How do those who identify as trans(gender/sexual) relate to the sexually fetishistic content present on this website? Also how do those who identify as such and also enjoy the sexually fetishistic content, reconcile the two aspects? For each of you, what is the experienced structure of sexual arousal regarding the content?
For myself, and seemingly the case for traditional fetishistic feminization literature, the experienced structure of sexual arousal seems to be the psychologically traumatic thought of being thought of through socially stigmatising femininity. A sexualization of childhood emasculation trauma.
When I am enjoying a story I am continuously recontextualizing and reasserting the anxiety of the thought of being thought of as feminine.
fetish
I avoid the fetishistic stuff and pretty much stay away from writing such. I like reading about transformation and am really into the psychology of the situation.
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
I find...
Personally, I generally find it distracting. (Not always, sometimes some can fit a story - but even here, I generally skip over those sections.)
Most of the time, when I'm reading, i'm reading to "ENJOY" stuff. Not for deep thinking about issues or any fetish point. (Example - I read Hunger Games, but couldn't bring myself to read the rest of the trilogy because it pits teens/kids in fights to the death. Not that this doesn't happen in the real world, etc. Just that I don't want to have to deal with that while reading for enjoyment. Others can and do disagree with me.) For similar reasons, I've not read "50 Shades of Gray". I've friends that really enjoyed the trilogy, but some parts just don't interest me and I've enough other things on my "to read" list (Like Tacticus...) that I've not felt moved to read it.
So - that this site supports people who need/want to write stories with that kind of content is fine with me. I feel no requirement to read everything published here. I know a majority of those here don't read stuff I've written. The variety is a GOOD thing! :-)
Annette
You aren't what you read
Hi
I've read a lot of different stories over my time; straight, TG, sex, horror, historic, etc. There are some story types that I find too uncomfortable to read, because they make me very upset. But just because I've read something, doesn't mean I'm going to try it. I didn't become TG because I read TG stories. I don't get the whips out because I've read 50 Shades. I'm also not what I write - I totally disagree with some things I write in stories.
It also depends what you regard as a fettish - to some people they might not see it as that. In some ways TopShelf isn't a TG site, but a T* site. In fact there are 254 shades of grey here (#00 is white and #FF is black)!
Karen
50 Shades
I read the entire trillogy but did not find it the nasty, kinky, smut that it was advertised to be. I think the billing was simply a clever way to appeal to the salacious nature of some of us. For me about 10% of the story was kinky. The rest of it was healing and romantic, and was cleverly written. Though I will not be sharing at church that I read it. LOL
Khadijah
Humans are many faceted.
First, everything in my life revolves around my belief in Heavenly Father. However, I have nothing to lose by telling the brutal truth.
I think I was probably addicted to sex shortly after my onset of puberty. By explanation, with a completely loveless home life; never having hear the words, "I love you"; never having felt valued or loved, the advent of Masturbation was like a warm breath of air in an otherwise barren life. I only felt guilt as a result of the condemnation of my distant and unaffectionate parents. This continued for the balance of my life.
I would not understand the full implications of my odd nature until I was approaching 60 years old.
Gradually, it began to dawn on me that when I saw pretty women, I was somehow jealous, and when having intercourse with my wife, while she thought I was being the male, in reality in my own mind, I was thinking of myself as the woman. These musings would eventually lead to my complete sexual dysfunction starting around 35 years of age.
You are asking a question as if there were a simple answer, and that really underscores your lack of understanding of the subject matter.
When I finally started down the T path, thinking I was somehow trans-gendered, around 1995, I had no idea about the things I would find out. Under counseling, in the early 90's, deeply repressed memories began to surface, and they were so terrifying to me that I had my first suicide attempt. It was then that I remembered my coming out for the first time when I was about 4 years old; donning my sisters skirt and declaring that I was like her. This got me one of the worst beatings I can remember, and after that I was often beaten, sometimes to unconsciousness.
Somehow, in my mid teens, after unspeakable abuse, I seemed to have forgotten all this. Later I would marry, serve in the Army, have children, and do my utmost to make a loving, affectionate family.
Tragically, lurking beneath the surface were dark things that I would at first feel deep shame over. As a result of my extremely abusive childhood, later in life I find myself drawn to BDSM, and fetishistic corsets. It has not taken over my life, but I have had to face that it is there, and try to understand the etiology.
It would not be until after my SRS, a great deal of intense counseling (4 years), and a great deal of pain, that I would find certain details about myself that were astonishing. First, there is subtantial her-say evidence that I was born with female organs, but they were removed at birth; not even being documented. I know of a half dozen people, some on this site that can relate similar experiences. Then Just last year, in 2011, in a Kariotype test, paid for by my church, I would find that while I am genetically XY, I have partial androgen insensitivity syndrome (PAIS).
For most people, unless you are a currently active genetic researcher, forget what you think you know about genetics and being inter-sexed. So, it is likely that had the doctor made a different decision at birth, I could have grown up to be a reproductive female or as it was, became a reproductive male, though my mind would never be male, no matter how hard they tried to remake me.
Happily, in the years since SRS, my sexual drive has declined to a tiny part of what it once was. Oh, to be sure, I am attracted to men for their butts and looks, but also for their minds, intelligence and dominance. However, they must have manners, cleanliness and be gentle and kind to women.
I am blessed in that I live in deep stealth and in the area where I live it is rare that anyone even cares if they do find out.
I hope that this answers your questions, and I would be happy to answer any PM you send me.
Much peace
Khadijah
"Under counseling, in the
"Under counseling, in the early 90's, deeply repressed memories began to surface, and they were so terrifying to me that I had my first suicide attempt. It was then that I remembered my coming out for the first time when I was about 4 years old; donning my sisters skirt and declaring that I was like her. This got me one of the worst beatings I can remember, and after that I was often beaten, sometimes to unconsciousness."
