Imitations of Reality

Resolution

I have been searching to find a suitable way to say good-bye to this blog and if not good-bye, at least an extended absence as I feel I can add nothing further on the crossdressing topic as I have resolved the issue for all intents and purposes.

I suppose I could just drop it and forget about it, but owning to the fact that I’ve had over 13,000 hits in such a short time, it would appear I have struck a chord that resonates within the hearts and minds of hundreds other men like myself. I therefore feel a certain obligation to not leave in silence without saying a word of gratitude to the many I have communicated with over the last 20 months. Knowing I was not the only one who experienced this “strangeness of mind” has been very helpful and as I have been told by so many who have taken the time to write or comment, I am happy that I have assisted them as well in coming to some conclusions as to the why’s and wherefores of their malaise.

But I would be remiss if I did not thank the most important person in my life, my wife; my lover and confidant, whose emotions at times were accosted by a man who, though madly in love with her and her with me, caused her to question all that she as a woman believed to be true in marrying the man she loved. How easy it would have been for her to throw her hands in the air and consider separating her life from mine. But knee-jerk reactions were never her style and thankfully my open discussions on this web page did not usurp her intelligence, our marriage, or her ability to foster rational dialogue that would help us lift the veil of angst held from her through 42 years of marriage. She was also wise enough to see that my behavioural issues were much more a problem for me than for her, stemming as they are from a lost childhood rather than an open attempt to be someone I was not. I own much to her trust, her wisdom, her motherly and womanly love, as well as her rational input in making IMITATIONS OF REALITY my confessional box.

It is my hope this journey of self discovery, ( fractured as it may be seen by the reader,) has provided food for thought and has been some assistance for those who struggle in attempting to understand the strange phenomenon known as crossdressing. As with all things in life, there are no hard and fast answers to one’s emotional needs as this blog would attest, and there are no clear rights and wrongs except to say, though it is a joy to imagine being someone else, it is a curse if one takes it seriously and allows it to take over the essence of one’s created self and permits it to interfere with the relationships one must foster in living as we do in a collective society.

With that in mind I will leave you with a few lessons I learned along the way which I offer as observations I have gathered from my musings and experience as well as in reading the blogs of others.

Balance

Find the balance between the “me” and the “them.”  Me being the person I know better than anyone else in the world, whose very being has been molded by countless genetic factors given to me at birth and the effects of those factors in my experience of the world around me and “them” of course – being anyone outside myself.  Though there are always acceptations to the rules of life, humans are social animals nonetheless and need inter-personal relationships to live healthy lives. That being said, we also live with ourselves every living moment, thus the need to find an equilibrium between “me ” and society’s sometimes destructive demands to deny one the freedom to explore ones sense of self and enjoying a sense of fantasy without breaking the rules of “Natural Law.”

Reality

One cannot possess that which is not theirs to begin with. Glandular reaction to the beauty of the female form does not indicate a mistake was made in ones creation as a male. So a word of caution: the dangers of losing one’s “light of being” by way of taking on the shadowy reflection of something you will never truly understand nor can ever be, will rob you of the temporary happiness found in playful dressing if taken beyond the reality of conceptual identity.

It will, in a very short time, supplant your knowledge of your chromosomal identity for an un-adult and juvenile imitation of your reality, which will in turn, lead to a life of unhappy depressiveness and a destructive separation of the world around you. You cannot re-create your birth. If you wish to remain in your relationship, remain in a semblance of authenticity, for you are in the body created when you were born. All else can either be a joyful recreation by way of one’s imagination, or a steppingstone to a world of untruth and self-created madness.

Believe In Yourself

Crossdressing is a personal experience that I feel is misunderstood in many cases by our wives, our lovers and society as a whole. So much of our mental health and our personality are lost in attempting to meet the demands of religion, government policy and social constructivism in making regrettable attempts to conform to THEIR reality and not our own. That being said, we all try to achieve a life of ethical behaviour, or if a believer, religious conformity. But one must find the balance of living with oneself, as well as with those we love. Be honest, be truthful at all times with your spouse.

Respect the feelings of your female partner

Women are an intriguing enigma to crossdressing males; (or any male for that matter.) Their form and very essences draw us in, in such a way, we find ourselves longing to relinquish our fundamental nature to be that which affects every desire and very emotion we possess. Their beauty and purpose in life is jealously coveted by many men without any understanding of what it is to be female, other than the object of excitement they sometimes provide to our senses. Thus to resolve this issue, respect for each other’s emotions must clearly be a priority, lest selfish and inward behaviour overrides the maintenance of the union.  If one is in a partnership or marriage be gracious and above all be kind. Compatibility and raising a family are the primary reasons for remaining together. It is vital that mutual respect for each other as individuals as well as partners in a marriage be upheld.

Most women that I know live their lives unpretentious and without any desire to extend their known existence into the realm of impractical imagings of being anything other than who they are. The suspension of rationality, the psychological behaviour that crossdressers exhibit, is completely lost on most women, so I think it goes without saying it is imperative to respect one’s partners reactions and thoughts with regard to our activities; something which they as women may not, or cannot hold as rational thinking in their minds.

Generally speaking, crossdressing takes place in private and with few exceptions, is a secretive and fanciful world we live in. I do not see any problem with that at all. The danger lies in the temptations, driven by sexual excitement, psychological imagining’s or the loss of reality that would see one so swallowed up by self-indulgent activities they would rather discard the reality of who they are for an image they long to mask themselves in. It is in many ways a masturbation of the mind, a point of view that many males display towards women in seeing them as objects of pleasure and therefore take upon the “sin” of self-indulgence to possess the object that gives them pleasure.

Finally
Be kind, be thoughtful, be honest with yourself and your spouse and above all Stay Real.

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Introduction
Before I begin, it is imperative that my readers understand the person I am about to describe. He is not a crossdresser as one may define the word  – dressing  for sexual pleasure or to identify as a woman, or living in a selfish world of fantasy to the detriment of those around him. Nor does he feel he is a transsexual.
The man I will discuss here, does cross the gender divide with dress in a minimal fashion, yet I feel he differs from many crossdressers in as much as his “sin” is a lifelong disposition that seeks to align his deep and mysterious sense of the muliebral within his soul, with the reality of living an ethical life as the male he was created to be.  

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Like the picture at the left there are males, who acknowledge their sense of maleness unequivocally and live an honourable life. They are married, love their wives and children, have a job, raise a family, go to church, visit the sick, are patriotic; donate to charities and give freely of their time to their communities. So it is that exteriorly, to wives, friends and associates, they are honest, responsible and looked upon as fine examples of citizenship in living the ethical life they thoroughly believe in.

Yet for a few men like me, something is wrong with this picture. For though in all outward appearances of being a representation of normality and trustworthiness and for as much respect as they may have gained throughout their lives in living a moral life; there is a private uneasiness when the psychic interior confronts the one they understand and live with each and every day.

In as much as they will admit the persona they present to their wives and loved ones, as well as the general public, affirms the person they feel unmistakably represents who they are, they will also acknowledge, (to themselves of course) that contained within this understanding exists a male with a vague and unusual awareness that he is more than the sum of his psychological make-up and like many that are touched by this sensitivity, have been aware of it for a lifetime.

It is a source of wonder and fascination as well as a basis for guilt, a feeling of betrayal as well as confusion given we must all live within the boundaries of the social and cultural order to feel and be seen as a normal and trusted member. Yet it is a deeply rooted cognisance that though they understand thoroughly and unequivocally they are NOT female by any definition of the word, or have any need or want to be anything other than the male they are, there is nonetheless a persistent and mysterious subconscious “knowingness” of a distaff side that challenges all they have been taught, live or have learned that is contrary to what society defines and expects of them as a male first and foremost, as well as fathers, sons and husbands.

It is at one time a fear and a pleasure and for those who are emotionally drained by its presence can bear witness, a disturbing quality that one did not seek to bring upon oneself but nonetheless is an aspect of one’s personality that is as much a part of their intuitive identity as are their arms and legs to their physical appearance. Some may argue it is simply a figment of imagination, an over zealousness to escape one’s surroundings or reality, or even a heightened sexuality but again, having felt its present all of my life, I dismiss these as not being applicable to my situation or in fostering any understanding towards the unanswerable question as to why or where it came from.

Similar to my crossdressing, I sincerely believe this muliebral awareness is felt more strongly in some males (i.e. philogynist’s) than it is in others and has nothing whatsoever to do with how one may have been brought up by one’s parents. On the contrary, it is I believe an undeniable feature of birth that belongs to one’s personality and nature, a sense of being different that has been there from the beginning and as this blog will attest, if not addressed and confronted in some manner before marriage or more importantly as one gets older, it will become a source of enormous emotional anxiety in not being able to touch it, define it, or express it to anyone’s satisfaction nor even to oneself.     IT IS!

Thus, with this lifelong sense of otherness of “What Is” – in moments of contemplation, with no intention to deceive and no thoughtful purpose to hurt the ones he loves, he is drawn to holistically align the whole person by turning to the only tangible characteristic of his muliebral consciousness he can touch: CLOTHING.

Now I would ask you to think about his act of mental adjustment for one moment and if you can; without any religious or social bias you may have gained about what clothing is in a feminine/masculine context (very difficult I know.) In light of his full intentions to remain male, live as a male, remain as a husband and father, does he become less trust worthy as a member of society by engaging in this act of emotional grace? Does his expression of the mysterious he cannot explain but knows it is part of his soul, change his moral character or his contribution to society? Does it in anyway make him a “danger” to those around him? These questions demonstrate the difficulties in finding answers to the very complex problem of separating one’s emotions from that of the clothing one wears; what it does, our application of it, or how a crossdresser uses them – without a learned religious, social and stereotypical point of view by others that will invariably cast judgment on his character.

As innocuous as clothing is for those who merely use it to cover their bodies, it will become a highly charged (almost insanely so) psychopathic collapse of rationality that takes place when the second skin of the wearer, no matter how innocent or guiltless his action may be, confronts the observer in is wife or is partner. His real “sin” is not the clothing per se nor his desire to express the deep emotional aspects of it in the personality he feels needs be aligns to reality of self. The real problem is found in his unarticulated and failed expression of honesty to his partner of what the cross-gendered raiment means to him and without this endeavour taking place, the almost immediate knee-jerk reaction of his spouse, despite the known love they have for each other, will take place in her feeling of betrayed, hurt and abandonment.

Relationships

I am willing to admit there is a valid argument to be made that anyone transgressing the clothing divide has introduced a problematic situation into a marriage but remember; we are still talking clothes here; not a threat to world peace, a desire to change one’s sex, nor even an overt wish to be anyone other than the person they were when they entered the marriage contract. The real threat here is not the rationale behind the crossdressers act, but the inability to talk as adults, as husband and wife, lover to lover, about adult emotions, as well as  the failure of not allowing each other the ability to express their individuality within a marriage without one’s spouse feeling terrorize by perceived anti-social or deviant behaviour. Again I remind you…… we are talking clothes here, not a desire to wreck a marriage by becoming someone we are not or selfish in our behaviour; but being open about ones emotions and making valid attempts to be truthful and sincere about oneself which is I would think, what a marriage should be all about. I will grant you, this unusual display should have been made clear from the beginning, but as anyone who undertakes any display of self expression can attest, social compliance often trumps reality when it comes to dealing with one’s experience of life.

Whatever the case may be, I do find it odd that many lovers and partners can introduce sex toys, be intimate and honest about their sexual desires in their marriage, but when it comes to dealing with an honest and open expression of one’s personal sense of self, it becomes a perilous endeavour that may see the eventual break-up of one’s relationship due to the absence of mature understanding and articulation.

The greatest and most divisive problem with crossdressing for the man I have described from the start of this post is the aggrieved partners knee-jerk reaction in suspecting homosexuality or transsexualism and when dwells upon it, why would she think otherwise given the binary code attached to dress by a lifetime of social conditioning? Surely one must see that as a consequence of stereotyping and a frightfully disappointing failure to recognize each other’s individual experience of self, relationships are doomed to that of fantasy and unrealistic expectations if they disregard the individual aspects of ones personality.

I posted the follow quote once before, however it seems appropriate to re-post it here.

Make no mistake; I do understand very well that clothes carry a strong symbolic characteristic that transcends simple protection from the elements, but I  remain totally mystified as to how emotional people become over someone else’s use of them, even if for reasons other than their original intent.

If partners in a marriage cannot talk or speak from the heart on the most intimate matters of each other’s desires, needs and personality in an ADULT manner, it is no wonder so many marriages fall by the wayside when many females enter a marriage idealistically with the  belief that a marriage is a Cinderella love story manifested by way of exchanging vows, which dismisses any sense of reality of the human condition by way of negating the personal and individual’s sense of identity.

In spite of this pragmatic approach to the issue of clothes and the crossdresser, in dealing with the subject of dress and who is allow or not allowed to wear it, it goes without saying we touch a nerve that runs so deep within societies unconscious psyche, that all sense of logic and rationality is dispensed with and replaced with the most irrational assumptions and judgments one can image that in essence, have little to do with how one USES clothing, but everything to do with HOW OTHERS make critical assumptions as to the transgressors moral and ethical character -  and all this, despite the knowledge on the aggrieved spouses’ part, of the irrefutable love the crossdresser has and demonstrates daily, for his wife, his family or his sense of living a good and upright life and that my friends is a pity!
Communicate, communicate, communicate!!!

A Nested Life

Each Christmas we decorate the house for the festive season of Christmas and some of the objects we put on display are a few Russian nesting dolls. The doll has a long history, going back to the 1890’s and generally is depicted by a peasant women or a religious female figure on the outer layer dressed in a long shapeless dress while the figures inside, (being of either gender,) become smaller until the last figure presented is a baby.

While putting away the ornaments of the season and with one of these dolls in hand, the thought occurred to me that like real life, as each doll was freed from the nesting mother, I came to see that it represented a reverse history of life’s growth – from mother to the child. It was one of those moments that hits one in a flash; these wooden and fancy replicas of real people could just as well represent me and my crossdressing experience. For it struck me that in a metaphorical sense, here in my hand was the public persona I display that hides the dark secret of my attachment to the feminine that I, or any crossdresser for that matter, keeps hidden away in the belly of the nesting mother doll.

The dolls, as I dwelt upon it, represented a very recognizable symbol (perhaps the original intention) if one where to reflect upon it, of human life; the relationship of object-within-object contained within similar-object; man within man, women within woman, as well as woman within man and man within women as the many aspects of one’s personality, hidden away within one’s shadowy lifetime experience. Each doll being part of the whole yet, in being drawn out separating, smaller and smaller from the larger visible “mother” doll, was retracing a history back to childhood. The concept so intrigued me, I took the liberty of taking a design I found on the internet and re-painted it to demonstrate the similarity I saw in this relationship between present and past, mother and child, mother to son, woman to man and man to woman  to illustrate one’s history and the present life one lives.

As I mentioned, generally the home, or larger figure, is represented by a woman in a shapeless dress, but here I make it a man; an innocuous  Mr. ordinary on the outside; business suit, tie and the semblance of the “normal” every day guy anyone may see in their neighbourhood, yet nesting a history of clothing discomfort. But as each doll is revealed it becomes of sorts, an allegorical time capsule; a life time of crossing the great divide of the clothing paradigm and the images of memory that are nested in each one us from – middle age, young adulthood, teenage years, early youth, and childhood. All “a nested life,” comfortably and safely hidden away in the personal-subconscious of the visible elder-statesman with the beard and only brought out at certain times, in celebration of a life lived within the fullness of the outer man, or haunted by the reverse process of de-decorating – from childhood to the “mother or father doll,” dressing and un-dressing to the mask of pretense found in the whole man that though sits on the shelf, remains hiding its contents until brought out once again.

I Sing the Female of Imagination

This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction.
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapour.

The female contains all qualities and tempers them,
She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,
She is all things duly veil’d, she is both passive and active…..
See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female I see.

Walt Whitman – I Sing the Body Electric

I don’t buy the idea that most crossdressers are transsexuals in disguise but more often than not, ordinary males who conceptualize the feminine to such an extent, they lose their sense of reality. Thus the visualizations that engorge penises and the mental chemistry that usurps their rational thought, depersonalizes the female (perhaps even their wives and lovers) to an object of overwhelming emotional desire. As Whitman says: I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapour. The Crossdressers mind staggers with the thought of beauty and curve and in so doing, he  soon becomes the slave to an all consuming irrationality of the female until in his hopeless quest to touch the softness of skin, the breast, the thigh and all aspect that are so intoxicating to him; compels him to BECOME the object of his desire and thus the bonfire of his own vanity.

My wife has an interesting theory which is for me, is a very plausible one regarding my own irrationality.

“Men tend to erotize women and the feminine mystic in their minds, even when married to the woman they love. This erotized woman of their desires, in many cases, leads to guilt and a sense of sinful betrayal and as a consequence, the objectified female remains hidden deep within their subconsciousness yet she demands to be released and become manifested in real life. But there is a problem! In the normal loving husband and father, this release cannot take place without breaking moral codes such as having an affair and thus the internalized woman of their dreams is found, by way of crossdressing, to legitimize the desired women of his imagination. The man than “becomes” the woman of his erotic quest! The women, in the reality she knows of herself, is lost to his fantasy of choice;  the Goddess of his imagination and his Imitation of Reality.”

