Mountain? Or mole hill?

It never ceases to amaze me that humans feel the need to categorize everything. Everything must have a label, a reason, a cute little box with a bright ribbon on top (color coded of course) all to explain our little "problems". But what if its "just is"? What if there is no explanation? What if there is no medical condition to explain it? No psychological explanation of preset criteria as to why we do the things we do?

It seems to sit and analyze everything takes more time than it does to either enjoy it or deal with it. If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, figure out a way to deal with it. If you can't deal with it, then move on to what you can deal with.

For all that I read on these forums about CDing, I could easily substitute the word art in and find myself nodding in agreement. But because I'm an artist, the collective "they" chalk all I do up to that single fact. "She's eccentric because she's an artist." "All artists are moody like that." So on and so forth.

Yet because CDing isn't considered "normal", everyone seems to want to come to the why, where and what-makes-you. As if coming to any "logical explanation" would ever "cure" it. Like its something as simple as never letting your son sleep in the bed with you as a child to ensure he won't grow up to be a crossdresser or something ridiculous like that!

How about... that's just the way you are? How about, that's life? Why not learn to enjoy it? Embrace it?

Life is far too short for all this analytical crap!

I'm me. I accept me. You're you. I accept you. What you do doesn't harm me unless I let it. So why should it bother me? I don't.

Okay people... I'm done ranting.

It is a very human trait to attempt to define things by associating them with other things that are in our experiences. Artists are eccentric, engineers are dull, blue collar workers are dim witted, politicans are crooks, crossdressers are gay. It is an easy way to look at things and allows one to look at the world without having to resort to thinking.

And yet, things have names, or names have things. So it goes on snowing.

I couldn't agree more DD. There is no one reason, even though we sometimes think out loud and ask why. Better to enjoy it like you say or just shrug our shoulders, accept it and move on to the next thing, especially if there is nothing to be done because it's just the way we are. Successful people can turn a perceived disadvantge into an advantage anyway and use it as a learning tool.

Kind of reminds me of all the hoopla about these hurricanes. We track them, analyze the crap out of them but in the end there is not a damn thing we can do about them. They are going to do what they are going to do. All we can do is endure and hope for the best. If they do damage, we pick up the pieces and start over. That is what true survivors do. Are we survivors or victims? Only each of us individually can answer that question.:)

Well said DD and Arianna. After reading many posts on this forum I have come to a similar conclusion. I am me and I have no idea why, but I am not trying to find answers any more.

:love:

Edwina

DD,

I could not have ranted any better myself. For years I had a hang-up about my cd'ing because I painted myself out of some imaginary box. Then I accepted myself and my life is so more enjoyable.

Gotta go because I'm busy having fun making up for lost time.

Babette

As Popeye said, I am what I am. I'm not going to change being transgendered so either people accept it, consign me to hell or ignore it.

I like the way you think DD. :thumbsup::thumbsup:

Life is what it is. Accept and enjoy it while yoiu can.

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Originally Posted by DemonicDaughter

Life is far too short for all this analytical crap!

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Yes, indeed! Apart from which it's all such hard work!!

Going shopping now...

Sarah...

Hey DD, I love your posts. You just keep ranting girl. I heard this a while back, " today you are you, that is truer than true, there is no one alive who is youer than you " dr. suess xo Toots

Good rant DD I feel I'm me I CD and don't need the why do I or care why I'm happy and that's all I need know. :hugs:
Angie

Many things in life cannot be controlled, other people and their actions, inner feelings though some will never express these. Many more that cannot be explained. So I am trying to live in the moment, day by day.

Well said D D.

you know DD........... i have seen and dealt with the people that claim to be normal .... and i want nothing to do with them...........

my thing that i can't understand is person's right here that are closed minded be what ever they might go by can't get it we are people all of us none better than the next... and if your feelings get hurt .... be mined ful of others so you take care to think about the person's feelings your about to stomp on..............

