The CD Mind

[Tracy Irving]

Never asked why. Don't care.

I just hope it doesn't go away.

Pink fog forever!

[Wildaboutheels]

FACT. Numbers don't lie.

Even someone with bad vision should easily notice in the pic gallery the threads that jump out with the staggering # of views and responses. These threads are not featuring granny dresses, jeans, flats, forms, bras, makeup, shapewear, or ... ?

The shared commonality of certain popular threads is obvious and undeniable.

Without a doubt though, this CDing "thing" is more mental than visual for some. I'm sure some members never even peruse the pic gallery but simply stick with the regular threads.

[RainbowDash]

I am constantly asking myself why I love wearing women's clothes so much. The answer is simple.... I love the clothes and everything about them. Lingerie feels so good and can make one look sexy and hot. Women's clothes can sometimes feel a bit tighter, but if ur like me and are going for a sexy look, then u don't mind it much. Men don't get to wear these things and women do, that's why I dress up.

While I have absolutely no desire to become a transwoman, I do feel there is a very strong feminine side in my body that screams to get out, and I release my feminine side by crossdressing. I do feel a strong urge to be a woman, at least on the outside, and dressing allows me to become the woman I so badly want to be without going through the long lengthy process of a sex change.

When I see a fancy dressed woman, I think 2 things.... 1. Looking at her I think how great she looks and 2. I start to visualize myself wearing what she is wearing. Next thing u know, I'm on the web searching for the outfit I saw her wearing, or at least one that is close enough to it. I love the way women express themselves with their clothes, and their confidence, swagger, and attitude when they do so. Sometimes it seems like these women have more confidence and self-esteem than other women, almost like they're ready to take on anything or anyone that life throws at them.

[Ressie]

I'm sure there are different factors and variables for each of us. As for myself, I see a lot of nurture and nature aspects.

Nurture - Each member of my family had some influence on me. My older brother was a bit physically abusive and my sister loved glamour/sexiness. Is it any wonder that I love sexy clothes and somewhat aggressive sex partners?

Nature - I don't have a very hairy body and my facial hair isn't as full as most men. My legs are thin, which adds to my imagination when wearing heels, hose and dresses. So, I tend to think there's something going on with my hormones.

[Connie D50]

Great post I started young before puberty. I also looked at sears catalog and found myself looking at the girls cloths more then the boys cloths (I still do look at the ladies section way more then the men's lol), and yes there was some sexually attraction. I'm not sure the sexually attractive came because of the way I felt wearing the cloths or the way I looked in the cloths.
I know this I would love to find out what makes me want to wear women's cloths.

[Angela Marie]

Interesting thread. As I noted on other threads I started by wearing my mothers tights. I also grew up with a single mother who was a very strong woman. I clearly identified with that and I have to think, developmentally at least, it contributed to a stronger feminine orientation.

[Ginni]

I dress to be the woman in me. I started at a very young age. Then I thought it was curiosity, but now i think it is meant to be. Later I thought it was sexual, but now I think the male in me is aroused by the female. I am beginning to accept who I am and what I am. I do really enjoy dressing.

[LilSissyStevie]

I gave up on the idea that I could find a one-size-fits-all unified theory of CD. I never really believed there was one anyway. As for myself, I trace the roots of my fetish to emasculation trauma as a child. Crossdressing isn't my fetish, it's just a way to accessorize my fetish which is masochistic emasculation. When I was little my grandmother was our primary caretaker. She was abusive to me both psychologically and physically. One thing she would do is force me to play with the neighborhood boys who were all older and bigger than me. Being small and meek, I got picked on and bullied a lot. When I complained, my grandmother called me a sissy and a crybaby and told me I needed to stand up for myself. I did that once and got my ass kicked real good. She said it would toughen me up. Bitch! My sisters never had to deal with any of this and my grandmother doted on them. Naturally, I started to wonder about how much better my life would be if I were a girl. I would sometimes dress up in my sister's clothes and fantasize about it. Whenever I could get away with it, I stayed home and played with my older sister and her friends. One day one of my sister's friends was going on about why was I playing with them when I was a boy? I was trying to think of some way to defend myself, and not really having a deep understanding what it meant to be a boy, when one of them came up behind me and pulled my pants down and they all pointed and laughed at the sight of my appendage. It was deeply humiliating to me and made me want to be a girl even more. That "thing" was standing in the way of me having real friends.