Reality Is Like Fine Wine

One of my favourite blogs is titled A-MUSED in which the author attempts to make the connections of life through… “jots and dots. lines and curves. scribbles and dribbles. reading between the lines of life unfolding. Longing to live daily with gentility, elegance and grace.” This morning he spoke of the meaning of reality which echoed much of the theme of mine own blog and especially my posting Through Male Eyes.
His post went like this:

“I learned an invaluable lesson from a wealthy and successful businessman here in Portland who owns a chain of coffee shops. A few of us were sitting in one of his shops one morning, and another friend asked if we had seen the World Series of Poker on TV the night before. None of us had, but that mention led to a conversation about gambling. My friend who owns the coffee shops told us, in a tone of kindness and truth, that nobody he knows who is successful gambles; rather, they work hard, they accept the facts of reality, they enjoy life as it is. “But the facts of reality stink,” I told him. “Reality is like a fine wine,” he said to me. “It will not appeal to children.” And I am grateful that my friend stung me in that way, because this truth helped me understand and appreciate life itself, as it is, without the false hope that formulas offer.”

Refusing to be Normal

“Normal is an ideal. But it’s not reality. Reality is brutal, it’s beautiful, it’s every shade between black and white, and it’s magical. Yes, magical. Because every now and then, it turns nothing into something.”
― Tara Kelly

The Path to Self Recognition

From the time I started this blog, my journey has been an attempt to discover who I am as a person. Along the way I discovered much about myself, some horribly silly thoughts and postings, while others hit a nerve of understanding that resonated a truth that I was hiding and feared to acknowledge. The following posts will be a change of direction as far as my issues with crossdressing are concerned, for I have come to terms with the anxiety associated with that matter. Nonetheless, the thoughts of where and how this all started continue to haunt my understanding and so I carry on.

Though the Christmas season is upon us and with all the hustle and bustle it presents for me as a musician and family man I will, over the next few weeks (perhaps months,) endeavour to revisit my own experiences of this phenomenon, as well as my continuing efforts to understand the source from whence it originated. But for now I offer a few thoughts that may be of interest.

The Individual and Crossdressing

Recent communications with a fellow blogger have prompted me to revisit my posting: “Crossdressing Reprised,” a posting in which I put forth a few theories as to why some males’ (myself included) desire on occasion to wear female clothing, despite an awareness of the social or religious taboos associated with this behaviour. When writing the posting, I was attempting to delve into the psychology of why ordinary men; musicians, teachers, pastors, loving husbands and fathers, fall into a state of mind that finds them responding to an irrational conscious state-of-mind that finds them appending a feminine demeanour to their masculinity. On my own journey of life I have often speculated if it was possible that as individuals, with unique souls, we are acting upon a personal journey that connects our brains as well as our soul’s distinctiveness, with what and whom we are and which in turn, finds us in conflict with not only the control exerted by societal sanction, but also with our subconscious minds as well?

On the surface, the crossdressers “compulsion” to touch the feminine, despite the awareness of his accepted masculine reality, would appear to be ridiculous, or even a sign of mental instability. After all, our individual sense of ourselves has been willingly corralled and directed to act like everyone else. Thus why on earth would anyone who accepts the social definition of sanity, have a desire to consciously dress, or even moderately contemplate, wearing the clothing of their opposite sex? Is it possible something much deeper than a mere reaction to sexual desire or stimulation is taking place? Is it not conceivable that something more than gender, hormones, history, culture and environment or religious belief is being activated here?

In reading the blogs of others on this subject, it is apparent to me a common thread runs through them; crossdressing is an on-going issue and if not actualized, at least in thought or attempts to quill its effects, remains a lifelong predisposition.

It is an issue that provides them pleasure, as well providing enormous feelings of guilt and shame. A remorseful sense of disgrace that they have betrayed not only themselves, but their wives and loved ones as well. What is not so evident however, yet appears to be implicit in their self confessed histories, is an enduring apprehension (denied in their shadowy subconscious but understood as true,) that they perceive they are different from other males and as a result of their compulsiveness, perhaps more than the act of crossdressing itself, this feeling of dissimilarity, this touching the home of their subconsciousness is the gateway to their guilt and shame and in turn, the cause of their anxiety?

My questions therefore are these…….

1. Why do some men, perfectly socialized by all accounts, drift from the conventionally accepted or collective understanding of what a male is, into a mental state of desiring something they are not?
2. Why is it that this state of mind captivates some males while in others it has no meaningful affect at all that would see them desiring to partake in such behaviour?
3.  Why do some men transgress the boundaries of a known reality (their masculinity) and venture into socially and religious unacceptable behaviour in their yearning to imitate, or at the very least, moderately display, a desire for a female persona? Could it be, by way of a personal perception, behind the public persona displayed is the Shadow they fear to confront? The true reality they in actual fact know themselves to be, but struggle desperately to refute?
4.  Is the “sin” or the imperfection in their human character that continually drives them to undertake their crossdressing behaviour, the part of their Ego or Self they simply refuse to come to terms with?
5.  Is it perhaps the denial that they “are an individual” and not the model of expectancy which society has fated them to be; that is known within the deepest part of their souls that they are more than the sum of the common or religious understanding of maleness and are reluctant to face?

These are the questions that I desire to find answers to, the questions that without my wife’s contribution by way of countless dialogues we undertook to resolve our situation of these and many other issues, neither I nor her would have achieved the tranquil place we find ourselves in today. Communication was the key and something that was lost between us for so many years and without which, to understand our two distinct personalities, or the enormous difference between our genetic and hormonal make-up, the harmony we have since found in a marriage of individualities would never have been achieved.

Carl Jung, the father of psychoanalysis postulated that we are not born as empty vessels; becoming rational humans only by way socialization. He saw that deep within every human being lays a “collective subconscious” (a soul) that was given to us at birth and something we ignore at our peril.  “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”  I, like most males, am a dreamer, but my quest is to awake!

Until next time, Merry Christmas to one and all.

Does God Worry About Crossdressing?

Introduction

When I wrote my last blog I did not intend it to be a comment on religion. However, in reading the questions contained in a recent comment regarding the religious aspects of the posting, my reply grew to such an extent that I felt since I was preparing a blog on the subject anyway, this post will serve as a reply as well as serving as my views on the subject. But before I say anything else I will quote from the book “The Soul’s Religion: Cultivating a Profoundly Spiritual Way of Life” by Thomas Moore which encapsulates much of what I am about to say:

“I don’t mind talking about God in the proper context and in moderation – but the first commandment – Do not honour false Gods – always gives me pause. Unless I use the name cautiously, I fear I will fall into the worst kind of idolatry – the illusion that in these mysterious matters I know exactly what I am talking about ……”

Thus it was that I left the realm of “organized” religion. But lest I give the wrong impression I will say that I respect the religion beliefs of the person who posed the questions, I am just not sure his beliefs apply to me.

I will not pretend that I know anything when it comes to God for I cannot be certain, nor do I believe can anyone else be sure, they know or have a fuller knowledge of the infinite we call God than I do. All I can do is attempt to understand and thus live my life with my idea of God. In this light perhaps the only suitable answer is a quote from Micah 6:8. “Do Justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.”

The Questions

• If you have left the God of organized Christianity, the God of the Bible, than how do you get your truth about who God is and what he thinks is good and what he doesn’t?

First off I came into this world and was baptized a Christian (RC) so I do have a foundational belief in God. But the reader has made an assumption that is incorrect. He has assumed that because I left organized religion, I have left behind my historical Christian understanding of God and the Bible as well which is untrue. I value highly the precepts of Christianity as I do other religious beliefs and understand there is much “Truth” in the Bibles contents. However I have rejected a concept that God can be captured and contained by a literal understanding of the Bible as being “True.”

I have come to see that organized religion is just that. It is a set of organized dogmas and beliefs that placed limits on my understanding of God. God did not create robots but gave us a brain to conceive of him in an adult manner and not in a child-like (not childish) way. Holding on to a concept of God we learned as children that continues well into our adult years, reduces God to a finite notion and places limitations upon an omnipotent and omnipresent deity which for me is an impossibility.

Being merely human, I don’t know how life all started, how the universe was created or how big the universe is and I suspect if anyone were truly honest with themselves, they would have to admit the same. Religion for me is a vehicle towards that understanding and not the ultimate answer, neatly packaged for us by a particular church that treats its followers as children and not adults. All of life and its continual creation is a mystery beyond any concrete human understanding and as such, is far outside our human ability to comprehend it. I have faith that God exists and that is all I can have with my limited mind, for faith is the only truth we can have when faced with the unfathomable; “Not a God on a leash.” (Steve Bell)

It is precisely for this reason that I feel books like the Bible should not become books of enslavement, or as another form of idolatry. GOD IS! He does not need to be explained in finite terms. God is the personification of a mystery that defies conceptualization and the Bible only becomes Truthful when it opens our hearts and minds and gives meaning to our own mystical experience of God and not a hammer for an understanding of God as one looking for retribution.

Because our brains cannot fathom the awesomeness of God the written metaphorical record contained in books like the Bible are attempts to do so. That is all they can be. All cultures, from primitive times on, have used the metaphor of word and ritual as a “believable-mythology” that was never intended be taken literally as it was in childhood, but to give hope for adults to comprehend the incomprehensible and provide us with an adult and mature human understanding through mythological symbology for that which we cannot grasp. I should note that word mythology is not to be taken to mean fable or fairy tale. I do not use these terms as demeaning to others belief. They simple represent for me the state of organized religion as I see it: stuck and unable to move beyond a medieval system that presupposes a complete and irrefutable understanding of God when God is a mystery and therefore immeasurable.

• Is your God just a God of your understanding?

I mean no disrespect, but is not your understanding of God, or anyone else’s understanding of God, only the God of your understanding? By purporting to know and understand God, God becomes what we wish God to be and not what we are incapable of understanding in an omnipresent being. All we have in reality is our own faith and as the psychoanalysis David Richo says, “The lowest common denominator of human faith is the acknowledging of a reality that transcends human power and human limitations.”

• Is your God just whoever you want him to be? How do you know that God is within you?

Again, I think it important to point out, I only use the word God to define that which is indefinable and not as an object of definability. The human quest to know God is with us from birth and an innate part the collective conscious of all humanity. Thus it is not uncommon to find similarities between stories found in the Bible and in other ancient narratives, myths of other cultures, or even the beliefs of most primitive of tribes even when they have had no contact with each other. This was evident to Carl Yung when he developed his theory of the Collective Consciousness; how was it possible he asked, that such similarities existed between cultures and histories that were never in contact with each other? His conclusion was that all humans are born with an innate need to believe in something other than themselves. God exists in these transcriptions as mythologems because that is the only way we can describe that which we cannot fathom and thus can only be recognized through faith and not conscious understanding, subjective opinion or imposition. It is for this reason when I say God is within me, what I am attempting to articulate; “I am more than I seem to be and something more than me upholds me.” (D. Richo)

•  How do you know that he likes your understanding of gender or crossdressing?

Does the God you understand have time to dwell on crossdressing when there is so much evil in the world? I think not. This notion that God is concerned about “my” crossdressing or yours is once again the understanding of God in a Parent – Child relationship. Somewhat akin to a Santa Claus who is going to check “our” names on his list to see “if we have been naughty or nice.” 

In reading your blog I sense the stress and struggle you have placed upon yourself by living by the “rules” of pleasing the God of your understanding. It illustrates very clearly the difference between our concepts of God and the theme of my last posting. Yours (As I perceive it) is a religious belief that is based on punishment and reward, good and bad and living a “religious” life before a God who is only waiting for you to trip up and place another black mark is his book “of you.” Therefore (as I perceive it) you will never attain the life you think God wants you to live until you release your understanding of the God of the Bible and replace him with the God that dwells inside of you and has always been there. Believing otherwise can only lead to more stress and guilt because you will always be wrestling and struggling with a God who expect you to be a deity and not human. It may be crossdressing or may be something else but until you truly understand yourself, outside the box of what you believe is (a life time’s work) you will never be at peace with neither God nor yourself.

The reason I left the school of organized religion was because I came to understand my inclination to a limited form of crossdressing (underwear) has more to do with my personality and my soul’s content than it does with interrupting my pathway to God, though I could say finding my souls content would also be a method of finding God. Our understanding of ourselves leads us to a closer understanding of whom or what God is in relationship to the created being we are. Life should never become stagnated but remain fluid in our relationship with the created world around us. In allowing the Bible to become a rule book to govern one’s behaviour, one loses one’s soul and individuality, the very essence that makes us different from everyone else in the created universe. Thus one is bound to be caught up in guilt knowing the “God-parent” disapproves and in so doing, one loses sight of the true nature of why one crossdresses and what it is about oneself that desires to do so despite an organized understanding of God as a God of reputation. Crossdressing is something you do for reason only you know but allow me to suggest, instead of using the guilt you have for an action you do, perhaps you could use the action and the guilt it causes, as a step towards understand yourself and why you feel it separates you from God of your understanding. The ninth-century Buddhist master Lin Chi is purported to have said, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” This may sound ridicules but it makes a valuable point in what I am trying to say: to turn the Buddha (or the bible) into a religious fetish is to miss the essence of what it teaches us about ourselves or as a record of universal truth.

•  You have interesting thoughts in this post, some of them profound. And you certainly are allowed to leave the God of organized religion, the God of the Bible.

I find it interesting that you see only the God of the Bible as being the one and only way to see or experience God. I can appreciate you may have a God that you think you understand, (and if that is reality for you I am happy for you) But it is in many respect like a man who thinks he understands women and we know where that leads (lol)

To dismiss the understanding of God that others have is in my view wrong if not harmful to a fuller understanding of God. Your belief in the Christian God has only come about I suspect, because of your parent’s belief in the same God of their understanding and their parents as well and so on. Thus in effect, it is in many respects a belief in your parent’s belief and so the only belief you have been exposed to. Stepping out or questioning this ancestral understanding of God to find the God that is within you is the challenge and it does take courage.

The Ever Present Power of Women

Each living person has a soul; an identifying essence that tells us who we are. It is a conscious and an unconscious energy that flows throughout our being at every moment in time and space. It does not lie nor attempt to deceive us. It is simply there and is what it is irrefutably. To dismiss it, refute its presence, or run from its existence, is to deny our created selves and live life in fantasy as a mere imitation of the reality we were created to be when we entered this world.

It all began with the women in my life and remains so to this very day. Their mystical energy and creative power throughout the universe has had an enormous influence on the consciousness of my masculine identity. Simply being the creatures they are, they have shaped and formed within me, a desire to hold the spiritual essence and life force only they possess.

Grandmother, mother, aunts and sisters, my loving wife, and every women who has passed in and out of my life have all unknowingly gripped my soul and through no fault of their own, have been or are; Loving Goddess’, Virgin Mary’s, Healing Mother’s, Goddess’ of Life, Sexual Temptresses, Tormentors of my soul, Spiritual Mentors and the Embodiment of the Divine.

I have feared them, loved them, ran from them and ran to them. I have cried with them and have cried for need of them, scorned them and admired them and to this very moment, their shadow and energy extends to the depths of my soul. The story of my life has been these influences and my own life force of masculinity has been marked by their holy presence and as with all things holy and sacred, my human mind cannot fathom the depths of this heavenly presence, but can only make an attempt to understand it.

Over the course of the last 18 months I have, through this blog, endeavoured to analyse and understand this lifelong and complex neurosis that has been the source of so many insecurities I have confronted in my masculine soul. I have read countless books, followed innumerable blogs; spent immeasurable moments in dialogue with my wife and have written hundreds of pages in my attempt to examine this extraordinary power that women exert over me and yet………. I still do not understand its meaning, its place in my life, the root causes of its existence, or the immense dark hole of apprehension it places upon my soul.

If I were to use a word to describe this phenomenon it would be Philogyny, a rare word I will admit– so rare in fact even goggle, with a result of only 35,000 entries, sees 99% of those results a repetitive definition of the word. It is also one with a rather straightforward and innocuous meaning, yet as harmless as it may appear, its significance has much to do with everything I have mentioned above.

To elaborate, it comes from the Greek; philo meaning loving and gynē meaning woman, with the most common definition in usage today being “a fondness, love, or admiration towards women.” It may be of interest to note as well, there are only four words out of the 228,132 found in the 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary ending in –gyny and excluding the others, philogyny and misogyny remain. Two words that could not be more dissimilar in meaning. As one linguist put it, “this anomaly among men must surely tell us something about the world we live in, loving women or hating women?”

Suffice it to say, after so many years of experiencing its existence, I do not see it any longer as wayward sexual energy, for what I experience is far, far beyond that. It is true; I have engaged in play-acting in a silly manner on occasion and allow this feminine force to pierce my male consciousness. However, it is important to understand it neither allows me to deny my masculinity nor by accepting its nature, propose that I wish to fool anyone into believing I am anything other than the male I am, for it does not possess my soul. The real sin would be if I allowed this energy to draw me away from my souls intended identity, not the action per se.

