I am trans. I dress up as female because this is what my mind needs. The first time, as an adult, i zipped up a dress fireworks went off in my mind. I am female. My body is male. I feel I have been forced to cross dress as a male most of my life. Now that Ive realized I am female, I have been embracing my being female and Ive never felt so me since I was 3. I have a joy for clothes now. I want to talk to other people about my clothes and shoe finds. Before I just covered my body in tshirts and jeans. I didnt like my body and cared little about it. Ive also been experiencing fundamental shifts in my mind the more I express who I was born as. I feel more as me. I feel more as me in female clothes. And I want to be more me.
There are some women into clothes and some not. I am a trans woman and would rather wear shorts and a tight shirt that anything else. Just look at different women in the workplace. Some dress to the nines each day while others seem to care less. One thing consistent though, all women want to look good. I would say, just like there is a gender spectrum, there also is a clothes spectrum. We all have a style we are comfortable with.
I have several friends that are crossdressers and have been for many decades. They identify as male and if you ask them why they would tell they enjoy expressing thrmselves in that way. Some I know even make a game out of seeing who can pass the best. That being said they do have rules and they stick to they. In my case i mixed dressed most of my life, and binged and purged till the day my egg cracked Most of the ppl i know feel more at ease, in this age of openness and exceptance. Very interesting topic, im going to a BBQ for the support group i belong in the Toronto Canada, Xpressions, (I know its a shameful plug Dr Jamie 😔😉) and ill bring up this question and see what ppl think. Your hair looks great Jamie
As a transsexual woman I find the video and comments interesting. I have heard crossdressers consider themselves trans, guess that is some. Since from a baby thought I was a girl feel my crossdressing was in male clothes. I have a friend who like me decided to transition before wearing female clothes. She did it all at the same time, I was stealth on hormones for years before presenting female. I know another that is trans wears female undergarments all the time but fears going further with destroy family relations it doesn't have a sexual connection. I would love to talk to a cross dresser to try understanding how they think.
There are those of us who are older and started to explore our gender at a time there was little support and acceptance. I think many of us started our exploration cross dressing. In my case, I think if things were like today when I was younger and I was encouraged to explore my gender, it would have been very different for me. I would have known at a pretty young age that I am trans. With that said, there are older people who say their experience is similar to yours. It is just that it more often has taken them longer to come to terms with being trans because of what it was like when they were young.
@@nicola3452 I think the comments here are very thoughtful. I’m wondering if you might find a crossdressers support group on Facebook. They have plenty of trans specific groups I belong to.
💯 right. I couldn't Crack my egg untilI was ready. I suppressed her in me until I could no longer and I could drop my shields and think about these things. Thank you again❤❤❤
I have been on HRT for 5 months now. One unexpected outcome of HRT is that I am not feeling the urge to crossdress. I still wear female clothes, but they are typical street clothes that a woman would wear. Cargo pants, t shirt, etc. Before HRT, I was crossdressing every chance I could. I love retro clothing, petticoats, etc. I was over feminizing my look. Now I am thinking about feeling comfortable and not self-conscious. I never expected that to happen.
Very similar to my experience. I'm now 2 years on HRT and any desire to wear my previous "fetish" clothing is gone. Replaced by a normal everyday female wardrobe. Suicidal depression was what finally cracked my egg and forced me to deal with my dysphoria. Living the dream!
It sounds as though these changes are maybe bringing you a deeper kind of fulfillment and I am happy to hear this is the case - I hope your journey is full of unexpected joy 🏳⚧🦋
@@RoweSandberg While I am sad to hear of how dark things were, I am heartened to hear of how glowingly you speak of your current life - I hope your life is filled with trans joy because it sounds as though you've had your share of cis suffering 👩❤💋👩
@@ivorydungeon909 You're not wrong. It took me 57 years of denial to get where I am. But I quickly learned that Gender Euphoria is a real thing and so far, everyone i know has been neutral or supportive. ❤️
Dr., Thanks for the video, I found it by accident. Straight, married guy here and I crossdress, not all the time but occasionally and I find it very comforting and relaxing. No desire to transition, I just enjoy wearing gals clothes, not sure why and at my age I don't really care. I tell wifey, I don't want to be a woman, but I do enjoy dressing as one, occasionally. Thanks again.....
