The CD Mind

[deebra]

Julie C said it so well in her post "Moher's clothes", she describes that dressing in her mothers clothes got her started and how it felt and made her a crossdresser. What was in her mind, our minds that cause us to want to try on women's clothes, the excitement and wonderful, dangerous, sexual feeling that comes with it and why we want to continue? Why us and not other males. Are we born with more femininity than other males? Do we have more of this mind set than females since we might enjoy the clothes, etc. more than they do (they wear the clothes to cover their body, we wear it for pleasure). As male to female crossdressers we can't let it go, the pink fog or whatever won't allow it. We are into feminity and crossdressing for life. I know, I know don't analize it, just enjoy it, but WHY US???

[dana digs sweaters]

Why for men that never crossdressed while young, became full blown crossdressers as an adult?
How many youngins have dabbled with female garments and have no real interest as an adult?
Womanless beauty pageants Not creating more transvestites/crossdressers?
womanless beauty pageant.jpg
For some youngins I am sure there was the thrill of avoiding being caught. The raising of one's heart rate.
Those of us (hand raised here) that were avid crossdressers before puberty hit us, were dressing for the clothes.
For how many trying to recapture our youthful delights of puberty while wearing female garments?
Escapism to creating a female image that we could call our own? And continuing that as an adult?
Why ask why?
Just enjoy!

Lipstick ;-).jpg

[Michelle1955]

It is in the brain, I was looking at the bras, panties, children cloths in Sears and JCP catalogs way before asexual thing. Like 5 years old, and admired my friends female cloths at that age also. I am a a cross dresser but actually a female in a man body. Currently 62 years old. And wear panties everyday. Mother cloths came much later. First panties were a friends of mine I tried on hers and She tried on my boy underwear at about 6 years old at her house.

[Alice Torn]

I don't think anyone can really explain why.

[Veronica4me]

Like most, I started so young, that there were no inhibitions, and before puberty, there was no pesky body hair to contend with. The clothes felt so wonderful on my skin, I couldn't resist. I think the lack of inhibition and fear made it easy. The clothing kept it compelling.

[Stephanie47]

I have to agree with Alice. I 'really' don't know "The Why." If I could come up with an answer it would be great so I could offer an explanation to my wife. A counselor I see for combat related PTSD, who knows zilch about my cross dressing, holds the position each man and woman has some dna of the other sex. She feels it is stronger in some than others. I guess, if that is true, then perhaps that would explain the vast continuum of sexual behavior/preferences to include gays, lesbians and all transgender issues.

My first interest in women's clothing was my mother's nylon slips. I had no sisters or female cousins, so there was no influence with siblings. I loved the feel of nylon. I was a rough and tumble little boy. I got in more than my fair share of problem. It was sports, sports and more sports. In the blistering summer heat or the frigid cold of winter it was baseball, basketball, football, roller hockey, street games. I do remember visiting my grandparents home and out of sheer boredom finding and trying on and prancing around in one of my mother's teenage articles of clothing left behind from the 1930's. Rather than sit with my hands folded I found ways to break the boredom until I was old enough to play on the sidewalk outside their house.

The only other weird reason I can envision, and, I never gave it much thought until my wife started watching shows on prior life experiences. When we moved to a new apartment and I was four or five I had dreams/visions that I had been a young woman who was battered and bruised and murdered. I was found curled up dead in the snow in an earthen parking lot wearing only a white slip. We did not have a television yet. I have no idea why a little boy of four or five would have a dream/vision like that. I still have that image etched in my mind. Another possibility for my cross dressing behavior? An influence from the past?

[Teresa]

Deebra,
We possibly do have more of a mindset than GGs , for most of us especially in our earlier days the clothes do have a sexual component whereas women don't see clothes in the same way , they may make them sexually attractive but not sexually turned on .

Why we want to continue , well it unlocks so many feelings , liberates us if you like . What keeps us coming back may not be so much of pink fog but the fact we keep developing , wanting more but not knowing in which direction . Did I know I would be so freely walking out the door even when I joined this forum , NO ! It was for others with the expertise and confidence , I was stuck in the closet in a DADT situation , How things can change !