This may appear to be academic semantics, but in coming to understand this, it has allowed me to recognize there is a vast difference between crossdressing as a deviance, i.e. something that robs one of their character and soul by taking them off the path of discovering the person they were born to be, and that of allowing ones masculinity to be touched and embraced by a feminine presence. (Heaven knows this world could use much more feminine nurturing to dislodge the testosterone so prevalent around us.)

In any case what is more important for me; in coming to understand this as being a part of who I am as opposed to something to run from or feel guilty about is: I no longer fear this presence within me as something evil, nor will I allow it to wash me in guilt as it so often did in the past.

Once I left the God of organized religion behind me; you know the one – ever watchful with the hammer in hand – I found the God who created me as the unique person I am; the God who wishes me to find him though all aspects of life; good and bad and the God who gave me all the tools I would ever need to know him from the moment I was born. Once I came to understand and be aware this God’s presence within me rather than outside me, I came to appreciate that life is not harmful or evil if we dispel the notion of duality. By allowing ourselves to be caught up in good and bad, we automatically separate ourselves from the God of – Him up there and me down here. But I will save this for another post. Suffice it to say I am not good and neither am I bad. Nor does the wearing of garments present a Y in the road that tells me – “take this one it’s good…. take that one and you’re on the road to hell.” © Imitations of Reality.com

Crossdressing Reprised

Dear J,
Since it has been sometime since we have discussed the topic of crossdressing, I thought I would bring you up to date with my ever fluid thoughts on the matter. I have as you know, tried unsuccessfully to get to the bottom of this odd characteristic of mine, but I feel I am getting closer with each word I write. I’m sure anyone reading my blog would think a Chameleon was its author for the many changes in thought that have occurred. Whatever the case, it is a journey that began after many years of darkness in hiding my emotional experiences and to arrive where you and I are today has given me hope that I am not as insane as I once believed.

New Thoughts on an Old Subject

I see crossdressing as an action that appeases a mysterious – and at times – overpowering emotional sensitivity which is expressed by means of clothing in an imaginative world of femininity. It is important that you note the word “imaginative,” as I use it deliberately in as much as I understand quite well who and what I am in my masculine mind and physiology but as you know, questioned even that at times. But I have left those thoughts behind as junk collected on my journey and now discarded. At any rate it is a pleasurable activity and one that fulfills, however naively, the gap between reality and awareness of something other than the masculine which I present to the world.

As silly as all that may sound, it is I have come to understand, a strange and unexplainable place I find myself in at times nonetheless. Though I see myself as a rational and somewhat intelligent person; coming to terms with a lifelong sense of alienation with my soulful-self has always left me exasperated, in as much as what transpires by means of an unattainable and imaginative sense of being, can grip me in such an illogical way as to question all I know of my personality and character.

In any case, as you and I are followers of “Vested Interest’s” blog, I must say he has had a great influence on my present approach to the subject. I fully concur with his posting: Born Identity in which he makes a very valid argument our sexuality if not our gender as well, cannot be misplaced as much as the psychological community or the many blogs on crossdressing would have us believe in redefining the meaning of those words. Like the story of the “Emperor’s New Clothes,” coming to believe we are more than our chromosomal make-up (except in very rare cases) is simply nonsense. However, though I would never deny who I am physically, by my own experience I can honestly say my life from early memory on, many times is caught in a duality of emotion that sees me identifying with more than what I perceive my masculinity to be.

It is, as I experience it, an undeniable psychological imbalance that draws me back and forth between birth masculinity and introspective femininity, with crossdressing becoming the psychological mediator of appeasement. I am no longer stressed by this, for after 65 years I see it as part of me and in dwelling on it, I am simply using my investigative outlook on life to understand its raison d’être. Whatever the core motivation may be, I sense it is a result of males being held more accountable for their outward expression of emotion than are females, thus we absorb our feelings interiorly. It could also be, in early childhood, while being stifled in our emotional expressions, we made unconscious associations with clothing that told us the wearer was permitted to express their feelings, while we were not. It is even conceivable that the connection to clothing is carried forth subconsciously into our adult life, appearing when needed to satisfy emotional requirements, which further confirms my understanding that the attachment of female apparel has nothing to do with identifying oneself as female but is more related to historic circumstances of childhood which Dr. Wilder Penfield stated in is essay “Memory Mechanisms” referred to in the book “I’m OK You’re OK.” (page 25 – Freud, Penfield, Bern) I think it a plausible hypothesis that certain emotional aspects that took place in early childhood trigger an irrational response in later life and blur our understanding of reality. For instance we often see children mollified by the use of a blanket or a teddy bear and in much the same manner I suggest, crossdressing in adulthood appeases an emotional need that social standards prohibit males attaining.

In any case, for me, the triggers are subliminal and I cannot in all honesty deny the overwhelming part they play in my make-up or how I deal with life in general. Correlating this pull on my character through crossdressing, (whether morally wrong by way of religious or societal convention,) to match an affinity of emotion to an unknown motivation, has always been seen by me as a troublesome response to what I suspect are deeper psychological divisions within me due to a difficult childhood. Nonetheless with your help I have overcome much and realistically or not, continue to experience this duality and bear witness to its affects on my person, our marriage and my life. It is something which defies logic but with trust and understanding it is me to you and you to me.

Thoughts during the Dog Days of Summer

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to:

During these dog days of summer, I have been catching up with books on my bookshelf, but more importantly I have been reading the many blogs I have bookmarked dealing with the issue many men have with their crossdressing persona.

I should state that I am not referring to those who wish to dress, act or appear as women in public or in any other capacity that would have them deny their own sexuality. Though I find these blogs intriguing, it is something I could never see a bearded man doing and therefore will not comment upon.

What I am referring to are those many males (and I truly believe there are many) who throughout their lives for reasons unknown to them, have sensed an innate part of their soul’s character to be feminine, or at the very least, not the male of their genetic understanding. Perhaps better stated, a small yet essential part of their make-up transcends their masculinity and calls out to be expressed in some fashion (usually through clothing) in order to make them whole. By that I do not mean they are effeminate in nature, nor do I mean they desire to be female. But in the depths of their consciousness they feel and understand they are more than the simple definition of masculinity contained in the social prison of gender recognition.

Far beyond the conscious awareness of the masculine identity with which they happily reside, their souls also contain a spiritual longing, to unite their physical maleness to the psychological female they know exists within. They yearn to touch and take upon themselves that which they feel is the ultimate of God’s creation as seen in the essence of the female. These men clearly understand and acknowledge their sexual identity as male and yet have a deep and soulful wish in some mysterious fashion, to grasp and take upon themselves an element that is far beyond their physical capacity to reach and yet deep within they sense it as being as much a part of their souls as is the physical male reality they present.

The stress of this knowledge can affect much of their daily existence and for some, can lead to a deep and sometimes depressive existence in trying to reconcile the knowledge of who they are with their religious and family values. Many of these men are in loving relationships which only compounds their struggle of appending their souls to the conscious world of reality. How distressing it is to see that in this struggle they find the loving environment they wish to maintain with their wives or girlfriends is usurped by a demand to conform their souls to their partner’s concept of who they are as individuals.

These men are robbed of their individuality (and lose their souls in the process,) when they become slaves to the wishes of others. As an example; a man may show all the devotion and commitment to his partner that he can possibly display, but will still be cast as abnormal if in an attempt to bring harmony into their lives when he reveals to his wife or partner the problem he is suffering. He can be faithful and loving in all aspects of the vows they undertook in joining their lives together for life, yet if his spouse desires conformity and orthodoxy as a sign of love over the characteristics that make him who he is as an individual, the marriage will be but an illusion of happiness. The allure of the feminine will not disappear as readily as they or their wives may wish, but to dismiss it as a sin, a deviance, a mark of evil, only compounds the problem as a denial of who they have been from birth AND as a creation of God.

I’ve experienced all of this and more in my 41 years of marriage, especially with regards to my play acting through clothing. For 36 years of marriage my wife and I played a game…  “You be the person I want you to be and I’ll be the person you want me to be.” Never mind the consequences that will result from that silliness. It was a fantasy world that robbed each of us of who we were as individuals and which in the end, almost wrecked an otherwise loving and devoted marriage by attempting to take possession of each other’s souls for our own purposes, or to dispel a fear of losing the other in expressing the heart and soul of what makes us the person we are.

Through serious and open dialogue, what I learned about my wife’s fears was the clothing issue per se was never the problem. It was the social and religious perception of deviating from the norm, as well as a fear of losing me to an illusion of femininity or the thought that this life time aspect of my personality would become a transformation to something else, even though I presented no evidence that I wished to be anything other than the male I was. The resulting anxiety of all this confusion in hiding my soul as witnessed in my blog, became a life robbing struggle and denial of who I was to fit my wife’s idea of manhood and masculinity, which saw the stress of it all culminate in six heart attacks, depression and loss of mental health, simply because of a desire to conform to something I was incapable of being.

I bless my wife every day for her wisdom and understand in seeing the man she married poses no threat to our marriage by way of what undergarments he may wear. Yes many men like me may perhaps be eccentric, unconventional or unusual but I am not mad or any less a devoted husband and father. I am finally at peace with myself and have no other desire than to be the person my wife married and to live my life with her forever. If only other men could be so lucky.

Deviance and the Social Construct of Clothing

Some thoughts on a Sunday evening.

We are all affected by labels in one form or another; either labelling others if they do not fit our personal view of the world or, in attempting to conform to the world view of others, try not be labelled ourselves. In many respects society, like religion, uses labelling to maintain a certain order, setting out standards of behaviour for its members, whether subliminally or consciously which affect both the actor of the behaviour and the audience who labels the actor. As Howard Becker, the American Socialist stated in his book Outsiders, “…social groups create deviance by making rules whose infraction creates deviance, and by applying those roles to particular people we thereby label them as outsiders.” In this respect, deviance is not so much the activity the person commits per se, but rather the definition applied to it by others in rules and sanctions set as labels on the ‘offender.’ The deviant is one to whom that label has been successfully applied and as a consequence, the deviant’s behaviour, being an abnormal divergence from the norm, becomes an activity that society forbids.

When Crossdressers become labelled in this manner, they are not only stigmatized by society, they also stigmatize and label themselves and in so doing, become guilt ridden and depressive in return, even though they be good and outstanding citizens. In my own experience, what I find particularly unusual about this labelling behaviour, is how firmly fixed and ingrained this self-reproach became, even when my activity was done in private and harmed no one.

Be that as it may, it is a very odd thing how society’s fixation with clothing, evolving as it has from biblical scripture to a social labelling system of one’s sexuality, remains to this day as such a forbidden activity when gender specifics come in to play. This exclusivity of garments (what belongs to whom and who can wear what) in some respect can be seen as fetishism in reverse; an obsessive compulsive disorder which revolves around a  preoccupation and fear of sexuality more than it does dress and is for the most part it, something we only apply to men and not women. No one would bat an eye if, in my part of the world, I were to don my kilt and venture forth down the streets of the town. But if I were to take off the sporran, turned the kilt around and have the pleats in the front instead of the back, or if I was to encounter a sudden gust of wind, the world would collapse if my feminine underwear were to be exposed instead of “traditional” dress.

A woman shall not be clothed with man’s apparel, neither shall a man use woman’s apparel : for he that doeth these things is abominable before God. Deuteronomy 22:5 Douay-Rheims Bible

The photo on the left depicts the clothing of men and women in early biblical times. I have always been befuddled as to where the distinctions lie, or how Deuteronomy’s edict on clothing was to be applied. Aside from the natural anatomical difference of facial hair and structure there would have been no appreciable distinction in dress, yet we cling to this ambiguity as a code of social conduct nonetheless. Clothing is designed for the most part, for practicality and to fit the human form. This of course is particularly true when it comes to undergarments (or lack of same in the kilt tradition) where they become gender specific to accommodate anatomical structure, fashion and comfort. Where the deviant label becomes attached to the male who wishes to wear any of this harmless attire, whether for comfort, enjoyment or otherwise; is in the collision of the social paradigm of ethics and in doing so, sees something as harmless as clothing, or personal preference become mired in the morality code of modesty and decency.

I do not argue for or against the part morality plays in society, but merely point out that it is only when the social contexts of clothing’s becomes wrapped in the religious anxiety of sexuality, that it than enters deeply into our subconscious mind and becomes labelled as a source of guilt and shame. Then and only than do clothes go from the innocuous harmless items they are, to becoming the “thou shalt not’s,” and the “forbidden.”

© 2011 Imitations of Reality

A Good Read

For what it is worth I ran across this article in the Atlantic Magazine today, “The Brain on Trial” which I found very interesting. Though it deals with criminal minds and has nothing to do with Crossdressing per se; there is much to digest in what is stated with regards to how the mind works. Genes in particular, as I have always thought, play more of an important role then science has known to this point and on many levels dictates much of how our actions and behaviour whether we like it or not.

Transvestism or Crossdressing

Hi dear,
Just curious – is there a difference between being a transvestite and a cross dresser? To me they are the same, what do you think? I’m simply tracing the genesis of our present understanding.
Love you,
J

Hi J,
To answer your question, I’ll give you a short history lesson.
The word Transvestite was coined by Magnus Hirschfeld, a German physician and pioneer in the study of sexology. He is generally credited with being the first to distinguish crossdressing as an activity which was different from that of homosexuality. But from what I have gathered, he saw it as sexual fetish, or an activity that provided sexual arousal and that is the thought pattern that is still used to this day by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders whereby they classify any person who obtains pleasure from wearing clothing of the opposite sex as suffering from a “transvestic fetish.”

I have a problem with that because the writers and practitioners who use the DSM manual have a concept of crossdressing which they “label” and prejudge all men who dress, even if occasionally in women’s clothing, as having a paraphilia which involves sexual arousal and gratification, something I and many others personally do not agree with. That is not to say that I do not derive psychological pleasure or excitement from it, for I most definitely do. Thus the word Transvestite for me is a medical term that I feel does not apply to me per se and one which I try my best to avoid, save for the occasional slip of the tongue.

So how do I define my Crossdressing?
I see it as a pleasurable activity that allows me to enter, at least exteriorly, the world my philogenist mind-set dwells in. By that I mean, I understand I am not female and have no desire to become female, but I do have an extreme adoration for everything female and feminine. I believe there are many men out there like me who, for whatever reason, emotionally identify with the female sex. In saying that I do not imply they wish to be female, but only that their natural male attraction to females becomes keener to a degree where their subconscious love of the feminine becomes an overwhelming desire to acquire unto themselves that which they acknowledge they cannot physically become. It is my reverence of the females physical beauty, something I can never possess, that sees me playacting the illusion of femininity; that imitation of reality which though is not sexual in nature is in the end a source of comfort and joy.

© 2011 Imitations of Reality

Polishing Up My Act

Hilarious adventures in Role Playing

I painted my toe nails last night for the first time. I suppose that may not be out of the ordinary given my inclinations, but it was in any case something new. There was no particular excitement attached to it, save for the fact that it never really crossed my mind to do it before and given that my playacting was never a sexual thing anyway. In any case, being rather conservative in my approach to all of this, the colour and the finished product looked rather nifty as I looked down at my feet and gazed upon the sheen of a nondescript colour on my toenails. But it is the story behind the painting that I found amusing and I hope you see the humour in it as well.

As I mentioned in my last posting, my wife is now comfortable with my playacting on the stage of our house and I also cited my reluctance to actually follow through in her presence if the mood were to take place. It’s no big deal; because I am happy that the most difficult aspect of my crossdressing, as mild as it is, was to release my guilt of always doing this in secret and to let her know about this aspect of the man she married. Thus aside from me wearing panties, and talking a great deal about the subject, we are still dancing around the idea of it all with nothing else taking place, which as I said does not leave me disappointed.

In many ways the whole situation reminds me of our courtship ritual 41 years ago. We were both in love with each other and desperately wanted to have sex. With the world being a different place back then, neither of us could get around to finding the words to say it and thus it became a ritualistic dance which in many respects we are playing out all over again. Both having knowledge of my other persona yet seemly unable to make the break through to allowing things to run their course. So this posting not only shows the steps in this comical life we now play out, but also the funny moments that can take place with my reluctance to display and her ambivalence in seeing no threat to her marriage.

Now to set the stage I have to tell you I am one of those people who never take their socks off from the time I shower in the morning to the time I shower at night. I just never feel comfortable walking around in bear feet. In any case, yesterday being the hottest day of the year my wife suggested I take them off as she thought I would be much more comfortable. I balked of course (old habits being difficult to change) but a few hours later while watching a ballgame I thought, “why not?” So off came the socks. A few moments later I happened to look down at those bear toenails and my mind instantly flashed back to an episode that took place a day earlier when I watched her painting her toenails. I observed this ritual like a scientist almost, watching each stroke of the brush being applied so carefully.

It was an intriguing process to me and something I never thought of doing to my own feet before which prompted the question; “Why do women paint their nails?” Her answer was vague to say the least: “I don’t really know dear; perhaps because it looks nice?” The fuzzy answer was a correct one when one thinks on it. She was doing something that was normal female behaviour; a ritual of her female sex. As a matter of fact it was so routine and such a natural form of behaviour for her, the vagueness conveyed did not require a detailed explanation at all. She was “femaleing” and therefore her answer did not necessitate a detailed study in structural semantics. She was being a “She;” end of conversation!

