a natural human being

[pamela7]

I've been doing my "thing" (for 9 months now focussed on CD-world), which is psychological process and research into the deepest darkest roots of humanity, personally and group-wise.

My conclusion that the "natural" form of humanity is not a duality, it is not male or female or even CD swapping from one binary state to the other, but rather the fluid form. Humanity is poly-gendered, polysexual, polyamorous, full-spectrum dressing/clothing/makeup.

The formation of patriarchal societies dominating women and enforcing a heterosexuality as part of a population-growth paradigm (as part of a scarcity-control program) is the cause of a binary gendered society with gender-defined clothing, behaviours and roles, AGAINST the natural form. Good v Evil/God v Devil etc are just other aspects of a different form of evil which holds suppression as its signal. "Not allowed" is the sign.

I appreciate and can see the tight mental/social programming of people due mostly to their upbringing, and I see the CD/TG/TS/fluid spectrum as the group human spirit shouting out against the unnatural dominance of a duality, against mono-theism, against monocultures like shopping chains (the clue there is in the word "chain"), and our police states (social crime and punishment is behind most of the problems presented on this site, for example in DADT).

Have a nice day, y'all, xxx Pamela

[Taragirl427]

My conclusion that the "natural" form of humanity is not a duality, it is not male or female or even CD swapping from one binary state to the other, but rather the fluid form. Humanity is poly-gendered, polysexual, polyamorous, full-spectrum dressing/clothing/makeup.

I came to a similar realization within the last year or so, that human sexuality was something more like a spectrum than two stark norms and a bunch of deviants. Its made me more comfortable in male mode because I have given up trying to live up to the masculine ideal and now allow myself to just be. That said, I'm still not as feminine in male mode as I probably should be...its been a gradual process. It has also made the feeling of being messed up somehow because of being a crossdresser/TG, which has followed me around my whole life, go away.

[Cheryl_Layton]

I find the psychology of humanity to be fascinating, not least the issues of gender and sexuality.

I’m sure that I can add an awful lot here but I’ll just focus on one point which may appear that I’m playing devil’s advocate, but how much do we really want to break down the divisions of gender diversity?
To take it to its ultimate conclusion, if there were no gender diversity then we’d all dress identically with women choosing to wear beards, for example. Do I want my SO to be able to tell me how to configure my SSD in my computer? How would I feel if she got my SDS drill and began building a wall? Most women don’t want men to encroach (or even take over) their feminine domain – hence the difficulty in SOs accepting their partners as CDers.

Personally, I am quite at ease with the separation of the genders as I feel that we each perform certain tasks better suited to our genders. Women don’t generally get into heavy construction because of their limited strength. This doesn’t lessen them as persons, let me say.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that I would restrict women from going into that type of employment if they so wanted. After all, women have shown that they are more than capable of doing what was considered male jobs in the past, eg Doctors, business leaders etc.

What we have to remember is that humans have fought very hard, very long and very aggressively over thousands of years to establish our place at the top of the food-chain. Part of this process did involve the subjugation of women to ensure the hard-fought for male dominance wasn’t compromised. To expect males, particularly, to give up this prized status over a very short (evolutionary) timescale is a big ask.

That said, I think that the way forward is to ensure that we all treat everyone with the respect and dignity that they deserve, regardless of their race, creed, orientation etc. We should also ensure that opportunities are there (in employment, for example) for everyone to enter into regardless of their gender.

We can get there but it will be a long road ahead which will need to begin with education. If we look at how far we have come over the last 100 years it should give us hope for the next hundred.

[pamela7]

Hmmn Cheryl,

I think we have to stick to crossdressing, or we'd get into quite a debate on the ills of the present world. By all means be the devil's advocate.

Why does diversity mean we'd all end up wearing the same clothing/beards? Pharaoh Queens did wear false beards, and apparently so did women at stonings - according to "Life of Brian" anyway :-).

We have a diversity of size/strength/abilities, which we should embrace, I dont see any one skill or beingness as more valuable than another, but then i'd do away with money and "ownership" as the fallacies of the "we are better / worth more than someone else" worldview. The small person fits into the nooks and crannies, climbs trees, the big guy breaks rocks - it's a team world. In the modern world, with machinery the differences come down to spatio-temporal skills (stereo-male) and communicating skills (stereo-female) - so why do we not have all-female politics? (which would work a darn site better than the "no comment" i'll make of the present lot in uk/us).

