The difference a few years makes

[Helen_Highwater]

I suppose this is a question aimed at some of the younger members here or those who have recently joined.

The more mature ones amongst us who are 60 plus often write about how isolated we felt in our earlier years as not having the benefit of the internet we were largely left to our own devices. Cross dressing was a subject of ridicule, homosexuality was illegal and could get you banged up in prison.

The internet gave us all a common pathway to grow our knowledge and to slowly feel less alone. So here's the question. If as a younger person society remained as liberal as it is at the moment but you had no access to the internet and wonderful resources like this site, would your CD'ing journey be as smooth, as easy as it may have been? Would knowing that there are LGBT friendly bars, clubs, holiday accommodation, laws protecting your freedoms be sufficient to carry you forward or would you like your predecessors struggle to develop as we did?

[Teresa]

Helen,
Any chance I can pretend to be 21 again ?

I do wonder if eventually the crossdressing label will go right out of fashion ( or use ) , it's not often I hear it used now anyway. The point is I feel it has to be easier for the younger generation .

As you say many of us were born not long after WW2 ended how different things were then , OK to coin the horrible phrase , " Men were men !" I only say that because most countries had sent their male population to war expecting them to fight like men for their country to keep it free . The carry over lasted at least a decade before changes began to happen . The big change possibly was the swinging sixties , when crossdressing suddenly came into public gaze through the new pop era . Looking back it was more like a revolution or you could say evolution, men were seen to be changing and many of the archaic laws with that .

When you read through the posts here it's usually the older members that talk about DADT , the younger members ( I feel we don't have enough ) appear to live in better harmony with CDing and TG issues . Maybe the echoes a little of the change in a male role and equality beween the genders . Going back to my previous point , we do now see far more women entering the armed services and serving on or near the front line and of couse we now have unisex uniforms right through the military and the police force and the medical sector .

I'd love to have a crystal ball so I could see where the whole CDing scene will go , how everyday will gender reasignment be ?

[Sidney]

I suppose lack of iterate (information) is one of the reasons my Sidney side did not come out until I was in my sixties. For like I don't know how may year I felt alone and different. When younger I did talk with several doctors about my feelings and desires but the wanted to refer me to psychologist to be "cured". Yes the youngsters today deffinatelly have an easier road to travel.

[azncd]

I fit somewhere between the two age groups, so if it's ok, I'll chime in a little...

I guess a little background, the dressing started quite young, although in the beginning it was more my mom having fun dressing me up in stockings and pigtails and stuff (although, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and liked wearing those types of things more than my boy clothes).

My personal journey started when I was around 10 or so, but everything remained a super secret for a really long time.

Around college, I finally decided to come out to my first friend, a roommate who eventually decided that he'd take it upon himself to tell everyone we mutually knew about it. I was totally devastated and betrayed, but in the end, it sort of opened the door for me to be able to tell others. It was strangely liberating.

So as I started telling some people, it turned out several already knew or heard rumors or whatever, but the ones that stayed friends with me did so even through the rumors. Some friends decided they'd cut contact with me, which was fine too.

Anyway, generally girls were a lot more accepting, with some even thinking it was a riot and egging me on to try new things. That was really unexpected and gratifying. Others were giving me constructive criticism, which was pretty fun too.

It was around then that I discovered the online community of other like minded people, where I realized just how vast the population of us was, which really helped put me at ease that I wasn't a freak.

Now that I'm a bit older, I've come out to a lot of my closest friends, and it's just become one facet of who I am. Just another hobby. Some people like golfing, or hunting or whatever, and I'm the friend who occasionally likes to CD. It for sure has made it easier to accept myself and that part of me, and not feel quite as much shame or self loathing or whatever you want to call it.

That was quite a long winded way of not saying much, but hopefully it helped someone?

[LovingThePanties]

I get the feel that I am one of the younger members on the board so I'll chime in.

Personally, I haven't had much of an inclination to come out to anyone other than girlfriends (i.e., girls that I'm dating, not friends. I've never told any of them, though) because the majority of my time is not spent en femme and I wouldn't want to deal w/ the awkwardness. That said, I don't think that it would be a breeze to come out even if I wanted to. In the macro, ppl are generally more accepting, but in the micro, ppl seem to be more weirded out by it and associate it w/ homosexuality, which is not something that a straight guy wants to be labeled as. Put more succinctly, there's a sort of NIMBYism involved where ppl are ok w/ a news story about a HS boy who goes to school dressed as a girl, but they'd be incredibly freaked out if their son wore women's clothes once in a while in the privacy of his own home. As far as laws, I'd have never needed legal protection in any era as a result of my CDing, but I think it's great that everyone is effectively treated the same under the law in today's America. The LGBT community hasn't been a resource to me because I'm not a member of it.

[Leslie Mary S]

I find that the most impotent thing is to figure out who you truly are and accept it. Then you will find out where you best fit in. We are continuously adjusting the "Who are we" as each day goes on. It is all part of the idea of living.

[Nikki A.]

It comes down to the chicken or the egg. If there was no internet, we'd still be isolated and maybe not have the voice or acceptance that we have now. I know that if I had the information that I have now 30 years ago, my life may have developed differently.

[RADER]

Helen:
How true are what you said.
I remember an old saying hanging on the wall of my Grand Father's Office.
"We get to soon old, and to late Smart"
Rader

BTW: Welcome to the Forum.