[CONSUELO]

My earliest memory of dressing was when my older sisters thought it would be a great joke to dress me in my aunt's longline corset. She was staying for the weekend with us and I have no idea how the plan to dress me evolved. I just remember standing in my sister's bedroom in that longline corset and watching them laugh. I don't know how old I was exactly but I am guessing that I was only about 5 years old. It was a vivid memory of standing there in that corset with sunlight streaming through the bedroom window and making the satin fabric shine. I became enamored with the sheen of the satin and the feel of the slippery fabric against my skin. That was the only time that they dressed me though the youngest of my three sisters who was six years older than I, did apply makeup to me and she made me sit in front of the house so that I would be seen.

I believe I can trace two strong desires back to those times. First the desire to dress in silky fabrics which I did frequently as a part of my sexual and erotic explorations for many years before puberty. Second is the desire to be sexually dominated, an aspect which I did not explore until later in life when I was able to visit and dress for dominatrices.

Indeed I did try on my Sister's and my Mother's clothing frequently but clearly the trigger came from being dressed by my sisters and being sexually aroused by it.
An unanswerable question is whether I would have become a cross dresser without that very early trigger event.

When I read the many stories by members of how they remember their early interest in cross dressing I am struck by the great variety of our experiences. Yes, there are some common threads but also so many variations.

A long time ago when I was being treated by a psychiatrist for depression I told that story of being dressed and he responded by characterizing it as "sexual abuse". It made me realize how the psychiatry/psychology professions so easily fall into parroting oversimplified explanations rather than trying to truly understand. I have been wary ever since. I never felt that I had been abused and in some ways I am even grateful to my sisters for helping me along this path.

[Alice B]

I did not dress as a youngin and never had any desire to dress until late in my 50's. Then out of the blue I wanted to experence it and let out the female that I thought was bottled up inside me. I was suddenly aware that I had no idea what triggered this. I spent a lot of time researching it on my computer and getting more and more excited about it. Being fully aware of the effect this would have on my wife. I openly discussed it with her and gave her selected reading sections that I felt would help her understand. She agreed to it on a limited basis and Alice was born.

[docrobbysherry]

Like Alice, I had no interest in women's things before my 50's. Beyond that, "regular" men don't even think about wearing women's things! I had plenty of opportunities when young. Then, with girl friends and a wife. My only thot about women's clothes back then was to get women OUT OF THEM!

As far as continuing dressing after we start? I mean, it's not like we really have a choice, is it!?

[Gillian Gigs]

I believe that there are as many reasons for CD'ing as there are minutes in a year. I can only speak for me and I spent years asking the "why" question, I think I finally have my reason for what has happened.

My first experience was as a punishment at age 4, which was being put into a pair of my sisters panties, being spanked and then being made to wear the panties for the rest of the day. I also had to put up with my sisters taunting me, and calling me a sissy for the rest of the day. They made sure that I didn't get changed out them also. This was the start of something that whether it was used as a threat, or actually happened went on for many years. Around age 12 I started to wear panties by my own choice, then other lingerie from my mothers dresser. The why of me doing it without an apparent underlining reason haunted me for many years. My conclusion was that I wanted to be in control of when it happened and for how long it happened. To take the power away from some one else and put it into my own hands.

The dressing developed into a fun game when I was alone and I was alone a lot by that time. Then one evening things changed for ever. I had my first ejaculation while dressed in lingerie, one experience led to another, which lead me down the slippery slope to a fetish. This fetish consumed me for many years leaving me with self loathing, a lack of self esteem, etc, etc, etc. With the internet I started to see that I was not alone and I started the journey toward accepting myself. I wanted to be in control, so I started to wear panties all the time in an attempt to stop any sexual component from happening. I thought if I normalized this I would take the sexual thing out of it. It took time, through the process I now underdress all the time and have added skirts and other clothes into the equation. Is there a sexual component today, yes, but it is now like 90% the clothes and 10% about sex. Fortunately I have a loving wife who understands and accepts this side of me.

I have had this innate pleasure of wearing anything nylon for as long as I can remember. The snugger the panties, the better and I can only figure that this came from the original experience. There is nothing to me more comfortable than to dress wearing a stretchy cami, panties, snug pantyhose and skirt, this is a happy place for me. Whether it was a good or bad start doesn't matter now.

[Wildaboutheels]

Basic Math 101.