I have a good friend who is a cross dresser. They say it relaxes them and make them feel good. My understanding is addiction is needing more and more of something and not being able to stop some negative behavior. It never seems enough. I think most cross dressers would say they are not addicted, but it often is something they find very hard to give up. Many will however have shame and hide their behavior. They shouldn't. I think it important to distinguish between a cross dresser and a trans person. As Jamie says, a cross dresser is comfortable with their gender assigned at birth. A trans person wants to live opposite their gender assigned at birth and have a body different from the one they were born with. Trans people often start learning about themselves through cross dressing. They even may be sexually aroused by it at the beginning. But, once their gender exploration goes deeper, they realize it is not about the clothes. That is what happened with me. Yes, I was afraid to start my gender exploration that included cross dressing because I knew I would likely not be able to stop. I thought, who needs that complication in life. I had no idea that twenty-five years later I would be transitioning. Oh yes, eggs crack when they are ready to crack. Live an learn! Dr. Jamie says being trans has to do with identity. IMO that is generally true. But, I would add it sometimes takes time for someone to get in touch with that identity. I know I am trans because I have dysphoria, want to live as woman, want to be treated as a woman, and have the body of a woman. My identity is more complicated. It is something I have struggle with most of my life. Even two years after transitioning, I still am working on accepting whom I really am. It has gotten much better. Hey Jamie, nice top! 🙂
@@marti7343 Sometimes, the hardest thing in life is accepting those things that make us different. They are also the things that end up bringing us the most joy. 💕
My answer to the second question would have been a simple "yes" with all the direct reassurance that (hopefully) provides. You, of course, went better, going beyond simplicity to explore some of the nuances involved in the question, and it's good that you did as I'm sure it was a more useful and productive answer. Thank you for that. OTOH, I wanted to push back gently on the first question, where I would say that crossdressing is not an addiction but that it _can be_ an addiction in the sense that any behavior can become one if you find yourself pursuing it even as it is unsatisfying and becomes disruptive to the rest of your life.
I have never heard a cross dresser say they find their behavior unsatisfying. They may feel shame and conflict because of it. They may even say it disrupts their life. But, IMO they would all say they get something out of it.
As a child, I do recall visiting my Mums closet and my Dads closet. Nothing in either would fit me at that age, but I do remember trying on a pair of Mums pumps and thinking to myself uh huh, yes, definitely! , even though they were obviously way too big. There was no way I was getting a pair of my own for Christmas so I had to try to forget them. When it came to Dads shoes I tried those on as well, and I can remember that giving me one of my earliest experiences with gender dysphoria, and I couldn't get them off fast enough. I had already begun to experience female embodiment fantasies, but that was really all about feelings toward my body, and how I wanted to become, not so much shoes or clothes. In my early/mid teens I had my first real crossdressing experiences, but this was at a time (mid 1970's) when being a thin young male with long hair wearing short shorts and a tie dye T, wasn't all that unusual. Except for being on the receiving end the male gaze older men give younger women, which somehow made me feel good and nervous at the same time, no one paid much attention to this. So I was out there publicly at least in summer between the ages of 12 and 16 (1973-1976). I was quite feminine looking then because I had always been careful to keep body hair shaved off, and paid a lot of attention to my hair keeping it in a more feminine way. At the same time I was beginning to develop early understandings about my sexual attraction to both genders. My appearance was feminine enough to change the relationship between myself and my best friend since kindergarten. It became a girl/boy thing, since he saw enough femininity in me to draw out his straight/masculine behaviours and the dynamics that followed led to our first experiences with sex.This felt very right to me and that phase lasted until we went our separate ways for post secondary education, whereupon I cut my hair, put on a pair of pants and buried myself in studies to try to forget my dysphoria, sense of incongruity and the loss of that first love. I had also had experiences with girls in early days. The girls I got involved with then did tend to be the more aggressive between us though and would initiate things every time, but once it was going... Things are still that way, I'm a sub and I need to see some leading behaviour to capture my interest. To feel pursued in other words. Needless to say there have been a lot of long dry spells in my romantic life. I feel that the development of my sexuality and my sense of gender were very much entwined during all those developing years. The cross dressing wasn't about arousal from the cross dressing itself; it was entirely about the kinds of potentials created for interactions like those above, which I find exciting, and I think gender expression in cis people probably evolves similarly. We all tend to find ways to accentuate the differences between ourselves and the specific gender (s) /types of people we seek to attract, and this I think is a norm for human behaviour, and it's innate. The radical feminists who reject all of this gender thing as some sort of entirely societally developed construct in denial of such powerful internal, personal driving force, such as libido just get a thumbs down from me, a failing grade, as does their accusations that trans people are somehow reinforcing socially constructed behaviour. This has been my experience with cross dressing in a nutshell. I started cross dressing again, light version, about a year prior to beginning hrt. After about year two of hrt, I felt confident enough to wear a dress for the first time and to confirm that I am woman at the same time. Since then it's no longer cross dressing. I have come to love women's fashion in a deeper way now, both for my self expression and to see the way other women cis or trans express themselves, embracing the colour, and the vastly greater variety of styles to choose from, for different occasions.
@@JaneChristensen. Thanks for sharing your crossdressing experience. I really enjoyed reading it. The descriptions were really great. I can visualize you in those shorts and tie die shirt getting the older men turned on! 😅💕
@@DrJamieTalks I still catch that gaze these days with the 2.0 version of my body and a summer dress, even at my age. This new packaging seems to appeal to a few women as well, just not the one I loved most and lived with for nearly the last three decades. Damn life is complicated. Anyhow I'm off to the back woods for a while, and then to Europe for some countryside cycling. I'll check in here and there when a connection is possible.
