Why Do We Dress?

With so much self-isolation time on her hands Linda is putting her mind to some of the deeper questions facing society. Why do people kill? How can we keep our plastic out of the oceans? Why is there such a drive to get an Earth colony on Mars? Why do crossdressers crossdress?

What drives us? By us I mean genetic males who seek to portray ourselves as females as often and as fully as we can. Respectfully I do not mean those who feel or know they should have been born female and are seeking to correct that mistake (transsexuals) or do not simply get a rush from putting on a few items of lingerie to bring themselves to orgasm and then taking it all off (transvestites).

I think it was Virginia Prince who popularized the term crossdresser to identify those on the transgender spectrum who prefer the full female look but for the most part and for various reasons do not prefer the full-time female look or identity.

So what drives us to do what we do? Why do we want to come so close to a female identity for ourselves and then pull back?

I admit I have gone through years of crossdressing without giving it much thought. I just like it. I feel complete. I like the attention. Those all seemed good enough for me. I have read several books by crossdressers and about crossdressing where the crossdressers describe their lives but I don’t recall any who have been definitely able to say what drives us to action.

One scholarly work by Kinsey in his ground-breaking study, Heterosexuality, is still worth a read. Back in the 1940s he interviewed a number of men who although not identified at the time as crossdressers would not fit the bill. As I recall he identified a phenomenon called a paraphilia. He described that there were certain philias that were serious conditions. Pedophilia and necrophilia are two that come to mind. But he also described paraphilia as an attraction caused when the person was young – probably pre-puberty – where the person became compulsively attracted to a certain behavior. Years ago when I read this I didn’t think I liked the idea of the crossdresser me being lumped in with the likes of the guy who had a preference to dress in rubber suits or like to have women urinate or even defecate on him. However Kinsey’s time line worked for me.

So let’s skip forward some 70 years and find ourselves avoiding in-person social contact so with time on our hands to think about such things. My friend Susan –- you met her in my last column –- got me started and before long I had the makings of a virtual conversation on the go. What makes us do it? We don’t see ourselves becoming women so why do we want to appear as women?

“Many of you know the biblical story of creation and first man, Adam, and first woman, Eve, in the Garden of Eden,” wrote Susan. “They were living in this land where everything was beautiful and provided for them by ‘God.’ There was one thing that they were told that they could not do. They were told that they could not eat from the tree that stood in the center of the garden, the tree of life. This is the tree of knowledge, of good and evil.

“Have you ever been tempted to do something after being told that you could or should not? Of course you were and are. Eve was tempted, picked the fruit, ate of it and shared it with Adam.”

I thought I pretty well knew where Susan was going with this.

Susan continued, “As a crossdresser, many of us seek an identity. Maybe we should all be called by one name, Eve. Most of us have grown up with the taboo, you shall not wear the clothing of another gender. So paraphrased from another biblical source. And there is also the predominant societal law that says the same thing. A man can be only one thing, a man and a woman can be only a woman and you should never ever be anything else nor dress in a manner reserved for the opposite.”

Well I certainly remember being told that I should take off that dress but I also remember being told on some occasions, like dress up days and Hallowe’en, how cute I looked as a girl. When our football team dressed up as the cheerleaders for a fundraising show most of the guys looked grotesque. Thanks to some of the girls and a nice wig I looked pretty cute, scary cute actually. I took some playful ribbing but that only made me block and tackle that much harder.

Back to Susan: “So am I a rebel; are you?” she asked, “I have male physical form so when I dress as a woman am I rebelling against society’s norm for me or am I giving in to temptation as Eve did eons ago? Somewhere deep inside, came this desire to put on feminine attire. I grew up in a Christian environment where we went to church every Sunday and children went to Sunday school, and then confirmation classes. We learned the bible stories. We learned about God. We learned about sin. We learned about the penalties of sin. Yet, given all of this, I still snuck into my mother’s bedroom to secretly don her undergarments. Had the devil tempted me and given me the items for my destruction? My dad tried to teach me self-defense for I was always picked on by the neighborhood guys. I was never adept at any sport and always picked last for any game, even simple ones like Red Rover. Girls were actually picked ahead of me. Is it any wonder that I gave into that tempting voice, “Taste the fruit. You will find the truth, you will learn who you are. Go ahead, try on that brassiere and girdle.”

