Is there less guilt in TS versus CD?

[juno]

I have always been a feminine male, and comfortable with it. I have been crossdressing for a few years. I have very little interest in anything male, so I am TS and not just CD. It seems that a common theme for most CDs is a lot of guilt and shame, which I don't feel at all.

So, I am thinking that perhaps the guilt and shame comes from the birth gender part of the brain, and is the struggle of conflict between feeling both genders. In a TS, the brain is mostly one gender, so there is no big struggle. We just focus our attention at looking better in the target gender.

Does this make sense to others here?

[Melody Moore]

I personally don't think that you can generalise like this for a start. I think you will find that the shame
& guilt is directly connected to the fact that you are hiding something that you believe is wrong & that
you will be rejected, branded a pervert etc., if other people found out. You will find most transsexuals
went through lots of guilt & shame until they finally come out. So if you want to free yourself from fear
then I believe that coming out is the way to deal with it. If you are not hiding it & those around you still
love you & accept you, what is left to be feeling guilty about?

Nothing! So if you want to be free, then see a therapist & learn to
find ways to overcome your fears if you can't do this on your own.

:hugs:

[juno]

Well, maybe my easy acceptance of CDing was very easy for me because I have been openly doing female-oriented things forever. I love pulling out a crochet project to work on in public. So, TV versus CD may not be the issue at all. It is just that I already accepted myself before starting to CD.

[Inna]

Oh my, I am a transsexual in conscious transition for the past 4 years and 40 years in denial, I crossdressed before I allowed the notion of being full blown transsexual infiltrate my conscious mind. And yet I felt a tremendous amount of guilt, confusion and internal pain to the point of committing to the final act. No it isn't any easier to have an out of norm tendencies especially those which are still perceived as taboo by most of cultures on this meager planet. Until recently left handed children were "corrected" to be right handed, what a bunch of frickin baloney and yet it was true, until recently black skin spelled discomfort and pain, and man wearing woman's garments is still perceived by most as a freak of nature. So GUILT? heck yeah, plenty of it until such behavior is looked lightly upon hopefully in the near future.

[Stephenie S]

Oh, Alexia. Please, please, don't feel guilty! Feel poorer, maybe. Or feel busier. Or feel happier. But never, never, never feel guilty about crossdressing or transitioning. Neither is wrong, or evil, or illegal. And transition is hugely rewarding.

S

[Melody Moore]

Juno, if you truly accepted yourself, then why are you feeling guilty & ashamed about it?

And as for being no struggle with gender identities being TS, then I don't believe that is true.
because the problem there is when you look at yourself and realise that your body doesn't
match up with how you feel on the inside then you obviously you have that dilemma that
you described original post. But it is not until we get ourselves into therapy & treatment that
we start to focus on realigning the body to match how we feel on the inside, then the focus
is on the one gender, not usually before. I think you will find that for most of us, until we do
finally reach that point that there is a lot of conflict between the male exterior & female interior.

[Rianna Humble]

I have always been a feminine male, and comfortable with it. I have been crossdressing for a few years. I have very little interest in anything male, so I am TS and not just CD. It seems that a common theme for most CDs is a lot of guilt and shame, which I don't feel at all.

You may well be right that you are TS, and I'm glad that dressing does not cause you guilt or shame, but I would still urge you to talk to a qualified therapist so that you can be sure of what direction you want your life to go in and take steps to get there.

I may be completely misinterpreting your words, and if I am I apologise, but I am not sure that the emphasis for me as a TS is on looking better in my target gender so much as expressing outwardly what I know in the depths of my being which is that I am a woman. Naturally, I want to look the best that I can - what woman doesn't?

[noeleena]

Hi.

Accptance of ones self is very diggerent from being taught some thing is wrong because some one else say's so' this western socity has messed up big time . its not about clothes its about you as a person an individual. the clothes we wear to day ....can ...express who we are because we'v been taught that . its....oh thats a boy clothes colour ,& thats a girls colour & clothes . say's who' ....

my friends 210 of wear allmost the same type of clothes men & women dress's skirts tight's stocking's & the list is more than that...Renaissance = the S C A. world wide .

& no one says oh you look funny , these men are real men's mens some are very strong masculine natal men sure not wimps. that i can tell you.so there you go .if i was a male i would not even be in the running like them. .

Its high time western socity woke up. & look at the real issue's not what we wear or how or not.

there should never be any guilt about ....who ....we are , so i'll keep on saying we must accept our selfs first then accept others & we can ,
then be accepted by other's around us. this is where the problem lie's .

I never took on this damm guilt trip of who i was / am i refused to . i cant help the way i was born . & why the hell should i ....because some one says something different i dont buy that & never will , if we are to be a strong people then we must hold fast who we are,

We are all different in our own ways , not damm robots .