Oops!! Do I hear the distant voices of social constructivist thinking preached at me now? I wonder if Cleopatra ever ran into those people? All those slaves around whispering…”She only gets all dolled up because it’s a social construct and if she were a real woman none of this la-de-da lip and nail polishing act would ever take place.” LOL!
Okay, I’m off my soap box and back to the story!

After listening to my wife’s vague answer while painting her toenails, she jokingly said to me, “Want me to do yours?”  Now you have to understand my wife’s intent with regards to this question. Though she may be comfortable with the idea of my crossdressing behaviour, it remains a purely academic understanding of my desire to don female apparel and not one which would find her encouraging me to show more of my acting prowess. Regardless, remaining timid as I am to doing any fe-maling in front of her I declined, even though the thought was running through my head nonetheless. (Told you it is a slow dance.)

In any case, having exposed my bare feet and toes while watching the ballgame, the subliminal stimuli I mentioned in my posting (The Manchurian Candidate Theory of Crossdressing) seemed to take hold and the image of my wife painting her nails suddenly arose. “Why not me too?” I asked myself. Thus there I was, with nude feet, contemplating a polished look on my toenails when suddenly she walked into the room. “You have your socks off” she said in amazement and in my surprise at her entrance I burst out, “And you can do my feet now “thinking of course that she understood the intent of my words as being polish my nails in reference to her invitation to paint them the night before.

“Well just hold on, I’ll bring some water to soak your feet as your nails should be softened up first.” WHAT? She was actually going to do this? She was going to be the first one to break the ice and stop the dancing?

She returned in a short while with a foot soaker, cream and a bunch of other things. “Soak your feet dear and I’ll be right back” And off she went. I sat there in utter amazement with this open display of her willingness to engage in my activity and I will have to admit I was getting very excited with the prospect of her joining me on the stage of my acting career.

“Feet must be soft by now uh?” she said in re-entering the room. “How’s the game going?” The game I thought? What game, let’s get the show under way……..

She began with a foot massage. Slowly rubbing the tops of my feet with great detail. Than out came the nail clippers. “My, my you haven’t been looking after your feet dear.” Anxiety was getting to me at this point………. “Come on babe, get the nail polishing bit I thought….”

“There, all done! I think I should do this a couple of times a week dear as your feet need attention.” And off she went with the water and her creams. “Hope your team wins this time.”

WHAT! That’s it?! No polish?  I was flabbergasted. Not sad, not angry but just …. disappointed I guess and feeling a bit foolish as well.

Later that evening we discussed the whole thing and had a great laugh and once again learned that in marriage as in life, if one wants something bad enough, one must make ones intentions clear…….LOL!

In any case, i now have polished nails (such as they are) even if I had to do myself, which in the end, was the only correct form after all.

© 2011 Imitations of Reality

After All This Time

My dearest G,
You may have noticed the new header accompanying this blog, The Masculine Illusion of Femininity . I think this title expresses the evolution of my thoughts with regards to my blogging and the steps I have taken to  understand what my crossdressing is all about. It is all play acting in many respects and cannot be anything else. A matter of self-hypnosis at times I think, whereby the actor becomes convinced he is the character he plays.

Since my last posting, and after many more intellectual conversations with you on the subject of crossdressing, I feel I am finally free of all the anxieties regarding my CD behaviour. I have even stopped asking the question “why,” though I must admit it lingers and rattles around in my head at times. Instead, I have taken to accepting your theory that “most men are eccentric when it comes to sex and in their illusions of what females are all about only fool themselves. I see no harm in that unless it consumes their souls or damages the lives of others.”

As you know from our conversations, my crossdressing is very much a private matter and is simply an occasional personal expression of my quirky personality. It is not an obsessive behaviour, nor does it necessitate make-up, shoes or jewellery. That is in no-way to imply that my actions do not knowingly cross socially accepted boundaries when it comes to what males are allowed to wear, but I see no harm if it does not endanger our relationship, cause you public embarrassment, or become sexually narcissistic behaviour.

I suffer no delusions that I am anything more than the sum of my biological parts, after all; dressing while living in my male reality is much easier than living with the pressure society places on women to always look their finest and as feminine and dare I say, youthfully sexy as possible. My beard would be a dead giveaway anyway…….LOL.

Even further, acknowledging my sex as real also negates the absurdity one sometimes finds on the net these days that would have us suppose we males have a tangible female-side that seems to exist as a physical or material part of our brains. I recently read a blog at CD Reflections that clearly articulates and debunks this position and is very similar in thought to my posting Through Male Eyes.

Whatever the case, it is a strange notion that attempts to justify for some males, by donning female apparel they sudden see themselves as truly female in all respects but physiologically after living their assigned sex most of their lives. And all this through some magic psychological elixir, which allows them to make a choice in changing their genetically assigned sex. That is not to say it cannot be done, or that there are not one in ten thousand who may be sexually wired differently from the rest of us. But at what cost to one’s soul, family and social network for the pleasurable sensation of wearing female clothing?

Enough ranting! Crossdressing may have many causes and many ways of being justified but this I find difficult to swallow. Perhaps if society had a broader scope when it came to the expression of human sexual emotions and manners of dress, many men would be more comfortable and not be so predispose to assume so quickly they are women and not men.

But I have digressed………What surprises me most about your acceptance of my eccentricity is how reluctant I have now become to change the pattern of my CD behaviour from one of a private undertaking to that of donning an article of female clothing in your presence. It could in some respects be equated to a child who cries and stamps his foot in wanting the parent to purchase a particular toy, and than once in their possession doesn’t play with it or want it at all!

Perhaps it is the shock of acceptance? After all, I have spent 50 years or more in thinking something was wrong with me and hiding my emotions from you and here, in my 65th year and the 41st of our marriage you tell me; “How sad that our marriage almost ended because we never communicated our inner most thoughts and emotions. I may laugh at the first sight of you in a skirt, but that should in no way imply I dismiss the history of where it comes from. Once we get over the awkwardness, it will all become routine and life will carry on.”

Perhaps the real reason for my reluctance to dress is the thought that your love for me transcends everything. It is in many ways a humbling experience because I know, deep down, that it is a love given freely by all mothers for their children and yes, even to their husbands who are in many respects children themselves at times. A curious statement I admit, but speaking as a male our love is ‘oft times conditional whereby in our self-centeredness and understanding of love, we ask for something in return. Perhaps now that you have relieved me of my guilt I, like the child who has been granted their wish for the toy, will have no further use for becoming an imitation of a reality in your presence after having felt the most redeeming feature of femininity there is; unconditional love! Something females have an abundance of which cannot be achieved by cross-acting the part of a female in clothing itself. What fools we men can be at times!

© 2011 Imitations of Reality

The Manchurian Candidate Theory of Crossdressing

Dearest G,

Having defined the root causes of my emotional kinship towards the feminine, in Part 5, I must ask where are we are now?  For many, many years crossdressing was an outlet of escaping the male responsibilities of fatherhood, job and husband and it was the running from those responsibilities due to my introverted nature that almost killed us. Today however we live a vastly different life now that the children no longer live at home and have come such a long way since the line of communication has been opened since my affair. Face to face dialogue, MSN messages when we desire to express our thoughts in an anomalous fashion in addition to emails, have allowed us to discuss anything on our minds as well as setting us free to be our own person within the marriage we undertook 41 years ago. God Bless correspondence!

Crossdressing and Me

That being said, the business of crossdressing, though not as dilapidating as we once thought, still raises the question of why? It has always been difficult for me to understand why it is I enjoy wearing female clothing and I am exasperatingly come to the point where I don’t believe I ever will but I will stay the course regardless. As you know from reading my blog, I have made many attempts at this and have had many theories and changes of heart in trying to discover this fault in my make-up that finds me wearing panties, and on occasion a bra under one of your blouses. (Love that pink one especially….lol) But a few things are clear to me when I look at the behaviour itself.  I do not get any special sexual kick from wearing any of the clothes per se. I do not wear make-up or wigs or jewellery, nor do I desire to leave the four walls of this house in an attempt to fool others into thinking I am a woman. I do not think of myself as a woman when I don these articles of apparel, (don we now our gay appeal…as the Christmas Carol goes ) though I will admit the wonder of womanhood does certainly enter and touch my consciousness in a dreamlike manner without affecting by sense of self. Thus I feel I can honestly say the dangerous elements of becoming so narcissistic or self-centered in the pre-occupation of a feminine alter-ego that would damage a marriage are not there BUT, one must still ask the question why? I know, understand and accept my created masculinity so there really is no threat to either of us of me changing my sex. Nonetheless there are moments on irregular bases’ and sometimes quite unexpectedly, where I do get carried away in daydreaming. What the triggers are I have never been sure, but I am confident you may argue, by allowing myself to engage in my crossdressing actively, I make a cognitive choice to do so that defies the norms of my Catholic religious boundaries. So allow me to offer a theory I have long thought to write that may give a partial though incomplete explanation to what may be taking place here.

The Manchurian Candidate of Crossdressing

I remember a very long time ago I watched a movie starring Frank Sinatra called The Manchurian Candidate.  The movie takes place during the Korean War and  Frank is taken prisoner by the Chinese. He is then subjected to brainwashing by the Russians to perform certain actions subconsciously whenever the “Queen of Diamonds” playing card appeared before him. Provoked by its appearance, he obeys orders which he then forgets. To make a long story short, I have at times wondered if the same reaction happens to me as well? Certain psychological experiences from my youth provoked by my feelings of loneliness and fear that only the feminine seemed to be mollify may be one? My ever so intense moments of un-worthlessness when I think of the “divine spirit” of the feminine compared to the “earthy” of males? I’ve probably written it several times about those moments when my physical body, in comparison to that of the female, gives cause for a cataclysmic cerebral collapse to an otherwise rational brain.

The problem with this theory is of course; correlating this phenomenon with what for the most part is a perfectly rational sense of myself and the world around me. Standing on a stage and performing, eating a meal with our children, or visiting a neighbour; none of the actions we are discussion enter my mind-set at all which must surely beg the question, if I am a rational human being and make rational choices, my actions than are of free choice and that argument too must certainly hold some validity. On the other hand, having lived a life of despondency over this once secretive behaviour, and seeing it now out in the open, perhaps the true answer to the thousands of words written is I simple enjoy it with no other motive attached? In any case I see all these triggers which instigate my behaviour as having a subconscious affect on my masculine brain and rightly or wrongly, by choice or otherwise, lead me to transgress my normally accepted maleness to one of worshipping you on the pedestal you so wish me to discard. Unfortunately, if all else is a fantasy, the pedestal is real even if I too which to abandon it.

It all relates to memory somehow I think. Where there is a very real sensitivity to actions and experiences performed and received in the past that directly or indirectly affect me today. Like the neurosurgeon Dr. Wilder Penfield’s discovery that the brain is much like a tape recorder and records all the good and bad occurrences from our youth, it’s all there. And like the Manchurian Candidate, all it takes is an exterior signal to my subconscious for a reaction to take place. I offer one more example….

While watching the ballgame the other night I saw a commercial for Time Life Music of the Early Sixties  and in doing so I was instantly transformed back to those days of my youth in 1960-61. I could see myself in the exact spot I was in when I heard the tune. Ever nuances of the voice, ever orchestrated note I knew by heart, even the scent of the air of my surroundings at that moment! Though the music and the performers are now 50 years removed, there I was reliving the experience once again and like my crossdressing, here I am still performing the same actions and singing the same tune.

© 2011 Imitations of Reality

Intimations of Solitary Insanity – Part Five

Dear J,
As you are aware, I downloaded all the writings I have written on the blog since its inception last June. Eighty Nine pages and 40,210 words later, I feel I am still equivocating far too much and have never really expressed to you my true longings, sentiments, desires or emotions  on the subject at hand out of fear of hurting you with a straightforward express of my Transgenderism. It has been a very long road dear on which I have travelled and one that has seen moments of great joy and peace of mind as well as guilt, shame, fear and yes even acts of betrayal.

The reconciliation process which was begun after the affair was the beginning of my desire to expose all the things I had kept from you for three decades of marriage and in the spirit of that honesty, the revelations of my feminine dream like experiences have now been laid before you as well. I cannot tell you the relief I have felt since divulging this to you, or how happy I am my behaviour has not been the final “deal-breaker” in a marriage which has given you so much unwanted turmoil. Literally thousands of words have now been passed between us in an effort to explain how my psychological workings have affected my daily life and temperament over the years and the resulting side effects that have caused so much division between us. With this in mind, I think it is now time for me to seriously analyse all the thoughts and dialogues we have had, all the blog postings I have made and come to a final understanding for the both of us of what I (we) are dealing with. If conflicts arise as a consequence, I am sure we can resolve them in an adult and unbiased manner to maintain our lives together as husband and wife, partners and confidantes So allow me to begin once again from the beginning, as it was my early childhood experiences that were the wellspring of all that has taken place since in my ‘oft times depressive and self imposed exile from the real world.

Childhood

For whatever reason, I was born with a weak and anxious disposition. It stifled my mental health in my early years through timidity and nervousness and became what is euphemistically referred to today as Social Anxiety Disorder. It was in essence a crippling fear of life itself and something I have now come to believe became the root cause of my eventual transvestic behaviour. In the nineteen-fifties though unspoken, there were clear dividing lines between what masculine and feminine behaviour was and in my fearful and anxious life coupled with the emotional absence of a father and wayward uncles, I bonded and found comfort in a loving mother, grandmother, sisters and aunts who showered their love and provided the emotional security and protection I felt I needed to survive.

Now by saying this I want to make it clear, that my transvestism was not a result of these women’s acts of kindness towards me, nor because of their actions it somehow changed my male identity into a female one, something many behavioural scientist would have us believe as if XY could somehow be magically changed into XX. However what I say may have taken place, was that somewhere in my psychological development, a keen subconscious awareness that the feminine was something that provided me a sense of warmth and protection that was more closely aligned to my sense of self than did the masculine I empirically observed about me.

As I have related to you on many occasions, the feeling of alienation I always felt with my exterior surroundings, stemmed from this lonely environment I believe, so it became a natural and slow gravitating process for me to attach the understanding of myself, which I recognized as being very different from my male siblings and friends, to the loving and nurturing nature of the females in my life who I saw as having a similar emotional make-up as my own.

Recently you said to me; “I wonder if, as a child, you were so isolated that you created an alter ego of the opposite sex – some mother figure to cherish you when your own mother was busy with the other children? Was it this alter ego you turned to when isolation, whether self imposed or by other circumstances, you sought out some comfort for your wounded soul?” My answer would be, I think you may very well be spot-on in that assessment.

The very masculine character traits deemed to be normal behaviour in the 50’s and 60’s were never mine psychologically and I think it was because of this, along with the shyness I speak of that over time became a secretive and fanciful longing to possess and incorporate that femininity into the alter-ego you stated.

All of these introspective experiences eventually saw me seek the only tangible recourse available to me when life got the better of me; wearing the clothing of that which provided so much pleasure to my mental stability. The problem with this was of course is, it contravened, as it still does today, the accepted norms of societal sexual identification and as my thousands of blogging words will attest, they serve only to justify my longings and desires with the guilt society places on my act of disobedience. I don’t blame society for that, as its unwritten rules do in general act as a regulatory system to stem the tide of chaos. However it is odd that something as innocuous as clothing can stand as a means to ridicule those who deviate from the norm, yet the gun culture of many countries is seen as praiseworthy. Go figure!

Relationship Psychology

My dear J,

As I wrote the other day: Though I appreciate you have an inherent understanding of what is acceptably accorded males and females in dress, shape and body imagine, in many ways you are displaying the reactions of a wife who believes she has just discovered her husband is a homosexual and not simply a man who has an affinity for a woman’s body and her clothing. So let me try once again (gosh I love writing….lol) to explain the state of the world in our neck of the woods:

Ordinariness + Love + Un-Ordinary Husband = Conflicts
Perhaps the problem here is not mine alone dear but possibly what you have called your “ordinariness.” That is not a fault I would want to see corrected in you nor see you change for like the knowledge I have of myself, you are you body and soul, and should never be expected to exchange your soul for someone you are not. The other element that defines you as an individual is your ability to love unequivocally all those who touch your life. Thus these two traits are what people see and admire about you and they are the part of your psyche that you see as shaping the person you understand yourself to be.

Where I believe we have always had struggles in our marriage, and where our personal peace of mind becomes disrupted, is when those fixed and rudimentary understandings we know about ourselves; those elements that define us as individuals, clash with those we discover or see in our spouse that are foreign to the understanding of the world given to us by our parents and our social experience of life. Men are men; women are women, black is black, white is white. Men wear “men’s” clothing women wear “women’s’ clothing and life contains no grey areas.

Having decided 41 years ago to live our lives together we avoided, or perhaps were unaware of the variances in our individualities, so smitten and in love were we at the time. This is the illusion society fosters and that all people seemly have upon entering a marriage. They become blinded by emotion and miss the reality that every human’s soul has distinctiveness in diversity and history.  Without this crucial knowledge of human make-up, many conflicts arise that lead us to question if perhaps we had made the wrong choice. Thus the discords that arise become magnified when our sense of loyalty and love for our partner is at odds with the values we believed we saw in our spouses that matched our own. Fears develop and anxieties become disproportional because characteristic suddenly learned later in life appear to threaten our togetherness.

