Interesting discussions about gender, sex and transgender lives from the Crossdream Life Forum

Selected discussions on gender variance and being various shades of trans from the Crossdream Life forum.

I have had the honor of being  co-funder and moderator of Crossdream Life, a discussion forum for all kinds of gender variance. There are a lot of insightful, clever and compassionate people over there.

I will use this post to draw your attention to some selected threads that bring up new and interesting perspectives on the many variations of transgender, nonbinary and queer existence, as well as on what we might call cigender gender variance.

Keep in mind that me linking to these discussions here is not an endorsement of everything that is said. This is the point of having a discussion forum like this: That members can, within reasonable limits, present ideas out of the ordinary.

A Transgender Typology and Unification Theory

Koloa has presented a very interesting alternative approach to talk about trangender identities and lives that avoid the kind of pathologization we find in many other models.

Are we just protecting cis people and the binary again?

A discussion about the gender binary, gender identity and gender expression.

Jemimah, the transgender Hemingway and more

A complex and multifaceted discussion about sex and gender, which also includes information about the transgender side of Ernest Hemingway.

Transgender and nonbinary news curation in social media

We provide links to the latest transgender and queer news and resources through our social media channels on twitter, tumblr, Flipboard and Telegram.

Anyone who wants to keep track of the transgender and queer debate – whether this applies to culture, politics, health or models of understanding – is facing a serious challenge as to how to find relevant news and quality content.

Search engines like Google are becoming increasingly irrelevant in this respect, as few of us go beyond the first two pages of search results and because so much of the content delivered is produced by anti-trans and anti-queer activists.

This is why we need curators who can identify and share relevant content with those who want to know more about trans, nonbinary and queer issues.

Here's the problem: There is, to our knowledge, very few who provide such services. Reddit provides some input of this kind, but it is limited to the interests of those active there. Sites like Pink News, The Advocate, LGBTQ Nation, and Washington Blade provide a lot of useful information, but they are – for obvious reasons – focusing on their own content.

This is why we are providing transgender, nonbinary and queer news curation in several channels, the latest of which is our Transgender World Telegram channels.

Here are our our transgender and queer news sites and accounts:

Trans Express on twitter.
This is our most expansive and up to date news source. We post some five to ten links of relevant content every day.

Trans Express on tumblr.
On average we publish one new post presenting relevant transgender and queer content every day.

Transgender News on Flipboard
Here we present much of the same content as on twitter, but in a practical newspaper format.

Transgender World on Telegram
Telegram is our newest offering. We realized that there were no serious transgender news sources on this popular platform and decided to provide our own. This channel will present selected links from the sources mentioned above.

Photo: Alessandro Biascioli

Yes, Ernest Hemingway was Transgender

PBS has made a new documentary
on Ernest Hemingway which presents their
gender variance. (photo by Yousuf Karsh)

Ernest Hemingway is know as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.  Hemingway is also known as one of the most macho male authors of the time. Yet, there is overwhelming evidence that the great author was some shade of transgender. 

Before we start: I am using the term "transgender" in its most common meaning here, i.e. as an umbrella term for all kinds of gender variance. 

We cannot know how Hemingway would have identified today, in a time that  is a bit more forgiving towards queer and trans people than the world Hemingway lived in. 

However, I will argue that given all the time they spent on trying to come to the bottom of their own gender variance, this was much more than a "fetish" (even if Hemingway, like most people, had their kinks). What we are facing here is a more fundamental nonbinary or transgender  identity.

Given that I do not know how Hemingway would have presented today, I stick to gender neutral pronouns.

My main sources on Hemingway's transgender nature are Mary V.. Dearborn's book, Ernest Hemingway: A Biography, and Nancy R. Comley and Robert Scholes'  Hemingway's Genders. (References below).

Fetish or identity?

Keep in mind that few of the authors who have looked into this side of Hemingway are transgender themselves, which often leads – as I see it – to some misinterpretations of Hemingway's  gender.

