Frilly Dresses ! Are Women to Blame ?

[Robbiegirl]

To Surprise a maid who had helped raise us my mom and aunt decided to dress my older and younger sisters in my clothes and me in my sisters clothes. I was probably about 7. After protesting I was to be dresssed in a simple skirt but my mother found an old party dress that the maid would remember and I was put into that . It was every boys nightmare lots of frills and very short, and tied in the back with a bow. When they added a headband and let me see myself in the mirror I was in shock. I looked like a silly girl, frail and weak. Moments later my sisters were let in and to this day they have never been happier and laughed so hard. Of course the maid was late and I had to endure them all telling me how adorable and cute I was and that I should always wear dresses and didn't I want to wear some cute undies underneath .

It was unbeleievable how much fun the women seemed to have making a boy experience frilly dresses!!

I wonder to this day if seeing I could pass for a girl and kind of enjoying swishing around in that dress made me a crossdresser or was it inevitable

Are women to blame ?

Is my wife to blame for not wearing dresses and slips very often. So unfair to us men !

Why do women seem to have fun putting us in dresses as long as we don't enjoy it to much ?

Women are so silly sometimes but I love them !

[Judy-Somthing]

When I was about 5 or 6 my sister dressed me up as a ballerina and I've been hooked ever since.

I always thought that when a little boy gets dressed up in a cute dress it puts them on the road to Cross-Dress City!

[Robertacd]

When I was 5 or 6 I remember looking at the JC Penny Christmas catalog and secretly wanting the ballerina costume.

No sisters growing up, not once was I forced to wear girls clothes, I have always known I was wearing the wrong clothes.

[Robbiegirl]

Thats funny because soon after the frilly dress maybe weeks later I got curious and tried on my sisters ballet tutus. Again it felt so funny to be prancing about in the silly tutus and ballet slippers !

[DIANEF]

My sisters never had anything frilly, they didn't like them, too girly!, My mum had some very nice dresses, big puffy skirts and tight tops, and I really wanted to try them on but was scared of being found out. I never got to try a ballerina outfit, but I did often borrow my sisters swimming costumes.

[Stephanie47]

I don't believe a young boy forcibly dressed up in his sisters' or cousins' clothing in itself will make him a cross dresser. I believe there has to be some predisposition to make that transition. Whatever that may be is surely pure conjecture. Maybe, the event was an awakening, but, not the cause. Before my grandparents moved to a new retirement home they built my family would visit regularly. There was usually absolutely nothing to do. My parents never thought for my brother and I to bring along books or games or toy cars, whatever. I discovered in the bottom draw of an old desk a romper my mother use to wear as a girl. I tried it on and prance around. My father was not pleased. My mother did not make as big a deal about it. To me it was nothing more than playing out of total boredom. I did that a few times before either the garment disappeared or I grew tired of it. I would not ascribe that as being the reason for developing into a cross dresser. I think it meant I was predisposed to being one.

Maybe being forced to wear frilly girlie clothes as a young boy would lead him to hate women? Or, maybe have a desire to be humiliated because attention was given to him which he other wise did not get? Who knows?

Back when I was a young boy women and girls wore dresses. Especially in summer the dresses were colorful. As a child I was a fairly good artist and maybe my love of colors and colorful things lead me to abandon dull drab men's clothing for lovely floral and print dresses? And, that may be suggestive of my collection of very lacy and colorful slips; reds, pinks, blues, greens, yellows, gold, burgundy, prints, etc.

[Elizabeth G]

I wasn't nearly as lucky. I only had brothers and my mother want really girly-girl so the only frilly things around were from my small stash.

[ReineD]

I looked like a silly girl, frail and weak.
...
It was unbeleievable how much fun the women seemed to have making a boy experience frilly dresses!!

I think this is cruel. As a mother, I never would have thought my sons' embarrassment over anything was humorous.

What you describe, though, is something my SO has tried to explain to me and that, as a girl, I have never experienced: a sort of shame over having been made to wear the opposite sex clothing when young. I don’t think that girls feel that way when they wear boy clothes. My SO tells me that when he was a little boy, he and his friends went through a phase where they all believed that girls had "cooties", that they were somehow "gross". I don’t know what causes this, if this is a natural development stage that boys go through, because since most kids identify with their primary caretaker first which in most cases is their mother, boys need to reject their mother’s female sex when they begin to identify as their own male sex. Since little girls already are the same sex as their mothers, they don’t need to reject their mother's sex as they approach puberty.

