Percentages?

[franlee]

I have read different studies or polls and the results vary, one may show between 5% and the next 10% of males have or do crossdress. But with the stigma associated to crossdressing even in private questoning I think many males refuse to answer truthfully or find some exemption to qualify their "no" answer.
In short I think if the absolute truth was known nearly every male sometime in their life, for what ever reason has parcialy at least crossdressed. And a lot more do activly CD and hide it, than will ever own-up to it. I have observed the lack of concern by other males in such matters and they just laughed it off into an non-issue. And I dought they would even remember it as such and answer no/never.
I think there are basicly two groups of males, , the one that admit crossdressing and the ones that lie about it. I'm just saying..............

[WsprsOnTheWind]

You will never get an accurate percentage b/c there are so many who will never come out of the closet. I don't think you can place all men in the group of admitting or denying being a CD b/c I do not think all men are CD's.

[taís]

I believe that some men will go through their entire lives without crossdressing (or having a desire to do so). that's because I believe that each and every kind of person exists on its own universe and it's a fully individual on its own. some will do, some will do it openly, some won't; percentages doesn't matter, because numbers doesn't justify any behavior. ;) :2c:

[ReineD]

The truth, franlee, is there may well be one in 10 males who at one point in their lives have put on a woman's panties, or even dressed fully, either at their girlfriends' urging, or as a lark. My own son did on a lark. His gf at the time put him up to it, and they both (with several of her girlfriends) walked into her mother's office on her birthday and sang Happy Birthday. It was funny because all the girls were about 5'4", and my son was one foot taller.

But I would hardly consider these isolated instances, CDing in the same way it is discussed in this forum. To me, a CDer is someone who habitually dresses in some form or another even if it is only under dressing, because he obtains enjoyment from it for it's own sake. I agree it is difficult to come up with numbers, but the rough estimes are anywhere from 1:200 to 1:500. To look at the best case scenario, in a college of 20,000 students, if half of them are men there would be 50 crossdressers to 10,000 men (for the 1:200 ratio).

Some members might come back and say that no, they're read somewhere where the ratio could be as high as 1:100. This means that in this same college of 10,000 men, there would be 100 CDs. Not a lot.

[Karren H]

Studys have shown that 95% of the other studys and polls on the internet contain data that's made up!

[Oilpainter35]

Figures can say what ever you want them to say. In short, figures can lie. I don't lie, I am ignorant about others . Intellegence leaves room for error.

[Tanya C]

Crossdressing statistics are kind of like UFO sightings, they both leave you hungering for some hard evidence to support their contentions. In the case of cding. the only way to compile reliable data would be to do a secret survey without the knowledge or consent of the participants. In other words, spy on a sample of the population to determine an accurate estimate of the number of cders.
Of course, that would be unthinkable.

[Ayame]

I think it really has to do with many factors such as location or upbringing. If you were to go to Haiti you might not find too many cross dressers, but if you went to Thailand good luck not finding one. In America I feel as you get closer to the coastal states, you will see more, because they're usually more liberal areas like New York or California. Especially if you go to a pretty liberal college, you might just see them all over the place, if you have a good enough eye to tell they're cross dressing. So in some areas 1/5 people might cross dress, other areas 1/100,000 might cross dress, and since so many people are in the closet or in denial getting the real numbers would be impossible. We can only really get estimates based off surveys that were given to very small sample sizes, which almost always are inaccurate, whether it be for how many people cross dress or how many people watch football or whatever else the survey could be, they're almost always off.

[denese013]

Figures lie and liars figure.

[Sammy777]

If you go strictly by the merriam-webster (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crossdresser?show=0&t=1328354831) definition of cross-dressing:
The wearing of clothes designed for the opposite sex.

Which in the strictest sense here, would mean any man who knowing wears any article of clothing, for however long, for whatever reason, that is solely designed for and sold to the opposite sex is considered to be cross dressing.

Uncle Bob grabs his wives coat to get the mail - cross dressing
Joey puts on his girlfriend's panties because she asked - cross dressing
Mom made Henry wear hand-me-downs from his sister, once - cross dressing
Halloween - girls clothes or girls costume - cross dressing
You get the point, lol.