DD i like your thinking and i don't think what you do for a living makes you..... you..... your you because your awake and alive with all thing around you.............

Yay DD!
I totally agree, there's been times while discussing CDing with a Cd'er that they were trying to explain the need to me. I just say that I figure it's so ingrained in that person that it's like their eye color. You can change it temporarily but you are only covering up the true essence of the person.
Accept yourself, embrace yourself, enjoy yourself!

P.S. I HATE boxes, don't ever try to put me in one.

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Originally Posted by DemonicDaughter

How about... that's just the way you are? How about, that's life? Why not learn to enjoy it? Embrace it?
Life is far too short for all this analytical crap!
I'm me. I accept me. You're you. I accept you. What you do doesn't harm me unless I let it. So why should it bother me? I don't.
.

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Originally Posted by Sheena Rue

Yay DD!
I totally agree, there's been times while discussing CDing with a Cd'er that they were trying to explain the need to me. I just say that I figure it's so ingrained in that person that it's like their eye color. You can change it temporarily but you are only covering up the true essence of the person.
Accept yourself, embrace yourself, enjoy yourself!

P.S. I HATE boxes, don't ever try to put me in one.

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Well said ladies can't agree more:love: I feel it is a gift
It is a part of you.... be proud....celebrate being yourself!
So many have such angst over it makes me sad:hugs:

OMG what a GREAT post! I can't imagine adding any thing to that - it is just perfect as it stands.

The way I see it is labels and boxes are mental tools that help us deal with the world. If we had to treat every blade of grass as a separate entity the mental effort needed to deal with the world would be overwhelming. The problem is that it just doesn't work very well with people. In one sense, it's not surprising that crossdressers can't be categorized into neat little packages. It doesn't really work with anybody. It especially doesn't work with people who defy convention to the point of wearing clothing of the opposite sex.

In other words, I agree completely!

The weirdest thing for me has been facing the reality that I suppressed this side of myself without acknowledging that I was doing it when I've always been so terribly fiercely independant.

I still don't even know why but I recall struggling with gender rules issues when I was a very young kid.

So I don't even know why it became such an issue when I've always been happy being different in plenty of other ways.

But for many it must be even harder with so much of the culture we in the western world have grown up in preaching conformity as important and that crossdressing is wrong.

So for me it's a matter of challenging these ingrained nonsensical issues with the same clear intelligent logic you put forward in your eloquent post
DD!

You are most thoroughly right!

There is nothing wrong with what we do and that is all the justification we should ever need!

The human brain is designed to organize things and provide some order to the world. Humans simply cannot live long in a truly chaotic environment. The real question is can we allow certain looseness in our categories (boxes as you put it) so that variations within the spectrum are not simply rejected. Most people can allow this, but others have to have rigid walls to cope with their insecurities.

On the other hand people like us are forced to make room for greater variations simply because we ourselves dont fit neatly into any of the provided categories and we learn (however slowly) that it is better to make allowances.

It is impossible to totally block this very human process of categorization, since it is wired into our brains.

I don't care why I'm the way I am. I could blame society, my parents, my childhood, my accident, the area I grew up in, teachers, pets, the color of the rug in the livingroom of my aunt's house... but it doesn't change who I am to find out the reason why.

I think learning how you progressed in life is interesting. I think the workings of the human mind are fascinating. But when we get to the point of trying to pinpoint every action's cause... well that's where you spend more time analyzing and less time living.

I have no desire to stick a psychosis label on cding. It simply is. I was born with gray eyes (using the gorgeous Sheena's example). Sure I could find out the scientific reason behind it, but it doesn't change their color.

