Percentages?

[sonna]

i found out by talking to people that we are everywere. i stoped beliving in studies a long time ago.
truthfully out of every (studie) out there for anything have any of you girls been asked any questions about anything.

[Karren H]

Hey, nothing wrong with made up statistics and data. Ronald Reagan used to make up statistics in the middle of his press conferences and lots of people still think he was a great President.

Yeah! Plus I made that up too! Actually I was quoting a Dilbert comics strip! Lol.

[ReineD]

i found out by talking to people that we are everywere. i stoped beliving in studies a long time ago.
truthfully out of every (studie) out there for anything have any of you girls been asked any questions about anything.

Not wanting to pick on you specifically, but others have shared your sentiments here. I don't understand people who dismiss scientific studies when they have increased the human knowledge base to where it is today, in technology, medicine, materials engineering, to name a few. We can say that some studies have proved themselves not entirely accurate once other scientists use the preliminary results to further expand the study, and some have been inaccurate, but this is the nature of building scientific knowldege. We used to think the world was flat and there was no such thing as evolution! To go ahead and dis all research as being unworthy is, in my opinion, particularly single-minded.

[Jennifer8]

what about all the woman that wear mens Tshirts or jersies designed for men. All crossdressers! .

IDK my friend does it all the time shes still a girl thou

[sonna]

well reinieD you got me there, you put me in my place and i am not afarid to sit there.
sometimes when your right your right. cant argue with that.

[Acastina]

I conducted a random survey of males in my household. 100% are crossdressers. If these results are accurate there are 23 male to female crossdressers on my block alone.

Good one, Vanessa. I have noted the same statistical concentration in my household, unless the cat counts (he's fixed; is that some kind of feline TG condition?)...

I am one of those who lived through that period - there was very little fuss in the UK about it tbh. I agree that re the societies regress again but I think its often a case of 2 steps forward and 1 back - so we still gain 1 forward. Little by little clothes are becoming gender-less but a question springs to my mind

if clothes were non gender specific would CD's still feel the same about wanting to dress? is it the clothes per se or the fact that they are female clothes?

I agree about two steps forward and one back. I always wonder why those who cling to the past don't have an epiphany that, if past generations hadn't been pushed out of their comfort zones by progress, we'd still be squatting in caves and howling at the moon.

Your last question is truly intriguing. It ought to be the start of a new thread. Quite frankly, at first blush, I have no idea.

[Jennifer B]

"There are lies, damned lies and statistics."

It's a subject that people will hide and lie about, often for good reason. So...

I posit that the best place to gather reasonable data, is to look at eBay's figures for the number of purchases, over a 5 year period, of female clothing by Male and Female users. With sub sets of data for lingerie and dresses. Obviously there will be many men buying for their partners, but taking this into consideration there should be clear indicators on users accounts to the contrary, for quite a lot of people. I know that my eBay account reads like a tarts boudoir.

I suspect that it would show considerably higher than other official figures. That in itself shouldn't be a surprise, because this is the easiest way for many Crossdressers to purchase female attire without a heart pounding visit to Victoria's Secret or the like. But even so, I imagine that it would still be an eye opener.

Can't see eBay releasing those figures any day soon though. Shame.

[ReineD]

well reinieD you got me there, you put me in my place and i am not afarid to sit there.
sometimes when your right your right. cant argue with that.

Don't mind me, it's just a pet peeve and it wasn't just you ... it was several other people too

[Foxglove]

Not wanting to pick on you specifically, but others have shared your sentiments here. I don't understand people who dismiss scientific studies when they have increased the human knowledge base to where it is today, in technology, medicine, materials engineering, to name a few. We can say that some studies have proved themselves not entirely accurate once other scientists use the preliminary results to further expand the study, and some have been inaccurate, but this is the nature of building scientific knowldege. We used to think the world was flat and there was no such thing as evolution! To go ahead and dis all research as being unworthy is, in my opinion, particularly single-minded.

Hello, Reine! I'd largely agree with your view here, but I think in the context of this thread, people have a good point. I think we need to make a distinction. To a certain extent you are making this distinction in your post here, but I'd like to pick up on it.

