Is there a correlation between crossdressing and childhood trauma?

[Mink]

mothers / fathers / parents not giving enough affection and or attention?

absent parents...? ... sisters or females that are given more love and compliments or gifts or more encouraged?

i'm sure many will say no... of course not!



but for the CDers who are more burdened by this versus freed / accepting it within to their identity... I wonder...

I feel like it rang true when I read a disgruntled wife say that from what she read just about EVERY problematic CDr had some childhood trauma or issues with their parents and the way they were brought up...


also the idea of women's clothing / sexual experiences tied in with associating the clothing with female contact / sex...

like a surrogate for young boys or teens who are too shy or awkward about getting the girl...

not ALL mind you...

but for many cases I can see this being the case!

of course you'll try to rebuke me!

making this thread a moot diatribe!

eyah!



once AGAIN... it's not for EVERYONE and probably not many people here but stuff like this DOES ring a bit true in my mind based on all the experiences I've had reading and researching online and in the "real world" :

these men THINK it's all about being a woman, but I disagree that for most that they actually are in the wrong body. I think there's a tiny minority of people in this world who fit the 'born in the wrong body' concept, and the rest are just broken men who started a comforting sexual habit way back in childhood and by the time they've reached adulthood they're caught at varying levels of this condition. Some are obvious fetishists with no gender issues, some are a mix of fetish and gender confusion, while others escalate their fetish into preferring a fantasy life as a woman over reality as a man. These are just my observations over the years, but I can honestly say that I haven't once spoken to a CDer, fetish or fulltime, and felt I was speaking to a woman. All just sounded like men lost in delusion and all had concocted a personal history that supported their fantasies. It was sad. They truly don't see their behavior clearly. Anyway, you're right that the extreme TS end is just too difficult to live with as a wife, and many ordinary CDers are equally impossible to live with. It can work, but no one should ever feel guilty if it doesn't. But don't be fooled that their explanations are real. These are men who have created an elaborate alternative identity in order to satisfy a fantasy

it's depressing to me... and it feels like i'll never be happy with how far I go or don't go... like if I accept it I still won't be fully happy... even with a girlfriend/wife or going it alone... but that if I utterly stopped like an addiction to alky or druggies and could never at all CD? i'd be miserable too!

every time i'd be with a gal i'd look at what she is wearing and know she has those magical undies and clothes that I wish I could wear...

so even if I abstain it will always be there


like a hardcore smoker that quits for good... AND succeeds... yet time to time... even 20 years later... still craves a siggy!

[Nadine Spirit]

Interesting theory. I would venture to say though that most people in society have suffered some form of childhood trauma.

I know for example that my sister had way more trauma than I did and she does not cross dress. She is in fact quite happy with her gender.

The search for the answer to the question of why is endless. I think we all wish for some plausible explanation so that we could all say "Oh, so I get it now. Now I understand why I do this thing that so many others feel is so weird! Now it all makes sense. I do it because _________."

I think searching for this is like searching for aliens or the Loch Ness Monster or the Chubacabra!

I am not saying it does not exist, but good luck in finding irrefutable proof of it!

[Michala]

Can't think of an possible trauma. Had a good family, liked to do all the things that boys do. Very athletic, not feminine at all. Good parents who were always supportive. At an early age I discovered I liked looking at ladies underwear in the Sears and Penneys catalogs. Then discovered one day when I was home alone that I felt very good when I tried on my mom's clothes. Started with her bra and a girdle with garters that held up the nylons. Back before pantyhose was ever invented. At first it was a very sexual feeling and liked the idea of looking like a girl even though I never did fully achieve that goal. Just have a too masculine body and shape to ever really look like a woman.

Trauma? none at all for me. Just sometimes find it fun and enjoyable to dress like a woman.

[sometimes_miss]

Interesting theory. I would venture to say though that most people in society have suffered some form of childhood trauma.

It depends on what you consider trauma; and, of course, it's all relative. For some, trauma is being dumped by a boyfriend just before the prom. For others, it's having your family die in a fire and being brought up by someone who beats you every day.