Boxes and labels are for stuff, not people. It's convenient to be able to quickly find our sewing notions, recipes, cleaning supplies, personal papers and so on. But people are dynamic. always growing, always changing. We don't stay the same so it is rather pointless to slap on a label. Even as we live our daily lives, we assume different roles and responsibilities... partner, parent (and/or child), employer/employee, shopper, dancer, adviser, and so on. Trying to put a label on a person, any person, would be like putting everything you owned into a box and trying to label what is inside of it... it would become so cumbersome as to be useless. If anyone wants to put a label on me, just make it read, "HH"... Happy Human (could also read Happy Holly;)).

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Originally Posted by DemonicDaughter

I don't care why I'm the way I am.

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Absolutely right! It's hard enough to figure out who we are, and even if we did know why, it wouldn't change anything anyway.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DemonicDaughter

I'm me. I accept me. You're you. I accept you. What you do doesn't harm me unless I let it. So why should it bother me?

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What a fantastic attitude! If more people followed this philosophy we'd have so much more harmony in the world - DD, you're truly a beautiful person! I've never met you but I love you already! :hugs:

I am a rectangular shape trying to fit into a round hole!!! I am who I am and that is good enough for me. I love your post's and you should keep ranting on. the lines of normallcy have been blurred, and thats a good thing. The sooner they get totally out of focus is what we are all looking forward to.

Great words to live by I wsh it were as simple. But when you keep diiging the hole. Your life seems like a pit sometimes. When I can finally accept who I am. I have an unaccepting wife to remind that this just doesn't work.
Life is full curve balls I'm gaining the courage everyday but it seems so hard to deal with it all.

Its not us you have to convince, its them! LOL

Society is based on rules and standardized behavior. The more organized and structural, the more efficient and successful that society will become. Individuality is frowned upon because it is unpredictable. A small amount can be accommodated but nothing should challenge the central pillars of society. Unfortunately transgendersim does exactly that. We challenge the neat organization and labeling system that society is based upon so are considered a threat.

If DD's artistry was condemned like CDing is then she would also want to know why. Nobody thinks about socially accepted behaviors because we don't need to. But anything anti-social needs to be explained because it means that person has broken out of the social conditioning and so society wants to know how this can be fixed so it will not happen again.

It is all based upon the illusion that society is based upon normal healthy human behavior when in fact it is deliberately highly constrained to squeeze out as much individuality as possible.

As to wanting to know the reason why, I happen to think this is a good thing. If we were not a curious species we would still be living in caves. Advances in knowledge will eventually help lead to changes in society so transgenderism will become accepted one day. Without knowing the reason why will leave CDing as an oddity which allows the prejudiced to label it under perversion.

Knowing why also has a beneficial effect on the individual giving them the confidence and reassurance to accept themselves and lead a happier life. Trying to achieve this while believing that there must be something wrong with yourself is very hard.

I tell people that sometimes a ham sandwich is just that, a ham sandwich, so put some mustard on it and enjoy.

Karen Starlene :star:

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Originally Posted by DemonicDaughter

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I have no desire to stick a psychosis label on cding. It simply is. I was born with gray eyes (using the gorgeous Sheena's example). Sure I could find out the scientific reason behind it, but it doesn't change their color.

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Thank You! I have felt that example a number of times, trying to explain this to my gf is sometimes like trying to explain why my eyes are brown.

I LOVE the "Art" as substitution, too. I feel like a Delacroix, but people look at me like I'm a Mapplethorpe;)

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Originally Posted by Satrana

Its not us you have to convince, its them! LOL

Society is based on rules and standardized behavior. The more organized and structural, the more efficient and successful that society will become. Individuality is frowned upon because it is unpredictable. A small amount can be accommodated but nothing should challenge the central pillars of society. Unfortunately transgendersim does exactly that. We challenge the neat organization and labeling system that society is based upon so are considered a threat.

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I disagree about the importance of strict order in society. i think that diversity and substantial constant change are essential for ensuring a societies long-term survival through changing circumstances. So in fact the rigid slow to shift structure, the very pillers of scoiety are a substantial threat to the society and a far greater one than unpredictable change.