In any case, since many little boys go through the "girls have cooties" stage, I think it is beyond cruel for parents and siblings to force them into wearing girl clothes or to laugh at their embarrassment.

I’ve no idea if this is what made you a CDer. Sometimes, as adults, we recreate painful childhood experiences in order to find ways to resolve them. You see this sometimes in women who have been abused by their fathers, consistently choose adult mates who also abuse them. It is almost as if they keep recreating the same experiences in order to subconsciously learn how to establish boundaries.

Why do women seem to have fun putting us in dresses as long as we don't enjoy it to much ?

No, not all women do that.

But, for some reason many people (both men and women) think that boys dressing up as girls are funny. Look at all the "womanless beauty pageant fund raisers", or even when some adult men who are not crossdressers will choose a "female" Halloween costume for a laugh, with garish makeup, cheap platinum blonde wig, etc, while making a big deal out of clownishly walking around in heels.



I think that people who laugh at men who wear women’s clothing do not understand the real need to dress like this, that members of this community experience. It’s cruel to laugh at anyone who doesn’t think it is a joke, no matter what the circumstances.

[Kelly DeWinter]

ReineD is spot on about this being cruelty. There are many forms of cruelty:
. Physical
. Emotional
. Mental

This fits all three physical in forcing you to do something you reasonably did not want to, Emotional in that at a young age it gave you an image of your self that made you fee 'shocked', Mental in that it has stayed with you for so long that to this day it causes you pain to this day.

[Lana Mae]

Disregarding the abuse aspect and moving on to the question! No, Skirting as it is called is not a cause of crossdressing later in life! Do not blame the women! I have come to accept that it is genetic and our brains are just wired that way! There could be other causes! Who really knows? I think it is there and something triggers it to come out is all! Your skirting episode might have made you aware of it but is not the cause of it! IMHO Hugs Lana Mae

[Roxanne]

I also had an experience of having my mother put me in a dress as a child. I believe it was to see how it would look before she sent it to my cousin as a birthday gift. I don't think that had much effect on me, rather she often talked about her desire for a daughter. I was the third of four boys in the family. Maybe the unconscious thought that girls were desired more than boys was an issue with me.

[Lorileah]

No sisters. No abusive parents. No trauma. No nothing.

And why does anyone need to blame anyone.

And while we're at it.. look in the mirror. Who is silly?

Personally, I find the thread unnecessary

[Dana44]

I had the experience of my sisters dressing e a few times but that did not have an affect on me. But my gender fluid brain did have an affect on me. I never blame women for my gender fluid bran and I was born that way as a DES kid and having synthetic Estrogen over my body in the womb did have an affect on my brains that made me gender fluid and I felt the switch all of my life. But as my fem side started me dressing at a young age. I love women but sometimes in this age they dress more as a boy to me. It is us that wears frilly stuff and we like it.

[Mickitv]

My experience is much like many of the responders. It was Halloween and I was probably in first grade and my mother dressed me as a little girl. I don't know whether that incident started it all but I always remember it fondly.

[Tina_gm]

To Surprise a maid who had helped raise us my mom and aunt decided to dress my older and younger sisters in my clothes and me in my sisters clothes. I was probably about 7. After protesting I was to be dresssed in a simple skirt but my mother found an old party dress that the maid would remember and I was put into that . It was every boys nightmare lots of frills and very short, and tied in the back with a bow. When they added a headband and let me see myself in the mirror I was in shock. I looked like a silly girl, frail and weak. Moments later my sisters were let in and to this day they have never been happier and laughed so hard. Of course the maid was late and I had to endure them all telling me how adorable and cute I was and that I should always wear dresses and didn't I want to wear some cute undies underneath .

It was unbeleievable how much fun the women seemed to have making a boy experience frilly dresses!!

I wonder to this day if seeing I could pass for a girl and kind of enjoying swishing around in that dress made me a crossdresser or was it inevitable

Are women to blame ?

Is my wife to blame for not wearing dresses and slips very often. So unfair to us men !

Why do women seem to have fun putting us in dresses as long as we don't enjoy it to much ?

Women are so silly sometimes but I love them !

Um, no. You either have this or you don't. What happened was the trigger, but there has to be ammo for it. For most, this wouldn't have any lasting effects that would change behavior. It would either be embarrassing or perhaps fun, but it wouldn't make most want to repeat it.

