Quote Originally Posted by ReluctantDebutant View Post
I kind of have a different take on this issue. For me I see it not as an attraction to the Cross-dresser but to Cross-dressing. In an algebra problem to solve for X you have to eliminate all other variables. If you take the man out of the dress he is no longer attractive. What was attractive was the act of dressing. To a CDer seeing cross-dressing done well can stir highly charged emotions such as envy or aspiration. From my own experience I believe cross-dressing is rooted in ones sex-drive whether or not the individual CDer does anything fetishistic or feels fetishistic about their cross-dressing. The act or just the thought of a man appearing as a woman in itself alone is the source of attraction.
RD, you break it down pertty well. If you're no longer attracted to the man when he's not en femme, then it wasn't the man you were attracted to, but something else. You suggest it's the act of CDing. While the act of CDing has always been interesting to me, I am more interested in...and attracted to...the finished product of the act of CDing. I'm attracted to beauty, whether GG or CDer. It's a visual thing and removed from the person, personality, sex, or gender beneath. Those things that I find glamorous, pretty, sexy, exciting, and arousing in GG's I see the same way in CDers. Yes, I'm pretty superficial about CDing.