-I recall a similar event. The unbearable humiliation of being forced to wear my sister's clothes around 4-6 years of age. The event was imprinted and sexualized in my psyche. It was in the discovery of masturbation that I recognised that this strange feeling that mediated my affinity with femininity up until that point was sexual arousal. Much of the time when I am aroused, I am not aware of the traumatic anxiety of the thought of being thought of as feminine as it is obscured by feeling of arousal, but it is explicitly recognisable in socially masochistic fantasies. Also when I see a girl wearing a hyper-feminine dress, I feel the stirring in my stomach, it is evocative of what I am aroused by. I can see how this can be confusing to many people, and can see how even I could have invested psychologically, perhaps over many years in the confusing affinity with femininity in terms of transgenderism.
wxhluyp
I was not forced.
I was raised as a girl from birth until about 4 years of age. According to Psychologists, this had a major impact on who I became. I loved my years as a girl, and my Mom was very affectionate to me. While shrinks insist it was abuse, I insist that she somehow sensed who I was very early on. I am not talking about sexual desire on any level, but about my identity at the most basic level.
You can look in some of my old stories and find very sexual ideas, but as I progressed over the years, that seemed to assume its proper place in a sane but damaged mind.
All this was extremely tormenting over the years, and were it not for the fact that I currently live in a very nurturing environment, I would have joined the ranks of our sisters who took an early out, a long time ago.
So was the case being
So was the case being something like the scenario of the mother wanting a girl, or to indulge in the illusion of having a girl, whilst the conservative father disapproved violently of such? I see childhood emasculation trauma as producing many variants of deeply engrained masochistic fetishes, especially autophilic feminization fetishism. The trauma of being thought of as feminine itself being sexualized, as recognisable explicitly especially in social-masochistic fantasies. The object of trauma otherwise being mediated through positive feedback loops by virtue of its connection to arousal, which corresponds to a common confusion of feminization fetishists regarding the long term psychologically and ideologically invested affinity to femininity and self-identification
Fetishism
As others have said, I tend to avoid that sort of story. I have declared several times that I write love stories. There are often extremely grim episodes there, and in Sweat and Tears I got as dark as I ever want to, but I believe in redemption, humanity, love in all its forms.
I have also said many times that I do not 'get' crossdressing, that it doesn't speak to me. That has never been intended as a condemnation but as a simple observation. I also don't get marmite, football, snooker, cricket, cars...
So much of what the OP calls 'fetishistic' is about feminisation, obviously. Again, I have said this before, and I have put the words into the mouths of my characters: I never yearned for particular clothing. I never pined for the ability to wear a dress. I just wanted, needed, yearned, pined for a life where wearing such a thing could be a normal event.
Relationship between the trans(gender/sexual) and fetishistic co
You might want to try Season House stories http://www.tigger-n-brandy.net/Janehome.html as the Mistress of Seasons Manor House Ms. Jane Thompson-Phillips employs her fetish for dressing boys as girls in her form of petticoat punishment to help change them for the better. Raised in SLC http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/1576/raised-slc Education in the Hills http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/3735/education-hills [by Penny Reed Cardon] A New Style of Education http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/363/new-style-education by Karen Page Double Trouble in SPA http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/37137/double-trouble-s... By BB and A New Style of Education: Hidden Gifts http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/6798/new-style-education-... by Annette as these stories all deal with either fetishism, or crossdressing as well as much of the T.G. spectrum. Hope this helps.
May Your Light Forever Shine
cant find the clicker 2 comment so am replying to anothr comment
That phrase "emasculinization trauma" is very telling. In femdom stories the concept shows up over and over, males being "reduced" to feminine status. For those who feel themselves as inherently female and feel that there's nothing wrong with who they are this doesn't make much sense, and while there's no wrong way to be transgender, if someone tried to apply such a dynamic to me i'd find it extremely insulting. If society stigmatizes feminity then it's time to confront society's sexism, not to play along with it...
hugs, Veronica
Well shit, I guess it really CAN happen here..,
.
It is simply an unfortunate
It is simply an unfortunate involuntary psychological reaction. I could even conceive that even if I had identified as feminine, nontheless the social stigma itself could have produced the same affect.
Comment buttton
Gone for me too, now. That is exactly it. I am 'just a woman' in the sense of identity. That is what I am, no more, no less. I am NOT 'just a woman' in the sense of a lower, less important person.
Meh
Everyone has fetishes even if they don't want to admit them. But a fetish isn't always a bad thing, that word has sadly gotten a lot of bad publicity but honestly it's harmless. Sure there are exceptions but I say as long as nobody is getting hurt live and let live (unless of course their fetish is getting hurt, then as long as it's CONSENSUAL then it's okay)
I know who I am, I am me, and I like me ^^
Transgender, Gamer, Little, Princess, Therian and proud :D
They don't really appeal to me....
...as a lot of the fetishistic stuff has some elements of masochism to it (forced fem, for example, or forced regression). I like to read about "real-life" transitioning (with the exception of fantasy stories set in the Altered Fates and SRU story universes, in which I imagine myself starting over as a little girl). In stories like Raff's "Through The Years" saga, I find it easier to put myself in the place of the main character, Tracy, if what Tracy goes through is at least somewhat plausible.
Livin' A Ragtime Life,
Rachel
Masochism
Yeah, it is arousing for feminization fetishists like myself if the narrative functions (or even can be interpreted) to present femininity as a socially stigmatizing subjection. I am the opposite as my perspective is sexual, I get disappointed if a story emerges as other than sexual