[abby054]

An old pastor friend, who had spent a lifetime in the ministry in some pretty rough places, may offer some insight into this. When someone who we both knew exhibited an unexpected behavior, he told me that when such a behavior comes out, it was already inside beforehand. I doubt that dressing up a little boy in skirts causes crossdressing, but it may help bring out something that was already in there.

In my own mind, I know that, from the day that I first learned to dress myself, crossdressing was already inside me. One of the first questions that I recall asking as a child was why can I not wear the nice, pretty clothes that girls get to wear.

I agree with Reine: from a position of power, intentionally doing something to embarrass a child, when he does not think it is funny, is cruel.

[Ressie]

My mom had me wear my sister's coat on Halloween because I didn't have a costume. I was very young and probably quite passable!

[Robin777]

Well I didn't grow up with a sister,I have 2 brothers. I was never dressed up in girls clothing when I was young. I did have one thing happen to me on multiple occasions though. I was told by my mother that I was supposed to be a girl when I was born. Did that turn me into a crossdresser? I doubt it. I was always more interested at looking woman's things in the catalogs when I was young and I remember getting into my mothers things when I was very young and trying on her shoes and liking her other things.That happened before my mother started telling me I was expected to be a girl when I was born. I just think I am genetically programmed to be the way I am.

[LelaK]

When I was about 9 I was in 4H and our club did a Fun Night each year. That year we did a hillbilly wedding. My sister played best man and I played the maid of honor. I loved my gown. I started crossdressing privately sometime before or after that. There was another local 4H club that was all boys and all of them were dressed as girls in that year's Fun Night. I don't think they all became crossdressers. I suspect that I was the only one, but you never know.

[sometimes_miss]

I always thought that when a little boy gets dressed up in a cute dress it puts them on the road to Cross-Dress City!

I think that only happens if he's got the desire to crossdress in the first place. There's still a lot of people out there who ridicule boys for dressing up like a girl. AFAIK, there's no groups that actively encourage the idea.

[Trish]

My wife got me into my first dress. Since that first time, I dress as often as possible. She still encourages my dressing, and picks out a lot of what I buy.She bought me two dresses for fathers day.

[GretchenM]

I don't think anybody knows where this behavior comes from. So many origin theories have been proposed. Genetics, developmental errors that create a more female like brain in a male, abuse, trauma, neglect, identification with female due to exposure to hostile males, especially fathers, etc. etc. But I have never found any theory that being dressed as a girl in youth somehow triggers a cross-dressing preference. There is something that precedes that if that is the result. The question makes me wonder if what we are seeing is selective sampling. That is, here we will find people who cross-dress who had childhood experiences that appear to be triggers and conclude that maybe it triggered the behavior. But what we don't have is data to indicate how many boys were dressed up as girls as a joke or out of cruelty or just tried it out, but who did not become cross-dressers. We need both sets of data to tell if there is anything to that conclusion.

I have some pretty good ideas where mine came from, but I don't know if they are correct. My biological father abandoned us when I was about 6 months old and was very neglectfull after that. My caretakers were my aunts and grandparents and sometimes my mother. We all lived in poverty. I feared men, except for my grandfather who was very gentle, even a little feminine. By the time my mother remarried I was about 7 and beyond the critical developmental years. I think that early identification with women produced a feminine identity in me that complemented my incomplete male identity and I ended up non-binary trans. Sounds good. Is it true? I have no idea and my gender therapist didn't either. She agreed that is sounded good, but how many boys grew up that way and did not end up non-binary trans? Who knows? Nobody. But it is interesting and useful to explore those issues. I think we just need to be careful about drawing conclusions on cherry picked data.

[me1101]

I don't believe that any experience or person made you a crossdresser but that your brain is wired differently. I am glad we are all wired a bit different, if we were all the same it would be a boring world.

[Robbiegirl]

ReineD I found your response quite thought provoking! I viewed my sisters as weak, silly and girly. They were some what intimidated by me. In the Party dress i looked as weak and girly as they did and they could sense it. They teased me mercilessly and seemed empowered by wearinng my clothes. It seemed like for months they kept asking if I wanted to wear their dresses or tutus, and my mother would just laugh and join in. It seemed the more they talked about ut the more curious I got to try on their silly things

[Fiona123]

The concept of blame does not apply. Blame implies something is wrong. There is nothing wrong at being CD or TG. We are who and what we are. I agree with other posts that our gender identity or need for alternative gender expression is hard wired in us somehow.