What am I?

[never cry wolf]

This thread in GD got me wondering where I fall, how I would be classified.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1600340#1609327

I realize that it is a sliding scale with many variations but I am not all that familiar with the terminology and such.

I am a 51 y.o. hetero male, married, father of two who has often wished he was a woman, enjoys TG fiction and has cross dressed many times for many years, starting at maybe age 7 or 8 (in private only.) I don't get real extensive with my CD, breast forms, underthings, shorts and a tank top, nothing real frilly or hyperfeminine. The only makeup is lip gloss, sometimes use fake nails and lashes, some perfume. I have a wig but use it rarely, I like the clip on pony tail better. Like I said, I do this only in private, I'm not trying to pass, nor could I. I don't even like the mirror. For me, it's all about trying to "feel" female, or how a female may feel.

I don't hate my penis and feel I am in the right body, I just wonder how things are on the other side (with more than just a of bit envy.) I have never really serious considered medically transitioning but if there were some way to magically swap, I would. I have no attraction to men but when I fantasize about being female, it is always hetero. I also fantasize about the same amount as my natural self with a female. Hetero from both sides I guess. Not all of my feminine fantasizing is about sex either, often it is the entire women's routine, even the dreary chores and also how they interact with both genders.

So, anyway, that's about all I can think of to describe. I'd be happy to answer any questions that may help clarify.

Thanks all.

[Runcible Spoon]

1. you're a person who is more honest with the variable nature

of your gender identification than the vast majority of those trapped in a rigidly dualistic clafssification system.

[rosesaylavee]

2. I think you are you

Are you happy with your lovelife? If so, that's great - that's the most any of us by any sexual definition can hope for. Why look for a label?

[never cry wolf]

3. What lovelife?

I said I was married, hahaha. Seriously though, I don't have a lovelife, my marriage is in it's last throes and I have zero attraction to my wife and havn't for years. Back in the day though it was fine.

It may be that I have had more interest in CD and fantasizing lately because of the lack of actual sex.

[rosesaylavee]

5. Sorry - I leapt to a conclusion

when you said you had two kids...

:hug:

[never cry wolf]

6. They are now 16 and 20

Like I said, back in the day it was fine. Not overly often and my wife was quite boring and unexperimental, almost exclusively missionary, no oral, etc. so I suppose it could have been better.

But it has been years. It kind of ended when I could not perform. It was not ED, it was that I had no desire for or excitement about my wife.

[GodlessBiker]

4. It's good not to hate your penis (most of the time, at least)

Avoid labels. Just be comfortable with yourself. It sounds like you are able to have an outlet even though you are married. (Does she know?)

[never cry wolf]

7. Nobody knows.

My mom caught me once when I was maybe 14 but no one knows except me, and now all of you guys, hahaha.

[KurtNYC]

8. Just a guess...

this is a fetish thing. You are hetero but have fetishized CD. It fits with your attraction to women but is more personal and a touch dangerous. Your current situation may be feeding some renewed interest in this a little since, in a sense, CD lets you create a woman that you control.

[never cry wolf]

9. Dangerous in what way?

You may have something there. I have always felt that women had the advantage. They know how attractive they are to hetero men and know how tio use it. I was quite shy as a youth, still am somewhat, have a hard time walking up to a stranger and start talking, NOT a pickup artist. I remember being somewhat jealous watching the attractive women at parties and in bars have to do nothing but stand there looking cute to get men flocking to them. Meanwhile most often I went home alone.

I was nervous about walking up to a girl and having her judge me (fear of rejection) while for a girl, she has been pre-judged and accepted when the guys walk up to her.

My fantasies involve a woman's extensive preparation to be attractive, knowing i'm attractive, getting a reaction (turning heads in a mall or something,) and being approached by male(s).

[KurtNYC]

10. danger in the sense of doing something that could cause

you embarrassment; mild but psychologically stimulating nontheless. Almost anything that provokes some adrenaline and a sexual response is fodder for a fetish.

Your fantasy seems to highlight the advantage of being in control of the mating process -- and therefore avoids the whole fear of rejection thing. Everybody hates rejection but perhaps you were especially hurt by an incident in the past and the fantasy in some way grapples with it. But if you started at 7YO it seems unlikely that rejection/control were part of it then.