For some the very presence of erotic crossdreaming or sexual role play, immediately leads to the term "sexual fetish". This is a term that is actively used to invalidate trans people. 

Mind you, I am not saying that fetishes do not exist. Most, if not all, people have them.  But it should be pretty obvious that a transgender identity is likely to express itself through sexual dreams and desires as well. Instead of using fetishes and sexual fantasies to dismiss transgender identities, we should use interpret them in a transgender and queer context.

Interview with a Love Shy Crossdreamer

Last year I was contacted by a young male to female crossdreamer from Britian, who wanted to ask me some questions about how to cope with being gender variant. The conversation ended with me asking her a few questions. 

Photo: Hramovnick

(I am using female pronouns on her request).

The more I learn about crossdreamers, the more I realize that this is a diverse group of people. That is: You cannot make up a profile that fits all crossdreamers, in the same way there is no pattern of personality that fits all women or all men, all Europeans or all Asians.

(This also means, of course, that crossdreaming most likely is not the end result of one particular type of psychological event.)

Still  some crossdreamers have more in common than others. Some, for instance, tackle their gender variance by isolating themselves socially.

Q: We have been chatting a bit about crossdreaming and loneliness over at facebook, and I would love to share some of your reflections with my readers. Could you say a few words about where you stand today?

Jennifer replied:

"I live at home with my parents and I work, I really want to cross dress and find someone who truly gets me but I'm worried about being mocked etc."

And that sentence sums up, as we will see,  Jennifer's major challenge quite nicely.

Q: I know that for you crossdressing has been one way of expressing "your other side". Could you say some more about what role crossdressing plays in your life?

Jennifer tells me that for her crossdressing has been an important outlet for crossdreamer feelings:

"Cross dressing helps me be the real me or Jennifer as I've come to know myself. It's like I hear her calling me to express who I really am and I love it, I need it."

Yes, I'm Barbara

I asked Barbara over at Crossdream Life for permission to republish a version of a blog post she wrote for her own Crossdream Life blog (which is restricted to CDL members). It is a poetic presentation of a psychological breakthrough as regards gender and gender identity. This is not uncommon among transgender people, although the way this takes place may vary a lot. Barbara is a male to female crossdreamer.

Sometimes transgender doubts may be resolved by
a psychological breakthrough. (Illustration: sezer66)

Guest post by Barbara

It started with innocent restless obsession with all the things gender :) Old beliefs about two-spirited people were shaken, new ideas were written on the water, I was consuming page after page of  information in the vain hope of reaching the unreachable.

All this was be accompanied by one single black metal band: Mgła. Their great albums were the only music that I could stand. Excellent melodies, dark atmosphere and nihilistic lyrics; this combination was exactly right. A good dose of nihilism was a good thing; 

If I were to come to some conclusion, it had better not be an artificial construct, not a made-up position. So aggressively questioning everything except feelings was a right thing to do. Day after day tension built, thoughts buzzed in my head like a swarm of locusts.

The main question was: Who am I? Am I two-spirited? Am I female? Or is it all is made up and I just have a fetish (I’m a fetish, how funny)?

Is that true, that female part of me, or is it a defensive construct? What if the male part of me is an artificial construct? (Giggles) It feels like a right thought. What am I wearing? Male clothes? But why? Am I a female to male crossdresser? (more giggles) Ok, I’m not bad at passing as male (Did I say that aloud?) 

The Feminization Project - Fetish or Being True?

My good friend Cheryl has put up a post over at Crossdream Life that should be of interest to many of the readers of this blog.  Cheryl reflects on her own life as a male to female crossdreamer, and on her struggle to find some balance in her life without transitioning. 

What I like so much about this post is that she speaks plainly about many sides of what it means to be both crossdreamer and transgender, in a world which rarely welcomes such longings and fantasies.

She touches upon crossdressing, crossdreaming, gender identity and the use of hormones.