Dignity, respect, diversity, that is our better nature, yes.

xxx

[Taragirl427]

When you think about ancient history you realize that nothing is really new, concerning human behavior. Of course, you have to leave technology out of the equation

[Pat]

Not sure we have to leave technology out of the equation. There really are very few foci of technology. The most advanced weapons systems are just refinements of throwing a rock. Digital telecommunications are refinements of talking/beating a drum/tapping Morse code. Airplanes, rockets, trains are all just refinements of walking from place to place. We refine our techniques and imagine it's progress but I can't think of a time we've changed the basic needs we've been programmed with from the start.

In terms of societal issues with binary .vs. continuum of gender, the same thought can lead to two different visions -- the same visions we've been having as long as story telling has been around. One is utopian one is dystopian -- it depends on the storyteller's choice. There's the dark view where we'd all dress alike and wear beards and there's the vibrant culture of quirkiness -- let's say "the Portland model."

[pamela7]

i'd prefer a "Grimm" future to a dystopian present! I like "the portland model" metaphor.

[Kate Simmons]

I've learned that if we embrace all of our feelings, the ways to express them and ourselves are limitless. That includes various presentations when in society.

[Nikkilovesdresses]

Do I want my SO to be able to tell me how to configure my SSD in my computer? How would I feel if she got my SDS drill and began building a wall? ...I feel that we each perform certain tasks better suited to our genders. Women don’t generally get into heavy construction because of their limited strength.

My wife weighs under 100lb and can not only configure my SSD, but has taught herself to tackle complex IT problems in French- not her native tongue. She owns a large DeWalt SDS drill as well as a compressor and various airtools, makes large stone sculptures and has built herself a stable block and eventing ring for her horses. For this she bought and restored a 1935 tractor, collecting all the accessories needed to grade a road, drive fence posts, etc, etc. She has captained tall ships, incl sailing both ways around Cape Horn; piloted light aircraft; led whitewater rafting expeditions through remote parts of South America; been stranded for 3 months in Antarctica, where she was taken in by the scientists at the Russian research station- and promptly learnt Russian. While there she took a load of photos that were published in National Geographic; she also loves fashion and has a collection of designer clothes. She's elegant, feminine, and highly emotional- and I couldn't be prouder of her. In no way do I ever find her achievements and abilities a threat- I love that she is so multi talented. She's also a great cook, plays piano and guitar, helps take care of the garden, and she handles all our finances.

It strikes me as odd that any man would want a woman who couldn't do all these things!

[Katey888]

Sooo.. You're saying that you see crossdressing, TG and TS folk as some form of spiritual rebellion against western religion and multinational corporates - is that right? (Sorry for the paraphrase - I just think examples are helpful to put complex ideas into a form that makes it easier to grasp... )

And that we're all capable of expressing multi-gendered and multi-sexual behaviour in a world that truly wants relationships to be anything but one-to-one...?

To use another Southern expression: I think you're whistling Dixie...

YOU may feel those things, but to suggest that (for example) transsexuals go through the hassle they do because of some sort of political protest rather than a need to align gender identity with physical identity seems a rather poorly conceived idea...

And CDers (bearing in mind the substantial proportion if not majority that are secretive and closeted AND often sexually driven) are also somehow raising a banner of political dissatisfaction with the power of Walmart and Apple (to pick on a couple of icons) also seems a little unlikely... after all, who would know...?

I fear you may be projecting too much of your own Utopian and altruistic views of this condition into the rest of the human race... 99% of them out there are just driving Darwin and evolution... On the whole, it's strength over weakness, haves over have nots, and all most of us are doing is trying to achieve some sort of harmony between a gender quirk that makes us different to 99% of the world, and the unhappiness that repression of that need brings (TS obviously are addressing a specific and more distinct mismatch)

I think we're just a bunch of similarly-afflicted individuals expressing what we feel like we'd like to be some or most of the time... I don't think you need to look any further at the gender diversity question again... we've done that one to death...

They don't half make some good scrumpy down west though....

Katey x

[Samantha2015]

This topic is too deep for my shallow mind. I'm just a somewhat evolved hairy monkey that likes
pretty lipstick colors.

[pamela7]

not quite Katey, what i tried to say was in the title - natural humans are as we are, diverse, and that the problem in society is duality/monopolies (same thing).
With the perspective that dressing as we please is going against the social norm and wishes of a duality society, we are in effect rebelling at that norm.
If there were no social consequences to crossdressing, how many more would be out, my case rests, unless you care to Dixie further?

