Question for CDers: What would you choose??

[Josephine]

I have had so much turmoil in my life, being a sissy when a young boy. Always hiding and ashamed of wanting to be female. Got beat up often for being
"girlie", not wanting to do boy things, or being called a "sicko", and many other things, which is what I often heard. IF it was acceptable (and available),when I was young, I would have transitioned in a heartbeat.

[sometimes_miss]

O.K., Melody, first off, if you're taking hormones, you're not a crossdresser. You're transsexual.
That said, if at ten, I were sure that I was really supposed to be a girl, then yes, I would have welcomed taking whatever it took. But for me, there were too many inconsistancies that simply didn't fit with my 'really being a girl'. Today, there are testosterone blockers that would allow more time for the person to decide, so as to delay the irreversible effects of puberty on a genetic male. Those would have been the appropriate choice.
You mention that you've 'just started very recently myself'. Started what? Crossdressing, HRT, or both? Because if you're straight, HRT will effectively eliminate any heterosexual romantic life on your part, as it will destroy what the vast majority of women are attracted to, and replace it with, what, a feminized male body?

[Kaz]

As a 'mature' member, I find this hard to answer. I would have found acceptance of my desire to CD and my interest in all things female at an early age and this would have heavily influenced how I developed my thinking, so yeah, maybe I would have been more likely to go down the HRT and even GRS route. BUT... I didn't, and I have a lovely wife and we have had a rewarding marriage and I wouldn't give up that or my three girls for the world, so to say would I rather have been without that gift, the answer would be no. However, would I have ever gone down the marriage and family route given the knowledge I would have had as a teenager in today's world is a different issue. I thonk I would have explored things much more early on and come to a clearer decision.

[Jonianne]

I'm 55 and what I would like to change, if I could, would be to eliminate the fear and shame I had. I started at 7, putting on my mom's dresses, and always kept it a secret because of the fear. I have never wanted to transition. What I would like to have done, would be:

1) telling my mom, grandmother, aunt and girl cousins that I liked to wear dresses and asking if I could get one I liked out of the Sears, Pennys or Wards catalog

2) instead of living in fear, taking advantage of the opportunities such as Holloween and costume parties to dress up

3) staying a guy, but intergrating many of the female things I liked, but shuned because of fear, into my daily life, especially later in high school

4) volunteering for the female part in the high school play that called for a guy or strong girl. They ended up using a girl, because no guy volunteered.

5) letting my thick hair grow long in the last years of high school - prior, it was not allowed.

6) going to college, intergrating more of the female things I liked into my daily life.

7) taking makeup and hair classes

8) taking dance classes enfemme

9) going out and about and making crossdressing a regular part of my life

10) being completly open with others and especially with my first wife before we married

That's all, untill I can think of more stuff

[Melody1985]

O.K., Melody, first off, if you're taking hormones, you're not a crossdresser. You're transsexual.
That said, if at ten, I were sure that I was really supposed to be a girl, then yes, I would have welcomed taking whatever it took. But for me, there were too many inconsistancies that simply didn't fit with my 'really being a girl'. Today, there are testosterone blockers that would allow more time for the person to decide, so as to delay the irreversible effects of puberty on a genetic male. Those would have been the appropriate choice.
You mention that you've 'just started very recently myself'. Started what? Crossdressing, HRT, or both? Because if you're straight, HRT will effectively eliminate any heterosexual romantic life on your part, as it will destroy what the vast majority of women are attracted to, and replace it with, what, a feminized male body?

Hey

I understand the difference between crossdresser/TV's and transsexuals. The question was posed to see who of us were maybe closer to TS than CDs. Remember alot if people on here started late or grew up in a time where it was not acceptable at all.

Anyway, I meant I was just starting out with CDing.. I'm not going to do HRT for the reason you gave amongst others.

Thank you to all for your input, and thank you Alexa/Lexi for the questions!!

[Acastina]

Funny you set the bar at ten years old. I started long before that, probably five or so, but more and more in my teens. I shared a bedroom with my younger sister (13 months apart, and she turned out very butch) until age 10, while my two older brothers shared one across the house. When my parents bought a new, larger house across town, my sister and our oldest brother got their own rooms, while I shared one with my older brother.

I distinctly and painfully remember a realization moment shortly after the move. It was late afternoon, and I was just going into our bedroom when suddenly it hit me that I was never going to be a girl. Like the default pink fog of life up to then had lifted to reveal a truth I really didn't want to hear. I didn't cry, but something just drained out of me at that moment that has never found replacement. I just kind of went cold and sad, and I've struggled with depression my whole life since. I was a straight-A student in the fourth grade and sang solo at the Christmas show when the other two in my group were too shy.

