Is crossdressing making you bitter and anti-social?

[Leslie Langford]

O.K., so I'm in one of my "grumpy old man...errr...crossdresser" moods right now, but it got me to thinking...

Many of us here are in hiding a.k.a. "the closet" - either from our spouses, our SO's, family, workplaces - maybe even the world at large. We have been conditioned by society to believe that crossdressing is shameful, anti-social, "unmanly", a destroyer of marriages and families, totally weird and unfathomable to most people, and at worst, is perverted and the next best thing to being a child molester. The "women's bathroom sanctity" fear mongers certainly believe so, as do the Christian fundamentalists, who are happy to point to numerous Old Testament Bible passages declaring crossdressing to be an abomination to bolster their cases and justify their bigotry.

So tell me, do you sometimes feel like Peter Finch in the movie "Network", and find it hard not to open up the window, stick your head outside, and shout at the top of your lungs "I'm mad as H*ll, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"?

Do you start to balk at fulfilling social obligations (e.g. visiting with the in-laws) that you have zero interest in participating in, only because "you have to", or "it's expected" - and mainly to keep the peace with your spouse or SO? And this is likely the same spouse or SO who forces you into a DADT relationship with her to maintain marital harmony, but on her terms? Terms that are coming from an asymmetrical power imbalance within the relationship, because she is using guilt and shame to manipulate you into getting her way?

I don't know about the rest of you, but I get very fed up sometimes by this seemingly one way street, where we are expected to acknowledge and cater to others' wants and needs, while ours - especially when it comes to our crossdressing - are stomped on and ignored, and we are essentially told to "suck it up" because these unique needs of ours simply don't rank on the "acceptability" scale.

The funny thing is, as I find myself becoming increasingly comfortable going out in public en femme (and enjoying every moment of it!), this happy feeling is becoming inversely proportional to the resentment I am starting to feel over restrictions to being fully able to express this side of me within the confines (yes, I used that word deliberately) my marriage. And yet, at the same time I am expected to nod and smile while I accede to - and put up with - everyone else's idiosyncrasies, foibles, and neediness. In other words, starting to become bitter and anti-social...