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I wouldn't say "a woman within," but most definitely a feminine side that unleashes when I dress. It feels like a release when I do. My walk, talk and mannerisms assume definite feminine attributes and I love it. My perspective alters and on occasion even a shift in sexual orientation. (To the point I realize that I'm bi-sexual and probably always was, but never admitted it to myself.)
Took me a long time to accept that my feminine side was not a sign of weakness which is what the environment I grew up in conditioned me to think.
Actual gender is irrelevant. I enjoy it and that's it. I don't feel bad about it.
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For me, I would not say that I have a woman within. There is definitely a female side to my personality. In an effort to help my wife, and the couple we have come out to, I use the analogy that I have an alter ego, and she is female. That helps to compartmentalize my dressing into something with a label that is easier to accept. In many ways it helps my wife accept this facet of my personality when I refer to my female persona as she or her and that she is only a small part of the complete me. I am very fortunate to have a wife and close friends that accept my dressing, and if using a second person pronoun helps to maintain that acceptance then I am more than willing to continue doing it.
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Caylee, I like your term of "alter ego". I think that is what i really have, too. Not really a woman.
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Only with SOME crossdressers. Since there is a WIDE variety of REASONS that express themselves in Cross-Dressing, Transsexualism, sadomasochism, escapism other things combinations of factors and varying degrees, we cannot say any one thing is common to all male crossdressers, except they are inclined to wear women's clothing.
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Most definately there is with me.
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My experience with dysphoria suggests it's not a "woman inside" or a "feminine aspect", but something more basic in my life. If I'm not engaged in something that takes my full attention or can't be seen as validating my internal view of womanhood, the dysphoria pops up. I've spent way too much time accommodating the dysphoria only to discover I've been playing a short game against a long term challenge.
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Oh, sure...a women within, though a relative term, defines that we all have a set of personality potentials that are part of our birthright, but that society labels as “feminine” and says he should suppress.
I believe most of us here have made contact with these potentials and found their expression fulfilling.
We integrate this into our whole personalities, and are able to smooth off some of the macho rough edges programmed by being brought up in a gender defined society.
I for example was raised to embrace my feminine side as a coddled undeveloped baby boy that got well with hormone therapy and grew breasts before most girls my age.
Whether Mom saw divine intervention or what, it was evident she saw the daughter she always wished for.
Hence I was a girl in my mind very early in my life. I do believe my experience, beside having menstrual issue, living as a female and not transiting do to cost, had me wondering and exploring my male side later in life.
Today, it's all about reminiscing about my childhood and longing to return to being my feminine self again.
I'll always have the need to wear soft fabrics, smell nice and clean, cross my legs when sitting, and don jewelry.
Feminine women were always a big influence throughout my life.
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*scratches beard thoughtfully*
Nah, not me. As I stated in another thread, we're all different and we all have different motivations or triggers for this, from people who suffer from true gender dysphoria to guys who simply have a bit of a kink to them. For my own lot - I've felt the guilt and shame, coupled with the worry that even though I didn't feel these feminine feelings I've read about either emotionally or sexually, they'd appear at some point and throw myself into turmoil. 35 years and a spot of therapy later and they STILL haven't arrived, so the only conclusion I could draw was... I just view myself as a regular guy who from time to time has slightly different clothing preferences than "the norm." and that realization has been massively freeing for me.
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Disclaimer: My opinions, based on what I've learned through my life, and the observations of others.
As already mentioned, we are always, who we are. What we commonly see, is men who have been brought up to believe that being feminine in any way is the worst possible thing that a boy/man can be. common insults that both grown men and women direct towards men to shame them, are sissy, lady, girly, p***y, etc., in order to insinuate that the target of derision is 'less than a REAL man'.
What we wind up with, is many of us will use our language in an attempt to distance ourselves from the feminine, in order to save our egos (after all, no REAL man would ever behave like, dress like, speak like or think, 'like a woman', because that's the worst thing in the world that we could ever do). We use female names in third person as if it's not really us who are feeling those 'bad' feminine feelings, or not behaving in the 'bad' feminine way. Some will refer to their female feelings as a 'side' of themselves, rather than admit that it's all an integral part of one person.
Even merchants will go along with this, Lane Bryant developed their line of 'women within' catalogs which enable us to pretend that outwardly, we're still rough and ready 'real men', and not lesser 'girly men', while also letting women also pretend that they can exhibit the 'preferential' masculine behavior when they want to, but still remain female at heart.
Women date murderers, rapists, wife beaters, seriel killers, megalomaniacs who kill on a grand scale, ruthless supposed 'pillars of society' who intentionally ruin millions of other people's lives. And those women still find these reprehensible men sexually attractive. It's all built into us, for women to admire those few traits that might make a man powerful and successful enough to ensure that her offspring will survive. Doesn't matter what he will do to other people, or even, to HER, as long as he might stick around long enough for those kids to grow up. So those women are inherently drawn to bad men. Same as we are instinctually attracted to females who appear to be only a few years past puberty, when their fertility is at it's highest, and they are least likely to have been exposed to diseases/injuries that might compromise her ability to bear healthy children, and nurture them long enough until they are somewhat independent.
I'm getting off track. There is no woman 'within'. It's all us, all the time. The feelings, the behaviours, that we don't express to the outside world, when we think it would make them think less of us.
I do this too. When I step outside my house, I am always wearing my 'man' costume; nothing feminine at all in my appearance. I intentionally developed a very slight swagger to my gait decades ago, so that it's my normal walking style. I carefully avoid ANY feminine style movements, vocal patterns, or behavior. I stand straight up the vast majority of the time, in order to create a commanding presence. And it works. As far as I know, no one suspects anything feminine about me.
