Although I'm probably as guilty as anyone here for denying simple answers as correct, there are a lot of people who will fall apart if we push them too hard, and be forced to accept the reality of why they crossdress. We're brought up brainwashed by our parents and society to believe certain things; and our entire reality is based on our beliefs. One of those, is that we are men, and that as a man, it's only appropriate for us to behave in a certain way. A second, is that for a man to be anything feminine is such a horrible thing, that a man who does so should be very, very ashamed of it, even punished for it; even certain religions promote that to the point where men should be put to death because of it. Is there really any doubt that there is a whole lot of psychological trauma to be done by forcing those men into facing reality? Most of them are at a functional level; if you force them to stop believing what they've based their whole life on, they might have to be institutionalized. Not everyone can handle having their whole life put into question, resulting in not having any solid facts to base it on. Reine, some people simply are basically followers, and not able to think abstractly for themselves. They only know what they are told, and live their whole life based on that. If you 'throw a wrench' into their beliefs and tear them apart, you risk destroying everything they have, because often, they don't even have the ability to separate what's good and bad on their own.
An obvious incapacity to do this is, when you read the forums here, the frequent references to 'the woman inside me', or men referring to themselves in third person to distance themselves from it, such as 'my neighbor saw Alexandra today' as if they were referring to someone else instead of themselves. They simply cannot accept that it is themselves who is the female person referred to, because we've been brought up to believe it's such a horrible and completely unacceptable thing.
O.K., lets start.
Stress relief. Based on the concept that either 1. the stress is being caused by NOT dressing as a woman, or 2. we need to escape reality by being able to pretend we are someone or something else, in this case, a woman who is not the person in our 'male persons' stressful predicament. Or, both. The common statement that the desire to dress up as a woman gradually becomes so strong that it feels overwhelmeing, kind of indicates reason #1, but it can also combine with #2 when both are occuring at the same time, because it takes a certain amount of brain power to resist doing something that we feel we really need to do. But it begs the question again of why we feel the need to dress as a woman and/or behave as one. And that isn't something that a lot of 'just crossdressers' want to, or are able to, face even to themselves.
Likes the look of the clothing. Perhaps that person wants to be punished for being different, by facing ridicule from much of society. You would have to figure out why that person feels guilty about something. Or, they simply want to fantasize about being an attractive, beautiful person; why it has to be a female person, you'd have to investigate further, but for many of us who grew up being ignored romantically and got turned down by lots of potential lovers because we weren't good looking enough, the desire to be attractive is always there.
Likes the feel of the material. Again, in denial; there are plenty of men's clothes made of luxurious cloth.
This one is of course written from only one person's point of view, assuming that most other men who crossdress probably feel the same as himself. I don't take pictures of myself, and avoid mirrors when dressed. Although there are some crossdressers who do enjoy those activities, there are plenty of those who do not. I wonder how much of the pictures and mirrors concept is also based on the belief that GG's spend a lot of time in front of mirrors admiring themselves, and love having pictures of themselves taken (the last of which seems untrue; most women seem to avoid cameras like the plague).Originally Posted by Wildaboutheels
You can stop most men from CDing by taking away their mirrors and/or their cameras.
I think the word 'celebrate' is the wrong one to use. Reveal is more correct, as women's clothing shows their figure, making it obvious that she is female and of notice to be available for mating, marriage not withstanding. Women's clothing attracts heterosexual, sexually active males to her. A simple mechanism in which to increase offspring and continue her line of DNA.mfakely wrote, while quoting Frederique, : Women's clothes celebrate the wearer's form, while men's clothes don't ... more than don't ... one might say the actively go in the opposite direction except in very rare edge cases.
Then Cass wrote this:
This is a common belief of a lot of men; just one of the 'grass is always greener on the other side of the fence' things. Either the man really believes it, or uses the argument to support why he feels envious of being a woman as a valid reason for his crossdressing/TG/TS condition. Of course it's not true, but when searching for a simple reason to enable them to avoid facing their underlying one, it seems lots of men use it. But it's not true; they simply don't want to face reality.An even simpler explanation is that to me, women have it better in everything--they get to express their gender without reprisal, they get to be emotional without judgement, they are pampered and cared for, they are into dialog instead of competition (typically), they get to be taken sexually, their sexuality is more holistic than focused, they are softer. The list goes on and on.