Over 75% [upwards to 95%] of men will "cross dress" at least once in their lives. :heehee:
Surprised? You shouldn't be.

[KrystalA]

Since this is a subject about which people tend to hide the truth, there will never be accurate percentage numbers. But then, who cares? We know there are a lot of us, and there are a lot more who won't admit it. Personally, I wouldn't classify someone who does it once (trying on panties...dressing as a girl on Halloween, etc.) as a crossdresser. I don't know if there are more of us now than in the past, or if forums like these just make it easier to 'come out' to others. But in the end, it does't really matter, does it?

[Renee W]

I know what the correct answer is.......

We are some of the many.

[Jenniferathome]

No, we are unique. The typical male never has, never will and never wants to wear women's clothing. We crossdressers are wired differently, just as are gay men or women. It's genetic. Now, as for the % that want to or actively enjoy crossdressing, we'll never know. I ascribe to the notion that there are more than are willing to admit. So if 10% admit i, then likely the score is really 12% or 15%. If it were any more than that, I think we'd be more mainstream

[Ayame]

No, we are unique. The typical male never has, never will and never wants to wear women's clothing. We crossdressers are wired differently, just as are gay men or women. It's genetic. Now, as for the % that want to or actively enjoy crossdressing, we'll never know. I ascribe to the notion that there are more than are willing to admit. So if 10% admit i, then likely the score is really 12% or 15%. If it were any more than that, I think we'd be more mainstream

I think that some cases are genetic, while others aren't, gender can be very fluid, since it's a social construction and varies greatly by culture.

[Vanessa Storrs]

I conducted a random survey of males in my household. 100% are crossdressers. If these results are accurate there are 23 male to female crossdressers on my block alone.

[franlee]

You are right, that is what I was thinking and believe too. Back when I was a baby they dressed most all babys in dresses. Growing up I don't know anyone that didn't stomp around in their mom's high-heels, and so on and so on. Personaly my first time was a bet that I made to get a girl out of her dress, the putting it on was for that excuss, But! IT BACKFIRED ON ME, look where I am now. So I believe the truth be known you are right. This reply was to Sammi777

[SANDRA MICHELLE]

And to Sammy777, what about all the woman that wear mens Tshirts or jersies designed for men. All crossdressers! I don't know how many people crossdress, only that I do. I used to think I was the only one way back when, I know now there are many more and I really think we are special in our own ways and someday more people will accept this form of expression. One can hope.

[Beverley Sims]

You are all focused in the wrong area..
There is a high possibility that close to 90 percent of posters on this thread could be CDers.
The remainder have knowledge of cross dressig practices.
Is this the silly season as there have been more light hearted posts recently.
As a service I will supply a weather report..
It is snowing in Slough.. That is in the yew nited kingdom near a big airport that has aeroplanes. 30 percnt of them won't fly tomorrow.

[ReineD]

And to Sammy777, what about all the woman that wear mens Tshirts or jersies designed for men. All crossdressers!

Um, Sandra Michelle ... take a look at the girl you wish to be in your avatar. :)

It appears as if you want to do more than just put on a girl's Tshirt or jersey and still present as a guy, if you're comparing what you want to do to the GGs who still present as GGs but wear sports Tshirts. :D

[Silentpartner GG SO]

I was thinking about clothes earlier today - is material gender specific? no - you can take a piece of material and you can cut it and sew it and make a men's shirt and a man wears it - no problem. Take that same piece of material and cut it and sew it and make it into a women's blouse - why isnt it ok for a man to wear it now? its the same piece of material -

back in the 60's men wore their hair long and wore shirts and pants made from flowery fabric and flowers in their hats and hair, beads and bracelets and nobody batted an eyelid - who decides if a piece of clothing is going to be for a man or a woman?

