Getting Yourself Onboard

Greetings dear readers. I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and found some pretties under your Christmas tree. I decided to give the keyboard a vacation and spent time with my wonderful wife. But fair warning – I’m baaack!

This will be the final installment in my “Onboard” series. You can read the others, in order, starting with Getting the Wife Onboard here Getting the Wife Onboard: Part II here and Beyond Getting the Wife Onboard – Coming out to Others here.

Today I’d like to talk about getting yourself onboard. I have read a lot of discussions here at XDress and also on other sites, and I find there is a great variance in the level of acceptance we have of ourselves as crossdressers. 

First, let’s take a look at who we are, demographically speaking. It is hard to get reliable statistics on who we are, due to how secretive we are, by necessity. Without a doubt, we are the most private and secretive subgroup in the population, due to the general population’s intolerance of men who like to dress like women. I would say “and also women who like to dress like men” but they already dress like men with full societal acceptance! The most reliable statistics I have found indicate that we represent between 3-5% of the general population, with 50% of all men having tried on female apparel at least once in their lives. We are, in the majority, straight and in a heterosexual relationship, with 3% of us being gay, which is representative of the general population as well.

There is an old joke: Q: What is the difference between crossdressers and transsexuals? A: About 5 years. This is a misnomer, as cross-dressing and transsexualism are very different. When I say “crossdresser” I am talking about men who present as male to the general public, but have an inner sense of also being female, and dressing accordingly when time and circumstance allow. 

There is a wide range of self-acceptance, from those who feel a tugging to express inner femininity but are afraid of it, to those who fully accept the inner femme and express it in clothing, jewelry, and makeup when possible. How onboard are you with your inner femme? If you are not fully on board with her, what prevents that? The possible answers to this are so numerous. It can come from your family of origin, where men are men and women are women and nothing in between. It can be from society in general which, while getting a bit more gender-fluid these days, still draws a pretty sharp line between men and women. It can come from your significant other. As a side note, I have a couple of on-line friends who have lost their families because of their desire to crossdress and express that feminine part of who they are. It can also come from a fear of yourself – if I truly embrace my inner femme, what will happen to me? What will I become?

Many of us, in our early exploration of our inner femme, went through cycles of purchasing panties, or hose, or bras, only to purge them when our guilt became too great. The purchase/purge cycle will be familiar to many of you. I personally went through two purge cycles, pronouncing myself a diagnosable pervert, until I realized this has nothing to do with sexuality. It has to do with a sense of who you truly are. True, we are all sexual beings, but the identity of self is a much larger issue. If you enjoy wearing pretty panties under your male outerwear because it makes you feel more in balance with who you are, that isn’t sexuality – its mental health!

I am one of the fortunate ones who have a wife who is fully on board with my feminine side, and our marriage has benefitted greatly from that, as well as my sense of well-being. Others are not so fortunate, and that saddens me. So, where are you in this broad range of self-acceptance; ranging from terrified of your desire to wear a pair of panties to complete acceptance of your inner woman? If you struggle with complete acceptance of yourself, what are the barriers to that acceptance? Get those keyboards warmed up. You know I love to hear your thoughts and stories. Oh, and happy New Year!!!

Fond regards,

Angie