[noamnety]

11. I wish "feeling female" didn't mean

putting on fake nails, fake odors, fake lashes, and fake hair.

Those aren't things I do, and they aren't things that make me feel "feminine." They are things that make me feel like a sell-out to or a victim of corporate marketing campaigns and the patriarchy. :(

[never cry wolf]

12. No, not at all

Just that my nails are short so fake nails make me "feel" more female, same with the lashes. The pony tail swishes across my back to generate a feeling of long hair. Again, it's not about looks but the sensory input I receive. I realize I probably look ridiculous, but women generally have longer nails, lashes and hair naturally. I don't, nor do I have breasts, so those things and the breast forms give me sensory input that I have them. They are props to make me feel less male.

As for the perfume, I guess that reinforces the sensory input via the olfactory system. Visual and sensory through the lashes. Taste and sensory via the lip gloss. Hair just sensory I guess. Breast forms, nails and clothes visual and sensory.

I know where you are coming from, I perfer the more natural and less corporate and cosmo look in women too. It's just that naturally I don't possess feminine physical traits so I have to fake it, were I naturrally female I would not.

[noamnety]

13. Urgh

Women don't naturally have longer nails, nor do they naturally have longer hair. It's a socially imposed gender thing that we're supposed to let our nails grow longer and paint them, making us less able to do "man's work." It's insulting.

Same with hair - people with short hair aren't "more male." People with long hair aren't "more female."

What I'm getting at here is that all this sensory stuff you're describing isn't what it means to "be a woman." It's what it means to be subjected to the corporate and patriarchy-imposed gender crap that keeps women in their place as dehumanized sex objects. If you enjoy that stuff, fine - but I wish you wouldn't call it "feeling like a woman" because that's pretty disturbing as a woman who fights against that imposed crap.

From Stan Goff's Sex and War:
"I'm not sure how much more clearly I could demonstrate the social constructedness of sexuality, or the power of "naturalization" - in which a socially constructed phenomenon is treated as if it were the outcome of natural laws - to conceal that social constructed-ness. Perhaps the most important thing I have learned in my later life is to be very suspicious any time something is referred to as 'natural.' Like natural sex. Like human nature. If we could just learn to substitute the term "socialized" or "encultured" every time we use the word natural with regard to human beings, we'd be a good deal more accurate."

[never cry wolf]

14. Oh, I know and I apologize

I will never know what it truly feels like to be a woman. But being a male and possessing male traits sometimes I go for some extra "fake" traits, even tho it is of the corporate idealzed version. To be honest, I only use the nails maybe 20% of the time and the hair maybe 50%.

I am sorry if you were offended.

[mongo]

15. Nice going lwfern

Nice of you to impose your own political fight into someone else's very personal thread. Any hijack is a good hijack I guess.

Geesh.

[noamnety]

17. I speak up if something offends me.

Sometimes I speak up in the Mann Coulter threads because I think that's offensive to TG folks. Sometimes I speak up about gay rights when someone is talking about some other issue and slips in offensive gay jokes. I speak up when someone makes rape jokes. I speak up when I see something that's racist.

I'd rather be the sort of person that speaks out than the sort of person that lets gay bashing or sexism or racism go unchecked. Sometimes I think people post such things without really thinking, because they haven't taken the time to look at it critically, and assess what they're really saying about an issue.

I am not apologetic, and I don't see speaking out as insulting or detracting from the OP's main point. It sounds like he's spending some time reflecting on what he's doing, and this is something else for him to reflect on. I don't consider that hijacking; it's just part of the discussion.

[never cry wolf]

19. Again, I agree with much of what you have said

And I have reflected on it. In my OP I did not consider that the conventional view of feminism would be offensive to some. I hate the pressure that the current glamour magazine/cosmo/celebrity corporate idealized view of what a woman should be. My best friend, who is a beautiful 50 yo just had a boob job and I personally think it's grotesque. She did it because she was small up top and that pained her self image. A self image created by decades of 16 Magazine thru all of the current crap.

She is a child of the 60's and 70's as am I. We have been indoctrinated since we watched Ward and June Cleaver and Father Knows Best, etc. as children. I am not saying that it is good by any means, but it is somewhat ingrained in our psyche, some more than others.