Here are a few paragraphs on the effects of using estrogen:

"During the time I was on hormones I really did become very consumed by appearing as Cheryl. I was a kid in a chocolate factory. I was determined to experience the gender crossover in as much honest detail as I possibly could. This caused a shift in what was at the centre of my arrousal mechanism. I no longer felt that cross gender presentaton or the thought of it carried an associated sexual component any more. I was more sexually interested in the more mundane or normal. 

"On trying to express the sexual side of crossdreaming I could not get to the top of the mountain any more and no longer understood the original attraction to those thoughts. Yet I still pursued the cross over of gender presentation, and was on the conveyor belt of transition in 5th gear. I was happy mentally and perhaps realised that this was as good as it gets. I encouraged myself to come off hormones which was rather difficult as they make you feel good. I realised fully that this was no fetish driving me but a forced deep within myself wanting to continue."

Cheryl's conclusion is that this is much more than a fetish, but that being transgender does not automatically mean that you can or should transition. If you cannot, then what do you do?

Cheryl presents her approach to this problem.

You can read the whole post over at Crossdream Life.

Finding Yourself Through the Crossdreamer Community

Last year I contributed a chapter on the crossdreamer community to a book on trans people and the internet. The book project was ultimately cancelled, so I have decided to publish the paper here instead.

Crossdreamer liberation is about self-acceptance
Illustration: Molay/andresrimaging/Risto Viitanen

Gender variance is breaking cultural and social taboos. This is the major reason being trans and gender variant can be so difficult. By breaking taboos, you risk losing your friends, your family, and the respect of your community.  

There is another group of taboos that are just as strong, the ones associated with sexuality. Communities world wide police desire, forcing people into very narrow boxes of normalcy. 

Crossdreamers exist where the violations of the norms of gender and sexuality intersect. Crossdreamers are men and women who not only dream about being a sex different from the one assigned to them at birth, but who have erotic fantasies about this.

This is the story about how crossdreamers started organizing online communities to explore their identities and sexualities. This is not going to be an “objective” and “disinterested” article. I have played an active part in building this community. Nor do I claim to represent all crossdreamers.  

Note that I use the term transgender as a broad umbrella term for all gender variance. According to this definition all crossdreamers are transgender, even if they are not all suffering from gender dysphoria, and even if only a minority of them are transsexual.

Psychological repression

Some transgender people become what I have called “splitters”, people who manage to divide their psyche in two, leaving one part for the inner sex and one for the outer. I have been aware of my female side since I was nine years old, but I managed to keep this side of me separate from my conscious gender identity as I grew up. I thought of myself as male, even if I considered myself a “failed” one.

Resources for Partners of Transgender People

Crossdreamer and transgender resource directory

Home | Articles | Resource sites | AGP Debate | Books | Science | Forums | Blogroll | For Partners |  Dictionary | Essential posts

When I found out my husband is a woman inside, I started googling. I wanted to find information for people who have a transgender spouse, forums with support for partners of transgender people and stories of couples that had found a way to make it work. Here is what I have found.

When the one you love is trans. Image by Kannaa.

By Sally Molay

Blogs

• She Was the Man of My Dreams (About the male-to-female transgender experience from a spouse’s perspective.)
• enGender/My Husband Betty (Helen Boyd's journal of gender & trans issues.) 
• Accidentally Gay (By a man in a same sex marriage after his wife transitioned to man.)

Forums

• TransFamily 
• Spouses of Transgender Community Group
• Engender_Family
• The My Husband Betty Forum
• Spouses of Transgender
• Mypartneristrans (on Reddit)
• Soffa Trans (on Facebook)

The Problem with Arousal

Guest writer Joanna Santos argues that it is time we liberate ourselves from  models that reduce gender variance to sexual arousal.

Trans people are liberating themselves from the
stifling theories of the past. (Photo: moodboard)

By Joanna Santos

I have lived all my life with the knowledge that something was different about me. By the age of 4 or 5 years old, although aware that I was a boy, I had an interest in playing with dolls and trying on my mother’s shoes. But quickly enough I learned to suppress those desires because the messages I received were that I was not to indulge in these activities.