Back when I was a kid it wasnt deemed feminine to wear jeans and my mum wouldnt let me have a pair - now I wear nothing but jeans - I'm still a female and nobody has ever questioned that.

maybe too much importance is placed on clothing being for a specific gender. It you like it, and it makes you feel good then wear it - who is it hurting? nobody and if other people dont like it, well they should just suck it up and take a look at their own shortcomings. Life is short, waste it worrying about what other people are wearing.

[StarrOfDelite]

Studys have shown that 95% of the other studys and polls on the internet contain data that's made up!

Hey, nothing wrong with made up statistics and data. Ronald Reagan used to make up statistics in the middle of his press conferences and lots of people still think he was a great President.

[Acastina]

back in the 60's men wore their hair long and wore shirts and pants made from flowery fabric and flowers in their hats and hair, beads and bracelets and nobody batted an eyelid - who decides if a piece of clothing is going to be for a man or a woman?


Actually, there was a lot of heat over it: "Are you a boy/Or are you a girl/You may be a boy/But you look like a girl" Those of us who lived through that period hoped it would break up the rigid binary for good, but societies often regress after progressive periods.

[Silentpartner GG SO]

Actually, there was a lot of heat over it: "Are you a boy/Or are you a girl/You may be a boy/But you look like a girl" Those of us who lived through that period hoped it would break up the rigid binary for good, but societies often regress after progressive periods.

I am one of those who lived through that period - there was very little fuss in the UK about it tbh. I agree that re the societies regress again but I think its often a case of 2 steps forward and 1 back - so we still gain 1 forward. Little by little clothes are becoming gender-less but a question springs to my mind

if clothes were non gender specific would CD's still feel the same about wanting to dress? is it the clothes per se or the fact that they are female clothes?

[Mrs Roads]

I have read different studies or polls and the results vary, one may show between 5% and the next 10% of males have or do crossdress. But with the stigma associated to crossdressing even in private questoning I think many males refuse to answer truthfully or find some exemption to qualify their "no" answer.
In short I think if the absolute truth was known nearly every male sometime in their life, for what ever reason has parcialy at least crossdressed. And a lot more do activly CD and hide it, than will ever own-up to it. I have observed the lack of concern by other males in such matters and they just laughed it off into an non-issue. And I dought they would even remember it as such and answer no/never.
I think there are basicly two groups of males, , the one that admit crossdressing and the ones that lie about it. I'm just saying..............
====================

I totally agree with you, I've had the urge and need to cross dress ever since I was like 12 or younger and only recently embraced my feminine side and love every moment of it now.

[Foxglove]

What counts as crossdressing and what doesn't? How do we define it?

Once when I publicly crossdressed: when I was in high school, we were playing our archrivals in football. Just to take a bit of a dig at them, six of us guys dressed up as the other school's cheerleaders. Men's undershirts with big balloons in them, wigs, little green skirts. When we ran out onto the floor in the gym during the pep rally to lead the students in a cheer for the other school, you can bet we got a pretty good laugh. The next year, six other guys repeated the exploit. Of the 12 of us, how many of us got a bit of kick out of it? Depending on how you define crossdressing, I was probably the only one who was doing it.

Another incident from my youth: lying in bed with a woman, really needing to pee. The loo was in the hall just outside her door. I had to put something on so I grabbed the handiest thing--her terrycloth bathrobe. Would anybody call that CDing? Since it was me, yes, perhaps, but if it had been a "normal" guy?

A guy I knew went one better than that: he was once spotted going from his room to the loo down the hall wearing nothing but his girlfriend's fur coat. Assuming he was a normal guy, was that CDing?

I myself have no interest in trying to inflate figures by including each and every instance of someone putting on clothing of the opposite sex. It strikes me as something of a "misery-loves-company" exercise. I think the numbers of people who dress for the same reasons I do are very small. Whether that's good or bad, I think it's the case.

Annabelle

[sonna]

i found out by talking to people that we are everywere. i stoped beliving in studies a long time ago.
truthfully out of every (studie) out there for anything have any of you girls been asked any questions about anything.

[Karren H]

Hey, nothing wrong with made up statistics and data. Ronald Reagan used to make up statistics in the middle of his press conferences and lots of people still think he was a great President.