You have a cause, I don't disagree with what you have said or your cause. I just didn't realize some were so passionate about it and your posts did cause me to reflect on it. I wish things were not the way they are and I wish you luck.

O for the day we can all just see a person as a person, no matter race, religion, looks, gender or orientation....

[idgiehkt]

24. I think self-decoration has been around longer than patriarchy.

As long as there has been sexual competition people have altered their bodies.

[mongo]

16. From everything that you've said in this thread.

It doesn't sound like the CD is a fetish for you. The fantasies you described aren't overly sexual, and I'm assuming you don't cross dress to masturbate. For a person with a cross dressing fetish, the motivation is to create sexual arousal.

Sounds to me more like you have some gender identity issues. This has nothing to do with your sexual orientation. You can be a natual born man who feels feels like a woman, and still be attracted to women.

What are you? A HUMAN BEING! Gender is a continum and not binary.

[never cry wolf]

18. Thanks, it is a continuim, not a binary

CD does cause me sexual arousal and often leads to masturbation. However, I would never think of CD in the company of anyone else. If I am with a woman I am attracted to, physically or emotionally, I am sufficiently aroused by them.

Maybe it is a fetish. As I recall when times were good with female partners the desire to CD was very weak and it was years between occurences. Since the fallout with my wife it has maybe been every few weeks.

There is also one particular woman I am very sexually frustrated about, my first love whom I have known for 35 years (with a 22 years lost touch gap.) We are back in touch, platonically, but for some reason she makes my synapses go haywire. In most of my "being female" fantasies I am her....

Thanks all for your input and insight. I am not sure if this is the right forum, or if there even is a right forum. I have always wondered about my own sexuality and orientation and figured this may be the most appropos place. I suppose that I am not really GLB or T but the people here have certainly asked themselves some of the same questions I have been.

My sister's ex husband is gay and HIV positive. Though they divorced they are still best friends and he is part of our family (even my dittohead, bush loving mom lets hiom come over and stay for a weekend, they get along great.) Mike is the only open GLBT I know but he is a sweetheart. I think that many GLBT tend to be introspective, sensitive and compassionate for others

[boolean]

20. Sounds like a fetish to me...

If you feel you're in the right body, you're a hetero male. Fantasy is just that: fantasy.

Sometimes I fantasize about being a secret agent on a secret mission in a James Bond style action flick.

[UncleSepp]

21. A curious, imaginative, empathetic man

It sounds to me like you never lost the curiosity that almost all little boys have about wearing Mom's shoes, or that almost all little girls have with trying to shave their faces. Somewhere along the line, that curiosity and willingness to play gets squeezed out of kids, and pathologized in adults.

It sounds to me also like you have a mind identity more than a body identity. Can you imagine that your body is a suit of clothes, and that your maleness or femaleness is part of the suit of clothes and not part of your essential identity? Not everyone has gender as part of their "I". Some people see themselves as a person who has a body that is male or female, and not as a person who is male or female and has a body that has male and/or female characteristics. If that's how you feel, then of course it's nice to change clothes once in a while. Since changing the suit of the body isn't so easy, then changing how the body feels - fingernails long or short, a hairpiece or a fedora hat, dress oxfords or heels, a tie or a bra - helps to reinforce the imagination. It's like a kid playing dress-up to imagine being big, wearing a towel to pretend at being Superman.

The clothes and breast forms are necessary props for your imagination, and to me anyway, it sounds very charming. Your wife and children are lucky to have a man like you in the family, who can still wonder, imagine, and play.

[never cry wolf]

22. Why thank you!

Very interesting insight, and I think may be on to something. I've never really considered your "body is a suit of clothes" analogy but now that I ponder it I think I could very well switch suits and still be me. I've never heard of mind identity but it does seems as if that is how I am.

Thanks again.

[DarkTirade]

23. Me, I gave up with labels a while back. :)

For every trait I've found in myself, I've found at least one exception to it. You seem to be a bit of the same, although with different traits. You like women's clothes... but not all the time. You are curious and a bit envious about women... but you yourself consider yourself to be male. Like you said, it's a sliding scale. There's no one point where a label will fit you.