So some family members heard gay's describe CD as fetish, with implication it is abnormal.
So what have you found as the most effective explanations to convince not fetish?
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So some family members heard gay's describe CD as fetish, with implication it is abnormal.
So what have you found as the most effective explanations to convince not fetish?
Ok well you might laugh at my thoughts on the matter. Assuming the premise is correct ( which I do not believe), ask them to google ?percentage of population with fetishes?.
I did, and it comes back with 75 percent. So if 75 percent of the population does something, seems to me that it is more ?normal? than not.
As soon as someone try?s to box everyone into a group, there is always the exception which invalidates the assumption. Oh well that is my 2 cents worth.
Good luck in arguing that.
Sandi
We use CD to accompany SEVERAL DIFFERENT "Conditions". It is hardly that simple. I, for example, am an "Escapist" I CD to , in effect, "Take a short vacation from MYSELF". where I effectively become ANOTHER person who is also another gender. and all my personal stresses melt away. There are those who get a rush from "Taboo breaking" and CD for that, still others CD as part of "humiliation SM", and more ----And various degrees of Fetishisms may also be involved. Even simple as "getting off" on the feelings of various exotic fabrics female clothing may be made from.-----CDing is something that is done for a variety of reasons---often not related to identity or sexuality.----So what if it is not normal? neither is being "Gay". We are the few who have found something FUN to do that is different.
Why does it being a fetish imply it being abnormal?
Doesn't a fetish only imply that you get some kind of sexual arousal from it?
There are lots of fetish's out there and let me tell you, crossdressing is way down low the tame end of strange sexual fetishes.
BTW: Back in my CD days saying it was a fetish was a lot easier than admitting to myself and everyone that I was TG.
SirDonna,
I would say very few people male or female don't have some sort of fetish , so why do we need to be singled out ?
The other question it raises is , " What is normal ?" I've had so many people open up to me about sexual or fetish problems , I guess we can become " Agony Aunts " at times .
The basic answer is Tranvestite translates as Crossdresser , no sexual content is incuded in that translation , it's what people associate with crossdressers and that is down to the media misrepresenting our community . We may not be the fetish ones in this equation but we may turn people on to it , we can do nothing to stop those thoughts . We have two choices in those circumstances , we either go along with it or we walk away , I personally don't need it so I politely walk away .
Be honest with yourself , if it's a fetish then so be it , where's the problem ?
Easy...
I can practice ALL aspects of CDing at a crowded shopping mall, can you practice ALL aspects of being gay at a crowded shopping mall?
If you have to explain it
From the dictionary
Quote:
a form of sexual desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, item of clothing, part of the body, etc.
You have two options say "yes it is" or you can say "its not for sexual gratification so its not a fetish".
Depending on your own personal situation.
Only you will know what is the best course to take.
There are a lot worse things in the world than crossdressing.
For some people it probably is a fetish. For me it has nothing to do with either gratification or gender, but it is compulsive, but probably no more compulsive than it is for many GGs who love clothes. I find them comfortable, I look good in them, and when I go out disguised as a woman I am merely acting. It is fun. Extending the holiday from myself metaphor - I have long used the term gender tourist to describe myself.
I guess the correct response is that is one persons opinion, and it reflects a very narrow perspective. Perhaps this person only knows fetish dressers. Or perhaps this person simply is making an observation based on personal prejudice. If so, its as erroneous as suggesting that all gays are effeminate.
As noted by others, while the term fetish generally implies a connection between the item (in this case clothing) and sexual pleasure, many people do not dress for sexual gratification. In reality, aspects of human behavior has some sexual component. The clothes people wear, the advertising we see, the media we consume. Its part of human nature, not a pathology.
We have to examine the whole process. We associate different behavior of some kind with how you express what is being generated in your brain. All behavior begins in the brain. But what we call a fetish is the behavior pattern and not necessarily the thinking that generates the behavior. And whether it is a fetish or not depends on the comparison of that behavior to what we consider to be normal behavior, which generally is identified as what most people do, that is, the mean.
The problem is what most people do is part of a big curve and so the normal is that part in the middle of the curve. It is discriminatory in that it considers anything on the wings of the curve as not being part of the normal. The entire curve represents the full range of behaviors or characteristics or whatever the curve represents. So why should some behavior that exists out in the wings be considered abnormal?
