trans | Why Do You Crossdress?

I was asked that question over two years ago in a counseling session, and not sure exactly why, my best answer was "To fit in. To be accepted to the group I want to be part of." But this year's end has me reflecting that maybe that was only partially right.

I am quite comfortable wearing minimal makeup and casual clothes. But having been taken advantage of by two men, seeing "that thing" between my legs horrifies and saddens me. What is the link between these two events? It's rather causal and circular. In memoir fashion, I found it easiest to go back one link at a time.

I know what needs to be "down there," and can visualize it quite clearly after visiting Dr. Saran's page. I remember at the age of 16, perhaps even younger, wanting it to go back in. It didn't feel right for me. I tucked the whole thing in the groin skin folds, but it wouldn't stay. It just kept popping out. I tried over and over several times over the years, to just try to get it to go back. At 16, and for many years, crossdressing, even though mostly just underdressing, took second place to relying on my imagination of being female in sexual encounters. I hoped, as a person of faith, that if I wore girl's clothing, especially the underwear, things would go the way I felt they should have been.

As a child and a teenager, I never got along with the majority of children. I found more friends among the girls, and I didn't try to be male or female as a preschooler. I just was. It was the presence of other girls, not the games they played or the clothes the wore (except for one skirt that the little girl made look so beautiful twirling in), and not most of the toys they owned that I was drawn to. I felt more comfortable in the female circles. I have learned over the last year from women's circles, that gender in me is at least 50% resonance. I feel more comfortable in a non-sexual way and more as if I were with my own kind in the room.

Naturally, I was attracted to the kitchen, the enclave of the women, because so much time was spent there preparing food. It was when I was separated from the people I felt comfortable with because I was a "boy," that I began to feel so alone. That loneliness was reinforced by being forced to do things that "men do," further segregating me. Eventually, when adolescence hit, I was at times disgusted with my development, and at other times hoping I could find a way to not be alone "as a man." I used to masturbate to random images from the television, and tried to make myself "feel like a man." But it never worked, and I grew dissatisfied at least half the time with that "thing that stood in my way," and was so annoying and embarrassing. I knew I liked women, but my internal images were always liking them "as a woman." My slow adolescence in a way was a blessing, as I wasn't forced to look like what appeared to me to be 30-year old men in my classmates. I wasn't, at least, physically required to present as a dominant muscle-bound male (at least, not yet).

Of course, I wound up so internally turmoiled that I had few, if any, true friends.

I dress femininely, because at 16 and 44, I would do anything to have my sex fit what I have known it must be, because I still have faith that by doing so, God will put things right. I dress because I have to present as a woman for at least a year before I can have the surgery. I dress femininely to be accepted, but I have learned how to dress comfortably and still be Ma'amed.

Why do I crossdress or live full-time outside of work? So I can have what's between my legs put right and be counted among the women.

Hugs and God Bless,
Sophie