PS you're right, i'm rather too altruistic, humans aint too nice.

Scrumping-on, xxx Pamela

[JeanetteX]

This topic is too deep for my shallow mind. I'm just a somewhat evolved hairy monkey that likes
pretty lipstick colors.

Ha ha ha Samantha, as a non-English speaking person your post is the 1st I understand in this thread!

[ReineD]

My conclusion that the "natural" form of humanity is not a duality, it is not male or female or even CD swapping from one binary state to the other, but rather the fluid form. Humanity is poly-gendered, polysexual, polyamorous, full-spectrum dressing/clothing/makeup.

This is true in the aggregate of our society where we can find a rich spectrum of traits and preferences. But individually, most people do identify as either male or female. It has nothing to do with their personality traits, what they do for a living, their personal preferences, the clothing styles they choose to wear (whether a guy wears a pink shirt or a girl wears a lumberjack shirt), etc - all these facets span the full spectrum of human behavior among each individual. But there is one single and consistent thing that makes most individuals feel they are either male or female (this duality you say does not exist), and this is how comfortable they feel inside their bodies. People in general do very much identify as either male or female and they are not interested in letting others know they are not their birth-sex, no matter what they look like, how they behave, or what they wear. In fact most people are so in tune with who they are, they do not spend a great deal of energy thinking about their gender presentation. They just buy the clothes they like in the sections of stores that sell clothing to their sex. Most people are very much heterosexual, they are opposite-sex attracted, save for a small percentage of people who are same-sex attracted but who still are cis-gendered.

But, there is a small percentage of individuals who are not cis-gendered, who do feel at odds with their bodies and who take steps to change their bodies, their names and their gender markers. And there is another small percentage of individuals who do feel comfortable in their male bodies but who are attracted to the stereotypical packaging of the opposite sex (feminine clothing, makeup, long hair, and some of the more stereotypical manifestations of gender for example the way that women walk, etc). Some of these people may even wish to erase the notion of gender-duality altogether because they feel caught in the middle. But this does not mean it does not exist in our society, not for the vast majority of individuals, no matter the sexual attraction.

I hope I didn't misunderstand your point.

[pamela7]

i think you understand just fine, Reine, and given the conditioning of growing up of course 95% will be vanilla, the amazing thing is any of us are left, and that we seem to be a growing phenomenon. Dysphoria is for me yet another part of our diversity, I wonder if that too is a spectrum rather than a binary switch - there are inbetweenies as well as TS and CIS.

[debstar]

For me their are three main spectrums to humanity. Physical identity, mental identity, and sexual identity. Any one can be at any point on those three lines.

[sometimes_miss]

I have to disagree. We are basically mostly male or mostly female. Sure, there will be some behaviors which are dominant in one sex to be present in the other, but usually in much lower occurrence. The reasons we evolved into the 'duality' system, is because it worked better than any other, and we still haven't found a better system: Men behaved one way, women another, and each complimented the other in ways that encouraged maximum offspring and maximum diversity within any groups most stable dynamics. Now, that may change, but what's built into our innate behavior chromosome wise, will take a very, very long time, if ever. Sure, we can 'learn' to change our behavior, but learning something after we're born doesn't get passed on genetically to our offspring, so they start right back at square one.

There have been on occasion people here who will search for reasons that we can be considered normal by the rest of society, sometimes even to the point of saying that those who are considered 'normal' aren't, but that we are instead. That.....kind of seems just weird to me.

[ReineD]

Dysphoria is for me yet another part of our diversity, I wonder if that too is a spectrum rather than a binary switch - there are inbetweenies as well as TS and CIS.

But not every desire to dress as a female is an indication of Gender Dysphoria. I know that giving it a medical term gives it a form of legitimacy, but there is a real difference between knowing that one is not the gender associated with their birth sex, hence they want to change their sex to match their internal gender (which is not a fun thing to do), and a strong preference for the trappings of a certain type of femininity, even if the lure is powerful (which is a fun thing to do).

I agree though, the strength of the desire to dress among CDers varies. A lot of this depends on their life circumstances since most people do tend to adjust to the restrictions they experience. By this I mean that if someone has an accepting wife, lives in a more liberal part of the world, and has a degree of freedom with a work/home schedule, they will allow themselves to want to dress more than someone who is married to an unaccepting wife, lives in a part of the world that is particularly biased against the CDing, and has no freedom at all in their schedule.