when young, were you accepted by your peers?

[helenr]

Maybe not the greatest of titles,but I am meaning-when you were a little boy, were your popular with other little boys-or sort of an outcast?
I am not sure if my attraction to females and feminine clothing at such an early age wasn't equally prompted by rejection by my 'peer group' boy crowd. You understand what I mean, when in 2nd, 3rd grade--the boys and girls rarely mix and mingle except when required in a classroom.
I wasn't popular, was bullied, selected last for the dreaded 'pick your team' ,etc and I wonder if this lack of acceptance by boys wasn't as much a factor in 'going femme' as being naturally attracted to all that feminine. How about you?

[MomofCD]

Speaking for my 18 year old son, he wasn't popular with the boys. He was very clumsy in sports. In fact, from kindergarten on he always played with a a girl or two at recess and tended to sit with a girl or two at lunch. He always had a crush on some little girl. He is in his senior year of high school and has only girl friends and still sits with a girl at lunch. From what I know, the girls are the only ones who he has told about his crossdressing and I believe they are fairly supportive. Although, he last girlfriend started off accepting and seems to get scared off. I hope it gets easier for him.

[Bootsiegalore]

I never fit in with the norm either. (picked last for sports, bullied and beaten on, etc...) I was sort of an out cast in grammar school. In high school I had more friends that were girls than boys. I sat with a group of girls at lunch and also for study hall.

Tara

[Jess_cd32]

After night after late night of parents fighting when I was in those grades because Pop was intoxicated AGAIN I was not only overtired in school but daydreamed most of the time looking out the window, probably about having a peaceful life.

On playground time,lol I kinda just kept to myself those times and didn't want much to do with the other kids, remembering back I was miserable and I intentionally outcast myself. Some kids picked on me for awhile till I finally knocked the worst one on his a** but good, that stopped that.

I did eventually make some close guy friends that also seemed to have disruptive home lives, guess birds of the same feather flock together even at that early age. By 3rd-4th grade I was more outgoing, my friend and I just loved the girls by then and we'd tease them alot till they chased us around,lol
Our gym teacher asked us what cologne we wore watching us with 10 girls chasing us around, lol

I don't feel my cd-ing really had anything to do with any of this, being outcast for a time etc... ,even had things been totally normal growing up I believe I'd still be a cd. I've concluded personally that were born this way, at least I was.

For those that were picked on take some solice in that in high school my friends and I put plenty of bullies in their place, and deservedly so, like they say paybacks are a bitch

[jennifer41356]

Maybe not the greatest of titles,but I am meaning-when you were a little boy, were your popular with other little boys-or sort of an outcast?
I am not sure if my attraction to females and feminine clothing at such an early age wasn't equally prompted by rejection by my 'peer group' boy crowd. You understand what I mean, when in 2nd, 3rd grade--the boys and girls rarely mix and mingle except when required in a classroom.
I wasn't popular, was bullied, selected last for the dreaded 'pick your team' ,etc and I wonder if this lack of acceptance by boys wasn't as much a factor in 'going femme' as being naturally attracted to all that feminine. How about you?

no , I had my mix of friends and I enjoyed playing sports and was pretty good, but I also liked playing dress ups and stuff like that when i was younger, maybe it was because I had some sisters

[JoAnne Wheeler]

I'm not sure that I had any "peers" because my "peers"ould be other kids who dreamed about CDing. That said, I was the last kid to get chosen when we would choose up sides. I really enjoyed spending time with the girls. Also, I never felt like I could or even wanted to take a shower in front of the other guys in the locker room. I think this significant of something - I'm just not sure what.

Love,

JoAnne Wheeler

[Nadia-Maria]

I was not at all popular with my peers and had only one good friend. I was sort of an alien. But I was not bullied either, even being the youngest and shortest, because I was kind of "protected" by the teachers for being a child early.

[Elizebeth]

Never I a lot of close friends, but of on outcast. I have always have had trouble conecting with people.

[Kate Simmons]

Hell no. The neighborhood guys were a bunch of budding jocks and I wanted nothing to do with those morons. I was kind of a loner but was a half decent tomboy in my own right.

[MsSamanthaErica]

I was a bit of a loner in school, but I had a lot more female friends than male. I wasn't into sports either and often went the more sedentary life over the active one. I got picked on a lot in school, but more so in the young grades. Once I got older, thanks to be being taller than most for my age, I got passed over being picked on. But still I had more female friends, was not really sure why until later.

Still, it wasn't until I was in High School that I finally started to experiment with cross-dressing. Like most, I thought something was wrong with me, but I realize now that there isn't. I'm just *different* and that makes me part of who I really am. More sensitive, more understanding and a heckuva lot better shopper!!

Now I have male and female friends, but I get along, it seems, with women more easily. Which is fine with me, since I like to imagine that I am wearing what they are wearing, pretty much no matter what it is!

