Hi all - it's been a long long time since I've visited this site and posted anything on this forum. I've thought about this question quite a bit and I think that the claim "if you're attracted to men while dressed, you're attracted to men while not dressed" isn't entirely accurate since it turns on how we understand 'attracted'. Here's what I've noticed (something I've talked about on my blog). I find that I'm viscerally attracted to women - I *notice* women, especially attractive women. Men? I don't really notice them much. The good looking men I do notice, I notice more in the way I may notice a nice house, or a nice car, etc. - it's purely like noticing a fact. With women, however, it's not just a noticing, but a noticing coupled with a sensual, desirous touch, which varies in degrees depending on how attractive I find the woman.

Now, with that said, when I'm dressed, I noticed that I found myself being "attracted" to men. But notice that I put that in scare quotes. The attraction towards men while I'm dressed is totally and completely distinct in its phenomenology. I am not attracted to them in the same way that I am attracted to women. After some serious thinking, I realized that the attraction is completely derivative and based on my own desire to look and feel like a woman. To have a man looking at me, desiring me lustfully, etc. turns me on only because it heightens my sense of 'being a woman' (i.e. feeling like a woman), and it's this heightened feeling of femininity that turns me on, not necessarily the man per se. So it's as if the man is the thing that could complete my transition to 'being a woman'.

This all personal so I am in no way suggesting that this is the case for everyone else. I've experimented with men before and certain things disgusted me and turned me off completely, while other things turned me on (the man staring at me, manhandling me from behind while I'm fully dressed, etc.)

So, for me, the man (this sounds bad) becomes more like a tool to heighten my sense of feeling like a woman, and that is what turns me on, not the man himself. The typical aesthetic qualities of a man (handsome, fit, etc.) do not directly turn me on at all, but only insofar as they accentuate my feeling feminine and like a sexy woman. The typical aesthetic qualities I find physically attractive in a woman (face, hair, nice legs, slender body, proportioned breasts, etc.) directly and immediately turn me on.

I think that my observations of my own experiences suggest that I'm not quite gay, since it seems that, at least from what I gather from my gay friends, that being gay means experiencing an attraction for the same sex in the way I experience towards members of the opposite sex.