When I come home, all that disappears, the 'Man' role that I have been playing is over, no more acting required
For Micki; Sure, there is no rule or law forcing us to stay. But some of us still feel obligated to take care of our family members. It's not only instinctual, but we grow up having familial responsibility drilled into our psyches. When my dad was dying, he made me promise that I would always look after my sister and my mother. The old, 'You're the man of the family now', type speech. And that's very hard to just discard just because it makes us miserable. If it were easy, billions of men would have discarded their irritating wives and children throughout history, leaving them to die. Instead, men still will march into machine gun fire for their society, in order to insure that their families back home, will survive.
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Alter ego works for me too - a second self.
Vikky
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Very interesting Sometimes Miss.
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^ Sometimes Miss wins the internet today.
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The conversation seems to be veering off to the "even though I wear a dress I'm really very masculine" line of thought. This is not what I meant at all, rather it is that one's self expression is unique to that individual, whether their behavior is normally considered masculine or feminine or whatever.
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For me, I'd have to say "In my early days, yes there was a 'woman within.'" Nowadays, I'd have to say "not so much." Here's why I think it happened.
At first, while I was still young, I tried being the typical male. I'd hang with the boys, do boy stuff, etc.
Anything that I felt was feminine or girly I tried to bury, or at least hide away. Getting rid of it wasn't even a possibility. Those feelings, those (dare I say it?) needs were as much a part of me as my breath.
The end result was that I was splitting myself in half. There was the male presentation that I showed to the outside world, and the female me that only came out in secret (such as some clothes hidden in an old abandoned house that was on the edge of collapsing - and something I'd "borrow" from my sister and hide under my pillow at night).
The different sides seemed to me to be almost become two different people living in one body - and fighting for control.
Eventually, I allowed the feminine feelings or urges to come out and be expressed. They have become blended back into the entirety of ME. There really is no more "He vs. She" in my existence any more. I now understand that I'm a little bit of both genders - and that's that.
The only conflict I still have is that I still wish I could be seen (at least from time to time) as female - but for a number of reasons, that's totally off the table these days .
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My two gendered selves are very different, and my wife completely agrees. Tina takes a more classically feminine approach to life. Discovering Tina helped to separate various characteristics of our personalities that were confusing when we thought I was cis-gendered. Our common body doesn't simply change clothes when we shift from one gender to another. The change is a startlingly thorough transformation of mind as well. The differences are rather amazing, actually, including perferred handedness: righthanded as masculine, left handed as Tina.
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For myself, my look changes with the hair and make up. my shape changes with forms and pads. My walk changes with the shoes. The nails change how I touch. Ect. So of course my mind changes into its female self. The more I "transform", the more Jessi comes out. Its relative to how complete I am and how I see myself. When I am head to toe and I look in the mirror, my male self kind of fades away and the female takes over. So both male and female are both always there but my senses aid in the female comming out completely. In my mind though the female is there all the time though. I'll see a dress I like or something like that and think, oh that's pretty, or I like her make up for example. But it's not until I'm 100% dressed that the male fades away.
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hello Donnalee,
What a fascinating question!
Sometimes cross-dressing is an "expression of my feminine side".
And when I play guitar I am expressing my musical side.
Same person doing different things, sometimes at the same time!
luv J
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jacques, I like how you put it! Well said.
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Hi Donna Lee :hugs:, It is all Mind over Matter . >Orchid ..O:daydreaming:O..
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Science suggests that there's differences between male and female brains. If that's true and given just how varied the forms of the brain can be, foe example, those on the autistic spectrum, is it not possible that many of use are a form of hybrid sitting somewhere along a line between male and female.
Men are tough and macho, women soft and feminine but aren't these to some great extent societal constructs. What were once the preserves of males, construction, trucking, fire fighting, boxing, wrestling, all have been embraced by females.
If theses lines are dissolving why is it such a leap to say that we have that woman in us.
I know that even only partially dressed, skirt, top, forms, while at home feels not the least strange to me. I'm as comfortable dressed like that as dressed in drab.
As Jessie says, heels, nails etc change how we behave. Manerisms change because as I believe, we learn them, not as GG's do by assimulation while growing up but by observation and then imitation. Different process, same outcome.
So do I have a woman inside me, I'll vote yes.
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The girl inside is probably a reasonable first approximation of my feminine side. I have had 2 wives who both agreed with that. My first wife told our marriage therapist, ?He doesn?t need a better half - he already has one.? Oh well. Sometimes it is hard to get past the catch phrases to find the real person.
Cheers,
Vale
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We are all as different as we are alike. For years now I have been trying to integrate the masculine and feminine aspects of my personality in a conscious way. Sometimes I seem to be succeeding, other times, not so much. I'm not so interested in catering to a woman within. I'm more interested in becoming the fluid, some times womanly, male bodied person that I am on the inside, on the outside as well.
Don't get me wrong; I love pretty clothes, and wear them a lot. But I think we have a tendency to over focus on that, and not on our relations with the people around us; something that the natal women that I so admire seem to do naturally.
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Co-consciousness is more fun
Probably the difference between a photo of a car and a 3D model of the car (you can enjoy different aspects of the model car that you can't do with 1 photo)
Having finally meet a trans girl (work mate), I'm Sooo glad I don't have a single personality - being trans and having Dysphoria, is in no way, fun.
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I kind of see it as the Opposite----Being ENCASED in a woman, and feeling "all warm and cuddly ;)