I might be oversimplifying it, but I believe that autogynephilia is the root cause, unless a CDer is attracted to both men and women in guy mode, in which case he would simply be bi. A change in clothing would make no difference.Originally Posted by Shananigans
By autogynephilia, I mean the love of oneself as a woman, and it is not only auto-eroticism while dressed. The love and sexualization of oneself as a woman does extend to a strong desire to gain the utmost accessory, a man, in order to heighten idealized feelings of femininity. In other words, it's a fetish for the CDers who are not attracted to men in guy mode. Would a self-defined hetero autogynephile (not a bisexual) be attracted to men in guy mode even if he wanted to?
To take this one step further, it could well be that an autogynephile CDer is not AGP at all, but is rather a late onset TS in denial who is merely expressing her natural sexuality as a hetero female. But only this TS can tell us whether the attraction to her GG wife was real all these years, or if the TS had lived behind a male mask so stringent that she only thought she had been attracted to GGs. Can the denial about sexual attraction and being TS be this deep? This is what I have difficulty understanding. I don't disbelieve it, I just can't imagine being so disconnected from the self for so many years. However, I've not been raised as a male in a homophobic society.
If a TS had been male-attracted from the beginning even in guy mode, then I can hardly see that when he believed he was a male CDer, he would have fantasized about being with a GG while dressed. Therefore, this TS would not be autogynephilic, since her sexual attraction does not change based on her presentation.
As a tangent, the CDers who come to believe they are bisexual: do they say this because they are attracted to men and women no matter how they're dressed, or do they prefer to say they are bi in order to explain an attraction to men only while dressed? I should ask the question in a thread some day. Also, do they say they are bi based on desires or fantasy, or has the desire been tested and approved in the bedroom with an actual man?
Shannon, to answer your question about different personalities (not sexual attractions) while dressed, I believe that some CDers form a thick wall around their feminine selves when they are young in order to hide who they are from a cruel world. And in the process they repress aspects of their fundamental personalities that they would not fear expressing if they were not CDers, especially past the teen-age, early manhood stages. There are men who like to do many things that CDers put in the "girly" camp. :p
