Crossdressing Reality

Let’s be honest.  Men and women are different, look different, and act different.  Men and women are NOT identical.  Many characteristics of men and women are so broad that there certainly might be overlaps but the reality is that men are naturally different from women.  Because we are different, we look and act different.  Because we are not identical, we NEED to look and act differently.  I will write about this in more detail in a future post.

So why do some men spend a lot of time and money on trying to look and act like a woman?  There are many different reasons for crossdressing that are described in detail all over the net.  I am not going to list all these reasons or go through them.  However, let’s examine what happens when a man crossdresses. 

First, let me define how I use the term “crossdress” here.  My definition is not only a man wearing women’s clothes, but using other items such as a wig, makeup, jewelry, and padding to look as much as a woman as possible.  In addition, a man attempts to use the mannerisms common to women such as changing their voice, how they talk, moving like a woman, and behaving like a woman.  I exclude:

• ·       men who put on a dress but do nothing else and it is clear they are a “man in a dress”,
• ·       men who dress like a woman one time only for Halloween or a costume party,
• ·       effeminate men,
• ·       Men who are androgynous.

Even though I discuss men dressing as women, all my comments include women who dress as men and use mannerisms and behaviors to emulate men.

Whenever a man crossdresses, when he CHOOSES to crossdress, something inside of him says that it is better for him to look and act like a woman than to look and act like a man.  For some reason, when a man crossdresses, he feels good about what he is doing; otherwise, why would he be doing it?  There may be a number of emotions occurring at the same time, guilt, shame, fear, excitement, joy, peace.  Overall, the net effect of whatever a man experiences when crossdressing must be positive, very positive, in order for him to do it.  No man is going to crossdress if the overall experience is negative.  So whenever a man crossdresses, he experiences or expects to experience some really good things.

Men normally dress and act as men without giving it much thought.  So when a man consciously chooses to crossdress, there has to be some very, very good reasons and positive benefits for a man to do so.  Not only does he change his appearance to that of a woman, he loses is appearance as a man.  If a man really likes his appearance and image as a man and feels very good about it, then why would he give that up to look like a woman?  Maybe for some unknown reason he does not feel very good about his appearance and image as a man so it isn’t that difficult for him to give it up for the benefits of appearing like a woman.

In other words, crossdressers like and enjoy their appearance and image as a woman much more than they like and enjoy their appearance and image as a man.  If this were not true, there would be no reason and no desire to crossdress.  In addition, something had to have happened to cause a man to devalue his image as a man AND to highly value his image as a woman.  The question now is “What happened?”

I used to think that I had a fairly normal childhood, free from a lot of drama, trauma, and angst.  Of course I had issues growing up.  What child doesn’t?  But after carefully going back through my childhood, I found more than a dozen different things or events from birth through my teen years that put major obstacles in the path of correctly forming my self-image as a man.  Each one of these viewed separately probably didn’t amount to very much.  However, when looked at collectively, they were very significant and, in retrospect, very painful…

These events were so significant that when I first experimented with crossdressing, it provided me with an alternative to dealing with my issues.  Today, the common term for alternative is “coping mechanism”.  I used my crossdressing as means of dealing with the pain of my screwed up self-image.  So if I “fix up” all those childhood issues, then my need and desire to crossdress should go away, right?  Theoretically, yes it should.  However, some of my childhood issues continue today and will never be “fixed”.  Today I crossdress to cope with the pain of my appearance and image as man that I do not like.  I like and prefer my appearance as a woman much more than I do as a man.

Now I am not saying that all crossdressers have had issues or have issues now…  And I am not saying it is wrong to use crossdressing as a coping mechanism.  However, I think that all crossdressers owe it to themselves and their loved ones to honestly think about WHY they crossdress, fix the parts that need fixing, and understand and accept the parts that cannot be fixed…