Reactions on "CDing not incurable"?

[Shy Charlotte]

I just read an essay called "Crossdressing is not 'Incurable'", and am not sure how to take it. Um, not really sure what to say, but just curious to what your reaction to the piece is. I've been on a psychoanalysis trip lately, and it's kinda got the 'ol wheels spinning.

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/cathytg/cure.htm

Shy Charlotte

[Elinor]

Freud's sexual inversion

"As evidence that something like this is going on, consider the prominence that mirrors have in the life of the crossdresser. Indeed, one wonders whether, if there were no mirrors or cameras, there would even be crossdressing" Well in my case yes! It's the feeling and what is in my head not what I look like.

"If so, the boy would tend to avoid making his mother the object of the feelings. A compromise, which gratifies the feelings, while avoiding the anxiety, is to focus them instead on female clothing, or on himself as a female." Sorry Freud my man not so, not in my case. I do not fancy my mother.

"The third class of things that may promote crossdressing are circumstances that may make it easier for the boy to discover crossdressing as a way to gratify his sexual feelings" More like me perhaps closer than the former two.

"The crossdresser basically experiences a highly refined version of infantile sexuality. It is highly fantasy laden, and extremely narcissistic. Some would argue that the very purpose of erotic pleasure is to tie us more deeply to other people. Yet in the crossdresser the pursuit of sexual pleasure tends to have the opposite effect of driving him away from people and into himself."
Well it did start in infancy around three or four. Perhaps something in this statment.
Well for me it feels good. I have stopped caring about it. My feminine side lives so be it.

[CDKathy]

Since you read that article, I'm wondering if you also read Jung's anima theory and how it relates to crossdressing (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/cathytg/anima.htm) on the same site?

I guess it depends a bit on how you define the term "cure". For each of us it may be somewhat different. If you read my post Independence Day (http://www.crossdressers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=893) that pretty well sums up what I feel to be my "cure". I am no longer plagued by the insecurity and self doubt that was caused by crossdressing. I am fully aware of and in touch with my feminine feelings regardless of the clothing I am wearing. I now choose to wear femme clothing or not based solely on the basis of personal comfort or style, not because of some feeling of need.

How you percieve your own cure may be different. Just keep looking within yourself and asking "who am I". When you look in a mirror while dressed, who do you see? When not dressed?

When I look in the mirror I see me. Regardless of what I am wearing at the time.

[kristi cd]

I'm still pretty young but I think that if I was indeed truly "cured" and never really thought of it again (how I would define "cured"), I could live with that, afterall, I would have no desire to dress or really look back fondly on the memories of dressing. On the other hand, if it is a "self-curing" (not a good word, but nothing better comes to mind at the moment) where it's essentially playing mind games and self control tactics with yourself, I don't think I could live with that, becuase just like the flip side of the above scenario, I would most likely look back fondly on the times I dressed secretly (that's why I started wasn't it? enjoying it?) and still have some desire to do so again. This is probably just the aimless ramblings of a confused teen trying to figure this all out his/her place in the big scary world though. :D

[Shy Charlotte]

I felt I'd finally reached a point where I've finally come to terms with my feminine side. Although I'm not going to publicly say "hey, I'm a transvestite" I feel like I'm finally at that point where I'm a crossdresser, and I'm ok with that. After that epiphany I suddenly felt the urge to dress gone. Not that I didn't want to do it, but I just felt like I wasn't compelled to do it anymore. To paraphrase Kathy, yeah I'm a crossdresser, but if I never dress up again it's ok, and if I do dress up it's ok too. Just a choice, not the addiction it once was. Although having met all the wonderful people that I have through crossdressing, and overcoming any prejudices and stereotypes (being in a class that is often prejudiced and stereotyped incessantly) has made me thankful that I've had the experiences that I've had. I do still choose to CD, just when it's convenient, and not when I feel it'll get me in trouble.

Having said that, reading the essay on the website bubbled up a slew of emotions that I hadn't dealt with in some time. My parents caught me CDing at an early age, and I purged, they purged, everyone purged my stuff in an attempt to "cure" me. I've even encountered conga lines of psychologists, counselors, psychiatrists (bunch of pill peddlers [no offense to any psychiatrists in the audience]). All this was meant to "cure" me. And reading the website made me feel, irrationally, that maybe it was CDing, not diagnosed clinical depression and social anxiety, that made me afraid to talk to girls. Admittedly I often was afraid to go up to talk to girls knowing I had a "perverted" secret (as one rather unpleasant shrink told me once) that I knew would cause automatic disqualification in dating circles once the secret came out. In fact I was found out by my first g/f, and not too soon after that she ran off with my best friend. Sorry, this is getting long.

I was just kind of bothered by the essay, since it almost nailed me to a T, and on top of that implied that I hadn't been trying hard enough (even after years and years of counseling and parental persecution). And although I finally feel at ease with my female side, I found the site unsettling. I just posted this to see how other CD's would react to it. I feel like I'm moving more towards where Kathy is now, rather than how I was when I started, and am curious how someone just coming out or starting out would feel towards it.