The search for the answer to the question of why is endless. I think we all wish for some plausible explanation <snip>
I think searching for this is like searching for aliens or the Loch Ness Monster or the Chubacabra!

Perhaps, but NOT trying to find the underlying reason certainly won't help at all. But not everyone has the capability of figuring it all out. Many people block out memories of things that would make them uncomfortable if they had to address them; some, for their whole lives. Lots of others were so indoctrinated into western societies' unwritten law that no man should ever embrace any feminine feelings or behavior, ever, or he's a failure as a man. This belief is very deeply sunk into our minds at a very early age, and reinforced often while we are growing up.

I'm not a professional psychologist, and so have not investigated other men's lives to figure out why they crossdress. I have, however, read everything that I could find on the subject over the past 44 years, and at least figured out the reason for myself. Briefly, I was told at a young age (shortly before my 7th birthday) that god made a mistake, and that I was really supposed to be a girl. With that information, over the next few years I thought about my life, looking for other evidence that would support that hypothesis, and found more than a little bit of it, and more things would happen that would further increase the belief in my mind. So not only did an outside person support the idea, I began to find reason to support it myself, and by the time I got to high school there was no longer any doubt in my mind. But as I gained more knowledge about psychology, the more the theory fell apart. But the feeling was still there. I believe that our gender/sexual self identity becomes finalized at some point in our adolescence. I have read other theories that it happens earlier or later, but neither support my own experience. So, part of me will always believe that I'm female. My desire to wear female clothing etc. is to make what I see and feel on the outside, congruent with what I feel inside. Many would now declare me to be TS. However, further investigation showed that I do not see the world the way girls to, I don't communicate the way women do, I do not multitask well (I can't listen to two things at the same time as women can), I do have very good spacial capabilities such as being able to think in 3D and envision objects in my head and rotate them easily, I have a great sense of direction, the list goes on and on. So I'm not TS. I'm somewhere along the TG spectrum.
My life is a terrific example of what can happen if you take a normal boy and want to turn him into a crossdresser; all the necessary outside influences occurred at the right times.

[Katey888]

Mink - No.

No trauma here... excluding the loss of a few budgerigars - I can't think that would have any effect...

Both parents present, happy, reasonably normal but poor...

Only child (ah ha! I hear some of you say...)

That's it...

Katey x

[BethanyAnn]

Gosh, Mink...I don't think so in my case. I began dressing at age 3 when mom and aunt would dress me and my gg cousin in cute gowns and let us play. Around age 5 I was not allowed to dress up anymore and started on my own in the closet around age 8. My family seemed well adjusted and it was a loving place I think.

I did begin to associate sex with female clothes when I was 13. I was fully dressed walking down the sidewalk in our neighborhood late at night and had an orgasm while I walked (must have been the slip on hose with a gentle breeze). I almost fell down and had NO CLUE what had happened. I was petrified too when I undressed back in my room only to find the mess I had made in my sister's panties, mom's slip and hose. After this I eventually "figured out" what had happened and sought to duplicate that experience on a regular basis until started dating my first boyfriend. Still get excited a little just putting on my clothes...guess that first link is hard to break?

[Victoria Demeanor]

I think searching for this is like searching for aliens or the Loch Ness Monster or the Chubacabra!

For your info Nadine I personally saw some aliens steal the Loch Ness monster just after she ate a Chubacbra……

I had a long reply for this, but on second thought decided to say No the family trauma was long after and if anything made me reject my desire
(these men THINK it's all about being a woman,) who are these men? to me it's about expressing my feminine side not about being a woman. of course I could do that with out putting on a dress and heels, but what would be the fun of that?

