Questions from the wives of my SO's social group

[sometimes_miss]

Young attractive women (arm candy?) are viewed as desirable.

I've never known a man to pick a woman to be arm candy. Men pick women that we would like to have sex with. If other people happen to think she's pretty as well, fine. But to have 'arm candy' isn't ever the primary reason we choose her, and just as often, we prefer to keep her to ourselves rather than expose her to the eyes of our competition, i.e., male friends and co-workers. The media stereotypical male locker room bragging about the hot chick we scored with isn't how a lot of men behave. I can't speak for anyone else, but I've never heard boys OR men talking about who and where they had sex in locker rooms or anywhere else, for that matter. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but to think it's the norm isn't correct.

Kelly, I am talking in a broad sense. For instance "victim blaming" in rape cases. You always hear things like "She was dressed provocatively", like that somehow excuses the rapist. Along those same lines, unwanted pregnancy. Why are women told to keep their legs shut if they don't want children, but us men are never told to keep it in our pants?

FWIW, my dad DID tell me to keep it in my pants, or at least make sure I use protection.
But there's a distinct slant on responsibility here: If a woman get's pregnant, it's assumed to be the man's responsibility. If a man gets VD, it's not at all the woman's responsibility. Women can unilaterally stop themselves from getting pregnant; if she doesn't want to get pregnant, there's absolutely nothing a man can to, to force the issue. The last study coming out of planned parenthood was that 95% of women who came in with supposed unwanted pregnancies were either not using any birth control at all, or not using it correctly. What does that tell us about these women? That they all wanted the MAN to be the one responsible for them.

I don't think there is a one size fits all answer. What do we know? Well they all have SOs and they wear women's clothes. I would be willing to bet that when you get down to it, each one is different.

I don't think that each person has a different reason; I think that there are groups of us who have something in common with what causes us to feel this way, but that it's going to be very hard to figure out what it is, all because of how we grew up, believing that to be feminine in any way was the most horrific, terrible thing that we could be. So when we became that, we can't accept it, and bury the causative factors so deep in our minds that they may never be discovered. What I do think, is that there is no one, single cause of why we do this.

Also I bet that few if any can answer the why question, other than because it feels good.

Then the question remains, why does if feel good? And unfortunately, most don't really want to know, judged by all the 'I was born this way' responses that always show up.

And yes, I can answer the 'why' question about myself. But it wasn't easy to figure out, and it took me decades, with a whole lot of confusion along the way. And for me, it involved numerous additive influences along the way besides the major one, so I can't imagine my exact experience being a common cause. That said, all the things that had to come together in just the right combination to make me into the person that I am, it's pretty clear that other paths to the same end result could occur as well.

The answers have gone deep into the inner workings of the male/female mind.

And so, professional psychologists or not, we all have to start learning about those deep, inner workings! Because that's the only way we're going to figure it out. But as always, be careful what you wish for (knowledge about why your mate crossdresses) because you might not like what you find out: About not just your mate, but about yourselves, as well. Most people have little or no idea about why they fall in love with a particular person, or even why they're attracted to them in the first place. Most just prefer to chalk it up to 'chemistry', or fate. But recent studies have shown that's not true at all. I refer you to a book by Timothy Perper, PhD, which explains many of the psychological things that go on in our heads during the mating rituals: https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Signals-B...iology+of+love

what I can tell, the SO's are trying to understand is the difference between "day to day" goings on between men and women.

It's pretty clear what the differences are; all one has to do, is start writing down each activity and experience that each sex has during a normal day. It's not really that hard do to, as I have done it many times. Start with waking up, shutting off the alarm, walking to the bathroom, etc..

One way of easing the gender identity dysphoria, is to realize that most of what we do each day is simply not gender or sex specific. Does a woman take OJ out of the fridge differently than a man? Make toast? Spread butter or jam? Chew our food & swallow? Put stamps on an envelope? Fill out forms? lock the doors? Drive to work? Park? The vast majority of what we do, is the same. Crossdressers may emphasize the differences and focus on them in order to get the temporary 'I'm a female' feeling we need to quell the GID, but on the whole, we live very similarly.

I'm guessing that the women in the group are trying to figure out what differences might make a male prefer the day to day life of a female instead of his own. And perhaps that fits into the 'the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence' type of theory, where the wife just assumes that her CD mate is looking for what might be assumed is an easier life.
But here's the wrench in that theory; It's not about the other sex's lifestyle or activities or privileges that makes it 'feel better'; it's more about feeling normal as our own self. Time and time again, I read on this very forum, about how women's clothes feel so much better than mens. And yet, from women's description of those very same clothes, we know that isn't true. Now why would there be such a divide on this concept?
Because its not PHYSICAL comfort of the attire that the crossdresser is experiencing when he wears women's clothing; it's the psychological comfort we get by feeling and knowing that we're in the correct, the female, clothes. The physical difference in tactile and visual sensations we get, are what contribute to that psychological comfort, even though they may not actually provide physical comfort at all (as seen in those of us who say we love wearing those painful heels).

So without the obvious differences in experiences regarding how males and females were raised, they wonder what difference the clothes make.

The clothes help identify us to ourselves, as either what we want to be, or already feel ourselves to be, whether that is correct or not. Think about it; don't we all choose our attire to reflect what we want express? The only difference here is, for the crossdresser, he's expressing it to himself first and foremost, the ritual of putting on all the female things and even doing it in 'the appropriate female way' being just as important. Conscious or subconscious, the self identification of 'female' is going on in a whole lot of us. The big problem is, there's a huge psychological obstacle in the way of recognizing it. So they pretend that it's just the clothes, or the feel of the fabric, etc..

The fact that men "don't worry about being assaulted" is the reason why the rates of random assaults leading to murder is almost double for men than it is for women.

It's also very telling about the ways that men resolve conflicts vs how women do. Men are way more likely to resort to violence because it's an accepted part of the male hierarchy in our society. In every group of men, each knows where he stands in the ability to fight, how much money he makes, how smart he is compared to the others, and how successful he is.

men should take exactly the same precautions that women do when going anywhere or doing anything.

Won't happen. We know that we'd be derided for being chicken or worse, sissies, for being afraid of danger. Guys are NEVER supposed to admit or even hint that we might be afraid; both other men AND women will see it as weakness.