Shy Charlotte

[Julie]

Since this is the same website as Jung's Anima Theory which pretty much says we need to accept ourselves and integrate male and female persona into one I'm going out on a limb and saying this person is a psychiatrist or psycologist and is working on theories that will get him/her published.

Is corssdressing incurable? Is wanting to watch sports incurable? Is it possible to reduce men's sex drive to that of a women's?

Anything is possible but at what cost? I know how incredibly miserable I was when I went ten years with almost no dressing at all. It was destroying me and my relationships with my friends and family. Now that I've allowed myself to truly be me I can see how I am opening up again to them. Every day my attitude gets better. I am a much happier person.

Cure is probably the wrong word anyway because it suggests a sickness. CDing is a personality trait just as being a thrill seeker or wall flower is. Can you "cure" a thrill seeker from being one? You may stop him but he'll be miserable if you do.

The real problem here is CDing is seen as an "abomination" and whatever other ridiculous labels it has been stuck with over the years. Society needs to lighten up and maybe start looking at themselves individually and ask why aren't they more accepting of other's differences?

Now wouldn't that be interesting?

[Julie]

A part of our persona is the role of male or female we must play. For most people that role is determined by their physical gender. But Jung, like Freud and Adler and others, felt that we are all really bisexual in nature. When we begin our lives as fetuses, we have undifferentiated sex organs that only gradually, under the influence of hormones, become male or female. Likewise, when we begin our social lives as infants, we are neither male nor female in the social sense. Almost immediately -- as soon as those pink or blue booties go on -- we come under the influence of society, which gradually molds us into men and women.

In all societies, the expectations placed on men and women differ, usually based on our different roles in reproduction, but often involving many details that are purely traditional. In our society today, we still have many remnants of these traditional expectations. Women are still expected to be more nurturant and less aggressive; men are still expected to be strong and to ignore the emotional side of life. But Jung felt these expectations meant that we had developed only half of our potential.

The anima is the female aspect present in the collective unconscious of men, and the animus is the male aspect present in the collective unconscious of women. Together, they are refered to as syzygy. The anima may be personified as a young girl, very spontaneous and intuitive, or as a witch, or as the earth mother. It is likely to be associated with deep emotionality and the force of life itself. The animus may be personified as a wise old man, a sorcerer, or often a number of males, and tends to be logical, often rationalistic, even argumentative.

The anima or animus is the archetype through which you communicate with the collective unconscious generally, and it is important to get into touch with it. It is also the archetype that is responsible for much of our love life: We are, as an ancient Greek myth suggests, always looking for our other half, the half that the Gods took from us, in members of the opposite sex. When we fall in love at first sight, then we have found someone that "fills" our anima or animus archetype particularly well!

There are other archetypes but it would get boring if I listed them all but this one I think most would find interesting: The hermaphrodite, both male and female, represents the union of opposites, an important idea in Jung's theory. In some religious art, Jesus is presented as a rather feminine man. Likewise, in China, the character Kuan Yin began as a male saint (the bodhisattva Avalokiteshwara), but was portrayed in such a feminine manner that he is more often thought of as the female goddess of compassion!

So it seems that other cultures allow for the feminine side of men to be projected openly. Why are so many other cultures so closed minded?

[Shy Charlotte]

Interestingly in many Eastern cultures, although on a personal basis homosexuality and/or male femininity were frowned upon, culturally there is alot of cross-genderization. In Chinese operas, for example, males were the only ones allowed in acting roles, so all the characters, including the women, were played by men. It's interesting that at the time period these crossdresser actors were idolized and even had groupies, both male and female, who were so enchanted by the actor's beauty and ability to impersonate females. For those movie buffs out there, you can rent the foreign film "the King of Masks" to get a feel for this. It would be a dream come true for many CD's to live in a society like that (although interestingly GG's were treated like dirt and were often left to die of exposure when newborns).

I think the entire prejudice against homosexuals, masturbation, and crossdressers, etc. etc. starts in the Western World from our common link to Judaism. Muslims, Christians, and Jews all have a common thread, the Torah (or Old Testament to Christians, and I'm not sure if there's a separate book in the Koran for Muslims). Try to imagine a scarce nomadic group of people, where there was strength and survival in numbers. With everything from the elements, to starvation, to warring tribes, there was a constant thinning of the population. So? From this there are basic guidelines in the Old Testament that are there to ensure the survival of an underpopulated ethnic group:

So you're a homo? Good luck having kids that way... that's a sin.

You like to wear a pink tunic instead of a brown one? Sounds like the above mentioned homosexual. Sin

Like to polish the 'ol kielbasa at night? Lowering sperm count = Sin

Killing your neighbor= Unnecessary depopulation= Sin

Like pork or lobster? Pigs can carry parasites and lobster (denizens of the deep) spoil quickly in desert environments. = Sin

so on and so forth.

Society unconsciously bases many of its biases and prejudices on a 5,000 year old ettiquette. Not that the Bible, Koran, or Torah is bad, just make sure that you know that the audience at the time was a handful of people trying to eke out a survival in a harsh desert, as opposed to hundreds of nations with hundreds of millions of people vying for a spot in an overpopulated world.

Just a thought,
Shy 1