[I published this at TG Stories under the name Jane Sweet and I had some interesting feedback]

Anyone for non-fiction? A little philosophical journey into the whys and wherefores of dressing up as a female. After all, T-girls need to be smart as well as beautiful.

By Jane Sweet

Have you ever thought why you are who you are (or even what you are)? I do; I think about it quite a lot. I’ve been dreaming about being a girl ever since I was a T-toddler.
I was never petticoated although I remember my sisters dressed me up once when I was five or six: put me in girl’s underwear and everything. It’s still a vivid memory, right up there with losing my virginity, but it wasn’t the trigger for my crossdressing. As far as I’m concerned, I came into this world a transvestite and I’ll be going out that way, too. My will even dictates what I’ll be wearing when I meet my maker. Black corset, black lace panties, black stockings, black high heels, long black hair in a high ponytail and black satin bow, black velvet dress and a stack of white petticoats (for contrast, of course). As they say: live fast, die whenever, and leave a fabulously gorgeous corpse.

I consider myself a standard-model transvestite. Once upon a time, transvestism was simply a Latin-based word meaning “cross-dressing” and was something of a catch-all for female impersonators, drag queens, lifestyle dressers, fetishists of many stripes – even a guy who liked to slip into a pair of panties now and then could be considered to be “suffering” from transvestism. These days, I believe, a transvestite is someone who closely empathises with women, seeks full transformation (raiment, make-up, hair, the lot) when she dresses, may or may not be erotically attached to the act – she may in fact integrate the dressing into other kink, such as bondage, female domination, forced fem et al - and may end up living as a female, either full-time or part-time. She may seek some physical alterations, electrolysis for permanent hair removal, perhaps even cosmetic surgery to feminise a masculine face, or even breast implants. She may not seek a full sex change, however, as her dressing may have become so mixed up in her sexual identity that she would never risk losing her male genitalia (instead, she’ll “tuck” to imitate the vagina). I believe she is more a half-man, half-woman, a person who has accepted the male side but wants to experience fully the female side as well, to varying degrees of lifestyle.

As to sexual orientation, well, that’s a mixed bag too. Transgender does not infer homosexuality or heterosexuality; in fact, they say many, if not most TVs and crossdressers identify as straight (straight like a scrunchie, I always say); even quite a few transsexuals are in lesbian partnerships. That’s all fine if you have an understanding, even co-operative girlfriend or wife, but they’re as rare and valuable as Faberge eggs. I adore women, all of them; and I am just as excited by pretty faces and lush, curvaceous bodies as I am by the prospect of being dressed as one myself. Getting the two happening together is another matter altogether. My marriage went south because my wife was convinced I was secretly gay and was just waiting to elope with some dark-haired Adonis. (She took me to the cleaners when we divorced, threatening to show my Polaroids to my boss and workmates if I didn’t sign the house over lock, stock and barrel – I’m just so glad we didn’t have children, mainly because they might have turned out to be selfish, narrow-minded, intolerant assholes like her). But I expect we all have had bad experiences. And I’ve had a few love affairs since, but getting serious always seemed a frightening proposition: you can only take rejection and heartbreak so many times. These days I’m thinking of getting together with other T-girls for some dressing dalliance, and if one happens to be pretty enough and shaves her legs and underarms, well, why not go to bed? As I said before: straight like a scrunchie.

There are manifold scientific theories as to why we dress and dream our girly dreams. Freud copped out with the “woman in the mirror” hypothesis: TVs, he said, are sexually inverted; in identifying as female, we seek sexual gratification with the image of ourselves newly created. It was later given the name “autogynephilia” and seemed to me a giant wank, literally. All sexologists have their pet TV theories: you were crossdressed as a child, you were too close to mummy, too many older sisters, daddy was absent or weak, the list goes on and on. There’s probably as many explanations as there are variations on the theme. After all, what causes a man to seek forced feminisation and age regression to babyhood, all the while getting turned on by a beautiful, domme mistress?