I'm exploring transitioning. I am not aroused when I cross dress, it's much deeper than that. I go out often while dressed, I have even gone to the beach this summer in a bathing suit which was a little nerve racking at first but I became quite comfortable, quickly. When I am dressed I become feminine, affectionate and completely free to be emotional in my thoughts and feelings. I now have many close friends in the LGBTQ community and I dance, flirt, and i feel very much like my true self.
it's interesting how women can wear jeans/pants/trousers and no one even thinks anything about it when they do.. but over a hundred years ago that was considered completely outrageous behaviour if women did that.. but then a guy puts on a dress and he gets treated REAL bad by a lot of people.. it's really tragic really the pain that causes a lot of people who just want to be themselves but too many in the world won't let them i wrote a song called "Blaze" that might be touching for some people to hear, I'm not meaning to spam you it's just it might be very touching for some to hear so i hope it's ok that i mention it.. i wrote it after a LOT of tough times so i hope people can relate i hope life will be really good for you all Best wishes to you from Rolland in Scotland
Trigger Warning: Veiled discussion of CSA. I remember a little over a year ago, at egg cracking 2.0, I read Savannah Hauk's two books on cross-dressing. While I enjoyed these books, and wouldn't hesitate to recommend them to folx interested in cross-dressing and diversity in gender expression, they also gave me the good sense that I was not really a crossie. As much as I do enjoy wearing female attire, it's really because of the way it helps establish a social context whereby people might recognise my femininity. One of the friends I've made through a local trans support group wonders if she is a crossie or if she's trans. While I suggested to hear that crossies fit quite comfortably under the trans umbrella, I sense that her question is about anxiety about an uncertain future. All she really knows is that she no longer has to feel ashamed of dressing femme, or seeking out the sexual attention of men interested in her. I think this has been liberating and empowering but then she is left with a degree of insecurity about to where all this power will be channeled. Although her work environment might allow her to present as femme, she fears how social transition might affect her career. I also get the impression that she feels a specific sense of pleasure for her incongruity - I guess this pride is the inverse of the shame that has corralled her behaviour for about 30 years. I suspect unkind and ignorant people might look at her current propensity for going out and meeting guys to be reflective of some sort addiction/compulsion. Apart from the excellent point already articulated, that this framing is unhelpful and inappropriately pathologising, I think these kinds of activities, seemingly fueled by pent up energy, also need to be understood for how they arise in tension with heteronormativity and cisnormativity. I think it's only through looking beyond the confines of heteronormativity and cisnormativity that my friend is going to come to a clear understanding of how she wishes to identify, what she wishes to do and with whom; and what kind of gender expression best suits her. But all of this takes time and energy and people need to keep their lives running with the limited energy they have. While it's easy to stand there and say this person is "hyper" in this respect, and "hypo" in that respect, those kinds of observations only tell me about your understanding of the central tendency, and don't really communicate much understanding of the person we're seeking to understand. Without wanting to draw too long a bow, I find that discourses of addiction are themselves the result of a kind of addiction to comparing people against the central tendency. But could there be any greater waste of intellect?? Obviously, when I say, "you" here, I don't mean you, dear reader, and certainly not you, Jamie. While the queer umbrella gave me some refuge, it didn't really quite serve me because I was able to use denial to convince myself that I was the sort of person that Julia Serano describes as "intellectually genderqueer" In a sense that's true. For many years, I used he/they pronouns in the classroom pretty much purely to give my students a signal that it's okay to be trans or otherwise sex and gender diverse. I also hated being "he" however, and have joked for some years that I got a PhD so that I could avoid a gendered title in favour of the perennially seductive title: doctor! But Jamie, as we were discussing, seeing concepts as grappling hooks is better than seeing them as umbrellas. Of course shelter is important and we all deserve to feel safe. But staying in the shelter can also make us a bit "undercover" and I think that fuels impostor syndrome and other symptoms related to problems of identity congruence. "Queer" did give me shelter for a long time, and I suppose I needed to be sheltered for a long time. But when I embraced the trans grappling hook then not only did it disrupt the feelings of inauthenticity that came from living undercover but I'm also much more willing and able to reach for the next hook and work my way up the mountain. This message is long enough already but I suppose I'll leave y'all with a cliffhanger. My "hookwork" looks like this: TransNeurodiversePolyPanSurvivor-> ? For me, it's been this dialectical process of recognising my self, and the breadth/depth of my potential feelings while then looking at the tensions that constrain me. I am trans and my transness helps me recognise my neurodiversity while my neuodiversity had been complicit in facilitating denial in the name of cis-normativity. Once I could recognise my neurodiversity then I could appreciate that society valorises