I think Susan has a point. I know when we were teenagers that there were a lot of things we wanted to do that we were forbidden to do. We could not legally drive a car until we were 16. We could not drink until 18 or even 21. We were advised not to smoke or have sex until we were adults so what did we teens like to do most? We liked to drive around smoking, drinking and trying to ‘get lucky,’ all the things we were forbidden to do.

So Susan’s ‘forbidden fruit’ argument seems logical.

I had a slightly different take on it based on my personal experience and on the stories of several others. Take my friend Debbie. She was an officer in the U.S. Military. I met her at the old Ziegfeld’s in Washington DC in the 1980s. At the time if she had come out as transsexual she would have been headed for dismissal. If she had been exposed as a crossdresser that was an area with more grey but two things were certain. Being outed as Debbie would have meant an end to her marriage and bye-bye to a good chunk of her pension and she felt it would have severely compromised her ability to command.

I was similarly for many years in a job where there was a fair amount of leadership and that ability to lead depended on the ability to command the respect of those under my authority. How do you keep the respect when the person talking to you is imagining you in high heels and a tight sheath dress?

Even with those risks, I offered into the conversation, both Debbie and I were driven to crossdress. I think it may have been because of the risks that I became such a keen crossdresser. Perhaps some of you can identify with this chain of events:

It started with dressing at home when no one else was around.

Then once when out of town I took along a femme outfit where I got dressed in a hotel room and walked down the hall to get a soda. Wow! Was I nervous!

After some short trips out in the car I ventured to a gay club with a drag show, then on a shopping trip, all en femme. As my trips got bolder my art of self-expression got better. Or perhaps it was the other way around. But each and every time there was the danger that I might get confronted, get exposed. Every time I thought of that there was a rush of adrenaline to excite my body. I have never strapped a parachute to my back and jumped out of an airplane but I think the feeling must be about the same.

But let me bring another friend, Wanda, into the conversation.

“Those may very well be right,” replied Wanda when I told her about Susan and my theories about the attraction of crossdressing, “but I have a different take on it.” Wanda is one of the more cerebral of my TG friends and although I don’t know for sure I suspect she is an educator at a high level. Under different circumstances I may be calling her Doctor or Professor Wanda but for now she’s just another t-girl wearing a pretty dress and a nice smile.

“Do tell,” I implored.

“It’s sex or more accurately the feeling of sexual arousal,” she declared somewhat emphatically. “Let’s say you take a thousand young males and study them all in a pair of panties, maybe a bra and slip as well. For some it will do nothing but for a few others perhaps the tight panties will cause a minor sensation in their penis. If they handle their penis that minor sensation may very well become a major one. An erection ensues and perhaps with a little prompting ejaculation results. Of course the ejaculation feels good, at least of a while.

“In terms of stimulus and response,” continued Wanda, “a connection has been established in the youngster’s mind. Wearing lingerie was the stimulus. A pleasurable ejaculation was the response. Now many of those youngsters are going to repeat that action with the same result. That is called positive reinforcement.”

“But I remember a time in my life when I just had to think about getting dressed en femme to get aroused,” I interjected.

“Did you ever hear of Pavlov and his dogs,” replied Wanda.

“Of course.”

“Dr. Pavlov believed animals and humans could be conditioned to behave in certain ways,” she continued. “In the famous experiment he would ring a bell and then present food to a dog. The dog would salivate on sensing the food. Soon he could ring the bell and not present the food and the dog would still salivate. It was a conditioned response.

“So you may be wondering what that has to do with crossdressing?” Wanda asked and I nodded in agreement. “It doesn’t take long for that touch of lingerie to elicit the pleasurable sexual response without any need for manual help. It just starts to feel good on its own. But while we are feeling the nylon our brain is already thinking of the sexual response and already releasing endorphins for that feel good feeling.”

“Speaking of feelings you are making me feel like a lab rat or one of Pavlov’s dogs,” I lamented.

“We are all Pavlov’s dogs in so many ways,” replied Wanda. “Think of all the good feelings you get just by thinking about something. Think of how you get hungry or your moth waters when you smell something nice in the kitchen. It is the same when I put on a dress. I am already thinking of the pleasure I will get when I go out. I get aroused just thinking about the person I will be with and even thinking about the outfit I will wear to be with that person.”

“You have something there,” I interjected, “I remember a time when I would get aroused just thinking of the femme outfit I would wear to make myself aroused.”

“BINGO!” Wanda exclaimed.

 I asked myself. Had we come full circle? 

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Tags: crossdressing, featured

Category: Transgender Body & Soul, Transgender Opinion