When I reached puberty, I accidentally discovered a little pornographic novel concerning the antics of some gay crossdressers. Although I had been having sexual feelings for girls for some time, this story put my libido into hyper-drive. I didn't understand it at all. I wasn't attracted to males yet the idea of being a CD "girl" pleasuring men in this fantasy was highly erotic. It led to my first real orgasm. Only the fantasy of sexual domination by women could rival that feeling. Not long after this I had an opportunity to have sex with a girl that was a little older than me. I completely failed to "rise" to the occasion and it was very humiliating. Although she acted like it was no problem, I knew she was laughing about it with her friends. It just reinforced the idea in my head that I wasn't a "real" man and that I was more like a girl myself. I was afraid to even try to have sex again because I didn't want to fail. When I did, my anxiety would cause my fears to be confirmed. To top it off a psychiatrist once told me he thought I might be a "latent homosexual." It was hard to argue with him since my sexual fantasies about women almost always involved activities that didn't involve me using my penis. More often than not they would involve the woman having a penis or giant clitoris and using it on me. Weird!

For most of my life, I kept my fantasies and CDing private and didn't really ask myself why I did it. At some point I decided I just had to know since it was wrecking my relationships. Maybe there was a way to "fix" it. I've read anything I could find on the subject and at different times I've wondered if I was "gay and in denial," bisexual, transgender, transsexual, genderqueer, gender fluid, autogynephilic, transvestic fetishist, blah, blah, blah. Autogynephilia comes close but doesn't really have a good explanation of "why?". I finally settled on the fact that I'm just a masochist. I used to think that masochists were people that enjoyed pain. I certainly didn't enjoy pain so I thought I couldn't be a masochist. What I understand now is that masochism is a defense mechanism where one substitutes pleasure, mainly sexual pleasure, for something that is painful. I found emasculating experiences to be very painful so I sexualized them and made them a source of pleasure. What is arousing to me is the anxiety of association to symbols of emasculation. There is no way to "fix" it, I'm afraid. People rarely, if ever, change their sexual orientation once it becomes imprinted. I've just learned to live with it. Thinking that I was trans or an effeminate gay person was just like throwing gasoline on my fetish fire. Sometimes a fetish is just a fetish.

[Ressie]

Thanks for sharing that Lilsissystevie. ^Interesting story that makes sense. A few people are lucky to have had a loving childhood without trauma or abuse. I had love from my parents with some abuse from siblings.

[krissysSecret]

This is a great thread topic. So many interesting replies. Growing up, my best friend was my sister who was just a year older than me. We did everything together and I played with her and all her friends more than my guy friends.my sister would let me wear her clothes as we were always home together after school and mom was at work. I developed a crazy fetish for swim suits. We would both put on girls swimsuits and play in the backyard! Ah..the good old days. Later, my mother opened a woman's clothing and accessories store in a shopping center where I would help out after school. Crossdresser boy heaven!
Being a crossdresser took its toll on two marriages, the that long ago. I finally realized that I didn't need a partner anymore and have enjoyed my cross dressing life everyday as I please. No commitments other than to myself. I still enjoy my ladies swimsuit collection to this day!

[JeanTG]

I agree with Alice, nobody really knows why. I do know my mother wanted a little girl and would dress me in sissy clothes, leotards, etc.

I also know that I am inclined to OCD behaviour. Once I got hooked on crossdressing, it became my OCD focus. I've recently had some success overcoming the dressing. I put all my femme stuff in a big storage tub and shoved it into a very difficult to access part of the attic. If the urge strikes again, I hope my laziness will overcome the urge! I've also been trying to shift my OCD focus away from dressing, to less damaging (to my marriage) pursuits: my hobbies and cycling. Result, I've got killer legs, but not in a feminine sense! I also am a person of faith. I've recognized that I am and always will be a crossdresser. I've accepted that but have also accepted that it can be very damaging to relationships. I was within an inch of losing the woman of my life and of the past 41 years, 30 of them married.

I was angry for her not "accepting" but now I'm grateful she wasn't an enabler. Instead of asking the impossible, every morning I pray to God to keep my obsession at bay for only one day: *today*. I'll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.

It had become an overwhelming obsession and giving into it was the very opposite of freedom, it was becoming enslaved to it. Yes it gave me pleasure, but no joy or happiness.