Then we moved.

As of fifth grade, I dropped to a B-minus and lived in a world of fear and confusion, aggravated by my brother's subtle but continual emotional abuse. Now THAT really made me want to man up, not. Being very intelligent and having a gift for acting, though, I invested much of my consciousness into observing around me and conforming my behavior to what boys are supposed to be like without ever feeling at home with it. When I was nearly 30, I wrote a song that sums it up:

Once it all seemed so simple
Pretty good at playing the role
But lately it seems the worst of my dreams
Are getting clear out of control

So I learned to play the role well enough to avoid being beaten up or outed, but my heart sure wasn't in it. It was a coping mechanism, nothing more. Then my puberty was late by about five years, so I looked more like the girls than I did the guys. I had academic struggles that I now recognize as a product of diverting of so much of my mental life into emulating others that I couldn't concentrate. Only when I went to law school in my late 20s did I learn how to study diligently and effectively. Then the second-wave revelation arrived shortly before graduation (if you read up on TG, you find that the coming-to-terms, confronting denial age is frequently around 30), and I soon discovered that I didn't have the emotional coldness required of lawyers, so there I went into a career path that was halting at best and nightmarish at worst:

Here I stand at the station
With a fast track just a step away
All my expectations
Have left me with feet of clay

I did transition to live full-time from age 33 to nearly 42, but (my opinion) the damage had been done and I couldn't shake all manner of uncertainty and anxiety demons that sort of negated a lot of the good stuff. Words from a different song, written nearly ten years after I gave the experiment up and came back:

I've been here before, so long ago
How I remember those years
The best of times, the worst of times
Laughing through my tears

I met my wife through a CD group. Her ex was a manipulative and unappreciative late-blooming CD who basically was gay and justifying it through CD. So she understood and accepted CD before we ever met. Ours is a committed and happy marriage, but we both know I'm compromised.

So, I we had today's more accommodating social climate and clinical perspective, yes, I would rather have been transitioned not too long after my painful realization. But that was then, and there's no re-boot for such things...

[sanderlay]

If you could go back to the age of 10, with the understanding that this feminine side of you was very important to your life, who would consider starting HRT or crossdressing a lot sooner (for those who weren't already doing it at that age)

If you think you would have done either, say which one (HRT or CD) and explain. If you would prefer it to play out the way it did, maybe explain that too.

I guess I'm in the mature crowd in my mid fifties. And a lot has changed since I was a child. As several have pointed out, in the 1950's and 60's was not a very accepting time. The nut house was real and not a pleasant place.

If I had spoken out I suspect HRT and SRS would have been the solution to normalize me to society. Make me a girl which would deny my male side and create another set of problems. But with what I know today that is a not exactly the path for me.

I would have liked to have done a course of HRT when I hit puberty. Having some breasts and more of a feminine body would have been nice. But SRS was and still is still not advanced enough for me to give up my... manhood. I still must embrace my male side. It is a part of me as a GM, genetic male. (I am attracted to women, with or without my clothes on, skirt or pants.)

Today, without HRT, I've learned I need to embrace both sides of myself, my male and my female side for balance. My yin and yang so to say. I do this with clothing and jewelry with my hair grown long. I currently wear no makeup as I go out to the world presenting as a mix of genders.

It would still be nice to grow some breasts and I am very slowly doing so thanks to gynecomastia. But at my age my health is very important. I don't want to rock the boat and enjoy what time I have left in this world. Today I don't have to accept just being a male or a female. I can live a little in both worlds and embrace these sides of myself.

[christina s]

I'm still trying to accept this side of me , so i still can't answer if i would start HRT . But i would tell myself (at age 10 or 20 ) this isn't a phase but a part of who you are and the sooner you can accept this , the happier you will be.

[Sammy93]

If I had known this about me, I would have wished that my parents would have confronted me about it so that they could find out about it on there own. I havnt told them about it yet and I dont think I really want to only because of what they may say. I dont care what they would think, but I get hurt really easily by words. But I would have started HRT had they asked me about it earlier in my life.

[ArleneRaquel]

I have always loved to dress female, but if I dressed 24/7, say at the age of 20, and decided to trsition back then, it is likely that I would have missed out on a woderful marriage, of 33 years, to a fantastic woman. She died in 2002, I went femm full time about 4-6 months later. After a false start, going24/7 which occured early in 2003, quit, then full time again in 2004 to the present.