I am not aware of any reliable evidence, but I would bet that male CDers outnumber female CDers by at least 10 to 1 if not 100 to 1. Possibly 1000 to 1.

Because of vsion, plain and simple. Very few women are "turned on" visually as it goes aginst their most basic programming.

Per the vast majority of input here, most men go through a period of "sexual component". (At the very least)

Or, started that way.

Or still have "it" currently, possibly multiple dozens of years later.

CDing is mostly a VISION thing.

Take away most CDers' cameras or mirrors and what do you get?

[Rachael Leigh]

The studies I’ve read are pretty clear, there are some environmental reasons and such but most have concluded they just don’t know why men or boys crossdress or are transgender it’s a mystery. And it sure can mess up relationships

[Micki_Finn]

There are as many answers to that question as there are crossdressers.

[Rayleen]

Deebra,

One thing is sure, some of us CD'ers have female wired brain. I know for a fact that at a tender age I was only interested in girls dressing up and female interest. I remember watching how they dressed, and wondered why my body did not match.

Its not only the clothes, but the aspect that my brain is not compatible to male behavior , but I guess we are each an original person .

Crossdressing is some moments to enjoy some satisfaction to ease the tension of my feelings.

[redtea]

I believe it's because we were more curious than other males and less close minded which allowed us to do something we knew was a social taboo.

That and our bodies may have been feminine too to help create the idea of wanting to try it.

my father figure also degraded me in my teenage years so by crossdressing i'm playing off of the taboo of being what he said i was, A girly boy.


Moral of the story, Divorce impacts boys way more than girls and boys really need a good father figure more than a mother who will let them go astray.

[MarinaTwelve200]

Since there are different reasons for CDing, like "Escapisim" from one's self vs "finding one's "true self" to getting a high from "breaking taboos" to masochistic "humiliation" to various fetishes, It would be impossible to make any general statements about the minds of CDers---as CDing is just something those of us with several different mental and Psychological "conditions" simply have in common to use for different ends.

[Beverley Sims]

As a man when I was twenty I was a 98 lb weakling and was not attractive to girls, in a dress I looked like a blond bombshell and attracted all the girls I wanted.

I was popular with all the girls and even some of the boys who did not know, so I just continued on and still enjoy life.

[sometimes_miss]

WHY US???

Something tipped the balance, and we wind up feeling better adorning ourselves with female clothing. Whether we're chasing being female or running from being male, all depends on the individual.

I don't think anyone can really explain why.

Well, some of us can. Trouble it, the way we're brought up, since being feminine in any way is the worst possible thing a boy can be, it's simply unacceptable to the male mind. So we repress any ideas that might suggest we have any type of stereotypical female feelings at all.

I have to agree with Alice. I 'really' don't know "The Why." If I could come up with an answer it would be great so I could offer an explanation to my wife.

Trouble is, the truth can be so disturbing to our SO's that they can't handle it, either.

Since there are different reasons for CDing, like "Escapisim" from one's self vs "finding one's "true self" to getting a high from "breaking taboos" to masochistic "humiliation" to various fetishes, It would be impossible to make any general statements about the minds of CDers---as CDing is just something those of us with several different mental and Psychological "conditions" simply have in common to use for different ends.