With this in mind it was these elements of conflict in individualism that often saw our marriage become unbalanced – you in your ordinariness seeing me as un-ordinary. I think it important that when I speak of individualism I do not imply self-centeredness. On the contrary! Our individualism is unique to us and therein lays the problem. Many people start out in married life believing the reason they love the other person is because they have found a reflection of themselves, a copy of their own psychological make-up. Thus the seed is planted when later they discover their spouse is not made in their own image but is a unique soul unto themselves and becomes labelled as being “un-ordinary,” by the commonplace person we see ourselves to be that fits well into societies labelling system. The emotional aspects of love somehow dispel the reality of individualism in as much as taking possession of our spouses soul  to placate the safe and warm feeling we have about ourselves is a far easier state of mind than to deal with any conflicts we wish did not exist. Though love is the emotional bond that holds us together, love of ourselves (the only real world we know) conflicts with our misunderstanding of the others world (the only world they know as well) thus stresses the ties that bind us together because uniqueness and individuality become lost. Until we allow and accept the other to be, and allow ourselves to be, internal and external conflicts will remain.

As a result of this misguided approach to marriage, through my writing I had hoped to reveal the person you never “really” knew at all. A man who’s inner and dual gendered soul often conflicted with your sense of who you understood me to be that being far from the ordinary you saw in yourself. As it turned out, what you have now seen exposed as the cause for our troubles, and the true sense of who your husband is, has in fact only burden you more in hearing of my desires to occasional express the fe-male person I am.

Never forget dear that I can understand your misgivings with regard to this matter as I understand the befuddlement all of this causes you. Panties, or bra hidden from view are a far different issue than confronting your husband, a man with a beard, clothing himself in women’s apparel, or seeking to emulate the physical attributes of her form. Your ordinariness in seeing life as a natural pattern of existence I suspect my make allowances for the “unnatural” on occasion in others; however the truth of the matter is I believe as long as it does not enter into your back-yard of family and marriage it is deemed okay.

Accepting that brother S and cousin D are homosexual is one thing, accepting the fact that your husband has many of the same deformations of gender make-up, albeit manifested in another form, is another matter entirely. It is in some respects a double standard wouldn’t you say? Accepting one diverse form of human sexuality and yet not another “because” I am your husband becomes in some respects a subconscious non-acceptance of the one you say you love as well, for it conflicts with the reasons you married me as a male. “Ordinary” people do not act in such an un-ordinary manner, especially those one marries as your mind tells you. You have lived with me for 41 years and are only now, having to confront something you may have at one time suspected but never really resolved as a foundational part of your psyche sets up the conflict I mentioned earlier. You wed, according to your conscious mind, a heterosexual male, and though he remains as such visually and has no desire to change that aspect of himself, nonetheless it gives you cause to worry when he tells you that aside from the physical features that make him male, his mind tells him he possess a dual gender that many times over, rejects those masculine features he possesses by desiring those of his female counterpart on occasion.

Is this cause for concern for you? You want to believe it is I can hear you say. Expect in your doubts and fears you have forgotten one important thing. Your husband is fully aware, accepting and tolerant that he is male and nothing aside from an operation he does not desire, will change or take away those appendages he no longer sees as functional or desirable. Being confronted with is problematic situation causes you (and me to some degree) to suspect the mental state of your husband’s mine for it is I suspect for reasons that you, in your safe knowledge of yourself could never see yourself desiring the same transfiguration and thus becomes a huge stumbling block for your reality of the world around you

Yet facing reality and pretending it is non-existent, perpetuates an illusion as well and is the cause of so much anxiety and fear. Like the young person who places their hands over their eyes or ears in hopes that what is before them will disappear, adults too shun what their subconscious refuses to deal with and which their conscious mind is seen to raise a red flag, telling them that the problem before them is dangerous and deviant behaviour and perhaps even a threat to the marriage itself.

So lets us dissect your husband’s brain and see if the danger you perceive really jeopardizes our compatibility and marriage and the happy place we have found ourselves, or is simply a challenge to perhaps altering your perceptions of human sexuality and relationships, gathered as they are, as Dr. Ralph Harris says in your “contaminated mind” by the values given you by parents or social construction and all other influences gained from childhood to adulthood.
I’ll be writing more so please stand by……..lol

SHE
A thought just occurred to me while reading your letter. All along, I have been thinking selfishly of you as “my” husband as someone like a possession. That is so distorted a viewpoint that it surprised me to realize that I had it! Of course you cannot be anyone but you, and that is as it should be. Whatever manifestation of your true self you choose to exhibit is what you must do. We all must follow our own path. I think you and I are secure enough to each allow the other to do just that. I will still be here as your wife and you will be here as my husband (although they are in reality at this point outdated titles).

I will stop the possessive attitude and discard the preconceptions which I know to be a hindrance to any relationship. Whatever or whoever you are, you are still the person for me.

Intimations of Solitary Insanity – Part Four

PART  FOUR

Introduction 

What began as an attempt to explain to you my solitary confinement of mind,( perhaps better stated as my “condition,”) has in many respect, become a history of my life from childhood to the present. It has shaped itself by honesty and sincerity by divulging and lifting the veil of the man you married, a man who at times was an egocentric, self-centered, mixed up, gender misfit yet someone who was in love with you.

In any case, it was not my intention that this document would evolve in such a manner, but I am happy to continue regardless, as this story once so secret, is one that should have been communicated long before this. So allow me to carry on in my verbosity, for in exposing my inner self as I am doing, it not only has been the method I use to retain my sanity, but also a way of allowing you to have a deeper understand of the man you married. Hopefully you will still embrace him as you did the day we were married.

Life presented itself to us dear as two people that loved each other, yet who found themselves trapped in the illusion that marriage was all that we were told it would be. You, trying desperately to hold on while being the adult for five children as well as a 10 year old going on 50. Your infinite love for me and your children, the embarrassment of separation, foolishness or fear of not finding your own way perhaps has in the end, what kept us together and I am grateful it has turned out as it has. Can any two people, can a man as complicated as me, be so lucky? There is a God (or Goddess) after all!

So now we have arrived to mid 2000. Communication has almost ended, emotional transference is almost done and my ever spiralling mental state has all but destroyed our lives leaving us hanging by a thread of hope and a prayer.  The strain saw a marriage; if one could honesty call it that at that point, falling apart. We had lost our way dear and though I will take full blame, I think neither one of us knew how we were going to correct anything. Our lives seemly had been a mistake; a mismatch bonded by holy matrimony.

The Prostate Operation

The Prostrate Operation seemed to bring everything to a head. There are no words, no expressions; no demonstrative analogies that I can use to explain to you as a woman what this did to me psychologically. Yes I had a very real conflict with ying and yang and a convoluted desire to possess that which was not mine. It was also true that in this divergence it was quite apparent, given the physical reality I spent my life as; the erection was going to win out every time acting as I have said, as a biological switch to bring me back into reality. Unfortunately, the new reality with my own sense of life, marriage and relationship coupled with the loss of functionality was a bitter blow both physically as well as mentally.

Yes I had fostered five children and yes; I will also admit my interest in sex sometimes became absorbed too much by self-interest and daydreaming and yes, my infatuation with the feminine would ‘oft times found me expressing those emotions secretly in your clothing, but the task that was before me in living with no outlet for the male was a frightening thought to contemplate in any case.

How I lamented those weeks prior to the operation. I feared them for I knew that I would no longer be able to rely on the physical switch to placate the feminine urges I often felt (Up being Off, Down being On.) Thus it added one more dark cloud to an already dark and dismal life, alienating me from “us” and many times brought about deep depression and loneliness to the point of suicide. Looking back I think my brain had literally collapsed under the strain and I probably should have sought help. God how I didn’t want to disappoint you, but was something I would end up doing nonetheless.

The Dysfunctional Fe-Male

The years of frustration now had come full circle. I needed the penis to be me; yet I disliked it because at times it was not me. I enjoyed the feeling it gave me when I saw you naked, I wanted it gone when the visual of you clothed made me wilt in desired “non-penile” emotion. The castration complex I many times felt and still do to this day, of not wanting but having and needing the gonads of birth, had now spawned a new reality. Instead of bliss, I was left with another disappointment. I was now “physically” in – no-man’s (no-woman’s) – land and life as an in-between illusionary Eunuch, was not what I had envisaged.

I didn’t know exactly what to expect. Doctor M did his best to tell me and of course there were always the pills to help (so he said) but you and I were never prepared for the reality of things to come. Due to my many allergic reactions to food and drugs, the promise was as phony as my life; my switch had been short circuited and the fuse was dead.

Though I understood the loss of penile functionality, like most experiences we think we understand until we actually experience them ourselves it really means nothing. One thing I did appreciate however, was my dualism of mind and gender and thus I had a dreamy outlook however much unrealistic and blind it may have been, that by some new sense of social propriety, it would allow my feminine desires to somehow magically become acceptable by you and everyone else. I had read that in a few exceptional cases, some men may suffer hormonal side effects and as silly as it may sound, though I have always seen myself as an exceptional fe-male/male, I secretly hoped my body hair and beard would disappear and perhaps even small breast would begin to grow.

In any case, whichever way I thought, whether by desire or reality, I was now half way to nowhere. Unable to enjoy sex as the male I was, wallowing in the dream of emotional and physical femininity, yet left with the visual hanging remainders of something I wish had been cast from me and matched by some degree, the “other” I longed to appear as. This surely must show you just show delusional I had become!

I wanted help, I needed help, but we were not talking about much of anything at that point and how could I ever have talked to you about it anyway? You were a woman, how could I ever have approached you? I wanted anything but to be the person I had become, a Jekyll and Hyde, a split personality and most of all; a full-blown, certified, Nut Case!!!!!!!!!!!!. I was left emotionally with the fe-male, and physically with the numb male. Neither of which could satisfy a wish to climax and the two were literary killing me.

I wanted to be the man you had always thought you had and the one I lived with in my human body. By saying that I understood/understand, you don’t need a penis to satisfy you, and when I hear you tell me that though you say it out of love it in some ways felt/feels like a condescending acceptance of your own sense of reality. It reinforced in me  what was not possible anymore. Yet having said that; this male being so screwed up, I was very much aware my “she” had become larger than life and though I now regret blaming you for the conflicts “she” caused me, it was these very conflicts that lead me down the path of adultery and self-destruction to prove myself a man and we know the rest of that story…….. How did I ever endure it? How did you?

Thus it was in those years when without a car when you went work, in the quite of the country side and no one to talk to, a marriage that wasn’t a marriage, a bed that was simply a sleeping arrangement, our lives had slowly and totally broken down under the strain. I realize NOW it was a problem for you as well, but without some understanding of the implications of the operation, the continuing influence of my feminine mind-set, what could you as a woman do? You were lost as well, but unfortunately I didn’t see that at the time. Mired in my own self indulgent sense of loss of functionality, I really should have sought out help. But I didn’t and it put me one step closer to a desperate move that I will always regret.

So here we are today; in an understanding marriage. I am happy and where I belong, and yet…. and yet…. this unfortunate dualism that has been released from the genie bottle through these letters continues to evade description. It is at times a source of embarrassment as well at times a barrier between us and should be none of these things but it is nevertheless. Following the lifetime struggle I have had, I have also learned after much misfortune, to go-with-the-flow of it all, pull up my big boy panties, skirt, bra, nylon and etc. and get on with it. I have arrived at a place where I feel I can express myself in both emotional hemispheres of my brain; with neither one or the other being more dominant or feeling the need to suppress the other’s need to be heard. But freedom always comes at a cost and in living in a social environment even as small as two people in a marriage, limits and boundaries are a fact of life. Thus a free and open express of clothing and the like is, in appreciation of your own sensitivities a ways off yet for garments and their expression of identity still present a huge psychological barrier for us to hurdle which I will try and explain in Part Five.

Do not fear dear, bear with me, the train is coming to the Sweet spot station on our journey.

Intimations of Solitary Insanity – Part Three

Introduction

My dearest G,

I sometimes wonder if your life has been wasted by a lie. So much water has gone under the bridge in our lives at yet this lingering issue I wrestle with has yet to be resolved. But however many heartaches you may have endured out of love for me, please know that though I may have lost all sensibilities at times with a thoroughly mixed up sense of my sexuality, I understood the immense power we had for each other and submitted to it with all my heart and soul. I make no excuses anymore. What we have endured is past though its memory may linger on for a life time. What follows is my continuing attempt to articulate a life influenced by the emotions I described in Part’s One and Two; an estrangement from reality and an obsessive compulsion to attain that which occupies at least a 35% of my brain in seemingly unattainable in reality.

The Summer 1969 and Beyond

How do we comprehend the beauty of a four letter word…LOVE? We don’t, and isn’t that wonderful? We live it and allow its overwhelming effect to enter our hearts. In many respects that is what I feel when those moments of adoration enter my life, and in the summer of 1969, you became the embodiment of all things real and unreal in to me. As a male, you excited me beyond belief. You “filled up my senses,” and for the first time, I touched physically, what only my spirit had known. I was transformed once again by another moment in time that washed away all my doubts and fears of who or what I was.

In the summer of 1969 your magnificent display of love for me, my adoration and love of you, in a mutual encounter of discovering our sexuality, I experienced another life changing moment much like the one from childhood. You were, to a day dreaming young man, the materialization of femininity I saw in the statue. It would not be wrong in stating my heart skipped a beat in awe of your beauty when I saw you for the first time naked, as it still does to this very day. Though my life up till that point existed in a wasteland, like the 10 year old, it was a flash point that would change my life forever.

Now in reading this I am sure you will say; was it love or the personification of love to fill my need of the feminine within myself? If I am to be truthful, at the time it wasn’t that it at all, but given the idea behind this essay, there may be some truth to that, though 41 years on, I continue to fall head over heels for “YOU”.

Until I met you dear, the feminine I understood was only through visual contact and emotional anxiety, as well as that which is contained within my soul. Thus in feeling and touching both in reality and that which was only an imaginative experience, my life was complete and made whole. Of course being the physical male I am, the erection switch did its work wonderfully, replacing the feminine angst I had lived interiorly with to the masculine of physical reality. On those warm summer nights of 1969, the switch being on most of the time, any trouble I might have had in the past with gender identification had all but disappeared. You did move my heart, you were the one, and you made me male to the fullest extent of the word. I fell in love with you as a male with no thoughts of what I had lived with in my life up to that point. All through that summer and well into the years after our marriage, my mental health was stable, though on occasion a helpless sadness would overtake me when I saw your nude body before me and those “moments” would infiltrated my sense of maleness and husband with a longing to be that which I was not created to be.

I believe it was my sense of responsibility as husband and father that dampened much of the feminine aspects I yearned for in the past, during those early days of marriage. In taking on the roles we were taught by parents and society alike, responsibility trumped any feeling of thinking of oneself in favour of children and family. In any case, though I remained in my mind male/husband/father first and foremost, I was always aware in restful moments, of my alter-ego when I watched you move about the house so gracefully with the children. But I can honestly say in general; Life Was Good; Fatherhood Was Good, Sex Was Good and our life was Good as well.

So how did I get from there, to where we are now? I can at this point only speculate, but one thing is very clear to me; the return of my anxieties in the late 70’s or mid 80’s was not caused by anything you did or said, it was simply nature masked by my gender madness, edged on by economic issues and my own sense of failure in my responsible as a father and husband by the dualism that increasing seemed to occupy my mind. I have no doubts that in never having resolved the issues from childhood, I was never mentally fit to face the challenges before me as a physical adult, for I continued to remain in the (CHILD) and the price of that immaturity would take its toll on both us.

The 1980’s

By the mid 1980’s life rolled along with the exception of a few pumps. The music world and performance schedules kept our minds off the problems we were encountering for the most part, and in general one could say we were the average family with church, vacation etcetera. However the stress of children, job and debt, by the early to mid 80’s, my ever dominate immaturity of mind, my sense of being the man of the house and all that was entailed in that role, was soon eclipsing the emotional effects of love and replacing it with cold reality. Not wanting to disappoint your father, not wanting to disappoint you, it began to work away in a similar fashion as was the case in my childhood. You and he were the (ADULT) and I remained the (CHILD) and I was definitely NOT OK once more.

Now in hindsight, one could call this mindset foolish and beyond childish and I suppose it was all of that, but that was how I felt regardless. I was more immature than you saw. You believed in me and that was wonderful, but unless I believed in me as well, life was a return to running a marathon away from me. I can honestly say much of what took place was the pressure I had placed upon myself for failing to live up to the expectations I had expected for myself and believed in what you saw in me and the economic downturn and our indebtedness began to disassemble our marriage.

In thinking on it now, though everything I explained in Part One and Two was true with regards to my emotions of gender dysphonia, life was soon becoming unravelled as if I was caught in a whirlpool that I could not survive. I should have sought help, both for my rapidly collapsing mental condition and our indebtedness; but in never being strong mentally to begin with, time seemed to stand still and I became paralyzed. Frozen in disenchantment and frozen with no words to explain where I was to you. I was caught and trapped in to two worlds contained in the one body.