[Risque_Christine]

Every day that Christine is not out in the real world is a lost day in her life. Each fantastic and wonderful day I have had in the last 2 years has been as Christine-- all from unexpected kindness from people who show me what life could have been. We all live with constraints, some of them more bitter than others. But you cannot regret what you did not know-- and I did not know that I was and am Christine.
Best, Christine

[Jenniferathome]

Well, I was crossdressing at age 10 and I wish it was less stressful, but I have never wanted to be anything other than the crossdressing man that I am.

[Cindia]

I started dressing when I was about 5, when I realized there was a difference between mine and my sisters' underwear. So I was pretty well hooked on that by age 10. I certainly would have jumped at the chance to take pills that would turn me into a girl. Heck, I would have even eaten broccoli if I thought it would turn me into a girl. I was never one that felt , to use the cliche, "trapped in the wrong body", I just wanted to be a girl.

[Dena]

I would have been out of the closet sooner (when I was almost pretty)!

[StarrOfDelite]

Occasionally, when I look in the mirror, and see a late middle aged man in a dress, I daydream about how great it would have been if I could have come to self-realization as a younger person. I'm sure, I think to myself, that if I'd only known the truth about myself that I would've gone to Greenwich Village, or San Francisco, and set the world on its ear as the transvestite transsexual toast of society, complete with a boob job, an Adam's apple shave, and lots of practice on my voice and mannerisms. In that scenario, although it's certainly a strong possibility that I would have taken hormones at some point in time, I'm sure it wouldn't have been as early as age ten.

In any case, those are daydreams, fantasies no more plausible than the daydreams I actually had when I was a boy, which primarily focused on my devout wish to be the second coming of Mickey Mantle.

I won't say I was completely happy or well-adjusted from age 8 to say age 18, but I wasn't miserable, either. I was cross dressed by some female cousins when I was age 5-6 -7, and I remember enjoying it and being sexually stimulated. However, once that was forcefully broken up by mom and aunt, I certainly don't remember any overt gender ambiguous feelings on my part. Maybe I had too many girls with whom I was friends in a non-sexual way, maybe I looked more curiously than I should have at the naked bodies of the other boys in the shower, but it was an era in which a person would push that stuff to the back of one's mind and soldier on. I didn't start getting into any sort of self-analysis until fifteen years ago when I was in my 40's and a marriage was sliding downhill. Before that I was way too busy being a student, a student athlete, an infantry platoon leader, a struggling young family man, a harried 30-ish family man, and a competitor in the professional rat race . Not all of that was good, but not all was bad, either. I've seen enough women who, for various reasons, have been miserably unhappy to know that being a woman is no bed of roses, and I've never ever wished to be female or regretted I had been born male.

As a man I have been a rather successful competitor, and, barring some sea change in my attitude or behavior, when I die I expect to be buried with family, friends and acquaintances remembering me as a father, a husband, a team mate, a service buddy, a trusted professional partner, and a 'good guy' with whom to share a bottle of bourbon and a bull session. To say that I would choose to do something different would be a denial of all that I've accomplished, good, bad or indifferent, and, daydreams notwithstanding, I am not prepared to do that.

[Rachel Flowers]

We get a lot of these "what would you do if..." questions on here. It's a bit like we're all role-playing being at a slumber party isn't it!

I started when I was seven. Those who started later might not have had the opportunities that we available to me: single child so no siblings to pester me; mother and father working so time home alone; washing basket full of clothes and bin full of discarded tights; sent off to the bathroom to wash myself before bed every night. If you had the same urges but never had the opportunity, how would that have affected you. In my adult life, it stopped for long time then in my mid 30s I started travelling a lot with work and bingo, the opportunities started up again. Now, Mrs Flowers knows all about it and the opportunities are greater, though still restricted as we have two teens and she doesn't yet buy that they ought to know about it.

So, Melody: if you could go back to the age of ten and every noght of the week you were guaranteed half an hour alone with access to all your Mum's stuff, would you have had a go? Would you have enjoyed it without feeling any need to wonder why but just enjoy it?

And why the sudden mention of "straight" at the end? It's a different thing. Dressing and orientation are two totally independent variables although being bi I guess I'm not qualified to comment!!

[Krististeph]

The only reason i might hesitate, is that I would not have met my wife, but then, any small change might have done that. I would do HRT, though it would require different attitudes of my folks. Good question- i actually revisited a city where i was at age ten (for a few years we moved deep south, I was just figuring out i liked dressing like a girl), and as i left, driving north (to a client midway between there and home) I pulled out a recorder and dictated a few hours of a story about just such an event... haven't done much with it since, but it was good to revisit and revise- or at least write an alternate possibility.