monogamy but that consensual non-monogamy is much more likely to enable the kind of relationships in which I like to take part. Recognising that I do not believe that monogamy sits in perfect correlation with "true love" helped me to recognise that I am pan. However, I could not really appreciate that I was pan until I could also sit with my identity as a survivor. That's a bit of a bitter pill for many reasons but getting that one done has actually helped me to get a better sense of my feelings about men. When I get stressed, I have interesting symptoms. For instance, I will think much about eating fruit and I will crave it but then I look at the fruit and just never be comfortable with wanting to eat the fruit. I'll worry that the fruit is actually bad in some way and the irony is that I will watch fruit turn bad over the weeks of my observation - well done, Doctor: another correct prediction - the fruit did indeed turn bad, eventually. So, I know when I'm in this headspace then I'm not really my best self. I know all fruit turns bad eventually and more to the point I know that fruit is healthy and that the days I have to sit wondering about whether to eat fruit are limited. So, things had been like this for a couple of weeks. Yesterday I was very hungry and there wasn't really much food around except for the fruit I'd been rejecting. So, I engaged in an autoerotic and introspective activity that allowed me to look at the different hooks and to notice the obvious. Maybe it was the nice queer men from ACON that I'd seen on campus earlier in the week but I was able to recognise that my aversion to fruit is a kind of masked androphobia. I think I need to accept that, while I had some unhappy experiences in younger years, that part of the reason why I was involved in those events is because that is what I wanted. While I can be intellectually aware that me being complicit does not excuse other people's action in seeking to shame or to mistreat me, I am starting to reconcile this with my body. It's okay that life is full of happenings and that some of those might be happenings that we wish did not happen. What I've come to recognise is that I am not really okay as long as I am pushing my androphilia into my shadow. It might be true that I love femininity and that I find myself more attracted to women, and to have more of an affinity for women. These things are true. But it's also true that it would also please me to satisfy a man, and to be satisfied by a man, provided he treated me with the requisite love and respect. I know this probably sounds like a small thing to you, dear reader, but I suppose what I'm saying is that my friend and I aren't so different, in that we have to do the work to reconcile our feelings; desires; expression; and identity. Sorry in advance for all the typos that likely riddle a message of this length. 😅 Gay power! ⚧🏳⚧🏴 PS Yes, after I got off and could own my needs, then I found that eating an orange was as simple as it sounds 😆 🟠😸
I saw a video yesterday called "Protecting Trans Bodies in Death". One of the examples given was a father whose transgender daughter died and he made the funeral director cut her hair and dressed her as a boy in the casket. It is really outrageous and saddening. Trans people have a hard enough time in life but things like this are the ultimate insult. This has nothing to do with the topic of the video but thought I would throw it out there for comments but I found it quite shocking. 🌷🏳⚧🥰
@@DrJamieTalks I know the thought is horrible. It was to me also. I know you like to be more positive on your channel, but it was an interesting trans related issue. When I die they can throw my ashes in the garbage, I don't mind. That's what I feel like I've been my whole life. But the visible indignity of families calling the shots on open casket preparations was very disturbing to me.
Susan... almost ALL females, AFAB's (Assigned Female At Birth) are 'Crossdressers'. They wear everything and anything their heart desires, feminine AND masculine, with very little ridicule from others. Females that wear traditional mens clothing eg; pants/trousers, tshirts, ties, ball caps, sneakers etc... are Crossdressers. In the grander scheme of things though... it doesn't really matter who wears what... as long as we are content doing so. ❤
I am trans. I dress up as female because this is what my mind needs. The first time, as an adult, i zipped up a dress fireworks went off in my mind. I am female. My body is male. I feel I have been forced to cross dress as a male most of my life. Now that Ive realized I am female, I have been embracing my being female and Ive never felt so me since I was 3. I have a joy for clothes now. I want to talk to other people about my clothes and shoe finds. Before I just covered my body in tshirts and jeans. I didnt like my body and cared little about it. Ive also been experiencing fundamental shifts in my mind the more I express who I was born as. I feel more as me. I feel more as me in female clothes. And I want to be more me.
There are some women into clothes and some not. I am a trans woman and would rather wear shorts and a tight shirt that anything else. Just look at different women in the workplace. Some dress to the nines each day while others seem to care less. One thing consistent though, all women want to look good. I would say, just like there is a gender spectrum, there also is a clothes spectrum. We all have a style we are comfortable with.
@@josephbelisle5792 Lovely comment! Thanks for sharing your experience! The euphoria you describe is also something I’ve experienced. 💕🏳️⚧️😊
I have several friends that are crossdressers and have been for many decades. They identify as male and if you ask them why they would tell they enjoy expressing thrmselves in that way. Some I know even make a game out of seeing who can pass the best. That being said they do have rules and they stick to they.