Since then I have come full circle and after a long period of reflection and angst (during which time I kept an almost daily blog), I have come to return to the state where I began my life. I have returned to being as true as I can to a nature that was always there but within the confines of the reality that I now live as an ageing adult.

After having read every book and every article on the subject of gender dysphoria I could get my hands on, I finally had to concede that there was not going to be a conclusive answer regarding the way I was made and why I was drawn to being a female. I had to finally accept without question that it made up part of my natural wiring and nothing was going to change that.

My gender expression need not be tied to my natal sex. No matter what society expects of you, it’s best to adhere to an expression that fits your comfort level and your self-image. This lesson was the hardest to learn because I came from an era where there was little latitude or permissiveness on that front. One was a male or one was a female and that was that.

Things have changed considerably since then.

We are now on the cusp of a revolution which I am still young enough to be able to witness first hand. Yes the same old arguments exist among the academics who will argue about Blanchard’s two typologies of transwomen and which one is more genuine but for me that is now entirely irrelevant because the true question is: “in which form do you feel most comfortable to live out your life?”

Chevalier d'Eon: Early Transgender Role Model

Fencing Match between Monsieur de Saint-George et Mademoiselle La
Chevalière d'Éon de Beaumont at Carlton House on 9 April 1787.
Engraving by Victor Marie Picot

By Sally

Chevalier d'Éon (Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont) was a French soldier, diplomat and spy who publicly lived as a woman in 18th-century London. 

Portrait by Thomas Stewart

D’Eon lived from 1728 to 1810 who appeared publicly as a man for 49 years, although during that time d'Éon successfully infiltrated the court of Empress Elizabeth of Russia by presenting as a woman. For the last 33 years, d'Éon lived as a woman.

The Chevalier d'Éon claimed to be assigned female at birth, and demanded recognition by the government as such.

King Louis XVI complied, but required in turn that d'Éon dress appropriately in women's clothing. When the king's offer included funds for a new wardrobe of women's clothes, d'Éon agreed.

How I found out my husband is a woman inside and what happened next

Photo: Robin Beckham

Buried Treasure, a Love Story

By Sally Molay, Guest Blogger


Different but the same
Where I stumble across the surprise of my life

"He is no different than he was yesterday. He is straight and he loves me."

These were the first thoughts I put on paper after I found out that my husband, Jack, is transgender, a woman in a man's body.

I was literally dizzy for days, and very frightened. But I was also eager to find the truth about the man I loved and I was overwhelmed thinking about how lonely he must be carrying this huge secret, scary on his own, how frustrated and sad. My heart was breaking for him. (Pronouns are difficult in this case. I use the ones Jack use.)

This is how I found out: I stumbled across his pseudonymous twitter account, which linked to a blog authored by the same pseudonym, a person living as a man, but perceiving himself as a woman. Some days later, I gathered the courage to read more and learned that, in his own words, he was attracted to women and happily married. Knowing this gave me a measure of security.

But so much remained unresolved: If I confronted him, would he freak out? Would I freak out? Would I still be attracted to him, knowing there was a female identity inside the body of the man I loved? The blog went back seven years. Could I live with the fact that he had kept this from me all that time? Could we make it work?

From MTF Crossdreamer to Transsexual Woman

Those who have followed this blog post for a while, know that I believe that there is a wide variety of crossdreamers, some of them transsexual, some of them not. Most (?) crossdreamers and crossdressers

Photo: fatchoi/iStock

do not feel the kind of deep misalignment between body and sex identity that transsexual men and women experience. But some do, and we can all learn something from them.

Heather made some comments about her crossdreaming here at this blog some two years ago. Now she is back as the woman she has always been. She has given me permission to publish her new comments as a blog post. The headlines are mine.

Jack

Guest post by Heather Roslyn

I have been thinking that perhaps I should come back and post a follow-up here as it has been some time since I originally posted my story on this thread July 3rd 2012. A great deal has happened in my life since then.