Because people expect conformity to particular standards and anything that does not comply well with that conformity concept becomes abnormal. The problem is that variation is normal and new trends in thinking or behavior or whatever does not come from the center of the curve. It comes from the individuals that are in the wings of the curve. So, in time, what is considered abnormal can become normal because it becomes the new standard for normal. So, you can see that expecting everyone to be more or less the same and expect that to stay that way as if it is some kind of holy grail is completely irrational.
In that world, change never happens and if there is anything that is true of the Universe it is that things change because things are variable. The logic behind identifying things as fetishes or abnormal or anything like that based solely on the behavior and whether it fits the current flavor of the day for what is normal ends up producing prejudicial and discriminatory thinking which doesn't do anybody any good.
The better standard should be whether the behavior harms the person or ends up harming others. But being an offense to somebody's narrow thinking is not really very harmful if harmful at all. So the whole concept of abnormal behavior being anything that is different from what most do ends up doing more harm than the "abnormal behavior" does. It denies a person's right to be themselves and to do that because it harms nothing or anybody else. So who is doing the harm to human freedom? It is the person who insists that everybody be more or less the same and stay out of the wings of the curve where the "creeps and freaks" reside. PURE NONSENSE!
Everybody should be free to be themselves whatever that is, so long as they do no material harm to someone else (usually, break a reasonable and sensible law). And doing something someone disagrees with is not doing harm to them when it is the thinking and discrimination of the other someone that harms the one is who different because that it the way they are. So, who is harming whom? It often ends up being the person who disrespects the other person's differences and insists on them conforming to the standard that they conform to. That demand to conform when non-conformity does no harm is one of the reasons why so many problems occur in human society. A failure to accept variability. And just because there are a few people who are in the wings of the curve that do material harm to others does not mean that everybody in the wings of the curve is automatically harmful because they are different from the people in the middle of the curve. Lots of people in the middle of the curve also do material harm to others and generally their behavior is considered to be normal except when they do harm. So doing material harm should be the gold standard for what is abnormal and not the simple fact and assumption that a person's different behavior will automatically be a threat and will result in material harm being inflicted.
(Sorry to sound like an attorney, but it seemed necessary to examine the logic behind the treatment of different people and how goofy - illogical - it often is.)
I would not try to explain it. If someone thinks it's a fetish, your opinion won't change their mind.
Who are you trying to convince, exactly? And why should what others think matter to you?
Frankly I have yet to hear a reason why it being a fetish is a bad thing.
The only reason I think fetish CD's are frowned upon in LGBTQ circles. Is lots of Cis-Het people think LGBTQ are all sexual deviots to begin with. So a fetish CD out in public in a short skirt and bad makeup is not what most LGBTQ want to be associated with.
Come to that, Roberta, most of us wouldn’t ether! Not in public, anyway.
I think the best argument one could make is that if a person is cross dressing in public it's probably not a fetish, because fetishes are usually not practiced in public. With the exception of public humiliation, but that’s another thing entirely.
It can never be a fetish unless there is some sort of gratification involved, the question that was asked of me when I "came out" from several people was "are you gay" which of course I am not but for some no doubt they are gay but for the most part we are just "us" and with a different way of life attached.
So, Donna, why would a gay guy describe CD's as having a fetish? Because maybe it's their way of saying CD's aren't gay?:straightface:
And, since most of us aren't?
I think it's a lot easier to use that term to explain our dressing than to have to continually explain why we aren't gay!:doh:
So, I have not heard any family or friends even discuss cross dressing, let alone call cross dressing a fetish. One thing I always do when discussing or arguing a point with someone is to have them define their terminology. Someone declares cross dressing to be a fetish. Have the person define "fetish." Have them define "abnormal."
Cross dressing is nothing more than a word which may be used as a noun or verb or adjective. Anyway it is used there is the underlying fact it describe the action of wearing clothing of the opposite sex.....sex at birth to the general public.
Of course, wearing the garments of a woman by a man may be a fetish. A guy wears a baby doll nightie while getting it on with his wife or girl friend would be a possible fetish if that is when he wears women's clothing. Of course, if it the woman who wants her accommodating husband or boy friend to wear the night gown, who has the fetish? In that instance isn't it possible he does not have a fetish? Isn't he enjoying how much his partner is turned on?