In the "hard" sciences, such as physics, chemistry and biology, scientists are often able to devise and perform experiments that yield reliable results. They've have a lot of time to refine their methods--but even so, their results are questioned often enough when further experiments cast doubt on the methodology of earlier ones. But in what we might call the "behavioral sciences", things are seldom straightforward.

For one thing, you often run into the question of definitions. In the case of CDing, what do we actually mean? I think some CDers prefer a broad definition of the activity. There are certain advantages to us CDers in persuading the general public that CDing is much more common than is generally believed. I myself on the other hand would prefer a more restrictive definition. I'm interested in knowing how many people there are out there more or less like me. (And what do I mean by "like me"? I'd have as much trouble as anybody with coming up with a good definition.)

And then when it comes to methods, you'll have considerable disagreement over what's scientific and what isn't. Recently, I was reading about a study that showed that a certain group of people were suffering from low self-esteem. This study later was fiercely criticized because in coming up with their results, those who did the study simply asked people how high or low their self-esteem was.

According to the critics of the study, this is useless. Self-esteem is a notoriously difficult trait to measure. You can't just ask people how they feel. You have to observe their behavior, come up with a number of different indicators before you can decide the question.

Recently, out of curiosity, I found the Cogiati test on line and took it. But I always have huge problems with questionnaires like that--the main one being that I think that they assume perfect self-knowledge on the part of the respondent, which is never the case.

E.g., one questions was, If you hear a bell ringing in the distance, will you be able to pinpoint its location? Now think about it: how many times in your life have you heard a bell ringing and correctly or incorrectly identified its location? It's not as if people carry around a little notebook everywhere they go to keep track of incidents like that.

So when you answer such questions, you're not basing your answer on any scientific data that you've gathered. To a great extent, your answers are based on the image you have of yourself, and one's self-image can be wildly wrong.

And finally, even when you have data that are more or less reliable, people can argue about what the data mean. E.g., a while back I was amused on reading a newspaper article with the headline, "Another Myth Exploded". A couple of girls from the local secondary school had done a survey, which, according to the newspaper, showed that girls aren't any more into shopping than boys.

Actually, if you read the article, what the survey showed was that girls didn't spend any more money on shopping than boys. But it also showed that girls tended to spend the bulk of their money on clothing and accessories, whereas boys spent the bulk of theirs on booze and cigarettes. Now for me the two activities aren't the same at all. Buying clothing is very different from buying booze and cigarettes. So in my view, rather than "exploding a myth", this survey actually confirmed a popular belief.

(And this may be one of those rare stereotypes that actually happens to be true. If it is, what's the big deal? Women love shopping? So what? How many men are going to watch the Super Bowl tonight?)

So for various reasons I think people are right to question the value of "studies" in the behavioral sciences. Up to now I myself have lightly dismissed all estimates of the numbers of CDers out there that I have seen, because these estimates vary so widely that it's an indication to me that no one has as yet devised a method to estimate the numbers with any kind of accuracy at all. I don't regard this as being "single-minded". I regard it as an attempt to decide which studies are scientific and reliable and which ones aren't. If we decide one study is unreliable, it makes sense to wait until we get a better one. You see lots of studies in newspapers, magazines, on the net, etc., and quite frankly I find a lot of them to be worthless. As you've suggested, we need to keep "building scientific knowledge."

Best wishes, Annabelle

[Ava Tryptyk]

I think the question needs to be clarified - one can either ask, "Have you crossdressed", or "Are you a crossdresser?" The first question asks if you have ever worn any article of women's clothing in your lifetime, and I think most have, if either as a prank, a dare, for a specific event/holiday, etc. I in fact think that very few males have not crossdressed at some point. But the second question concerns those who do it habitually, especially if they do it at home for their own pleasure and interest, and not necessarily for others to see. I think the statistics for the first question would be amazingly high, while the second question would have a much lower positive answer rate.

[Gillian Gigs]

Statistics say that everyone who ate pickles who was born between 1850 and 1860 is now dead. Hence pickles will kill you, that is enough information to help anyone one realize that statistics can and will be twisted to suit any situation, or need. Just read any womens magizine to see how they twist surveys to what ever there need is. So, stay away from those pickles.LOL