The AGP/Crossdreamer descriptions were something of a stepping stone for me, a language of self-discovery that helped me come to terms with who I am and have always been.

Beyond repression

After a lifetime of hiding, I finally came to terms with the truth that I had been transgender all my life, repressing it for years with what can only be described as unbearable guilt and self-loathing.

In the months following my original posts here I began gender therapy for the first time in my late fifties. Despite the fear and resignation I expressed in my earlier posts, it gradually became clear that I could not go on repressing my true feelings. After once again nearly taking my life one day, I finally concluded that I would have to transition to female to survive.

On Getting Your Identity Affirmed (The Rayka & Jack Crossdreaming Dialogue 3)

Last year I had a very interesting email conversation with Rayka, a young Iranian girlfag and female to male crossdreamer. This is part three of our edit of that conversation. Part 1 can be found here.

How do you get accepted for who you
are, if there are no words to describe
who you are?
(Photo: Stockbyte)

In this part we discuss the difference between gender roles, gender traits and gender identity. We also look at what the lack of visibility, recognition and affirmation means for you mental health.

(About words: A crossdreamer is someone who gets excited by the idea of being or becoming the other sex. A girlfag is female bodied person with a strong affinity to gay male culture and who may imagine herself being a gay man with a gay man).

A difference between MTF and FTM crossdreamers

JACK
At first I believed that the main difference between MTF [male to female] and FTM [female to male] crossdreamers was the FTM focus on gay men and gay relationships. In MTF erotica the relationships are just as often male vs. female. It as if there has to be a male involved for many MTF crossdreamers to feel affirmed as woman in their fantasies. If you ask them, however, whether they are truly attracted to men, they will say no.

I have made myself "a sexual orientation test", asking selected MTF dreamers the following: "Go down the main street of your town. At the end list up the people you remember. If the majority is female, you are predominantly gynephilic [sexually attracted to women]."

This applies to me, as well. I am attracted to women and not to men. I do believe I have a preliminary solution to the puzzle, though, and I got it when I read a wonderful lesbian love story written by a MTF crossdreamer I know. The story is widely read by lesbians. I doubt very much if a man would be able to write such a story if he didn't have some kind of inner female identity. The point is that if you remove the erotic part, the crossdream that remains is the dream of a lesbian romantic relationship.

Maybe you can come up with an explanation for why FTM crossdreamers do not need to be a man with a woman in their fantasies to have their masculinity affirmed.

Words for what we are

I realize that it must be hard for you to even try explain what you are to your friends, given that the only terms are lesbian and trans. I have tried to use the term "straight gays" to explain this to non-trans friends. Sometimes it works, sometimes it causes even more confusion.

How it feels to be a girl

You wonder how it feels to be a girl with a girl´s emotions. I can completely relate to this. "How can you possible now how it feels to be a girl?"some people ask. My reply is much like yours: "Í have absolutely no idea how it feels to be a man!" But I do know what if feels to be human, and have found that most of what it means to be a man or a woman is something we have in common.

Man or woman or both? (The Rayka & Jack Dialogue 2)

Last year I had a very interesting email conversation with Rayka, a young Iranian girlfag and female to male crossdreamer. This is part two of our edit of that conversation. Part 1 can be found here.

If anyone have doubted the existence of female to male crossdreamers, this conversations should end that misconception.

Adam Lambert, girlfag icon.

In this part we discuss to what extent childhood experiences and hormones may shape our crossdreaming, and how to find word that can be used to describe who we are.

(Apropos words: A crossdreamer is someone who gets excited by the idea of being or becoming the other sex. A girlfag is female bodied person with a strong affinity to gay male culture and who may imagine herself being a gay man with a gay man).

What causes crossdreaming: Childhood, hormones?

RAYKA
I just wanted to know more about the theories about social and psychological causes of crossdreaming. I heard that getting raped at childhood might cause this condition. Well I experienced this! They say for a female, being raped may cause her hate her femininity so she wants to be a boy cause it feels more secure and less vulnerable! 