[LilSissyStevie]

Not just trauma but emasculation trauma. Were you shy, timid, nonathletic, small, weak, rejected by/afraid of girls, pushed around by bullies, etc, etc, etc? Then you've experienced emasculation trauma. In fact the very anxiety of attempting to live up to impossible masculine ideals is traumatic even for a "normal" male and it permeates our society. When you've been here as long as I have, you start to see it everywhere. But very few will admit it. It's much more comforting to think one is expressing an "inner woman" or a "feminine side." So why doesn't everybody who suffers emasculation trauma become a crossdresser? I don't know. Everyone's different. The fact that not everyone who experiences intense combat suffers PTSD isn't proof that PTSD isn't caused by the trauma of combat. Personally, I find the realization that my gender issues stem from childhood emasculation trauma to be very liberating. Not that there is anything I can do about it, the imprints are set in concrete, but the mystery is solved.


Some Lite reading:

The Compulsion to Repeat the Trauma
http://www.cirp.org/library/psych/vanderkolk/

Not specifically about crossdressing but you should get the idea how it applies.

Third Way Trans
http://thirdwaytrans.com/

Read from the start to most recent to get the best understanding.

[Pat]

Wow, I remember when it was a correlation between childhood trauma and homosexuality that was the boojum du jour. It had the same "it's all a pathetic cry for attention" story. Not saying it's impossible but I have to question why studies by social scientists and psychologists can't turn up a correlation? These are explanations are the type of thing that show up when people who don't understand something try to come to grips with it by deciding the people who experience a condition must not understand it and need it explained to them.

I really don't mean to be dismissive, but I've read this screenplay before -- it's been used to explain homosexuality, bisexuality, why spouses cheat, why BDSM people follow that practice and probably more.

[Mink]

there's this weird thing where CDers WANT it to be something that wasn't caused by anything... that it was just in the cards ... in their DNA... nothing could have stopped it and nothing will

so you better just accept it and do whatever you want to do because you didn't have a choice... ?

and downplaying the sexual side and how it has evolved or morphed or the people for whom it still is or always will just be sexual (maybe saying they will eventually "evolve" as if non-sexual CDing is the more pure / less pervy higher version of CDing..)


kids who are abused physically or sexually will tend to continue this...

is someone born a pedo and there was no way to ever avoid it?

lesbians who turned to only liking women after very bad experiences with a man or men

it's not always so simple

but it's sure easy to just wave these things away and not think about them / discuss them!

[Victoria Demeanor]

A friend of mine loves model trains. He has a huge set up in his basement and yes wears an engineers hat when he down there. He runs his little trains on a schedule and is obsessive about detail. He is not a real train engineer. It’s his fantasy to play one. Oh its not sexual…I will argue that. Was there some family trauma that caused him to retreat into this little world? You can tell me it’s not the same, but ya the guy that loves football, dresses like his favorite player and surrounds himself with memorabilia. Did mom and dad not pay attention to him when he was young? The only difference I see is the acceptance by so called normal society.
(there's this weird thing where CDers WANT it to be something that wasn't caused by anything )
I actually found this a little insulting. Yes we are all effected in someway by our life experiences, but to say that cross dressing has to be caused by something bad in our life is to say that it is a sick unholy fetish. Sorry Mink I look at it as something good something I enjoy and something more natural then some other things that people seem to find exceptable.

[Allison Chaynes]

I can only speak for me. The female rejection happened for a couple years, right about the time the CD fetish arose. Otherwise, the only childhood traumatic experiences were heart disease, my first plane accident, and getting shot.

[Nadine Spirit]

kids who are abused physically or sexually will tend to continue this...

Out of everything that you wrote in that post this was the most offensive. In doing a bit of quick Googling the stat I found the most was that about 1/3 of abused will end up abusing. Maybe it is being picky, but for those of us who were abused, to say that we "will tend to continue this..." is pretty rude.

[Jenniferathome]

mothers / fathers / parents not giving enough affection and or attention?

absent parents...? ... sisters or females that are given more love and compliments or gifts or more encouraged?

i'm sure many will say no... of course not!...

Only those of us who have had no childhood trauma Some of us lived the Brady Bunch life for real.