Though it may appear that I write as if I was unaware of your emotions at the time, I have no other way of expressing the huge disappointment I was to myself or I thought I was to you at the time. And neither do I have any others words to articulate the mental breakdown that was occurring within me. Throughout it all, though my actions spoke otherwise, my love for you was unwavering and though I blamed you for many of the events that unfolded, I have no words to describe the mental break down and its resulting irresponsible behaviour that gave you such heartache. My shame returns as I write this and I truly wonder how it was we stayed alive or even how you gave birth under such stress. So as I continue this narrative, please understand I loved you when we met 1969, I loved you when our life was in turmoil and I love you now.

1990’s

I have no reason to disbelieve, that by the 1990’s both our lives had reached a very low point and life was becoming intolerable for both of us. How did we survive dear or to put it more precisely, how did you survive? God how I hated the world I found myself in at that point: unable to support you emotionally, unable to express my love for you, unable to solve the moments of my “other” when they took over or understand their meaning or life in general, I decided to end it all with my first attempt at suicide.

I got myself dressed in the middle of the night and drove South, determined to run the car into the first transport truck I came across. But as luck would have it, (or an angel) I didn’t see one at all. After arriving there, I turned around and pulled over to the side of the road and cried my eyes out, totally broken. It was by anyone’s description a mental breakdown of major proportions. The only thing that kept me alive after that was my music and my occasional trip to your dresser drawer, both of which took me out of the real world.

Heart Attack and a visit with the feminine divine
I will speak only briefly on this subject, as it is really all a blur to me now, but I will include it here for chronological purposes. I believe, due to my weakened disposition and mental condition, it all was stress related. Hiding miss “nameless,” my constant wrestling with the role I could never master for myself in husband and father all took its toll. As I mentioned above, music was what took me out of reality and I was so thankful for it.

Encounter With The Divine

I am not sure if I told you or not, and this will surely sound contrived or as if I am making this up as I go along, nonetheless it is true. The best piece of music I ever wrote and the one that has sold continually since the day I wrote was written on one of those occasions when you were off to one of Highland Game’s events with the boys. It was as I recall, somewhere around the late 1990’s or maybe early 2000. In any case it makes no difference. I was outside mowing or doing something to stay busy when I was once again struck with an overwhelming sense of feminisation, only this time I simply stopped mowing, felt it run through me and carried on with what I was doing. I WAS OK.

Later on that evening I sat down and the keyboard and began to write a melody that I was humming in my head throughout the day. Once again, the emotion washed over me and went. You may say I was simply being my old sexual self and up to no good, and I did go upstairs, went to your dresser and the cloths on the rack and found something to wear. (God dear you really do have to get your wardrobe updated and get something for your legs……..not a skirt in sight to this day LOL)

In any case, I was not, as you may suspect, in any sexual frenzy at the time as I seldom are when I wear these cloths, but just went about my business as usual. I returned to the keyboard and began to write most of the tune in hardly anytime at all, and during that wonderful moment in time I wrote, “Send Out Your Spirit Oh Lord No. 2.” How did this happen? What allowed me to write not only a melody, but a perfect piano accompaniment and orchestration as well in no time at all? The usual struggle with such a piece would take weeks! Was there a connection between the two sources of energy that exist at that time? Maybe, maybe not, but as I have told many afterward, I felt it was not me writing but someone else, for I had struggled so clumsily many times with arrangements in the past, yet this flowed out of me as if I was Shostakovitch himself.

And so we leave the tremendous effort we each made to find or place in life; a life we each thoroughly believed would last lovingly and without interruption until reality or better put, the man you married cast a pall over the one he loved so much and became lost, not by intention, but with an illusion and misapprehension of something greater than he could ever understand; an alter-ego and a fantasy of a husband who would be perfect in every way. Both became an illusion that could never stand side by side with reality.

Intimations of Solitary Insanity – Part Two

PART TWO

The Discovery Explored

In meditating upon the difficulty I have had with this self-identification issue, the thought of the seminal conscious moment of discovering this mystery, suddenly came to me to the other night. It was as a picture of nude females in a statue found in those old American encyclopedias downstairs around the time when I was about 6 or 7 years of age (?) that the phenomenon took place.

I cannot fully grasp what actually happened dear, or even why this picture held such attraction for me. I have ruled out sexual excitement as I was far too young to have entered puberty and especially so since I was far too undeveloped and constrained at that age by a restrictive Catholic and religious mindset to think otherwise. Today, in a much older frame of mind and still sensing the reverberations of  ”the moment” and though as decisive it may have been, I will allow an attempt at reasoning on your part however; that it may have been instigated by other factors, such as genetic (given my brother Stephen is a homosexual) or perhaps religious, given the environment I grew in. Whatever that event was, it happened and though I always knew it was real and continued to believe and feel it as real I have at the same time always deny it and truly believe my low self-worth as a male is tied to that instant in time.

It was that split second flash that saw me in a way, wilting and succumbing to an unknown force; a dichotomy which was the emotional struggle I felt and feel between the divine in the feminine I aspire to find, and the mortal and earthiness I am as a male. It was a powerful revelation, completely freighting for a small child I think and have no doubt, as with my mention of chemicals in the brain; altered some neurological area which controls our actions, emotions and thought of who we are as gender defined humans and which at least for me, will remain unalterable. Nonetheless, at the risk of repeating myself, it was an immediate empathy with something that was beyond understanding and by coincidence, as I dwell on it now, was also the time that my sense of alienation also began; that sensation of not being me I have always felt as I so often have told you; though I was aware of the physical maleness of me. I am now positive the two were linked at that instant and became the troublesome experience of a lifetime.

Encounters With the Divine – London 2010

I should also mention, though not as intense as the first, these moments have on occasion reoccurred throughout my life where I suddenly am outside my conscious-self and I become – dare I say- female both physically and mentally, though in saying that, I cannot with any certainty refer to it as such for as a male, how could I know what that is to be female? But whatever it is, psychologically I sense it to be female in my male understanding of the feminine, which I will grant, is limited by my masculine humanity and what the sexes perceive of each other.

In any case, there was one recent occasion of these “out of body” experiences in which I felt the intensity of the childhood revelations revisited, which I will relate:

It occurred when we were in England last year. There was a moment in the street very near the Charing Cross Underground, where among the noise and hubbub of construction, I suddenly and without warning, literally felt a presence, a feminine presence calling me; one which was having such a strong effect on me I thought it was the beginnings of another heart attack. I say this as there was a moment during one of those episodes where I must have died I think because I could see myself lying in bed.

In any case, we were walking hand in hand and I recall seeing only females around us. I’m sure there were males as well but all I could see were females smiling at me. As I said, I was holding your hand and unexpectedly I sensed I was a part of you and them. My body seemed to become something I was unfamiliar with and my heart was beating crazily and the sound of the street was replaced with a chorus of voices.  It was a very strange feeling as you can imagine where my knees suddenly were giving and I was being lifted up by some powerful force, almost like life was giving way. I remember very vividly that all I wanted was too simply to stop and cry tears of joy. Yet despite the noise of the city around me I heard nothing. I was in heaven, yet there I was on Charing Cross Road in central London. I was unconscious but conscious.

THAT was the feeling that occasionally has surfaced within me throughout my life and exactly how I felt when I was experienced the picture I mentioned above. It was eerie, and so unexplainable, like a cosmic-hole opening to let me in (and I don’t even watch those kinds of movies.) If there is a moment of rapture, surly this is what it must be like; a feeling of being part of many voices within me. Its effects sometimes last for only a short time while others remain with me for days ending in depressiveness and silence, being unable to talk yet going about my daily exchange with you like a man in a body cast, trying to carry on without showing it or pretending it isn’t there. How do I explain this to you? I can’t! And that in so many ways has been the commutative barrier that has crippled our relationship.  

Whatever the case may have been, as I became older, this psychological imprint was always, to some degree, present in my psyche in one form or another and though life’s experiences may have dampened the emotional effects, the imprint remained nonetheless. In any case my childhood became in many respects a daily experience of uncomfortableness with lonely school life and relationships that would eventually exhaust me of ever having a normal childhood; not that the environment I grew up in was anywhere near normality.
So I will end this here and finish Part Four- Our frustrated life of non-intimate contact and the effects of my Prostrate Surgery.

Intimations of Solitary Insanity – Part One

It has been some time since my last post and though life has become much more livable thanks to a renewed marriage (we celebrated our 41st this year) and a greater understanding of each other as individuals, there is still the issue of my Androgyanic/Transgender mentality that lingers and often imposes itself like a shadow over an otherwise loving relationship. This issue has always been just under the surface and after so many years of having such a profound impact on our marriage I have resolved to address it once and for all in an adult manner between husband and wife.

Thus last month I began a slow and much thought out approach to writing essays to my wife that would, I hoped, open the door of my soul to my beloved and relate to her the history her husband’s anguishing struggle to maintain his sanity has a fe-maling man. I am happy to say they have been well received, though I must admit in the feedback I have been given, both in open dialogue and letters in return, doubts and uncertainties remain that will require much more communication for her to attain a comfort zone in her understanding of the man she loves.

By posting this correspondence her, it is my hope that others who may be struggling within a marriage with these issues as well  may find a connectiveness that will assure them life can be a wonderful journey when adult minds enter the adult room of dialogue and empathetic understanding.

PART ONE

Introduction

My dearest G,

Given our conversations of late, and the mess, real or not I have made of your life, I feel it necessary to clarify the one dilemma we seem to have left of the residue of these last four years, that being; my endeavour to blend the visible with the invisible through cross-gendered attire. In writing the following essays to you it is my desire to alleviate any fears you may have formulated regarding this activity, and partly to erase the causes of my letter of January 2008 in which the frustrations of my mind and that of our marriage were expressed so harshly.Though I understand much of the issues that enveloped much of my life leading up to that latter have been addressed and are now thankfully in the past, this one dilemma still remains and that is the reason we must confront its affects on our marriage if we  are to go forward.

I do understand these fears you have dear of your fe-maling man as I think they are only normal emotions which naturally arise when ones partner engages in attempts to cross gender lines we are all programmed by constructs in one form or another to fear. However I would ask that you please bear with me one more time as I try and articulate what may be going on here if not for you, at least for me.

I would also hope that given your concerns of where this may lead, it will assure you that though my thoughts on gender have a times provided you with problems, they have been a great burden as well for me all my life, for though in knowing I am not a transsexual by any means, I think I am a “trans” something, which the aim of these essays will make an attempt at solving, though I suspect words will never be enough to state it clearly.

I admit that it is an oddity of character yet in order to understand it, it must be made clear that whether it be seen as an undesirable trait or not, it is something I have spent a life time trying to hide, simply because it has been with me so long and remains both a joy and a stigma which was, I have no doubt, one of the root causes of much of our marital problems. Thankfully we have reached some common ground and have come to an understanding, perhaps reluctantly for you, that it does not, nor will it affect who we are as a couple, nor does it interfere with any definition we may use to describe our marriage. Perhaps in making an attempt to study the history of how this came about, how I have struggled with it, and how it affects my life with you and yours with mine, it will add additional insight and understanding for us both.

An Apology
I should begin with an apology that has come far too late I’m afraid, yet deserves mentioning nonetheless. Being respectful, especially in a marriage, of others and their individual likes and dislikes is a difficult matter when shame and deep conflict abounds in ones soul. Remorse, confusion  and embarrassment I think, force one to focus on oneself and in so doing, forges a wall that isolates one from their loved ones and that in a nutshell, was the experience of the I’M  NOT  OK – YOU ARE  OK mentality I carried forth for a life time. Far too often in the last four or five years our writings and topics of discussion have been about me and my problems and only out of a attempt to remain sane have I made time for your struggles and your experiences. You have never said or mentioned it, but living with the boring, narcissistic person I was and perhaps remain to some extent, must have been tremendously difficult.

Having said that, though this letter is once again about me, I hope you recognize it as an explanation of the character of the person you live with, rather than another self-centred attempt to impose himself on your emotions as was the case so often in the past. I have learned, thanks to you dear what love is, and it is not a whining, self-centred person who is uncaring for anyone but himself. With this in mind, as my abnormal tendencies are inclined at times to interrupt the flow of understanding we both require to maintain a good relationship, I feel they need to be examined and an honest attempt made to explain them in order to resolve any doubts or uncertainties that may arise for you to be comfortable in the relationship we now have. So let us begin at the beginning once again, for I have read much about this subject since my last letter on the topic and perhaps it will shed new light on this old story.

But before I begin, I should make one more apology I think, for it will appear that though I begin this story on a negative note, in as much as it may appear I do not give you your due when it comes to this subject, it is possibly the residue of a life that never unfolded as it should and as well as on the occasional reference to anxieties you have expressed on the topic and not your ability to empathize or accommodate some understanding with it.

Still, making accommodations for your childhood, religious and social upbringing being so vastly different from mine, as well as your complete understanding of yourself as a woman; I suspect no matter how detailed my attempts to articulate myself on this matter it will, if we are honest, be virtually impossible for you to fully grasp the impact or the resulting affects of my mental journey have had on how I attain a complete relationship with you, myself, society, friends or family. By that I mean, as loving a person as you are, any attempt made to understand the neurotic mind of a male transgressing gender lines will be a difficult task to undertake, for if I do not fully understand it myself how can you? Thus though I write this with all good expectations in mind, nonetheless, all I can clearly wish for is that together we can find a way to absorb it into the loving marriage we now have and work out any uncomfortable difficulties that may arise to maintain it.

Childhood
To the best of my knowledge it all began in the earliest days of my life and like the constructs of social conduct and knowledge we all learned in growing up, somehow those unspoken understandings of life presented a small boy with an enormous conflict of reasoning, in as much as what I was told was true as unquestionable facts, I recognized were not true about me and thus became the start of a complex, lonely and dis-attached life that has never been resolved.

As we have discussed, the imprint of events from early infancy as explained by Thomas Harris in I’M OK, YOU”RE OK, have an impact upon our lives whether we realize or understand it or not, and imprints left on your mind and mine on which to build a health mental life began in vastly different environments on which to construct our own personal  I’M   OK’S.

Though we met, fell in love, married, had children and built a life together for more than 40 years, for many of those years, like my father in some respects, I hid much of my personality and identity due to these imprints which developed in low self-esteem and self-doubt, largely because I lacked the skills of communication to solve the huge difference between what most accept as normality and the “normal” I knew in myself. So it was that out of fear of making a mistake of in exposing this (un) normality I knew was true about myself or being laughed at, I believe it gave others the impression I was superior to them which was as far from the truth as could be.

Even within our relationship dear I am afraid to say, a fearful self-centred awkwardness took place as a result of this inability to articulate how I felt my partitioned emotions burdened me, which in turn became the pathway to depression in not allowing me to give you full access to the mind of the man you married which if one correlates all the information found in the essay, must surely have been the unseen forerunner of problems to come. That is not to say I did not have the choice to make things different by transforming my life by ADULT thinking; I did, but apprehension repressed and restricted my expression of love for you. In any case I do believe for the most part, in these last two years I have done much to make changes to my abysmally low self-esteem which hopefully will help heal the scars of the wounds I inflicted upon you.

So let us proceed to study how a childhood awakening of self, (and I mean that not in a trite way but psychological way) which has impeded much of our lives together, became an adoration and mental persuasion for the feminine and how that psychic disposition manifested itself into a neurotic love of the female gender and all its attributes.

The Beginning of Troubled Mindfulness

In dwelling upon the influences of childhood one may see moments, even as early as 6 or 7 years of age, where one sees things as an ADULT, but is not allowed to express them out of fear of denying the parent their own sense of parenthood. By that I mean children may at certain moments in their life become aware of the world and their place in it (ADULT) and understand intrinsically that what the parent states does not apply to them as individuals. If this is the case, the child is presented with a problem because society, religion and the parents values (all representing the PARENT) in playing such a dominant role the little one’s life, give cause for the child to remain in childhood out of apprehension of  I”M NOT OK  but YOU’RE OK and thus conforms his or hers sense of self to the norm out of the anxiety of doing wrong. Thus life, and those moments which are so important to establishing the growth of the seed of a conscious self which allows the child to know the world around them and most importantly, the knowledge of who she or he is, is stymied by their none-sense of their own identification and begins life in the mind-set of YOU”RE  OK  -  why am I  NOT  OK?

As I will explain later, one of these moments fostered within me a clear understanding that I did not fit the prescribed norm at all, and in that unexplainable split second it became the psychological dilemma that was to affect me for the rest of my life.

I think it important however how you view these words, for whether you see the affects of that moment in my life as simply a childish surrendering to a pleasure of childhood or not, it is real and remains real and is a part of my psyche whether I choose it to be or not. Like my arm or my leg being attached to my body, however difficult it may be for you to fathom, it is this misunderstanding of my internal make-up that fosters my guilt and shame, as well as your apprehensions when you once said “get over it.” It is so deeply ingrained in my awareness of who I am, try though I may to conform to the standards of this world or become the person you thought you married  I can’t, thus the embarrassment and feelings of social deviance attached to it because it separates me from you.