And there's also my hormonal problem. My body produce more testosterone than normal and causes some problems. Once my mom told the doctor that I'm so boyish and she said many girls with this problem are like that. As I read, it's also so common among FTM [female to male] transsexuals! 

I wonder whether this problem makes me boyish or me being boyish causes this problem! Something else: I have a butch lesbian sister! So many variations in a family, aren't there? But I have read somewhere that it actually makes sense, like, it's something in the family's genes!

Childhood crossdreaming

Illustration  of Iranian woman, based on photo
by Harris Shiffman. This is not Rayka, but
she could have been.

Childhood crossdreaming huh? Reading the trans people stories, I always see that they knew it in their childhood, but,well,I wasn't aware of this until about about [a couple of] years ago.

But I remember that I always (and right now) imagined the life of a boy (which I then realized was me!). I have  liked feminine boys since an early age, but don't remember if it was before that abuse incident or not.

Sex identity versus gender identity

You write: "I guess I am 'gender queer', but 'sex woman', if you see what I mean."

Exactly the same here (a male sex but an androgynous one); that's why I said I'm not transsexual. But, you know, I actually would like to transition to some extent. I always dream about it: top surgery and a low dose of hormones that gives me a deeper voice!

What irritates me the most is the idea that maybe my identification is not true; I just can’t be sure about anything…

Hey, seriously, why are FTMs  so much less visible than MTFs [male to female crossdreamers]?!

The Rayka & Jack Dialogue on Crossdreaming 1

Illustration  of Iranian woman, based on photo
by Harris Shiffman. This is not Rayka, but
she could have been.

Last year I had a very interesting email conversation with Rayka, a young Iranian girlfag and female to male crossdreamer.

She is inquisitive, she is intelligent, she asks hard questions and makes very helpful observations.

Because of my discussions with her I have expanded my own understanding of crossdreaming, crossdressing and  transgender issues. Most of all she has helped me map the similarities and differences between female bodied and male bodied crossdreamers.

The following is an edit of that conversation. I publish it here with Rayka's permission.

(About words: A crossdreamer is someone who gets aroused by the idea of being or becoming the other sex. Personally I believe crossdreaming is a symptom of  some sort of broader gender variance. A girlfag is female bodied person with a strong affinity to gay male culture. Girlfags may imagine themselves being a gay man with a gay man, and many -- but not all -- of them are crossdreamers).

Am I transgender?

RAYKA
I can say I'm a FTM  [female to male] crossdreamer but don't know what it all means; does it mean that I'm a transgender? I just mark both options when they ask about gender in a formal paper, I just feel like it but It's so confusing.

It's like you try to keep a hidden identity for yourself but you attempt to give up in the routine of everyday life.

JACK
I consider us transgender, as in "gender variant". We are outliers on the gender spectrum.
Some crossdreamers are truly transsexual, (i.e. with the inborn sex identity of the opposite sex), while others are not, and I am afraid you are the only one who decide for yourself. That might take time.

I guess that one way of finding out who you really are is to see if you suffer from gender dysphoria (i.e. deep unhappiness with one's biological sex and gender role).

If you do not feel distress because of your fantasies and you feel at home in your female body, I would say you are not transsexual. If you feel a deep longing for the life of a man, and this longing causes distress and unhappiness, you might be.

It seems to me you are troubled by it all.

As for myself, I do experience gender dysphoria, but for various reasons transitioning is not on the table.

On gender dysphoria

RAYKA
I'm reading the references you provided. about the dysphoria. Well, I would do anything if I could just cut off these irrelevant mounds of flesh on my chest. I really cant connect to them, they're stupid! I bind them all the time but they are still there! 

You know the image I have of myself  is of a a man with a flat chest, guy's wear and  short hair (just like me!). That person looks like a sweet boy but I'm not sure what's his gender!