In my case i mixed dressed most of my life, and binged and purged till the day my egg cracked
Most of the ppl i know feel more at ease, in this age of openness and exceptance.
Very interesting topic, im going to a BBQ for the support group i belong in the Toronto Canada, Xpressions, (I know its a shameful plug Dr Jamie 😔😉) and ill bring up this question and see what ppl think.
Your hair looks great Jamie
@@Chloedawnknauer Glad you enjoyed the topic! 💕
"Don't pathologize your diversity." -- Dr. Jamie
Love this!
@@IntrovertAncom 🤍🩵💙💚💛🧡❤️💜🩷 Be the rainbow 🌈
As a transsexual woman I find the video and comments interesting. I have heard crossdressers consider themselves trans, guess that is some. Since from a baby thought I was a girl feel my crossdressing was in male clothes. I have a friend who like me decided to transition before wearing female clothes. She did it all at the same time, I was stealth on hormones for years before presenting female. I know another that is trans wears female undergarments all the time but fears going further with destroy family relations it doesn't have a sexual connection. I would love to talk to a cross dresser to try understanding how they think.
There are those of us who are older and started to explore our gender at a time there was little support and acceptance. I think many of us started our exploration cross dressing. In my case, I think if things were like today when I was younger and I was encouraged to explore my gender, it would have been very different for me. I would have known at a pretty young age that I am trans. With that said, there are older people who say their experience is similar to yours. It is just that it more often has taken them longer to come to terms with being trans because of what it was like when they were young.
be careful who you trust online people.. just because they say they are something does not make it true
@@nicola3452 I think the comments here are very thoughtful. I’m wondering if you might find a crossdressers support group on Facebook. They have plenty of trans specific groups I belong to.
@@nicola3452 I think there is a lot of variation of experience out there. As long as you’re true to yourself, you’re on the right path.
@@DrJamieTalks Yep, so true. I would only add that sometimes it takes work to peel back your life to find out who that self is.
💯 right. I couldn't Crack my egg untilI was ready. I suppressed her in me until I could no longer and I could drop my shields and think about these things.
Thank you again❤❤❤
@@chrishankey3396 Once it cracks 🥚 there is no going back 🏳️⚧️😃
I have been on HRT for 5 months now. One unexpected outcome of HRT is that I am not feeling the urge to crossdress. I still wear female clothes, but they are typical street clothes that a woman would wear. Cargo pants, t shirt, etc.
Before HRT, I was crossdressing every chance I could. I love retro clothing, petticoats, etc. I was over feminizing my look. Now I am thinking about feeling comfortable and not self-conscious. I never expected that to happen.
Very similar to my experience. I'm now 2 years on HRT and any desire to wear my previous "fetish" clothing is gone. Replaced by a normal everyday female wardrobe. Suicidal depression was what finally cracked my egg and forced me to deal with my dysphoria. Living the dream!
It sounds as though these changes are maybe bringing you a deeper kind of fulfillment and I am happy to hear this is the case - I hope your journey is full of unexpected joy 🏳⚧🦋
@@RoweSandberg While I am sad to hear of how dark things were, I am heartened to hear of how glowingly you speak of your current life - I hope your life is filled with trans joy because it sounds as though you've had your share of cis suffering 👩❤💋👩
@@ivorydungeon909 You're not wrong. It took me 57 years of denial to get where I am. But I quickly learned that Gender Euphoria is a real thing and so far, everyone i know has been neutral or supportive. ❤️
That is profound
Very interesting. Thanks for posting. 🌻🫶🏾🦋
@@davefisher1840 Thank You! 😊 🩵🩷🤍🩷🩵
Dr., Thanks for the video, I found it by accident. Straight, married guy here and I crossdress, not all the time but occasionally and I find it very comforting and relaxing. No desire to transition, I just enjoy wearing gals clothes, not sure why and at my age I don't really care. I tell wifey, I don't want to be a woman, but I do enjoy dressing as one, occasionally. Thanks again.....
@@telescope497 Glad you feel content and supported! 💕😊
I have a good friend who is a cross dresser. They say it relaxes them and make them feel good.
My understanding is addiction is needing more and more of something and not being able to stop some negative behavior. It never seems enough. I think most cross dressers would say they are not addicted, but it often is something they find very hard to give up. Many will however have shame and hide their behavior. They shouldn't.
I think it important to distinguish between a cross dresser and a trans person. As Jamie says, a cross dresser is comfortable with their gender assigned at birth. A trans person wants to live opposite their gender assigned at birth and have a body different from the one they were born with.
Trans people often start learning about themselves through cross dressing. They even may be sexually aroused by it at the beginning. But, once their gender exploration goes deeper, they realize it is not about the clothes. That is what happened with me. Yes, I was afraid to start my gender exploration that included cross dressing because I knew I would likely not be able to stop. I thought, who needs that complication in life. I had no idea that twenty-five years later I would be transitioning. Oh yes, eggs crack when they are ready to crack. Live an learn!