I myself, as anyone who has read my stories on this wonderful website [TG Stories] would know, am partial to a little age regression - 10 years old is about as little girl as I like to fantasise about. I don’t really do the baby girl thing: exciting as frilly baby frocks and booties may sound, dirty diapers tend to leave me cold. The childhood focus is an interesting one, however. It suggests we are seeking a sweeter time of innocence and a fugue from the stress, complexity and responsibility of adulthood, while the gender change signifies a desire to break from some of the more harsh and competitive “masculine” traits. I am sure there is more than a little truth to this.

Some years ago I came across the unusual adjective “polymorphous perverse”. I assumed it meant what its root words inferred: “poly” many, “morphous” shape or form, “perverse” unorthodox or deviant. I decided, without checking, that “polymorphous perverse” referred to a sexual deviant with a whole range of fetishes. Well, that sounded like me all over. I was sexually unorthodox and did lots of kinky stuff. Turned out I couldn’t be more wrong but in discovering its real meaning, I lighted on another, more interesting theory. Our old friend Sigmund Feud used the term “polymorphous perversity” to refer to the sexual disposition of small children, from infants to age about five. He believed we are all born with sexual desires but, being children, unformed, in the throes of learning, our sexual drives are pointed anywhere and everywhere: he saw in it the origins of bisexuality and incest (when we play with or get close to other boys or siblings) and adult attachments to various bits of female anatomy (through our close bond with our mothers).

What interested me about the hypothesis was that it could easily be adapted to explain transvestism. After all, as tiny children, we are also exposed to a great deal of “dressing”, especially the female kind. I remember being fascinated watching my sisters being dressed by my mother, and equally of seeing my mother in her lingerie. I was also one of those little deviants who liked to crawl under card and dinner tables to look up the ladies’ dresses. I knew I liked it and I knew I wanted it to happen to me. It also suggests an explanation for infantilism in the same way: a baby may be getting incredibly turned on simply being pinned into his or her diaper, and that euphoria could easily become fixed. These things are endogenous (“originating from within”) rather than as a result of external happenstance, especially being petticoated or dominated by a strong female. It probably explains a great deal of paraphilia, but I like to think that we T-girls are just incredibly sexually sophisticated, even from the cradle.

My other theory, and it neatly dovetails here, has to do with our even earlier development. We are all – boy and girl – born of woman. The male component, the tiny wiggly sperm that fertilises the egg, seems pretty insignificant compared with the overarching female constituent. [Have a look at this posting: https://userpages.umbc.edu/~korenman/wmst/fetus.html ] From conception until birth, if you think about it, we become a part of our mother’s bodies – just like her arm, say, or heart or even vagina - and it would be easy to argue that we are, for the duration, female ourselves, XY chromosomes notwithstanding. Nature shows gender can be flexible. Spontaneous sex change occurs among fish and reptiles. Perhaps the difference between man and woman is even less than the physical characteristics science traditionally uses. Maybe slipping back and forth between genders is the true natural state of the human. It would explain a lot to me and, I’m quite certain that even those people who are not trans themselves, have at some stage wondered what life would be like as the opposite sex, even if they don’t pursue it. That is only natural.
It’s all food for thought and we T-girls are nothing if not sophisticated thinkers, hungry for knowledge.

I gave this piece the title “Why I’m a T-girl, you’re a T-girl and everyone else is so jealous: the transgender agenda”. I think I’ve dealt with the question of self-identity. But why, you may ask, would anyone else be jealous of us. After all many see us as freaks, ridiculous, comical, self-deluded, even mentally ill. No way, Josie. To me, it’s straight life that’s ridiculous: dull, conservative and barren. Who wants to be normal anyway? I’ve always thought of myself as exotic, a delicate hybrid flower, a bird of paradise, a glittering jewel. OK, I’m not as pretty as I once was; but I’ve done some pretty wild things, sent my imagination into some pretty strange and wonderful places, and experienced some pretty intense euphoria. And all because I like to dress up as a girl. Who wouldn’t be jealous of that?
The End

If you’re interested in reading some more thoughtful and cogent writing on trans history and biography, go to “A Gender Variance” at http://zagria.blogspot.com.au

© Jane Sweet (2014); by all means reblog or pass on to anyone curious.