[jessicabf]

I can't think of any trauma for myself. What if the same thing that makes one GG girly and another a Tom-boy is found in males too? However I can see that some types of trauma could lead to that. My advise to someone who needs to CD due to what they believe is a serious past trauma, to seek help. Untie that knot. CDing is fun. But I'm not sure if it classifies as a treatment for severe emotional trauma? But what do i know?

I take my daughters as an example. My youngest is very girly. And my SO is not at all. I think my daughter got that part of her from me. Whatever 'that' part is.

There's my two cents as I fall asleep. ;-)

[pamela7]

Personally, I find the realization that my gender issues stem from childhood emasculation trauma to be very liberating. Not that there is anything I can do about it, the imprints are set in concrete, but the mystery is solved.

actually there IS something we can do about undoing imprinting traumas, very effectively in fact - its my expertise. However the more I've worked in the field the more I see that life's traumas shape a divergent beauty and I'm reluctant to see anything undone unless its no longer serving the person.

From the present self it is largely impossible to find the underlying causes cos they lie within the timescapes of prior selves during this life, instead we latch onto possible triggers and formative experiences that we remember. We're likely to fix on archetypes of attraction, each uniquely. I was never into my mother's clothes, and yet only today I remember I was given, in formative teenage years, two of my mother's tops that were soft and comfy. They looked unisex, polo-neck thermal tops is what nowadays looks like them, maybe that was one thing, maybe tho, i've just remembered something that fits a pattern i'm trying to jigsaw together.

Enjoy your life - or don't if you don't want to - and realise those little traumas make us who we are. They also make the straight and boring people straight and boring ...

[Teresa]

Mink,
No trauma from family just the unexpected sexual outcome of wearing a sexy swimsuit the rest just followed and never stopped !
Not sure if I like the way the quote is worded ! Why do we have to be described in such terms, we are stuck with it through no fault of our own, and strive to make sense of it and make the most of it when we do come to accept it ! We shouldn't be viewed as something to be pitied but human beings that have something different going on in our minds !

[kimdl93]

No. There are anecdotal associations. There are several problem with such associations. First, many children experience traumas of one sort or another. Very few are or 'become' TG. And many people without recollections of childhood traumas also eventually identify themselves as TG. And peoples recollections of childhood are, like all memories, highly unreliable. In fact most of memory is basically a construct combining bits of what happened with elements filled in by the mind.

[Nikkilovesdresses]

I can think of one plausible trigger- I've known my mother to say on several occasions that she wanted a girl (I'm an only child), but it isn't proof of my CDing, and I know that she adores me and has always done so.

My first recollection of a CDing instinct was a fascination with her underwear, which I began trying on at about 13. But I'm willing to bet that if it had belonged to a sister, a neighbour, or I'd seen it in a shop, I'd have been equally attracted to it. And it wasn't her brassieres, or skirts, or make up, or anything else, it was specifically panties. This is still the only female garment I possess, or have ever possessed in quantity.

Mink- any thoughts on what triggers the onset of CDing in older people? Many seem to arrive here in their early-mid 50s. It's not like I had kids who've flown the coop, and I'm 11 years into a happy marriage, albeit one with little sex over the last 4-5 years. I've always dabbled in CDing, but last summer, bam! It was like a light got switched on, and I can think of no particular reason.

The quote in your OP is a little stark, a little cold, but it's possible to boil all human activity down into stark, cold terms, if you remove sentiment and apply cool reason. We're here to reproduce, end of. Everything else is playtime.

[Rachael Leigh]

Was just reading an article about childhood trauma and yes it can cause many issues that relate to our dressing. It also pointed out it does not have to be a major trauma or abuse either, it can be as simple as neglect that may or may not be on purpose or stress that is going on in the family while the child is very young say 2 to 7 years of age. See this article for me made sense since I know of no major problems in my childhood that would have effected me but I have been told about a few things such as stress. We moved about 1100 miles when I was barley a year old and and only stayed in that place till I was 2 and my mom already had 2 kids so Im sure that was a very stressful time and I can imagine there could be some correlation for sure.
Want to make sure everyone understands the article I read was not specifically talking about gender issues just triggers for certain issues we have into adulthood

[Kate Simmons]

Perhaps for some but definitely not for myself. I just preferred to be my own person since I was self aware.