Dr. Jamie says being trans has to do with identity. IMO that is generally true. But, I would add it sometimes takes time for someone to get in touch with that identity. I know I am trans because I have dysphoria, want to live as woman, want to be treated as a woman, and have the body of a woman. My identity is more complicated. It is something I have struggle with most of my life. Even two years after transitioning, I still am working on accepting whom I really am. It has gotten much better.
Hey Jamie, nice top! 🙂
@@marti7343 Sometimes, the hardest thing in life is accepting those things that make us different. They are also the things that end up bringing us the most joy. 💕
My answer to the second question would have been a simple "yes" with all the direct reassurance that (hopefully) provides.
You, of course, went better, going beyond simplicity to explore some of the nuances involved in the question, and it's good that you did as I'm sure it was a more useful and productive answer. Thank you for that.
OTOH, I wanted to push back gently on the first question, where I would say that crossdressing is not an addiction but that it _can be_ an addiction in the sense that any behavior can become one if you find yourself pursuing it even as it is unsatisfying and becomes disruptive to the rest of your life.
I have never heard a cross dresser say they find their behavior unsatisfying. They may feel shame and conflict because of it. They may even say it disrupts their life. But, IMO they would all say they get something out of it.
As a child, I do recall visiting my Mums closet and my Dads closet. Nothing in either would fit me at that age, but I do remember trying on a pair of Mums pumps and thinking to myself uh huh, yes, definitely! , even though they were obviously way too big. There was no way I was getting a pair of my own for Christmas so I had to try to forget them.
When it came to Dads shoes I tried those on as well, and I can remember that giving me one of my earliest experiences with gender dysphoria, and I couldn't get them off fast enough.
I had already begun to experience female embodiment fantasies, but that was really all about feelings toward my body, and how I wanted to become, not so much shoes or clothes.
In my early/mid teens I had my first real crossdressing experiences, but this was at a time (mid 1970's) when being a thin young male with long hair wearing short shorts and a tie dye T, wasn't all that unusual. Except for being on the receiving end the male gaze older men give younger women, which somehow made me feel good and nervous at the same time, no one paid much attention to this.
So I was out there publicly at least in summer between the ages of 12 and 16 (1973-1976). I was quite feminine looking then because I had always been careful to keep body hair shaved off, and paid a lot of attention to my hair keeping it in a more feminine way.
At the same time I was beginning to develop early understandings about my sexual attraction to both genders. My appearance was feminine enough to change the relationship between myself and my best friend since kindergarten. It became a girl/boy thing, since he saw enough femininity in me to draw out his straight/masculine behaviours and the dynamics that followed led to our first experiences with sex.This felt very right to me and that phase lasted until we went our separate ways for post secondary education, whereupon I cut my hair, put on a pair of pants and buried myself in studies to try to forget my dysphoria, sense of incongruity and the loss of that first love.
I had also had experiences with girls in early days. The girls I got involved with then did tend to be the more aggressive between us though and would initiate things every time, but once it was going... Things are still that way, I'm a sub and I need to see some leading behaviour to capture my interest. To feel pursued in other words. Needless to say there have been a lot of long dry spells in my romantic life.
I feel that the development of my sexuality and my sense of gender were very much entwined during all those developing years.
The cross dressing wasn't about arousal from the cross dressing itself; it was entirely about the kinds of potentials created for interactions like those above, which I find exciting, and I think gender expression in cis people probably evolves similarly. We all tend to find ways to accentuate the differences between ourselves and the specific gender (s) /types of people we seek to attract, and this I think is a norm for human behaviour, and it's innate.
The radical feminists who reject all of this gender thing as some sort of entirely societally developed construct in denial of such powerful internal, personal driving force, such as libido just get a thumbs down from me, a failing grade, as does their accusations that trans people are somehow reinforcing socially constructed behaviour.
This has been my experience with cross dressing in a nutshell. I started cross dressing again, light version, about a year prior to beginning hrt. After about year two of hrt, I felt confident enough to wear a dress for the first time and to confirm that I am woman at the same time. Since then it's no longer cross dressing.
I have come to love women's fashion in a deeper way now, both for my self expression and to see the way other women cis or trans express themselves, embracing the colour, and the vastly greater variety of styles to choose from, for different occasions.
@@JaneChristensen. Thanks for sharing your crossdressing experience. I really enjoyed reading it. The descriptions were really great. I can visualize you in those shorts and tie die shirt getting the older men turned on! 😅💕
@@DrJamieTalks I still catch that gaze these days with the 2.0 version of my body and a summer dress, even at my age. This new packaging seems to appeal to a few women as well, just not the one I loved most and lived with for nearly the last three decades. Damn life is complicated.
Anyhow I'm off to the back woods for a while, and then to Europe for some countryside cycling. I'll check in here and there when a connection is possible.