The transformation from CHILD to ADULT was, I expect an easy one for you because the environment you grew up in provided you the space in your mental development to evolve to the ADULT I wish I could be; particularly regarding this aspect of my persona. By saying that dear, I do not wish to imply a justification for not making this evolution in my own life or to make excuses for perhaps remaining in the CHILD. But again, the worlds in which we grew up were the foundations on which we stand today and as such perhaps will always present conflicts of individuality that will or will not sustain us.

A Moment in Time

Harris said: “Through the Adult the little person can begin to tell the difference between life as it was taught and demonstrated to him (PARENT), life as he felt or wished it or fantasied it (CHILD), and life as he figures it out for himself (ADULT) “

I had a moment of being an ADULT as Harris indicates and though I have always wrestled with the impression I knew of myself, until recently I was remaining in the CHILD but I am now becoming more comfortable with it. As I child I believe it was suppressed by parental institutions and parochial schooling,  and more and more I think it had a profound influence in how I came to see it as formulating within myself I was “NOT OK” and as a result, an emotional fault in my psyche that stayed with me for much of life. Again, though I understand this is no excuse to move on and be done with it, I maintain that though your understanding of what was learned or experienced from your own childhood in developing the person you have become; it also in many ways affects how it influences your understanding or inability to understand me and the lasting influence my awareness of myself has had on our relationship.

Mystical
So let us get to the heart of the matter and describe what I discovered that mystically imprinted itself upon me. It was in its simplest form I suspect, the sudden realization that females were different from males; but that being said it was far more than an awareness of the anatomical. It was in many respects, a moment of identification in a “spiritual” sense, of the feminine divine that enveloped me, something which one reads about in biblical moments of transformation or in mysticism and if I could state that was all it was, I would be very happy to live with that explanation and as silly as it would appear, that very well may have been the case, even with ordinary people like me.

Whatever the matter, I honestly believe dear, there are moments in people’s lives that have such a profound effect on them that it changes their life forever and it can take place at any age and at any time and at any moment, ordinary or not, though some rarely remember these moments if they occur in childhood and if they do, are not inclined to discuss them for they are unexplainable. It was an experience which tended to go beyond the realm of the ordinary consciousness a small boy could understand and as such, no doubt a fearful moment as well.

I will never know dear what it was to be honest, only that it was a case of keen awareness of that which is unreal and unknown and untouchable, and as such kept me in the CHILD whether I understood it or not. But it has occurred to me at times; perhaps it not me at all that remains in the CHILD, but only those who cannot understand the idea of such an experience, for they perhaps have never experienced such a moment in themselves. Perhaps there are many people who having been touched by such an event in their lives and standing outside the norms by which the world see as natural, their unnatural experience causes them to never mention it.

Regardless, its impact at that very moment  has made me who I am today which sees the mystery I speak of as a part of my emotional structure, unlike yours or other perhaps, where I have an atypical sensitivity to something other than me occupying my brain. It is, as I have attempted to articulate on many occasion, a conscious awareness in my psyche whether a cognizant choice or not, moral code or not, social norms or not, which finds me some days much more attuned to it than others and yet as a fairly intelligent person, why or how these emotions remain as they have, is a mystery unwinding yet a problem to be solved because of social norms and our own sense of fear in transgressing them.

Crossdressing and Philogyny: A Retrospective of My Life

It seems somewhat ridiculous to me now, but until recently the question of why I, a normal heterosexual male, would desire to don the intimate clothing of a female was a very vexing issue for me and one that took the better part of half a century of musing and brooding, not to mention robbing much of the energy out of life and marriage, to become comfortable with it.

I do not believe I will ever discover the complete answer to why this preoccupation occurs, though I believe I may have struck upon a plausible one in the word Philogyny (the love of women) which I see as having shaped and formed much of the subconscious thought I possess regarding how I view and relate to women. I would also venture to say, that though I had devoted much time and space on this blog to what I now see as a perverse believe that the feminine was the dominate aspect of my identity, I have come to the conclusion that illusionary words such as crossdreaming and autogynephila that I once saw as defining my character, no longer apply to my transvestic activities. Suffice it to say I have come to terms with this quirk of my personality, which essentially is a deep fascination and enchantment with all those elements I see as beautiful in femininity and “femaleness” that elude me as a male.

But sigh…… I also believe it is much deeper than a single word can ever describe. I am quite sure there are a host of other psychological issues that underline my extreme infatuation for femininity that are manifested both objectively and subjectively in my mind and though do not solicit a denial of my masculine nature, nonetheless fog my ability in gaining full access to the understanding of why my own masculine nature is seen as being so inferior to that of the females around me.

In my musing on this subject, I have become convenience that some males like myself, are born to live in an in-between world and though I cannot offer any scientific proof, my reasoning tells me some abnormality must have taken place in my mother’s womb which has presented me with the ability to function comfortably within my given sex, yet nonetheless also presents me with a disquieting sense of concern over a fathom presence of “another” within.

For some men I think this presence provides them an overwhelm complexity of emotions which though felt from an early age, appear to gain strength as they get older while others, simply recognize and accept its existence and learn to deal with it. In both cases however they look upon females not so much in a sexual fashion, but more in a heartfelt sense of awe and affinity for what they truly feel within themselves are a shared personification and embodiment of the essence of femininity they so much admire!

In any case one thing should be made very clear regarding my own sensitivity to this issue. This dysphoria that I speak of is in no way associated with autogynephila, transgenderism, transsexualism, nor even the medical definition of transvestic fetishism as a sexual stimulate. Periodically dressing in feminine attire places no irrational demands or strains on my masculine identity, nor should it presuppose I desire to be a woman, for that would only be a physical falsification of the reality of my spirit and my soul. Hormone replacements and surgical intervention may offer a way to join mind and body for some who were misaligned at birth, but for me that would only be a disastrous attempt to mask the “chi” of my true self. For it is my sincere belief that most of my dysphoric anxiety in the past was in fact an internal fight to unite my known and accepted masculinity, with this disquieting presence of the feminine which I perceptibly feel is part of me and which I believe I can now characterize as Philogyny. It is a world that kindles within me an effusive adulation for females and in turn spawns a complex sense of inadequacy when juxtaposing my banal masculinity adjacent to the physical and mental aspect of womanhood, and though I can safely say I am comfortable with that aspect of my personality, there are ramifications, subtle though they might be, which have unconsciously put undue stress on my marriage which I will explain in my next posting.

I would be very interested to hear from others with regards to the ideas expressed in this posting. Please forward your comments

NOVEMBER 19 – Resolution

For six months my blog has served as my psychiatrist couch, at which time I delved into the many aspects of my previously depressive existence. With my wife taking the active role of confessor, councilor and psychologist, and through hours of dialogue and hundreds of messages and letters  between us (300 pages) I have reached a point where I no longer concern myself with the anxiety of those moments when I breach the social line of gender. When I don the rose-coloured glasses of my imagined femininity, it is just that and nothing else, and certainly not an action I may perform that the American Psychiatric Association need concern itself with.

The reality I have come to understand as truth is, I am neither the transsexual nor the transgendered individual I once thought myself to be, but simply an ordinary heterosexual man who, in awesome wonder of the human female, occasionally falls short of his inherent masculinity by setting his imagination free in flights of feminine fancy. Perhaps on a spiritual level, as a musician/composer and performer, these moments of imaginative contemplation are the hidden energy that fuels my journey through life and thus being part of my soul, should not be seen as I once thought, as problematic or a dysfunction of my male character.

For those who have followed this blog, you will have no doubt observed much time was spent in the beginning, in needless and self-centered anxiety, guilt and apprehension over a belief that in breaking a social taboo as innocuous as clothing, there was something wrong with me and in the face of failing this test, I assumed I should seek help from a medical professional. It never materialized of course, for there was always something deep within my psyche that told me otherwise – who among us has never wondered at some point what it would be like to a member of the opposite sex. Though troubled and anxious as I was that my wondering and wandering had taken me much further than anticipated after my mind became sequestered by the word autogynephilia, I also knew I was as sane and well adjusted as anyone, yet even in this knowledge, the guilt prevailed.

That being said, once communication was opened with my wife, the only person who truly matters and would be affected by my behaviour, did it dawn on me that through her guidance, love and ability to see beyond these aspect of guilt I saw in myself, did a transformation take place once she made it clear that she saw all these aspects of my character as only another colour on the palette and canvas of the man she married and was by no means, a threat to her or our relationship. It was this release, this sense of losing the thought I was somehow contravening some moral and sacred code of manliness and the laws of marriage, that I managed to relinquish the fear I had felt for 64 years of my life.

It should be noted at this point, my moments of transgressing the gender line do not see me donning make up or the outer appearance of feminine identification of wigs etc. as I have seen in so many. Nor did I desire to embarrass my wife, my family or friends in any public way by contemplating an adventure outside the confines of my door. Where the true struggle always resided was not with appeal per se, but in believing by crossing the imagined line of right and wrong, guilt was always accompanied  by these actions..

I trust I have come a long way from dispelling this unjustifiable belief, for when these events do occur, I see them only as a natural combination of curiosity, normal male heightened sexuality and a passion for the female body; the latter being I will admit, the heart and soul of my once misdirected angst in questioning my created gender. What I now see and understand, by engaging in an activity such as crossdressing, (not to be confused with Jack Moley’s crossdreaming) is it does not imply that I am any less the man I know myself to be. Playing baseball or hockey and putting on the uniform does not make me a major league player, anymore than driving my car at an excessive rate of speed makes me a Formula One driver. I may receive a rush of imagination in doing so and may dream of the same, but reality will always speak otherwise. Likewise, performing my everyday tasks with my right arm may make me wish I could do the same with my left, yet does not suggest I should have my left arm surgically removed and replaced with another right arm to facilitate my desire to make life more comfortable.

What I now see and understand, by engaging in an activity such as crossdressing, (not to be confused with Jack Moley’s crossdreaming) is it does not imply that I am any less the man I know myself to be. Playing baseball or hockey and putting on the uniform does not make me a major league player, anymore than driving my car at an excessive rate of speed makes me a Formula One driver. I may receive a rush of imagination in doing so and may dream of the same, but reality will always speak otherwise. Likewise, performing my everyday tasks with my right arm may make me wish I could do the same with my left, yet does not suggest I should have my left arm surgically removed and replaced with another right arm to facilitate my desire to make life more comfortable.

Donning female appeal does not mean I am abnormal, gay, transsexual or a transgender person. Appreciating the awesome wonder of the female does not require a surgical change of sex – for the one organ that cannot be surgically changed is my brain, the one instrument that formulates all these emotional aspects of misappropriated gender and the one identifying organ of gender I would have to live with regardless of the body it was contained in. What it does imply however, is an honest change of mind in viewing ones sense of self and ones sense of the sensual and erotic, as well as ones sense of dealing with ones desires in seeing the beauty and sensuality of women. Something not to be seen as objects to possess or a gender to be magically transformed into, but simply as a natural emotion found in most men in the overwhelming adoration they find in the female form and countenance.

October 14 – Through Male Eyes

A Male Illusion?

Can a male relate to the world as a woman? In viewing a recent blog in which this thought was expressed, it has occurred to me that this outlook, though conceivably a valid emotional understanding by some, is perhaps I would argue a mistaken sense of reality.

I feel for those men who may confuse desire with reality as these are emotions that I have felt at one time or another. Though I have found many of the reasons for my dyslexic emotions stemmed from childhood and I have been able to come to terms with them, they remain with me none the less as an aspect of my personality. I know that though I will never transition (for many reasons,) the thoughts of being a woman, or possessing the physical attributes of the same, remain with me and no doubt will remain with me forever.

That being said I also wonder how it is that transvestic behaviour as expressed by many in cyber-space can develop to the point whereby one begins to consider that one is female. This manner of thinking could, if one thought on it in an absurd way, be equated to one wearing a superman costume and then believing he can fly.  I intend at some point in the future to foster a discussion on this thought of uncomplicated crossdressing versus using this application to become female, but will leave it for now.

Many men in wrestling with their lives as heterosexual males, purport to relate to the world as a woman; my thoughts tell me however that though we as males say we relate to the world as women, it poses the question; can we? Can we actually understand what that entails when viewing the world as undeniably and categorically male? Of course if one looks as females in the manner of gender-feminist theory that would have us believe there is no differences between the sexes save for reproduction, a hypothesis I have trouble with, perhaps one would.

However I find myself continually asking the question; how is it possible that one can relate to the world as female yet acknowledge the fact they live their life as males? Surly this is the ultimate emotional incongruity. For how can a heterosexual male (assuming he is not transsexual and struggling with both sexualities) relate with a psychological identity that is not one’s own?

I Experience You, and You Experience Me

R.D. Laing, the Scottish Psychiatrist in his book The Politics of Experience made an interesting comment regarding the experiences we believe we know of others lives which I think has a practical application on the topic at hand when he stated:

“I see you, and you see me. I experience you, and you experience me. I see your behaviour. You see my behaviour. But I do not and never have and never will see your experience of me, just as you cannot “see” my experience of you. My experience of you is not “inside” me. It is simply you, as I experience you. And I do not experience you as “inside” me. Similarly, I take it that you do not experience me as inside you.” (Quotation marks mine)

My experience of you is not “inside” me. This is the heart of my analysis and has, as I have come to understand, sums up the plight of many engaged in the so called autogynephilic world, a world I put to you, if not found to be a medical condition, is a world of self conception and illusory.

I should state here, that my use of the word autogynephilic is perhaps misplaced, as my understanding of this phrase has yet to settle unreservedly in my mind. None the less I will use it as a metaphor in my writing for the condition of heterosexual males who desire to become women, or desire to append their physical male bodies with the attributes of a female. In any case I believe there is a flaw in this autogynephilic thinking as I try and reason my way through the labyrinth of facts and fiction regarding this phenomenon.

As seen by my reference to R.D. Laing; being male limits our view of the world and predicates immensely on our desires for a physiological female identity. Again if I may paraphrase Laing, “the autogynephilic’s experience of women is not “inside” him.” Males are not females no matter how much their logic believes this to be true and therefore, due to his set of biological and hormonal criteria which, coupled with the set of instructions in which they have been given and codified by society and culture on the meaning of their masculinity, will always shade and disfigure their perspective of how they view or imagines womanhood to be.

Focusing on ones female aspirations to see oneself as a woman is somewhat distorted because the paradigm itself is a result of a preconceived “male perception” of womanhood as seen only through male eyes and therefore, something we have no real awareness of, or affinity to.

It is I should think, an idea of womanhood that will always be confined to his response to a visual/sexual image of women; something R. D. Laing said which again I paraphrase; “I as a male cannot and never have and never will see as women’s experience.”

By our conception as males in the womb of our mothers, it will never allow us to truly relate to the womanhood of our imagination and therefore fails in many ways to offer a valid understanding of womanhood other than that of a “reflection” of what we identify or believe womanhood to be. This pattern of thinking becomes a form of self-deception in many respects and much along the line of the philosophy of Franz Brentano’s “Intentionalism” being simply defined says – “The things we think about may or may not exit, however in thinking about them they become real to us whether they are true or not.”

In my own struggle with is phenomenon, I came to some realization that my desire for a female body was nothing more than one of irrational idealism and impracticality; an escape as it were from the adult world in which I was living. Coming to this conclusion does not dismiss the desire at all as it is something that is part of my psychological personality. However it was I believe in part due to its use as an escape mechanism which comes about as a result of never having come to terms with my past (facing my shadow in Jungian terms) and therefore remained a source of fear and angst well into my adult years.

If those who do not wish to change their sexuality, (i.e. transition) yet at the same time thirst to attain something other than who they are, than these aspirations for the inaccessible become an endless source of self-induced mental masochism, in as much as ones hunger to possess an image of “physical femininity” i.e. vagina, breast, hair and shape, will always remain an unattainable dream and totally unrelated to the hormonal female of reality. One’s desire for a physical female body is simply a desire to capture an essence of womanhood as seen through male eyes and thus in many respects, discounts the realism of a menstrual cycle, or pregnancy, or birthing or menopause or any other physical or mental aspect of the female reality of life and dare I say, becomes an Imitation of Reality.

These feelings are no doubt very real to many as they remain to a certain extent with me; however I see the autogynephilic’s desires as an attempt to emulate a physical image of the female rather than a psychological one, even though his preconceived idea of womanhood appears to be real. However I don’t feel, while being confined within our own physiological make-up as males we can come anywhere close to understanding what real womanhood is as we cannot experience it within ourselves. We may try to replicate it by wrapping ourselves in all the trappings of femininity to ease our yearnings for this image, but in possessing little “real” knowledge of what it is to be female, it becomes much like fulfilling sexual loneliness by making love to a plastic blow-up doll. It fulfills our needs at the time but never comes close to the real thing.

October 13 – Renaissance – Part Three

In response to my last posting I received further comments by my friend Jack Molay to which I would like to address here. Jack’s response to my posting contained four valid considerations that he believes I should reflect upon, to which I have offered further thought on this subject.