Actually my current hypothesis of human civilisation is that there are essentially several main groups in society.

The creatives. From artists to engineers these are the cause of innovation. They also tend to be the more different.

The ordinaries. Nothing wrong with them, they are the mainstay of the species. Without them the rest of society would collapse crumble and starve.

The users. Made up mostly of psychopaths (the powerpath varient specifically) they take the innovations and new things of the creatives and integrate them into the lives of the ordinaries. Not for the purpose of benefit to the ordinaries or society in general, thats just a side-effect, but merely to advance their own position of power. However to ensure that other powerpath users cannot rise too quickly to challenge them they must crush and prevent as much innovation and creativity not directly under their control as possible.

And so the Users through the millenia use the creatives and the ordinaries to get power then foster hate for either other societies or the creatives within their own society not under their direct control to undermine their competition and to keep the ordinaries and creatives from realising how they are being used.

Because Transgender people threaten no important part of society or it's order or structure. Just like gay people don't nor women before that. And at every turn society has become better with increased civil rights and increased diversity not worse off.

Of course there is some neurobiological evidence that some people are born less able to cope with new ideas or with change.

In which case every civil rights struggle will be just as fiercely opposed as the last as each new generation involves an conflict between those who can understand why it is right and those mentally disabled people who find any change threatening and uncomfortable.

Or the comparative studies of chimpanzees and bononos that suggest humans carry both groups social genes could explain it.

Many of us carrying the free-love society of the bonobos with their love of new things and peaceful but very very kinky ways while many carrying the chimpanzee gene with it's hostility and fear towards the different, it's society based on aggressive violent dominance murder and rape.

But whatever the situation is we do have the following facts:

Society does indeed change.

People change it.

There is nothing unethical about crossdressing. It causes no harm by itself, only the culturally and socially determined reactions of some in modern western society cause harm in response to it. Many cultures throughout human history have considered us valuable, special, important and even sacred!

There will be another generation of crossdressers and transexuals etc after us!

Now think about that!

If we pass up our chance at changing society back to it's former TG-loving ways then the next generation will have to do it. And if they are too scared then it'll be the next one. Ad Infinitum!

So how many generations might we cause to suffer by our inaction if we do not change the society in our own lifetimes?

See there is the real moral dilemma for us!

Not can we find an excuse to tolerate our own crossdressing. Not is there something wrong with us. Because if we just deal with that we guarantee the next generation will have to do likewise too just like generations before us had to struggle!

Our moral dilemma is whether we have the courage to stop passing the buck. Whether we have the courage to make a differance in the world. Even if it's just a small one, even if it's done from inside the closet so long as it keeps the ball rolling, keeps gaining ground.

Because whatever hypothesis explains their motivation the fact is there are those intent on ensuring the next generation are either no better off than we or are even worse off!

And if we do not act to prevent that then we will be guilty by our inaction.

Well said DD my wig is off to you and it fits everything not just us Crossdressers or Transgenders or what ever

psychologists like to label behavior cause they usually have a corresponding drug to presribe. Hell with them.

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Originally Posted by DemonicDaughter

As if coming to any "logical explanation" would ever "cure" it.

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I think that's the root of a HUGE amount of the agonising that goes on.

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Originally Posted by DemonicDaughter

I was born with gray eyes (using the gorgeous Sheena's example). Sure I could find out the scientific reason behind it, but it doesn't change their color.

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Exactly. When we find acceptance within ourselves, it ceases to matter why.. :)


Thank you, DD. :)

xx

DD,
I just love the way you put so many of my thoughts into coherent words that make sense. Thank you for your depth of understanding and the ability to express. You make me think.
I have often wondered why it is that when someone steps out of line, out of the norm so to speak, there is a mad rush to bring them back into the fold, into "normalcy" again, instead of trying to find out where they are going.
Labels? Heck, I didn't even know I was a GG until I joined here.