I'm exploring transitioning. I am not aroused when I cross dress, it's much deeper than that. I go out often while dressed, I have even gone to the beach this summer in a bathing suit which was a little nerve racking at first but I became quite comfortable, quickly. When I am dressed I become feminine, affectionate and completely free to be emotional in my thoughts and feelings. I now have many close friends in the LGBTQ community and I dance, flirt, and i feel very much like my true self.
@@Josie-fi5up Yay! I’m happy you are exploring, meeting friends, and finding yourself. 💕🏳️⚧️😊
it's interesting how women can wear jeans/pants/trousers and no one even thinks anything about it when they do.. but over a hundred years ago that was considered completely outrageous behaviour if women did that.. but then a guy puts on a dress and he gets treated REAL bad by a lot of people.. it's really tragic really the pain that causes a lot of people who just want to be themselves but too many in the world won't let them
i wrote a song called "Blaze" that might be touching for some people to hear, I'm not meaning to spam you it's just it might be very touching for some to hear so i hope it's ok that i mention it.. i wrote it after a LOT of tough times so i hope people can relate
i hope life will be really good for you all
Best wishes to you
from Rolland in Scotland
@@CastleHassall Thank you for your support of the community. All of us just want to be our most authentic selves. 😊
Trigger Warning: Veiled discussion of CSA.
I remember a little over a year ago, at egg cracking 2.0, I read Savannah Hauk's two books on cross-dressing. While I enjoyed these books, and wouldn't hesitate to recommend them to folx interested in cross-dressing and diversity in gender expression, they also gave me the good sense that I was not really a crossie. As much as I do enjoy wearing female attire, it's really because of the way it helps establish a social context whereby people might recognise my femininity.
One of the friends I've made through a local trans support group wonders if she is a crossie or if she's trans. While I suggested to hear that crossies fit quite comfortably under the trans umbrella, I sense that her question is about anxiety about an uncertain future. All she really knows is that she no longer has to feel ashamed of dressing femme, or seeking out the sexual attention of men interested in her. I think this has been liberating and empowering but then she is left with a degree of insecurity about to where all this power will be channeled. Although her work environment might allow her to present as femme, she fears how social transition might affect her career. I also get the impression that she feels a specific sense of pleasure for her incongruity - I guess this pride is the inverse of the shame that has corralled her behaviour for about 30 years. I suspect unkind and ignorant people might look at her current propensity for going out and meeting guys to be reflective of some sort addiction/compulsion. Apart from the excellent point already articulated, that this framing is unhelpful and inappropriately pathologising, I think these kinds of activities, seemingly fueled by pent up energy, also need to be understood for how they arise in tension with heteronormativity and cisnormativity. I think it's only through looking beyond the confines of heteronormativity and cisnormativity that my friend is going to come to a clear understanding of how she wishes to identify, what she wishes to do and with whom; and what kind of gender expression best suits her. But all of this takes time and energy and people need to keep their lives running with the limited energy they have. While it's easy to stand there and say this person is "hyper" in this respect, and "hypo" in that respect, those kinds of observations only tell me about your understanding of the central tendency, and don't really communicate much understanding of the person we're seeking to understand. Without wanting to draw too long a bow, I find that discourses of addiction are themselves the result of a kind of addiction to comparing people against the central tendency. But could there be any greater waste of intellect?? Obviously, when I say, "you" here, I don't mean you, dear reader, and certainly not you, Jamie.
While the queer umbrella gave me some refuge, it didn't really quite serve me because I was able to use denial to convince myself that I was the sort of person that Julia Serano describes as "intellectually genderqueer" In a sense that's true. For many years, I used he/they pronouns in the classroom pretty much purely to give my students a signal that it's okay to be trans or otherwise sex and gender diverse. I also hated being "he" however, and have joked for some years that I got a PhD so that I could avoid a gendered title in favour of the perennially seductive title: doctor!
But Jamie, as we were discussing, seeing concepts as grappling hooks is better than seeing them as umbrellas. Of course shelter is important and we all deserve to feel safe. But staying in the shelter can also make us a bit "undercover" and I think that fuels impostor syndrome and other symptoms related to problems of identity congruence. "Queer" did give me shelter for a long time, and I suppose I needed to be sheltered for a long time. But when I embraced the trans grappling hook then not only did it disrupt the feelings of inauthenticity that came from living undercover but I'm also much more willing and able to reach for the next hook and work my way up the mountain.
This message is long enough already but I suppose I'll leave y'all with a cliffhanger. My "hookwork" looks like this: TransNeurodiversePolyPanSurvivor-> ?