Still sometimes I wonder why it is that I was 'picked' out for this life, but I know there's no really good answer, so I just get dressed since it makes me happy deep down and because I can.

Still my feminine wardrobe is overtaking the male one, and there seems to be no end in sight!!

~Samantha

[sherib]

I never had a problem with my peers. They came and got me when they wanted to play ball or anything. The only problem I had was I had a secret that I wouldn't dare tell anybody. I wanted to be a girl

[Carole Cross]

I have never had more than a few friends, always a bit of a loner. At school I was always picked last when choosing teams, I never really played most sports outside of school. I was also bullied at school and at age 11 I went to an all boys school which at times was sheer hell.

[Rachel B]

I believe there is a direct link between "our youth" and what we do as adults. I dont believe that we dress because of it though!

You'd probably find as many people who dont dress but fit the profile as you would who do.

CD'ers are always looking for a reason as to why we do what we do (I know this only too well!). Science has uncovered a genetic marker which may offer the explanation, but I guess for many the search will continue.

[Karren H]

Yeah!! I was one of the boys yet I also hung around with a group of neighborhood girls... I could multi-task even way back then!! Hahaha

[Tricia Lee]

I didn't have any of the problems that others seemed to have had. I was athletic and relatively popular, and did well in most sports. I probably didn't fit in well in the most hard-core jock situations, but I had jocks who were friends, and others who were enemies.

I also didn't gravitate toward friendships with girls. My problem was that I put them on such a pedestal that I had trouble relating to them. I was very shy and awkward toward them. It wasn't that I was unable to attract female attention, I just couldn't seem to do anything about it. The biggest effect that had while growing up is that I ended up dating a lot of girls who were more forward, maybe even "easy". For the most part they weren't the girls I was most attracted to - just the easiest to get along with.

The cross dressing was always a secondary interest that I had. It didn't seem to affect most things I did, but I do wonder how much having it as a secret hindered my relationships. I think it did have a significant affect.

Things didn't really click for me until I came to accept the cross dressing. I realized it a) wasnt' something I was going to grow out of, and b) wasn't something that I was ashamed of. I'm not open with my crossdressing, but I don't let myself feel bad about it either.

[Michelle8]

I was always the one organizing the sports games in my
neighborhood.And i had plenty of friends.I Don't know why
I CD.It just felt right.

[Toni_Lynn]

I wasn't accepted at all and kept to myself. From taunts of having cooties in primary school to being called fatty fag in junior and senior high school it ws a bit of a hell. Yep --- called last for teams in gym class, sat alone at lunch, walked around by myself at recess. The flames were intensified at home by my mother harping in me for being a loner! The only ones at school that seemed to not hurt me were the nuns. The sisters always gave me holy cards and told me about the saints. They always told me I should grow up to be a priest.

That hell was only escaped from when I became a teen, for it was there, I'd go into my secret stash tucked inside the box springs of my bed, pull on my training bra and panties, and if mum and dad weren't there, a dress, and then get out my copies of 16 and Tiger Beat magazines and listen to my records, get out the Sears, Penneys, or Wards catalogs and dream -- or -- and this is odd I guess -- read the Reader's Digest or books about old time radio (people like Jack Benny and Fred Allen - mind you this was the 1970s and these folks were in the 40s) -- still do this last bit -- in fact -- still do most of this -- except for 16 and Tiger Beat. Funny thing is two girls that I wrote about in another thread -- Renee and Rachelle, who were good friends, always tried to tell me that I should dress in girls clothes too -- that'd I'd be very pretty. I'd try to reluctantly (yeah right -- I was screaming YES PLEASE inside) go along -- hoping that they'd get out their clothes and dress me up -- they had COOL clothes -- but we always got caught before anyting could go on.

Funny how all these years later, I'm the one in the marraige filled with love and have a great career -- and so many of my peers are divorced and unhappy

Huggles

Toni-Lynn

[jennCD]

Heck, I still don't fit in and I'm into my 40s now!
Well, I was always the type of person to value a few close friends rather than want to be a little friendly to everyone possible. It's always been easier for me to focus my attention with small groups of people important to me.

Looking around at this point, other than one or two people who's company I enjoy (which is helpful since I work with them), I pretty much don't have any friends besides my immediate family... but I'm ok with that simply because it's always been that way.

Growing up, I was shy, awkward, had difficulty expressing myself, very uncoordinated, not into sports, cars, tools or anything with a masculine tilt to it. I enjoyed music and immersed myself in the idea of being a composer so that helped isolate me from most people.... which worked out well since I mostly wrote about feeling isolated from the world... who wouldda guessed, huh? LOL

So, all that notwithstanding, well I guess I'm just an average, normal, middle aged transgender person working on simply being me.


jenn

[DameErrant]

I was never one of the popular crowd; in fact, I was the "Omega Wolf," at the bottom of the social heirarchy. Last chosen for sports, etc, as so many others have posted. Never had a wide circle of friends, but when I made friends, they were very close. Hung around with the "geeks and nerds," Astronomy club guys who were trying to grind their own telescope mirror and working part time on a way to reverse entropy. Found another outlet in Scouting, which has had a permanent, positive effect on me.

