I love this kind of stuff.

The trials and tribs of my transition have convinced me that a more liberal attitude about gender variance would have saved me from years of confusion. Would I have still transitioned if I could have openly said at 7 years old that I prefer to hang out with the girls? I don't know, but a cross-dressing man would NOT have such deep emotional feelings about pieces of fabric if the very idea of being pretty or fabulous wasn't completely closed off to them during their formative years.

The whole concept of masculine and feminine roles in marriage is a total red herring here though. A cross-dressing man has no concept of femininity outside of their own understanding and that means clothes and shopping and 'women's work'. The idea that they are somehow trapped in a masculine hell because they have to kill bugs or work on the car is childish and delusional. There are MILLIONS of men who don't do such things and they would punch you in the face if you called them a sissy because of it. There are millions more who are just not very traditionally masculine yet are completely straight and have no problem being men. The nebbishy Woody Allen type comes to mind.

A man who is trapped in a life of rigid expectations of masculinity is living in a trap that he created himself. I don't blame him because as a closet queen for many many years I totally understand the comfort of "being a man" when you look like one. The larger point here is one that I keep trying to get across to the closet cases and it nearly always falls on deaf eyes; You don't need to 'come out' as a CD to be an authentic person, you just need to come out as an authentic person.

Cross-dressing can be a private activity, but you can still be a man who doesn't like to work on cars, or who doesn't like sports, or who likes to shop with his wife. In my case I never felt masculine but near the end of my closeted existence I was a man who enjoyed racing dirt-bikes but didn't like working on them. I would get the occasional snide comment when my cousin would take over the track-side maintenance for me, or load my bike for me, but by then I wasn't afraid anymore so I just cracked wise myself. I was no longer pretending to be interested in football, or a gazillion different things, and I was amazed at how okay it was. I was gay (or so I thought) but most people didn't know that and more importantly they didn't assume it as far as I knew.

I was just a guy who liked SOME guy stuff and didn't like some OTHER guy stuff. Any macho dude who wanted to call me out on my lack of manliness didn't get the response he was expecting. I don't back down from anyone and it's not because I'm some bad-ass, it's simply because I'm not afraid. Most of the manly men who CD here have rugged masculine personas that they are afraid of losing by just being who they are but I'm here to tell you that nobody will assume all of the things you're afraid they're going to assume. I was openly gay, yet many people STILL didn't think I was gay. If you are a regular dude who isn't afraid of getting in someone's face if they disrespect your wife, then why do you think that has to change if you admit to everyone that killing spiders creeps you out? Or if you like shopping for shoes with your girlfriend? Nobody has to know that you like to cross-dress, but don't you want them to know who you really are outside of that? If you're a guy who likes MMA and Rupaul, who would give a shit?

I say come out, but not as a CD. Come out as a real man, a real complex man with varied interests. Eventually you will develop a circle of friends who really know you and after a few years you might forget why you were EVER closeted.