Of course, if one is accepting of even the possibility of a person born into the body of the wrong gender, then is it really cross dressing? Aren't the clothes now being aligned with the true sexual identity of the person without regard to the equipment between the thighs?
If one has a deeper discussion of why a person wears the clothing of the opposite sex you're probably going to encounter a lot of ignorance and worse. Maybe, it is time for you to have a deeper discussion with those family members.
All sexual arousal is fetishistic in the sense that there is always some thing that triggers arousal. The thing could be an object, an idea, a quality, a look, etc. or a combination of these things. What we usually associate with fetishes or paraphilias are when those things are unusual or extreme. Fetishistic crossdressing is so steeped in shame and denial that I suggest that one shouldn't ask themselves if it's a fetish, ask your wife.
I often thought it was a fetish for me when I was younger. As I age and reflect more and grow as a person who enjoys the balance between my masculine and feminine sides, I realize the fetish aspect of it was not related to my crossdressing, but a separate set of interests to explore.
Oh c'mon you know what I mean. Besides public humiliation often goes hand in hand with forced-fem fantasies.Quote:
Originally Posted by Patience
hello SirDonna,
Perhaps for gays cross-dressing is a fetish? I don't know
Most crossdressers are not gay.
Most of us were attracted to wearing female clothes before puberty so it is often not an erotic fetish (see my recent survey results of forum members).
My explanation is that we are somewhere on the transgender spectrum to varying degrees as individuals.
stay healthy,
luv J
Jacques, yes. In the LGBTQ community crossdresser is commonly understood to mean “a man who uses women’s clothes for sexual pleasure”. On the “colloquial” scale, most of us who do it for some kind of self expression would be gender fluid, bigender, or somewhere on the “trans” scale (which includes non-transitioning trans people). Don’t ask me why the crossdressing community uses the verbiage differently. I’m guessing because so many are adamantly “not gay” that they never really circulated with the greater LGBTQ community and so developed their own parlance.
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This wouldn’t be absolutely true, as the definition of fetish is an ABNORMAL attachment to an object, idea, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by LilSissyStevie
First I would say, they don't know what they are talking about.
I would and do prove my point by living openly, making friends, living life.
For me, they are not just clothes, they represent how I want the world to see me, they are part of me, reflect my emotions.
Not just adamant, but many seem to go out out of their way to make sure everyone knows they are not gay or transgender.Quote:
Originally Posted by Micki_Finn
Lets face it, Homophobia and Transphobia run rampant in the CD community.
I think it has to do with not stepping on anyone?s toes either. Gay and transgender people can have a very different set of hurdles in front of them that I am well aware that I don?t relate to. I try not presume that I know anything about anyone else?s struggle except my own (and I?ve been very fortunate), so I do feel a need to make it clear that I don?t fall into a category that doesn?t reflect who I am.
Technically a fetish is sexual arousal by an object: like a shoe fetish. I'm using fetish in the colloquial sense that includes fetishes and paraphilias. I'm not sure normal/abnormal is an issue here. I mean, how many attachment units +1 does it take for a balloon fetish (yes, it's a thing) to become abnormal? Then again, fetishists of all types outnumber LGBT so who exactly is more "normal?"Quote:
Originally Posted by Micki_Finn
we are in free world we should not take seriously what people talk about us, we like to dress and see ourselves in our dream role, we are happy and nobody can snatch our right to be happy.
I don?t think it is either/or. For me there is definitely fetish involved but as I get older I?m discovering something else too. When I was a teenager I would dress, get a sexual high, release it (let the reader understand) And hurriedly undress in shame. As I?ve got older dressing has become less sexual. Now I wear female clothes most of the time (Jeans, t-shirt, underwear) and it just feels ?right?. The sexual element has decreased as I have grown more comfortable with myself.
I am easily aroused by specific pieces of garments like skirts, leotards, pantyhose or shoes (and suspect to not be the only male in that predicament :)), but they have to be worn by a woman or it has no effect on me. Does that make me a fetishist? A half-and-half?
According to medical studies, fetishes seem to be almost exclusively concerning males. I find this astonishing.
Tell them being Gay is a fetish and see their response. Sure their argument/response would be pretty much the same as yours to be accused that CDing is a fetish. X x x