If the meaning of birth gender means that its only the psyical side of us . then we are sadly mistaken . it's about the all of us .Psychological..Mental..& Emotional. then of cause what makes us the way we are,

I'm not talking about what we learn, here , its long before we are born.
The problem is we have word's spoken over us & when we take those word's on board then yes we have problem's about our selfs, so we have to shake off those chains , till then we are in guilt land .

So the ? then is are we going to stay there or come out from that place. i belive we can .
Some of us have ,so for those still stuck . try it you may find you can be liberated & when you do there wont be any word's to decribe it.

If you notised i did not use any lables because we dont need to. becaues we are a people who are real .


...noeleena...

[Amber99]

Nah, I had a ton of feelings of guilt initially. I felt like I was burdening everybody I knew with my transition.

[Frances]

My own guilt over being trans nearly killed me and delayed my transition by a few decades. I don't feel guilty anymore. In fact, I feel less and less TS as well.

[Schatten Lupus]

I agree it's far too large of an issue to generalize. Back when I was a Christian I felt shame and guilt almost daily over what I perceived as very sinful and something that only the devil could be doing. And without doubt it didn't help the pastor made a regular habit out of condemning every alternative lifestyle under the sun, and even every non-Baptist denomination.
And then for years it was more shame over a perceived weakness. I then for a brief moment around the time I came out to my girlfriend I felt something that was kinda like guilt, because I knew I was taking away what she dreamed of for a family, but it wasn't guilt because I knew that she chose to stay with me knowing it wouldn't be congruent with what she wanted out of life.
And now there is no more negative feelings attached towards being TS.

[JennyA]

I feel totally at one with my body and the universe now and feel zero guilt whatever. It is quite liberating and makes living a joy and gives me a spiritual armor that no person can crack.

[ReineD]

I can only share my SO's experience. She is not TS, and she has never felt any guilt even from the time she started to CD at the age of 12. She understood at an early age that expressing a different gender was not accepted in society, so she determined to play by the rules and enjoyed being herself in private until she was old enough and financially independent to do as she pleased. She has never purged nor wished to purge.

I think feeling guilty has more to do with one's comfort level in being different. Some people feel they need to conform, while others are fine when they don't. The propensity for guilt is more a function of someone's personality, although it is influenced by the environment in which they are raised.

My SO was thinking outside the box on so many levels since the age of 6 and throughout her life, that being dualgender was just a small part of all her differences compared to the mainstream. :)

So to recap, being TS or not I don't think has anything to do with the amount of guilt that anyone may feel.

[Hope]

I think the guilt and shame come from outside and not from inside. They come from the hiding and the lying and the feeling that one must hide what they do ergo it must be shameful. While the CD girls get to live essentially normal cis lives, they never (very rarely) get to have the sort of coming out experience and opportunity to live "out and proud" or at least never really get the opportunity to live in a way that doesn't imply shame the way TS girls do. But we have to give up cis privilege to get it. It is probably not a fair trade...

[Rianna Humble]

For me it is a fair trade (giving up something I never really wanted in return for being true to myself), but I can see how it could be an unfair trade for a CD'er

[Hope]

For me it is a fair trade (giving up something I never really wanted in return for being true to myself), but I can see how it could be an unfair trade for a CD'er

The loss of Cis privilege costs more for some of us perhaps? None of us would be here if it wasn't ultimately worth the trade... but you sometimes have to wonder. I spent 8 years in college earning a degree that is absolutely useless to me now. The best gig I can get is working part time at the women's fragrance counter at a department store. Would I trade back? Never ever ever. But having to give up 8 years of education and 6 years of experience and now being seen as a pariah in the job market as a result of my previous employment/education is not exactly fair.

[Rianna Humble]

Sorry you had to have that at the same time as your transition, Hope. :hugs:

I had gone through something similar whilst still in denial and it's no fun whatsoever.

The job I'm in now is much less demanding and requires far less knowledge and experience than the one I lost through redundancy some years ago, but I have had to face the fact that in my previous line of work I had far too much experience and far too few paper qualifications for the liking of most employers. It can be soul destroying.

[juno]

Juno, if you truly accepted yourself, then why are you feeling guilty & ashamed about it?
My point was that I don't feel guilt or shame. I am just wondering why I am different from my CD friends. From the answers here, CD versus TS does not seem to be the difference. I am probably just lucky to have lived part of my childhood near San Francisco. I just wish that more people could avoid guilt over their gender identity. Fortunately, society is gradually moving in the direction of acceptance.

[Carole Cross]

I had lots of guilt when i was younger and I had come to the conclusion to transition at 16 until i was caught so shame follwed guilt and I lost all confidence and didn't transition. I then spent several years in denial, trying to supress my feelings. I finally accepted that my feelings were not going to go away in my early 20s but because of the effects of testosterone on my body I thought I would never pass as a woman so I decided that crossdressing in private was my only option. It took another 20 years before I could not live as a man anymore and transitioning was my only option. So that was about 40 years of shame and guilt but now I don't fell any shame or guilt, I am being true to myself and I am even starting to make use of my engineering degree so the future looks a lot brighter now I am who I was meant to be. :)