Johnny Weissmuller, but never raced him. He said he knew he'd get beat. So, I reckon my dad, also a good swimmer, but never swam competitively, figured it was in the blood and had us join the team. After a few years on the team, I became the fastest swimmer on the team.

The biggest influence came with the gifts he bought me for Christmas. When My brothers were getting toys I'd have liked, he gave be electronic things, so I could build radios, etc, because I was always taking things apart, like old televisions (they had tubes back then), phones, radios. My Granddad was schooled by Westinghouse and was an engineer on locks and dams. My dad worked for the telephone company. So, I went on to become an Electrical Engineer.

Now, with respect to CDing, my mom caught me once, and told him. I wasn't punished, and he only asked me why. I didn't have an answer for him, and he never brought it up again.

[Sharon]

I'm one of those who was fortunate to have a good father, one who was always there for me when I needed him. He showed me that it was possible for a big, masculine man to also be a compassionate and gentle person. It was my deepest wish as a child to be just like him, but that was impossible.

He discovered over the years that I was not a "regular" man, but he was never anything less than totally loving towards me and my own family. It's been two-and-a-half years since his passing, and I think of him often and it has always been my goal to be half the person he was.

[MJ]

i can't say my dad was ever bad he help raise 4 children was always around until his death very sudden and while i was young i sure do miss him but i don't think he would approve of me , but he would reject me either

[Daintre]

Growing up my father was not a very nice man, I certainly won't go into the issues we had and the abuse I took, suffice to say, it certainly impacted me.

[Scotty]

My dad would have freaked.
First time I played with my sisters toys he kept trying to hammer it in that I was a boy but I still wanted to play with my sisters toys.
Granted I played with the boys toys too but ..when I could I played with my sisters toys...Looking back I can say I knew, subconsciously, but at the time I did not...

[Christine Andrews]

Well as far as my parents go, My mother is my best friend and we can finish each other's sentences and come up with the same ideas for problems at times. Aside from being a mother and a friend I consider her my rock and although I have tried to tell her I no longer dress, deep down I know that she knows. Although I cannot lie to her, because we are so close and know each other so well she can always tell when I am lying I always feel the truth could endanger our friendship and bond - something which would hurt me more than anything else in this world. With a mother who is a friend and a role model I consider myself extremely lucky. When I started Uni (now in second year) I managed to turn my mums interest at my open day into her enrolment onto a part-time HNC paid for by her employers and I have to say I am extremely proud of her for doing it and she is getting excellent grades too!

My father I simply hate and refer to him as bio, because the only good things and fatherlt things he has done for me is contribute half of his genes and bring home income. He is a father only biologically - other than that he is selfish, bad tempered **** who seems to get stressed and angry if I speak to my mum whilst the tv is on and is quite short with me on the rare occasions I (have to) speak to him (because I am polite and as much as I want to my morals won't let me lower my standards in terms of conduct and manners). Perhaps he is jealous of how close me and my mother are but he doesn't acknowledge the impact of his attitude and behaviour.

I don't really have a male role model, I try to be the kind of male that would be my role model and the only good experience I got from him was that if and when I start a family of my own (if I am lucky enough to find someone whom I can click with in terms of personality and mind set - that doesn't already have a boyfriend or husband) I know exactly what not to do when raising children of my own.

My dark side is pretty tame and is nothing more than trivial compared to some peoples unfortunate experiences, and perhaps only having a female role model and wanting to be the opposite of my father (one example: he drinks heavilly despite the fact he knows he cannot hold it where as I stop at two or three drinks at the most and prefer soft drinks most of the time) is a contributory factor but deep down I think its genetic and a need which has always been there awaiting the conditions it needed to become active.

For me life is what we make it.

Regards
Kirsty Hall

[Alice B]

Nada, none, zilch.