Yeah! Plus I made that up too! Actually I was quoting a Dilbert comics strip! Lol.

[ReineD]

i found out by talking to people that we are everywere. i stoped beliving in studies a long time ago.
truthfully out of every (studie) out there for anything have any of you girls been asked any questions about anything.

Not wanting to pick on you specifically, :) but others have shared your sentiments here. I don't understand people who dismiss scientific studies when they have increased the human knowledge base to where it is today, in technology, medicine, materials engineering, to name a few. We can say that some studies have proved themselves not entirely accurate once other scientists use the preliminary results to further expand the study, and some have been inaccurate, but this is the nature of building scientific knowldege. We used to think the world was flat and there was no such thing as evolution! To go ahead and dis all research as being unworthy is, in my opinion, particularly single-minded.

[Jennifer8]

what about all the woman that wear mens Tshirts or jersies designed for men. All crossdressers! .
IDK my friend does it all the time shes still a girl thou

[sonna]

well reinieD you got me there, you put me in my place and i am not afarid to sit there.
sometimes when your right your right. cant argue with that.

[Acastina]

I conducted a random survey of males in my household. 100% are crossdressers. If these results are accurate there are 23 male to female crossdressers on my block alone.

Good one, Vanessa. I have noted the same statistical concentration in my household, unless the cat counts (he's fixed; is that some kind of feline TG condition?)...:lol2:


I am one of those who lived through that period - there was very little fuss in the UK about it tbh. I agree that re the societies regress again but I think its often a case of 2 steps forward and 1 back - so we still gain 1 forward. Little by little clothes are becoming gender-less but a question springs to my mind

if clothes were non gender specific would CD's still feel the same about wanting to dress? is it the clothes per se or the fact that they are female clothes?

I agree about two steps forward and one back. I always wonder why those who cling to the past don't have an epiphany that, if past generations hadn't been pushed out of their comfort zones by progress, we'd still be squatting in caves and howling at the moon.

Your last question is truly intriguing. It ought to be the start of a new thread. Quite frankly, at first blush, I have no idea.:daydreaming:

[Jennifer B]

"There are lies, damned lies and statistics."

It's a subject that people will hide and lie about, often for good reason. So...

I posit that the best place to gather reasonable data, is to look at eBay's figures for the number of purchases, over a 5 year period, of female clothing by Male and Female users. With sub sets of data for lingerie and dresses. Obviously there will be many men buying for their partners, but taking this into consideration there should be clear indicators on users accounts to the contrary, for quite a lot of people. I know that my eBay account reads like a tarts boudoir.

I suspect that it would show considerably higher than other official figures. That in itself shouldn't be a surprise, because this is the easiest way for many Crossdressers to purchase female attire without a heart pounding visit to Victoria's Secret or the like. But even so, I imagine that it would still be an eye opener.

Can't see eBay releasing those figures any day soon though. Shame.

[ReineD]

well reinieD you got me there, you put me in my place and i am not afarid to sit there.
sometimes when your right your right. cant argue with that.

Don't mind me, it's just a pet peeve and it wasn't just you ... it was several other people too :hugs:

[Foxglove]

Not wanting to pick on you specifically, :) but others have shared your sentiments here. I don't understand people who dismiss scientific studies when they have increased the human knowledge base to where it is today, in technology, medicine, materials engineering, to name a few. We can say that some studies have proved themselves not entirely accurate once other scientists use the preliminary results to further expand the study, and some have been inaccurate, but this is the nature of building scientific knowldege. We used to think the world was flat and there was no such thing as evolution! To go ahead and dis all research as being unworthy is, in my opinion, particularly single-minded.

Hello, Reine! I'd largely agree with your view here, but I think in the context of this thread, people have a good point. I think we need to make a distinction. To a certain extent you are making this distinction in your post here, but I'd like to pick up on it.

In the "hard" sciences, such as physics, chemistry and biology, scientists are often able to devise and perform experiments that yield reliable results. They've have a lot of time to refine their methods--but even so, their results are questioned often enough when further experiments cast doubt on the methodology of earlier ones. But in what we might call the "behavioral sciences", things are seldom straightforward.