[Erin.Sometimes]

I know for a fact I wouldn't be where I'm at with crossdressing without the internet, if only for the fact that I've gotten the vast majority of my clothes and things from Amazon haha. There was also a lot of reassurance I got from reading stuff online when I was starting out, letting me know I wasn't really all that weird for doing this.
So really, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be doing this without the internet. I would've outgrown my mom and sister's things and probably would've never picked it back up after I got caught the first time.

[Shybrenda]

Nikki,

I can’t agree more if I had this 30/40 years earlier I would have in braced the inner girl in me so much more. I only have been on this site for a short time and even as an older member have learned so much.

[Beverley Sims]

If I knew what I know now, when I was twenty, I have no doubts I would be a woman as one could be now.

I was on hormone treatment, and starting to grow boobs when the doctor said if you continue you will become sterile, etc. etc and etc.

Not having positive outcomes I stopped, the aureola's shrunk and I then started to grow facial hair.

If I had only known what I know now.

Mind you medical science has improved out of sight too. :-)

[GretchenM]

Helen,

Good question. At 73 I still remember and often think about those early days when I was just experimenting with my mother's clothes and not understanding why I was doing it. It was 1953 when I told my mother I didn't want to be a boy any more and wanted to be a girl. The answer was - you are a boy and will always be a boy and you can't be a girl. Good answer for 1953; wrong, wrong, wrong for 2018. That was followed by 59 years of shame, denial, secrecy, isolation, and often deep depression with suicidal thoughts a few times. Pretty normal pattern for a denied transgender person. In some ways I am lucky to be alive.

So, in your scenario society in 1953 was as liberal as today, but no internet. And, presumably, it would have continued to today. What effect would have occurred?

For starters, my mother would likely have followed a different path. I would have been taken to a gender doctor and perhaps a pattern similar to the treatment of youngsters who show transgender characteristics might have been applied. If the signs continued I might well have transitioned and now would have been a woman for about 50 years. Maybe married and with adopted kids. Who needs the internet when the liberal society accepts the behavior as just a variation? It would have still be useful to have an internet for newbies to seek answers, but there would have likely been other, more personal resources readily available as they are today.

In my view it depends a lot on how liberal the society back then would have been and the path it followed between then and now. Lots of places for what was acceptable becoming unacceptable and being a transwoman became a liability. But in general, I think the answer to your hypothetical is that it would have been easier for many of us, internet or not. In my view, the internet has opened a door for us to communicate among ourselves in a society that, although liberal, still has some pretty firm boundaries for those of us who are this way. Thank goodness for that huge change from 1953 to today. If society would have remained as it was in 1953 - the "men were men" thinking Teresa courageously pointed out - and there was still no internet... The horrors that would have created.

For the creators of this site, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Gretchen

[Helen_Highwater]

Gretchen,

Thank you for your post. I feel you encapsulated the whole thing so well.

At the heart of my question about the lack of an internet was the knowledge that even in a more accepting and tolerant world, for even the young, having the courage to step out into the world would be the domain of the very few. The help and support, and yes sometimes criticism, we all get here is the glue that binds us.

One thought I did have looking back on those early web days, thank goodness we progressed past 28kbs modems. You would need hours just to read a few posts back them. All hail broadband.

[GretchenM]

28kb/second? Yikes. I didn't even think about that. Not only slow download but forget the pictures. It would be like slogging through a tar pit. I fully agree with the value of this site that you stated. It is a lot like a support group. The only advantage of an actual support group is the face to face contact. That is important. But here I think the vast resource of knowledge and perspective on an unlimited number of subjects provides a sizable advantage over the support group. Maybe someday we will simply communicate with each other visually rather than with keyboards or the pecking of fingers on phones and tablets. Sadly, I think that day is a long ways off - maybe a whole 10 years.

[Angela Marie]

As a 64 year old who grew up in the 60's the change has been striking. I don't fault those who we grew up with as they were a product of their own upbringing. I find people today more accepting, with a live and let live attitude. Change is always incremental. Perhaps that is for the best, as it gives people time to examine their preconceived notions and see the larger picture.

[ambigendrous]

28K modems? That was heaven! I can still remember upgrading from a 300 baud acoustical modem to a 1200 baud dialup...

[Leslie Mary S]

I remember the 45 baud links over an established dedicated line and we were billed by the number of data bits we transmitted and then there was a second line for receiving 45 baud data. again billed by data bits. and you only communicated with one site. Then we moved to the 300 baud rate, and it seem so wonderful and at the same time the teletype machines were having trouble keeping up so they added the newer faster re-perforated model 28 tape systems. I also remember the big murals mad with the printers that were stored on the paper tapes.

And the wreaths made with used IBM punch cards.

[Eemz]

I know for a fact I wouldn't be where I'm at with crossdressing without the internet, if only for the fact that I've gotten the vast majority of my clothes and things from Amazon haha. There was also a lot of reassurance I got from reading stuff online when I was starting out, letting me know I wasn't really all that weird for doing this.
So really, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be doing this without the internet. I would've outgrown my mom and sister's things and probably would've never picked it back up after I got caught the first time.

I think the reassurance was really important and is something that was missing back in the day. I think I started about the same age as you, but as far as I knew I was the only one and it was a lot harder to convince myself that I wasn't some sort of weirdo, that this was just me being myself. I think you probably would have started again, but maybe with a bigger gap and lots of pointless beating yourself up in between. Fortunately you get to skip all that And yes Amazon is just great.