^Best short explanation. The big problem is, everyone is searching for the 'one, and only one' true reason for crossdressing, and there isn't only 'one' cause. And because so many cannot accept the potential reasons, it's become fashionable to just tell people that they were born that way. While that may be true for some, it doesn't explain why their crossdressing desires & behavior doesn't show up for years or even decades. And it doesn't have to be one thing, either. It can be a number of events or hormonal actions that can leave us vulnerable to the eventual tipping point that pushes us over the edge (and into a dress, or such).
Consider.
I was occasionally dressed in my sister's old clothes as a toddler. At that age, I had no idea that I had been wearing girl clothes until dad found out and blew a gasket over it.
I was envious of my sister getting more attention with getting dressed and having her hair fixed, as well as being told that even if she hit me, I wasn't allowed to hit her back because 'men never hit a lady, EVER'. Sis had lots of friends, I had none. Seemed better to be a girl for many reasons, and none benefiting being a boy.
Boys had to fight, and I was always the smaller kid getting beat up, but not allowed to quit or get help from an older sibling, I was expected to stand up for myself and always fight back, even though I always lost. Always losing the fights, and watching and noticing that girls didn't get into physical fights much if at all, seemed better to be a girl.
By the time I started school, the fight had already been beaten out of me, as I just assumed that whenever I hit someone back, I would get a beating. So I stopped fighting back, resulting in be being labeled a coward and a sissy.
And so it went. Just before I turned 7, when someone told me that god made a mistake, and that I had really supposed to have been born a girl, I believed it, because he presented what seemed to be valid reasoning to support that idea (I was six, I didn't have the ability to debate what an older smarter person was telling me). Then with that in mind, learning about my family's past, I saw other events that pointed to that being the case as well, and I was then reinforcing the erroneous hypothesis that I was really a girl through my childhood.
Trouble was, until I was 6, I was still a normal boy, with normal boy desires and thoughts. If I was born a crossdresser, where were those desires until then?
If just one of those things happened, even two, I don't think I would have wound up being a crossdresser with transgender feelings. But add it all up, and, well, here I am; only truly comfortable when dressed up as a girl.
Confusing parts were, if I were a girl, why wasn't I romantically interested in boys? We know NOW that gender and sexual preference are different, but in the 60's no such knowledge was available. And why didn't I think like girls did? Where was the preoccupation with relationships? Why did I get irritated with all the nonsensical discussions that went nowhere? Girls love to talk about nothing in particular, but it just irritated me. The truth about it all finally started to come out in the 90's, when psychologists finally got around to figuring out the differences in the male and female mindsets.
But today, we still suffer from our upbringing. And I see it continuing, because much of society still has preconceived ideas of what is appropriate for each sex, and what isn't. Until that changes, us males will still feel the stigma of wanting to do what are considered behaviors only allowed to girls, and we may very well continue to repress why we feel that way.

[ClosetED]

I can't quickly find the data source, but I recall many percent of boys (?20-30) try on women's clothing as an experiment and don't go any further with it. But we are different and the data suggests that there is a genetic difference in us that makes us enjoy it more when we do get around to trying it. Based on social environment, it might be allowed early or suppressed by parents and show up much later.
Hugs, Ellen

[laura.lapinski]

The only trauma in my nuclear family life growing up was verbal fights as in yelling. My dad use to yell at us, and us kids fought with each other. I was the youngest of all, so I was in the most vulnerable position. I think I turned to self-stimulation at a young age as an escape. I was dressed up once at age three by my sisters and a female cousins, but that was innocent fun by them, and there were even some pictures taken. As I developed, I did some self-pleasuring, but knew nothing about it as far as that it was related to sex. I didn't even know that men and women had sex, and had no idea where babies came from. I would say that the stress of other people not getting along caused me to escape into myself at times. I did see and like some Playboy and Penthouse magazines as a youngster and like them. I would get turned on by them, but I still didn't know about sex, but I think we start gathering information and figuring it out along the way. Nobody ever molested me, and made me do anything against my will. I think sex just became a stress relief for me. I think that the CDing is partly genetically embedded in us.

[Nikkilovesdresses]

Basic Math 101. Take away most CDers' cameras or mirrors and what do you get?

A common theme here, and it's described very clearly in Consuelo's post, is the feel of the fabrics. But for me and countless others, the look of women's clothing is as, or more, important than seeing images of ourselves wearing them.

You might have taken Basic Math 101, but many others have gone on to do a Phd.

Divorce impacts boys way more than girls and boys really need a good father figure more than a mother who will let them go astray.

This should be a thread in its own right. I don't know how factual it is, but it's deeply intriguing - especially to me, having been raised by a single mom. Personally I disagree with the idea, but I'd like to know what others think about it.

[Devi SM]

Some researchers are trying and already find some traces in transexuals, trasgenders DNA.
I love the LGBT flag because is a the rainbow colors. Any color changes to its similar next passing in between for other colours and successively I to other including all variances. The reason of the colors, just light, the reasons of us, just us.

[BLUE ORCHID]

Hi Deebra , I am not sure that anyone really know why we do what we do. >Orchid ..00..

[Robertacd]

Since accepting myself I have lost the need to know why. Sure I can tell you what I think the reason is.

But in reality I think true self acceptance means you don't need to know "why" you are the way you are. Because you no longer need an excuse or a scapegoat to explain yourself to anyone, including yourself.