Crossdreaming : A Push Towards a Self Authoring Journey

On the road to self authorship (photo: Hemera/Photos.com)

In this post, guest blogger Janikest argues  that crossdreamera needs to develop narratives that makes sense of their lives.

Only then can they find ways of navigating a society that shows little understanding of what crossdreaming is about.

"Crossdreaming : A Push Towards a Self Authoring Journey"

By Guest Writer Janikest

Crossdreaming is a complex phenomenon with a wide variety of features and expressions from one individual to another. One thing is quite recurrent though : to the casual "fetishist" to the dysphoric "twilighter", crossdreaming is likely to come up with a host of issues, ranging from love shyness to chronic or permanent anxiety.

Wandering around forums and reading books on the topic has also allowed me to notice another common feature : The people who seem to be able to handle crossdreaming (be it finding an outlet, trying to figure out what it is, or chose to transition) share something in common. The present text is aimed at understanding what they share.

A Frank Discussion of Autogynephilia

Being sexy feels sexy. That is natural.
Photo by Vladimir Nikulin

"Hopeful Kylee", a transseuxal woman videoblogging over at YouTube, has published a fresh and frank post on autogynephilia that should be of interest to all crossdreamers, also those who are not transsexual.

As me, Kylee simply argues that women too get aroused by the idea of being sexy and being attractive, of feeling desire and being desired.

How can a pre op transsexual woman not get aroused by the idea of being desireable, when sexuality is such a central part of the lives of nearly all people?

It seems to me  that too many of us has fallen for the myth that women are somehow less interested in sex than  men, less libidinous, and with sexual fantasies restricting themselves to the engaging in the missionary position with their faithful husband every Saturday night.

The sexual fantasies of women

I am currently working on a series of blog posts on the sexuality of women born women, and their sexual fantasies.

I am going through all the relevant research I can find. I am reading steamy romance novels, and erotica written by women for women.  I am also studying collections of female fantasies made by people like Nancy Friday.

Apart from the transformation part,  all the motifs of MTF crossdreamer fantasies and fiction are found among XX women. All of them, including the more extreme fantasies of humiliation and rape.

The existence of crossdream fantasies can therefore not be used to pathologize transsexual women.

Non-transsexual crossdreamers

As for the rest of us? Well, having erotic male to female transformation fantasies does not prove that you are wired like a woman. I guess you could argue that these fantasies draw on instincts and mental figures common to both sexes.

Still, the existence of women like Kylee, tells me otherwise. As she points out, the desire to transition is for her much more than a desire to be a sexy woman. It is much more fundamental, much more comprehensive and applies to all the aspects of being a woman.

This makes me suspect that also non-transsexual crossdreamers share some, but not necessarily all, of the trans women's fundamental identity.

The pure and the impure 

Kylee indicates that there may be two types of crossdreaming (my word, not hers).

Warrior Princess - On Using Hypermasculinity to Kill Off Your Feminine Side

Kristin Beck, before and after

A new fascinating book covers the life of Kristin, born Chris, Beck, an American Navy Seal who ended up transitioning.

The book,  Warrior Princess A U.S. Navy Seal's Journey to Coming Out Transgender, should be of interest also to non-transsexual male to female crossdreamers. It gives a clear example of what has been called "hypermasculinity": attempts at suppressing a feminine side by getting involved in stereotypical male interests.

I have no way of definitely knowing whether Kristin Beck is or has been a crossdreamer (in the sense of having experienced sexual fantasies of being a woman pre-op), but she was definitely a crossdresser while  male bodied.

She was also married with a woman, so I guess we can say she had a lot in common with many of the readers of this blog, whether they are transsexual or not.




Hypermasculinization

She is not the first MTF transgender to have joined the military to toughen up and become "a real man". Military male bodied persons are twice as likely to be transgender as civilians.  Still,  I do not think there are many crossdreamers out there who have joined special ops like the Navy SEALs in order to support a fragile male identity.

The fact that many gynephilic (woman-loving) male to female transgender often chose stereotypical male occupations has been used to "prove" that they are not real women. (This implicitly means that female firefighters and fighter pilots are not real women, either, but let us put that aside for a moment.)