For one thing, you often run into the question of definitions. In the case of CDing, what do we actually mean? I think some CDers prefer a broad definition of the activity. There are certain advantages to us CDers in persuading the general public that CDing is much more common than is generally believed. I myself on the other hand would prefer a more restrictive definition. I'm interested in knowing how many people there are out there more or less like me. (And what do I mean by "like me"? I'd have as much trouble as anybody with coming up with a good definition.)

And then when it comes to methods, you'll have considerable disagreement over what's scientific and what isn't. Recently, I was reading about a study that showed that a certain group of people were suffering from low self-esteem. This study later was fiercely criticized because in coming up with their results, those who did the study simply asked people how high or low their self-esteem was.

According to the critics of the study, this is useless. Self-esteem is a notoriously difficult trait to measure. You can't just ask people how they feel. You have to observe their behavior, come up with a number of different indicators before you can decide the question.

Recently, out of curiosity, I found the Cogiati test on line and took it. But I always have huge problems with questionnaires like that--the main one being that I think that they assume perfect self-knowledge on the part of the respondent, which is never the case.

E.g., one questions was, If you hear a bell ringing in the distance, will you be able to pinpoint its location? Now think about it: how many times in your life have you heard a bell ringing and correctly or incorrectly identified its location? It's not as if people carry around a little notebook everywhere they go to keep track of incidents like that.

So when you answer such questions, you're not basing your answer on any scientific data that you've gathered. To a great extent, your answers are based on the image you have of yourself, and one's self-image can be wildly wrong.

And finally, even when you have data that are more or less reliable, people can argue about what the data mean. E.g., a while back I was amused on reading a newspaper article with the headline, "Another Myth Exploded". A couple of girls from the local secondary school had done a survey, which, according to the newspaper, showed that girls aren't any more into shopping than boys.

Actually, if you read the article, what the survey showed was that girls didn't spend any more money on shopping than boys. But it also showed that girls tended to spend the bulk of their money on clothing and accessories, whereas boys spent the bulk of theirs on booze and cigarettes. Now for me the two activities aren't the same at all. Buying clothing is very different from buying booze and cigarettes. So in my view, rather than "exploding a myth", this survey actually confirmed a popular belief.

(And this may be one of those rare stereotypes that actually happens to be true. If it is, what's the big deal? Women love shopping? So what? How many men are going to watch the Super Bowl tonight?)

So for various reasons I think people are right to question the value of "studies" in the behavioral sciences. Up to now I myself have lightly dismissed all estimates of the numbers of CDers out there that I have seen, because these estimates vary so widely that it's an indication to me that no one has as yet devised a method to estimate the numbers with any kind of accuracy at all. I don't regard this as being "single-minded". I regard it as an attempt to decide which studies are scientific and reliable and which ones aren't. If we decide one study is unreliable, it makes sense to wait until we get a better one. You see lots of studies in newspapers, magazines, on the net, etc., and quite frankly I find a lot of them to be worthless. As you've suggested, we need to keep "building scientific knowledge."

Best wishes, Annabelle

[Ava Tryptyk]

I think the question needs to be clarified - one can either ask, "Have you crossdressed", or "Are you a crossdresser?" The first question asks if you have ever worn any article of women's clothing in your lifetime, and I think most have, if either as a prank, a dare, for a specific event/holiday, etc. I in fact think that very few males have not crossdressed at some point. But the second question concerns those who do it habitually, especially if they do it at home for their own pleasure and interest, and not necessarily for others to see. I think the statistics for the first question would be amazingly high, while the second question would have a much lower positive answer rate.

[Gillian Gigs]

Statistics say that everyone who ate pickles who was born between 1850 and 1860 is now dead. Hence pickles will kill you, that is enough information to help anyone one realize that statistics can and will be twisted to suit any situation, or need. Just read any womens magizine to see how they twist surveys to what ever there need is. So, stay away from those pickles.LOL