It's been 4 weeks since I put away all my femme things, and it's been wonderfully freeing. I even broke down and bought some men's underwear for the first time in YEARS.

Everyone is different of course, but for the first time in a long time I feel truly free.

[Diane Taylor]

There's no sense in knocking ourselves out trying to figure out WHY? when we should just go with the flow and enjoy it while we can.

[Charlotte7]

Me, I think that there's a genetic element to it, but allied to that I think that there's a hormonal element too (from both us ourselves and also our mothers), and only when the two things happen together does cross dressing express itself. For me it has to be innate as it has always been there. My never ending desire to dress up as a girl started from an age before I could know anything about it. It just happened. And, I hope that, as many have said before, it doesn't unhappen, but after 50 years I'd be pretty surprised if it did.

[Veronica4me]

Here, here, Diane!!

[Confucius]

The way I see it, my brain is hardwired to release feel good neurotransmitter (dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and others) when I crossdress. When I try on something new, or when I push the transgender envelope, my brain releases more neurotransmitters. When I have an orgasm my brain releases prolactin which causes the "pulling away" response and lowers dopamine levels. Wait around awhile and my neurotransmitters return to normal operation.

So why does my brain release these feel good neurotransmitters when I crossdress, but "normal" guys can crossdress and feel nothing but embarrassment? I believe it has to do with neurogenesis. There are periods in our lives (early childhood and puberty) when our brains create many new neural pathways. This is followed by neural pruning where pathways that are not used are eliminated, and others are reinforced, through the learning process. This is only my opinion on why we crossdress, but I do believe there is some good science behind it.

In my case, when my mother was pregnant with me, she wanted a girl, and did everything she could imagine to have a girl. So when I was born she was disappointed. However she didn't have to wait too long. I was only six months old when she became pregnant with my sister. She often told us how my sister's birth was the happiest day of her life. My sister became my mother's pampered little princess. I grew up thinking my mother would love me more if I was born a girl. I recall crossdressing when I was only around 3 years old. However by the time I started school I was conditioned to believe that the worst thing a boy could do was to be girly. I learned to keep my interest in girly things a closely guarded secret. Yes, I would often pray that it would go away, but my brain was already hardwired.

[Jaymees22]

Why ask why, when we should ask "Why not?"

[Brandi Christine]

I too started very early, and I'm also from a broken home where my Mom kept things together. As the oldest of three I also picked up a hyper-responsibility thing, maybe my dressing was (and is) a way to let go. I would wear my Mom's and my Aunt's clothes because I liked them, and I liked the feeling of being girly, you know, I wanted to be sugar and spice rather than slugs & snails & puppy dog tails... Sex didn't play into it at all until high school, by then not only was I identifying with the girls (and was still attracted to them) but I also started fantasying about being the girl in sexual relationships, over a few years my fantasy's transitioned to the point where I was always the female...

I understand the visual aspect of it too, I love doing photoshoots, and when I bought my first house i installed multiple mirrors in my bedroom so I could see myself en femme. I also did (and still do at times) the 'virtual crossdressing' thing when I couldn't dress the part by using photoshop to make myself into the woman I so desire to be.


I just know whether I stay married or not I will never stop, for some reason with age the guilt has faded while the desire has heightened… The pleasure has heightened & gotten deeper too, when I finish and see myself, the makeup, the hair, oh my God the feeling is so great! For lack of a better term I feel high...

[Roxanne Lanyon]

Honey, I agree with Diane Taylor, below. Just go with the flow! I could spend all of my energy trying to figure out "Why", for the rest of my life, but, honestly, It just makes me happy! I love being Roxanne, I "bathe" in it! Sometimes I think I want to be Roxanne for the rest of my life! I will never, ever know why, and, so what? I am a happy girl!

"If it feels right, then maybe it is!"

Roxanne Lanyon

[Devi SM]

My experience is similar a many here but the question still not answered yet.
I spent so many years try to justify my behavior, then rationalizing it blaming someone else, family, a pastor in a church when a kid that was a sexual abuser, doing all kind of things and being very sexually promiscuous, reasoning religiously and answered didn't come.
When I accept myself is when the peace came.
Now I'm in transition, wife is supportive and we stop looking for answers because is a waste of time, just enjoy yourself and whoever accepts you, life is too short to waste on witch hunting...