[LilSissyStevie]

there's this weird thing where CDers WANT it to be something that wasn't caused by anything... that it was just in the cards ... in their DNA... nothing could have stopped it and nothing will

so you better just accept it and do whatever you want to do because you didn't have a choice... ?

and downplaying the sexual side and how it has evolved or morphed or the people for whom it still is or always will just be sexual (maybe saying they will eventually "evolve" as if non-sexual CDing is the more pure / less pervy higher version of CDing..)

IMO, the reason some want to believe there is some genetic cause for CDing is that they believe that any other explanation means that they are responsible and could be "cured." That explanation has never worked out for victims of genocide. Being "born that way" is the reason for attempting to exterminate them. But it's not even true that you can't be held responsible for your genetic traits. People can be born with a genetic predisposition to anger and still learn to control their behavior. Then there is the fact that most CDs really just don't care why they do it, they just want to enjoy themselves. "The Devil (or DNA) makes me do it." More power to them.

Downplaying the sexual side is easy. We live in a culture that devalues anything sexual. Hence the idea of a "mere" fetish in spite of the fact that many people experience intense dyphoria from their sexual attractions that can result in suicide. So-called autogynephilia in its most intense form means that you can never experience sexual satisfaction as long as you remain a man. It's interesting to sit back and watch how some people's narratives evolve from "fetish dresser" to "identity dresser" because they think that an identity is somehow more legitimate than a fetish. Note the false dichotomy of fetish vs identity. Yes kids! You can have an identity AND a fetish! At the same time!

actually there IS something we can do about undoing imprinting traumas, very effectively in fact - its my expertise. However the more I've worked in the field the more I see that life's traumas shape a divergent beauty and I'm reluctant to see anything undone unless its no longer serving the person.

The imprinting I was referring to was the imprinted sexualization of emasculation trauma (what I used to call autogynephila.) There doesn't seem to be much evidence that one change sexual imprinting very much. In other words: You can't pray away the fae. As far as PTSD goes, I've suffered plenty from that including hospitalizations, years of therapy, drugged into zombiehood (Thorazine shuffle!), self medicating with drugs and alcohol, etc. At this stage of my life I've got a pretty good handle on it. But even now I sometimes break into tears for no apparent reason. It usually passes after a minute or so. It's more annoying than distressing. At one time I could be driving down the road and be suddenly overcome with intense blinding rage to the point that I would lose control of the car. Now that was freaking scary! That hasn't happened in decades.

[marilyn m]

i have read somewhere that mothers that were dominant, could play a part towards being a cd
my mother certainly was, she also told me she wanted a girl, but as i have got older my fem side has
become more part of who iam, i fought her off for so long, now realize we are one and the same

[Alice Torn]

Mink, Your thread really hits home with me. Really. I had severe issues with a dad who never wanted me, an older sister he adored, and who adored him, and never wanted nor had a boyfriend all her 66 years. A smothering mother, and my dad was very jealous of me, for having so much of her attention. Kept away from girls . They were always off limits, and still are it seems. i asked a lady cashier today, because she has no rings on, if she is single. Yes, but has a boyfriend lives with. I cannot recall the last woman i asked if was single, that actually did not have a husband, or boyfriend. Available single women have been almost completely off limits. I have delved into womens' clothes off and on since age 14, and it truly is my substitute for a mate now, but like you, even when i did date some, i was interested in their clothes, wishing i could dress like them.

[Marcie Rose]

i have read somewhere that mothers that were dominant, could play a part towards being a cd

My mother was dominant and I used to think that was part of the reason. I remember first dressing when I was 10 after my dad died so I used to think that was part of it too. Now I realize that there's no one to blame. It's a natural part of me that I enjoy. Why worry about why?