CDing was only one outlet that I found for my discontents, but I truly believe that I would have found it even if I was Captain of the Football team.

[Jennifer Giovannetta]

I was accepted my most kids my age. But I was skinny for most of my teenage years which made me prime bully bait. But my skinny stature did not prevent me from playing sports. I was particularly adept at football. When I reached high school the high school coach wanted me to play. He asked me after school every day to play for junior varsity. But I did not want to play because I was afraid of being rejected by the jock kids.
I guess I had normal childhood experiences. But I had a tendency to be a loner.
During all of this I never fully understood that I was a crossdresser. I knew I liked the clothes the girls would wear. At times I was jealous of them. I had no interested in boys clothes. It may sound funny but it only occured to me ONCE to wear a dress and heels. I tried it and felt silly and did not do it again for a few years. These feelings were a great source of guilt and shame for me. I always felt like I was diffrent than everyone else.
Just the other day I was thinking if I had access to the internet at that time, maybe I would discovered my crossdressing. It would of been interesting to see what I looked like dressed at that young age. I probably would of been passable.

[Nicole Erin]

grade 1 thru 5 was not real bad, had friends and things went normal as any kid's grammar school career. 6 thru 10 were my rough years, especially 6, 7, 8.

Picked last for sports and all that crap. Got called faggot on a daily basis, and sometimes made fun of cause of an incident where I was caught dressed en femme when I was in 1st grade. Got to hear how I threw liike a girl or ran like one or walked like one...

So my middle school career consisted mostly of trying not to draw attention or hoping not to get spit on when riding the bus home and crap...

Being CD now and being treated like crap or a fag when I was in school. I don't know if there is really a correlation or which is the cause and effect.

I am one of the CD's out there that believes that what cause3d me to want to CD is feeling like I failed at manhood.

[Emily Anderson]

Helen,

I was a perfectly "normal" boy (outwardly), as I'm sure many others were too. I don't believe one can really find answers for this type of question, any more than one could find answers to the reasons for crossdressing.

For me, it has always been a question of choice (inwardly), even though I recognize that it is against societal norms. The fact is, I've always been attracted to female clothing, whether for the beauty of the fabric and decorations (artistically speaking), or in a fetishistic way (sexual).

However, I also know that my experience is not the same as others, and should not be either. We are all individuals, making our own choices in life.

[deja true]

Thankfully those school days are so long ago I've pretty much forgotten about them. Back in my day, there really wasn't a lot of bullying in any school I went to. The nuns saw to that in grade school and the teaching brothers saw to that in high school.

I was awkward and did the minimal in noncontact sports like track and swimming, just to get the letter, but really enjoyed the drama club. In the all-boys HS that was the only way to get to know girls from the all-girls school down the road, and the camaraderie of the rehearsals brought a lot of girls my way. Naturally, I was interested in them for more than just the usual teen-age boy reasons but a combination of shyness and respect kept me from getting seriously involved with any until....

I went to college and was seduced by that upperclasswoman!

[Ediosa]

Well, I was Mr. Popular. I was captain of the high school football team, and baseball team. I was also a part of the wrestling team, would've been Captain of the basketball team(didn't play Senior year cause I hated the coach). I was was a part of every club you can think of. Chess club, astronomy club, Citizen Bee, Student Council, Yearbook Staff, and everything else you can think of. I was also a member of the Chorus, and Drama club. I was a member of the jocks, and a member of the geeks. Hanged out with the skaters and also dress as the populars. I was everywhere, even was the class flirt. I was all over the women. I didn't have many girlfriends though cause I will think to much about it. I will hear that this beautiful girl liked me, but I will think that was impossible. I thought to much about it and not just do it. When I finally decided to take one of those saying to action. I had a girlfriend for 2 years. I guess I should've been a normal guy and gone with those statements, maybe I would've gotten more then I did during high school. hahaha..... oh well.

I didn't like to be told I couldn't do this and that. I would always challenge the norm and always asked questions "why". Why couldn't I play football and be in the school play? That is one of the reason why I CD. Why can't I wear what I want to wear? But I had more girl friends then I have guy friends. I feel more connected with them.

[Barbra 58]

Hi i never had any problems with my peers nor did i have any desire to wear womens clothes until I was 14 I found my mothers bra on the ground i put it on i dont know why and that was the start of my crossdressing i got a real sexual buzz .Then could not wait to do it again. I must say its much easyer when you are younger I sed to pass myself off no problem used to go to shopping malls use ladies toilets Ect. i would not dare try it now.