For me, it's been this dialectical process of recognising my self, and the breadth/depth of my potential feelings while then looking at the tensions that constrain me. I am trans and my transness helps me recognise my neurodiversity while my neuodiversity had been complicit in facilitating denial in the name of cis-normativity. Once I could recognise my neurodiversity then I could appreciate that society valorises monogamy but that consensual non-monogamy is much more likely to enable the kind of relationships in which I like to take part. Recognising that I do not believe that monogamy sits in perfect correlation with "true love" helped me to recognise that I am pan. However, I could not really appreciate that I was pan until I could also sit with my identity as a survivor. That's a bit of a bitter pill for many reasons but getting that one done has actually helped me to get a better sense of my feelings about men.
When I get stressed, I have interesting symptoms. For instance, I will think much about eating fruit and I will crave it but then I look at the fruit and just never be comfortable with wanting to eat the fruit. I'll worry that the fruit is actually bad in some way and the irony is that I will watch fruit turn bad over the weeks of my observation - well done, Doctor: another correct prediction - the fruit did indeed turn bad, eventually. So, I know when I'm in this headspace then I'm not really my best self. I know all fruit turns bad eventually and more to the point I know that fruit is healthy and that the days I have to sit wondering about whether to eat fruit are limited. So, things had been like this for a couple of weeks. Yesterday I was very hungry and there wasn't really much food around except for the fruit I'd been rejecting.
So, I engaged in an autoerotic and introspective activity that allowed me to look at the different hooks and to notice the obvious. Maybe it was the nice queer men from ACON that I'd seen on campus earlier in the week but I was able to recognise that my aversion to fruit is a kind of masked androphobia. I think I need to accept that, while I had some unhappy experiences in younger years, that part of the reason why I was involved in those events is because that is what I wanted. While I can be intellectually aware that me being complicit does not excuse other people's action in seeking to shame or to mistreat me, I am starting to reconcile this with my body. It's okay that life is full of happenings and that some of those might be happenings that we wish did not happen. What I've come to recognise is that I am not really okay as long as I am pushing my androphilia into my shadow. It might be true that I love femininity and that I find myself more attracted to women, and to have more of an affinity for women. These things are true. But it's also true that it would also please me to satisfy a man, and to be satisfied by a man, provided he treated me with the requisite love and respect. I know this probably sounds like a small thing to you, dear reader, but I suppose what I'm saying is that my friend and I aren't so different, in that we have to do the work to reconcile our feelings; desires; expression; and identity.
Sorry in advance for all the typos that likely riddle a message of this length. 😅
Gay power! ⚧🏳⚧🏴
PS Yes, after I got off and could own my needs, then I found that eating an orange was as simple as it sounds 😆 🟠😸
@@ivorydungeon909 Sounds like you are well on your way to understanding yourself! 🏳️⚧️🙂💕
Great explanations for all aspects of dressing 💯👍
@@johnnj3858 You’re welcome. ☺️
the eggs cracking metaphor is gross and a bit disturbing.. what about the flower flowering?
@@CastleHassall Some cute things come out of eggs like dragons 🐉 💚🤗
@@DrJamieTalks and omelets.
I saw a video yesterday called "Protecting Trans Bodies in Death". One of the examples given was a father whose transgender daughter died and he made the funeral director cut her hair and dressed her as a boy in the casket. It is really outrageous and saddening. Trans people have a hard enough time in life but things like this are the ultimate insult. This has nothing to do with the topic of the video but thought I would throw it out there for comments but I found it quite shocking. 🌷🏳⚧🥰
I would consider that to fall into the category of "indignity to the body of a deceased person".
Terrible! It makes me wonder how we help kids when their parents are ridiculously intolerant.
@@JaneChristensen.Absolutely...
@@time4clocks That’s horrible!
@@DrJamieTalks I know the thought is horrible. It was to me also. I know you like to be more positive on your channel, but it was an interesting trans related issue. When I die they can throw my ashes in the garbage, I don't mind. That's what I feel like I've been my whole life. But the visible indignity of families calling the shots on open casket preparations was very disturbing to me.
❤
@@davidmicheletti6292 ❤️❤️
What are female cross dressers called and do they get teased
Susan... almost ALL females, AFAB's (Assigned Female At Birth) are 'Crossdressers'. They wear everything and anything their heart desires, feminine AND masculine, with very little ridicule from others.
Females that wear traditional mens clothing eg; pants/trousers, tshirts, ties, ball caps, sneakers etc... are Crossdressers.
In the grander scheme of things though... it doesn't really matter who wears what... as long as we are content doing so. ❤
@@Genevieve111 Agree 100% Be yourself. Wear what you want.
@@DrJamieTalksAbsolutely...
Myself I dress up to relieve myself if you know what I mean
Sweet vídeo love
@@JorgeOrtízDamuadt Thanks! 😊
@@DrJamieTalks You love My live orgullo is love real sexy 🌹 You Dr jamie love sweet ❤ video
@@DrJamieTalks You love My ❤🏳️⚧️🧚🏳️🌈🧚🧚❤👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
Why does estrogen interact with methadone
?
@@SusanWillan There are no interactions I am aware of.