Crossdressing viewed as negotiation for acceptance

[Emily Occasionally]

Since no one else has seen me dress...I don't have to worry about onlookers. I don't have a desire to go outside dressed (yet) and I'm still just trying to experiment. I know the kinds of stuff I like wearing and when I do go out and if someone doesn't like it I can't help it.

Until recently I didn't accept this side of myself truly. I was always scared that someone would somehow read my thoughts and know that I was thinking about wearing women's clothes and wanting desperately to try them and hoping that if I was found out that I wouldn't be banished from society or hated by my family or just plain old beat up by some intolerant person. I was hoping for acceptance from everyone for this behavior and that it wouldn't rock the boat and we could all live our lives. But I wasn't accepting myself. I was relying on other people's views of me to define my desires to dress. I was afraid of being thought of as a freak or a deviant or what have you. I'm not exactly considered a "normal" person by society's standards anyway and adding crossdressing into the mix felt like "too much" you know? I would think, "Why is my brain doing this to me? Why do I have so many problems? Who could possibly want to be like me?"

If the worst thing, the most deviant, crazy, terrible thing you do in your life is wearing women's clothing, the way I see it, you're doing just fine as a human being. With all of the actually horrible and terrible things going on in the world, and if someone wants to be upset about me, a 6 foot tall lanky guy, wearing a frilly, lacy, Gothic Lolita dress with all the ribbons and bows I can get on it, then they're worried about the wrong things in life. They want to be mad at me? They should put their efforts into something more useful than getting in my face about the clothes that I bought with my own hard earned money. Personally, I'm tired of trying to bargain with myself and the universe to make me acceptable. I am already. It just took me a while to notice. Crossdressing is just one star that is part of the constellation of me. If people don't want to get to know me just based on my crossdressing then that's their loss.

So basically my negotiation in terms of crossdressing is the same as Michael Corleone at the beginning of Godfather II: You get nothing. I'm not going to stop dressing. I've tried to suppress it but it's not going to happen. Maybe one day I won't need to dress anymore but until that day this is a part of me.

I wish I was actually brave enough to say that to my family...

[Kelly DeWinter]

I find negotiating tedious,boring and counter productive especially in a relationship. Relationships go better if you anticipate your spouses needs wants and desires and they yours. If I have negotiate what I want in a relationship, you end up spending the rest of your life at the emotional car dealership. You are trying to sell something that is over priced, with options you don't want, terms you can't afford, that loses value once you drive it off the lot.