Family members and friends may also push them into traditional masculine occupations in order to have them "cured" of their crossdreaming.

This is an old tactic, often used for  homosexual men (and women). The idea is that if you force them into accepting activities "appropriate to their sex" they will rediscover "their true selves", or -- if not -- they will be conditioned to accept their fate.

This does not work for the gay and it does not work for crossdreamers, but as long as people can make themselves believe that this is a question of will and character, and not the result of an inborn trait, I guess both family members and crossdreamers will continue trying.

On male to female crossdreamers and how to establish a romantic relationship

How do you establish a loving relationship to a woman if you are a male to female crossdreamer dreaming of being a woman?

There has been a lot of politics on this blog lately. That is necessary, I am afraid, given what people say and think about crossdreamers. But today we are going back to the basics: to the lived lives of crossdreamers. 

I will share an email I got from a reader with you and add my response. I think this is an exchange many male to female crossdreamers will find familiar as well as interesting. 

Do add your own comments!

The life of Josie

Josie from over at Crossdream Life sent me following story:

"I'm thankful to finally have a name attached to this conditon and know that there are others, but I still feel sometimes so confused and conflicted. I'm sure that in this community my story and my questions are common.

When I was a little kid I don't remember being one of those that insisted that I was a girl. To my recollection I was fine being a boy, but I was always 'soft'. I've always been passive and introverted. 

Iused to play with my sister and her dolls and saw nothing wrong with it but I did boys stuff too. I always liked to play sports but never excelled at it. I was always picked on by the alpha males in my school, especially in junior high, and I was never successful being a romantic interest for the girls. I was just too shy.

Dreaming of skirts

When I remember my AGP feelings starting to make themselves known was around puberty. The girls in my class started developing hips and breasts and I was thinking "That's pretty cool, I wish I had that too." By the time I was in high school I secretly wanted to be one of the girls. 

I went to a Catholic school with plaid skirts and I would fantasize about being one of the girls in those skirts. God bless those skirts! lol 

A young transgender teenager asks for advice

Photo from Photos.com

Here is the story about a struggling  male to female transgender in her early teens.

The Internet is slowly changing the way crossdreamers seek help. They are more likely to realize that they are not alone at a much earlier time than before, which is good.

On the other hand, they are also exposed to all the crap that is written about "paraphilias" and  "autogynephilia", which is not equally helpful.

I have been in correspondence with a young male to female transgender in her early teens. She is very mature for her age -- which is probably why she found a way to get in touch with me -- but she is nevertheless struggling hard to cope.

With her permission, I will present some of her thoughts below.

Constructive comments are very much welcome!

I have done my out most to anonymize the text  to protect her and her family. I have changed the spelling to mask her easily identifiable writing style, but the quotes included below are true to the original.

Since R's female identification seem so strong, and since she wants me to use her female name, I have used  female pronouns in this post. Let's call her R.

The content of the complete set of emails has convinced me that this is a genuine case and that R is who she says she is.

This is what she says:

Background

"Basically, this all started when i was about 7. I cant remember what exact age, but I remember what year I was in in primary school. I used to think about this one girl (i had a crush on her, but i didn't know it) tying me up and dressing me as a girl and forcing me to do things. I found this very sexually arousing."

She also had submission fantasies about being treated as a baby.

She tells me she hit puberty at an early age. Searching the Internet she found that diagnosis like autogynephilia, infantilism and "parts of masochism" fit how she felt.

Reading TG erotic fiction

"When i was 11/12 i started researching some things. I read stories, and I used to do it any night I could (usually 4-5 nights a week) and only at night because my parents would walk in on me a lot, and I didn't want them finding out. I had to stop reading stories because my hormones were just screaming and it tickled.." 

The stories she found online made her  feel even more of an urge to try out what she had read. The stories were often about was relationships between a dominant wife/girlfriend and a submissive male being turned into a woman.