Jack states:

1. [Perhaps]…She has been a transwoman all along, but has suppressed the fact out of fear of becoming ostracized and losing his loved ones. Getting closer to the end of life, she is realizing she is losing her only chance at being herself.

I have no doubts there is great trepidation in the minds of these men at the thought of losing their loved ones. However I find it difficult to believe, in approaching life’s end, it affords one the only opportunity be oneself. It is my belief, if they have not figured that out by now, it is I sense not going to happen as a woman either. But in either case, they cannot have it both ways without suffering the consequences of their actions or desires.

There are simply too many aspects that take place in the long span of one’s life lived in the roles of our biological sex, to suddenly say one is a transwoman. As I infer in my post, one is or one isn’t and I do not believe there is any half measure here. Without any clear evidence of transsexualism these emotions are, I believe, an uncontrolled fantasy based on a fanciful notion of what women are and no doubt supported partly, if not entirely, by the exhilaration of participating in the act of transvestic behaviour itself.

2. His inner woman gets stronger throughout life. She is the anima demanding to be heard in the second phase of life, when some of the regular “life-building” is over. Jung argued that all men had to get in touch with their feminine side later in life. Maybe some has a stronger feminine side than others, meaning that they psychologically and spiritually speaking actually are women.

I will not pretend to be an authority on the psychoanalytic theories of Carl Jung, but I do not view Jung’s theories of our subconscious mind as a means test either; like taking ones blood pressure to determine one’s health. That would be a total misappropriation of the basis of psychoanalysis reasoning. However, given what I have read and believe I understand; I consider Jung’s concept of the anima, a notion of an archetypal value which is part of our collective unconscious or as he put it; “…it is universal, and is of an impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited.” As I see it, Jung saw this collective unconsciousness acting as a balance in human psychology that facilitates an understanding of the world outside one’s normal ego state.

Jung’s idea on this subject was not in finding that one can “choose” at any given moment in one’s life, to materialize the anima in a physical manner, for it is always contained in our subconscious and therefore is not, nor can be a conscious act of attainment. It is as he said, of an “impersonal nature” and merely affords a way for us to understand our environment and those other individuals who dwell in it. In other words a means by which we balance our conscious and unconscious minds and the balancing of one’s life psychologically. It is this balance which is exactly what I have been trying to articulate; something I do not find taking place in the lives of these men.

By immersing one’s thoughts into an idea of being or becoming someone they are not, or to allow those thoughts to take control of one’s sense of self is a recipe for disaster. As a matter of fact Jung himself stated as much when he said, “Over-awareness of the anima could provide a premature conclusion to the individuation process of the life cycle.  A kind of psychological short-circuit may take place; in identifying the animus at least provisionally with wholeness of one’s ego. Though this element can bring life-giving development and creativeness to the personality, over-awareness could provide petrifaction and even physical death”

One cannot be locked in a room for one’s life with only oneself to think and care about. We humans need the interconnection that society provides to discover the world around us and to realize the potential of the person we are in reality. In other words our friends and loved ones reaffirm our reality daily and hourly throughout our life. Having experience an inner loneliness for most of my life, I can honestly state that introversion and conceptualizing ourselves to be someone other than the life we have lived into our middle age and beyond, does nothing to enhance the world or our place in it, but simply destroys the life we have been given.

3. He is not a transwoman, but by reaching the second part of his life, the end of life becomes more present. The fear of life and the fear of death makes the feminization urges stronger as they give some kind of calming emotional relief.

I truly am bewildered by this concept Jack. Inferring that being female affords one the opportunity to face death easier, or that women do not have a fear of death as men do is a very an unusual concept to say the least of what men and women experience. Either of course would be irrational.

And fear of life? If he has already passed much of the cycle of life as a man and has not understood life in that respect, how could he ever understand life by becoming a woman with all the wonderful and beautiful complexities experienced by that sex?  From my own experience, this calming emotional relief you speak of, can be obtained in crossdressing itself. It does not have to be a public statement, it can have the approval of a spouse and that can be enough. Fascinating concept though!

4. He is simply getting older and wiser. He has always set others before himself. Now that the kids are out of the nest he decides it is time to give more room for his own needs, and he knows that he is — in fact — a she. Staying unhappy won’t help anyone.

Again I say with all due respect Jack; the existentialist mind-set of ME as opposed to US is very prevalent here I fear. US is the true value of living within a society. ME, throughout human history, has never proven too have been an advancement towards a human ethos. Having lived a life as a male for decades, fathering children and all the responsibilities demanded of one’s time and energy as a man (married with children or not,) one cannot simply decide “it’s my turn now” and turn their back on loved ones, nor turn the thermostat of repressed sexuality up a notch to fill the vacuum of an empty nest. Nor can they I believe, mollify a childhood event that may have been, as you like to phrase it traumatic.” Living ones dreams requires far more than US being replaced by the thought of ME. If others are to be considered, as mentioned in paragraph one, what becomes of them in this ME self-consciousness?

With respect to wisdom; I would trust he would become wiser as that is the anticipated hope we all aspire to arrive at after passing and living through the stages of life, or “the life cycle” that Jung refers to; the cycle that provides the growth of personal human development towards an advancement in our knowledge of humanity held within in human history.

However, regressing backward in time to our childhood as a stepping stone to advance a theory of one’s identity as opposed to the acceptance of one’s reality, is not becoming wiser but simply remaining in the attitudinal aspect of one’s youth and does nothing for one’s human psychological advancement towards to self-hood

October 11 – Renaissance – Part Two – ABNORMALITY

“Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth……….   Ludwig Börne”

In my last posting I ended by stating that I had, in learning to live with all my foibles and eccentricities, discovered the world was less afraid of me than I was of myself. Having been blessed with someone who was able to tell me her love transcends any misgivings I may have of myself; it afforded me the opportunity to relieve my mind of the belief that I was somehow an atypical male human being.

It should be made very clear however, that having learned to cope with my emotions and eccentricities, it did not eliminate them entirely, but it went a long way towards allowing me to see that as a father and a husband, I was not the threat I once perceived I was to my situation in life.

Having recently returned from London in the UK, I can testify that eccentricities such as mine abound on the streets of that great city and though remaining an exception to the normative rules of social conduct; crossdressers, transvestites, or any of the other supposed “genderisms” that dwell under the umbrella of unconventionalism do not per se, subject society to traumatic panic as much as their fears would indicate. This is especially true when ones singular life of introspection is juxtaposed with the wider troubles of the world we live in today – i.e. famine, wars and economic uncertainty.

Transvestism is in itself a harmless activity and no doubt gives rise to thoughts,  allowing one to speculate what life may be like if one were female. Transvestism only becomes abnormal when like the world I found myself in, it becomes an overwhelming sense of discomfort to our innate understanding of normative moral behaviour, or becomes a barrier that inhibits our ability to interact with the community or society in which we dwell by overzealous self-interest with one’s existence. This is especially true if one is in a relationship, where self-centered activity alienates one from those we purport to love.

In any case, though my crossdressing led me to a darker world at times of dreaming of the female I could never become, I am mystified by viewing the number of sites devoted to taking these thoughts further than a desire to don the clothing of the opposite sex and into full-time angst and preoccupation of possessing a female body.

Some would no doubt object to my criticism of this overindulgent behaviour but none the less I must pose the question. Where does the jumping off point begin that sees one transcending from  crossdressing to actualizing a wish for one’s physical body and spirit to become female?

How is it that after living life as a male for 30, 40, 50 years or beyond in many cases, within a family environment, a job or community network, without any proven transsexual variance, one can come to believe one is really female and not male? How it is that replaying the normal historic events of childhood sexual misapprehensions,  gives rise to aspirations of womanhood? How it is their everyday 24/7 life and activity as a male, consumed by family (husband and father,) and  interaction in society are too be dismissed in an act of total obsession of this one thought…..” I am woman, hear me roar. In numbers too big to ignore, and I know too much to go back and pretend….?” – Helen Reddy

It is not my intension to be flippant about this. I understand full well there are real problems faced by some in their despondent self doubting with regards to their sexuality. I mention it solely for reasons I suggest is purely of self-interest. If one is not a true transsexual, if one has not from their infancy perceived their sexuality has been enclosed in the wrong physical body, than one’s misguided sense of being uncomfortable with their present status in life is more often than not, simply suffering from an undeveloped sense of self.

By that I mean, in persisting to dwell in the past and never leaving their childhood memories (as most would ascribe to,) it affords them the perfect  opportunity to reason, their past experiences of an easily bruised ego, inflicted in their childhood, was a verification of their present state of mind and therefore, instead of maturating into adulthood, allows them to carry their past into the future and expressing it as a form of discontented, teenage melodramatic angst.

In his book I’m OK, You’re OK, Dr. Thomas Harris supported the theory of Transactional Analysis, in which he stated “we decide on a life story very early on in childhood, and then live the story out of that awareness as adults. It is a pity that this ‘life script’ causes us to selectively redefine some events and at the same time disconnect ourselves from others as we attempt to make the reality we have come to perceive as truth, fit the story or script we are presently are writing of our life based on childhood experiences.”

In other words, by ones ongoing rationalization, the script of life, being drawn up by a few hurtful remarks and events taken to heart during  a time of an undeveloped sense of self or ones sexuality, becomes comes the bedrock for the remainder of one’s life story. Choosing the selective hurts from one’s youth and disregarding all the other experiences that drew one in to ones adult years; family, friends and all the other history of one’s life is discarded for a mistaken belief one is a women and not a man.

Rightly or wrongly, there is nothing wrong  with anyone desiring to wear the clothing of the opposite sex. There is also nothing wrong with speculating what it would be like to be a member of the opposite sex and there is also nothing wrong with indulging in a fantasy of being a woman. However, there is everything wrong when those actions and desires interfere with our relationship of living in a human community and especially with those with whom we also aspire to share our lives with.

Can one honestly expect to make the transition to womanhood, no matter how medically or scientifically possible, and expect those expectations be embraced by our loved ones, simply because we desire it to be so? This is the ultimate existentialist act!
“I create my own universe by my thoughts, actions and choices, therefore I am.” It is a sad state of human development, but I see this existentialist philosophy very much alive and well on many of the blogs I read today. An erroneous contention put forth by the existentialist philosophy, that contends that man creates his own human essence or spirit through a series of choices and actions that fashion his sense of self and through those actions create his own definition of humanity. By stressing the individual aspect of one’s existence as the most important element to ones happiness, some will discard their human nature of living and interacting with others of their species, for an unreal, individualistic form of existence. i.e. I was born man but wish to be a woman, therefore I live only for my aspirations and no one else.

Again I state there is nothing wrong with desiring to be anyone we want to be, and that includes the practical manifestation of the autogynephilic’s desire to be a woman. But unless proof be issued or claimed that one is transsexual, or one can coexist with one’s fellow human beings while fulfilling these desires on a level that does not apply discomfort to others; one’s actions will always be seen by society AND I’m afraid by the individual indulging in such thought, as abnormal and as a struggle to maintains one’s sanity, and that my friends is a pity

October 8 – Renaissance – Part One

“I feel it is the duty of one who goes his own way, to inform society of what he finds on his voyage of discovery.” – Carl Jung

Though I feel I have made considerable progress in understanding the complexities of my sometimes “divergent,” personality by writing this blog, there is still much that remains unexplainable which I continue to seek answers to, or if not answers, at the very least a window into the reasons one acts or behaves as one does. My wife, the one person responsible for the renaissance that has taken place in my life, has often told me the search for answers to my existence is predominantly a male characteristic; questioning and investigating the “why” to things that do not always necessitate answers or with some, do not require an answer at all.

It is, as she has told me, necessary to wonder and find meaning to one’s life as part of the journey of life we all travel. But it is a fruitless task to become so self-absorbed with one’s existence that one avoids accepting the realities of that existence by dwelling in the deceptive and illusory world of introspection. A world in which one loses ones natural human ambition for social contact and thereby loses the surprises life has to offer to each of us.

This simple truth took years for me  to discover – that so much of our lives can be lost when we engage in unrestrained egocentrism. When the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard lamented “man has forgotten how to exist because he no longer participates in reality; he just thinks about how to participate in it, and becomes caught in a world of the abstract.” I believe he must have been thinking of the plight of many who have lost the will to live the reality they are and instead, dream of that which  they are not.

It seems a sad fact of modern technological life, that in having all the tools to communicate, or engage in a pursuit of harmonizing our lives with the world around us, we choose to communicate only with ourselves by choosing to remain in a cocoon of reclusive introspection. This form of self-centerness can be much like a cancer to our subconscious mind; creating a world of alienation and loneliness that eats away at our sense of reality. When we get trapped in this dreamlike world of the ego, (something I once heard defined as mental masturbation,) we misplace our capacity to form true relationships with those around us, by replacing the reality of those relationships with a fantasy of self-illusion.

The truth I came to realize was the only place where I could truly BE was in the present and the here and now and not in my past world of hurts. By engaging in this form of thinking, it followed that I could not dream of the future either, as engaging in such behaviour would lead, as it did, only to a speculative experience of reality. In choosing to believe, what the self-centered ideology of introspection told me, that I was living a gender dysphoric existence, I repudiated everything that was real in my life; wife, family and who I was born to be. Replacing that world with a mistaken belief that my sensitive nature and my affinity for the feminine was my true nature, (which were both the antithesis manliness) for the search of an unattainable physical embodiment of femininity.

The similarities of my erroneous thinking I see in many blogs today. There are, undeniably those who live and breathe a life of gender dysphoric loneliness. However, given the plethora of sites devoted to the topic, one must ask how many of these are truly transgender, or simply suffering or clinging to the repercussions of a childhood like my own, that saw my sensitivities as a male become a self-exiled exclusion from boyhood because of my belief that I must be  female. This belief was so overwhelming, in a time long before the advent of gender research, that looking back upon those episodes of my life of female proximity, it is no wonder I was in such a mess all my life.

Childhood in the 50’s was not easy for the likes of a fatherless son and by the time the 60’s rolled around, though the sexual revolution may have been taking place all around me, my instinct for female companionship began to be blurred with what I felt was my inconclusive sexuality. This incongruence with the reality of my masculinity, despite a marriage and five children, was a constant source of alienation for my inability to reconcile the emotions I felt and sought to express through the self-absorbing behaviour of crossdressing and transvestic behaviour. Though these emotions remain with me today, it has only been though the love my wife has for me; a love that accepted the burdens I had carried, the secret life I lived and who believed the man she had married was more afraid of himself than she was of him, that set my mind in a different direction and allow me to retrieved my sense of wholeness within the realm of reality.

As a follow-up to this posting I intend, in the coming days and weeks, to examine this aspect of introversion, my shadow as Carl Jung called it, to better understand how I have arrived at the point have reach today.

It may appear to the reader, that I have achieved this renaissance fairly easily, since I have only been writing this blog for a mere four months. However I assure you that though I continue at times to stray into the dark hole of introspection and despite my wives love and understanding of the man she married; facing and coming to terms with the cauldron of secrets that belay my public persona was never straightforward nor was it ever as uncomplicated as it would seem. In any case, regardless of how I got here, the world as my wife has told often, was less afraid of me than I was of myself.

September 11 – Acceptance Part 2

My friend Jack recently made a comment regarding my blog Acceptance in which I made the following comment: “There is no law that I am aware of that prohibits anyone from taking on the opposite gender we were born with, yet we perceive there is and in doing so become sullen in our approach to life.”

Jack has taken mild exception this remark by saying;
But there is. Kids learn it in school when they are called sissies, and transgendered people learn it in their neighbourhood or at their workplace when they are called faggots and perverts. There are laws that are not found in law books, but in the social mores of your tribe. And some of those laws are unnecessary and need to be changed.

I understand very well what life is like as a child, though again I believe Jack and I are still looking at this from two different angles. He focuses on the trans-community while I can only speak for those of us who are not in that struggle.

In any case, I grew up with all those things  Jack spoke of, as did my brother who is gay, as did many in the gay community I know as friends and acquaintance. I am also aware of so many others who in their youth were told how stupid they were, or how they would never amount to anything and any other number of cruel and insidious put-downs many received as children. It is true that in many cases an individual, who has to deal with horrendous circumstances as a child, may have more difficulty negotiating the later stages of life than someone who didn’t have these challenges early on. However do we sustain those hurts and keep them alive by holding our life and society hostage to our memories? I would hope not! Sooner or later we must grow into adulthood and stop allowing our past to dictate our present behaviour. Many people, who are prone to living within their fantasies and desires, use things that have happened in their past as an escape; a method to justify or permit certain behaviours to continue to disrupt their lives because they do not want to let go of the pleasurable illusion autogynephilia is.

However, life affords many opportunities for us to see there is good and there is always the chance that somewhere along the way if we are open to it, the strength of the human spirit can be ignited and allow the deficits of early life to be overcome. When those moments occur, we pass from decrying our childhood and stop living in the past and enter adulthood. When this occurs we  learn to deal with our particular doubts and uncertainties in a non-childish manner and accept, as Dr, David Rico says, the “Five Immutable Facts that come to visit all of us many times over…. That life is not always fair and that pain is part of life.” Only when we achieve this point in our lives, or perhaps better stated, IF we choose to aspect this as our true reality, will we be able to live a peaceful existence.