A few days ago, I read a story on Big Closet that left me feeling a bit perplexed.
The story was well-written and the author has every right to explore the genre as she wishes.
Yet – I wish she had picked another premise or I had not read her story,
which shoved me back into the old argument as to whether cross-dressing is a mental disorder.
I think the majority of the United States has clearly decided that transsexualism is NOT a mental disorder. (Please don’t muddy this thread with Trump discussions. You’re not going to enlighten anyone, or change their minds. Simply vote.)
There still seems to be a faction willing to state that cross-dressing is a mental disorder.
These issues are very personal. I consider myself a cross-dresser because I’m not willing to commit to SRS. Yet – I’ve probably wished a million times I’d been born a woman. I read a statistic that less than 10% of those with gender identity disorder have SRS. Does my self-honesty, cowardice, empathy for my family (you pick one) condemn me to having a mental disorder?
I spend sixty to seventy percent of the time at least partially feminine clothed, maybe fifty percent totally feminine clothed.
I function at a high level, so I wonder where the disorder manifests itself.
I’m always surprised by opinions here and look forward to reading yours.
Is cross-dressing a mental disorder?
Jill
Comments
Of Course Not!
Unless one is a transphobic, reactionary biggot! I'd say it's in the spectrum of transgender. And people have all kinds of reasons for not transitioning. If TSs are accepted so should be CDs.
Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee
I Agree
Thanks.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
lol hell no
'Crossdressing' and or even any form of the transgender umbrella is NOT a mental disorder, they even removed it off the DSM years ago.
But...
Mental/emotional disorders tend to build up, due to the personal depths of dealing with it which can often be so bad one of the things could be chronic Idiation (constantly in a suicidal state).
Developing Mood disorders, like bipolar and borderline personality disorder; borderline almost most of the time is caused by childhood sexual abuse through the included major form of PTSD called CPTSD or complex post traumatic stress disorder.
CPTSD is typically caused by childhood abuse & sexual assaults.
Severe forms of depression
Self harm comes about
Eating disorders, I know I have mine...trying to make myself as stick thin as possible so I do not look male by being so...you begin to actually think yourself obese even when your ribs are poking out.
I know that I may have some of those issues due to other reasons, but I would not be as bad off with a list of disorders like 'santa's naughty & nice list' if I had not had GID, as most of the reasons for having the additional mental & mood disorders, if I had been born normal/cisgender, instead of assaulted, abused etc because of being born genderwise in opposition to my sex, let alone being born intersex & punished for it since you got pulled from the womb.
Almost all of my sexual assaults were because of my dysphoria, as acts to 'cure' me, especially though Conversion therapies as a child.
Those are NOT 1 disorder, and they are NOT causing the Dysphoria...the dysphoria is causing those issues
Therefore....GID, is not a mental disorder but it follows disorders as symptoms resulted by living with GID.
Think of it like PTSD, sort of. ok
Like PTSD did NOT cause what happened to you, but PTSD is caused by what happened to you.
Hopefully that makes sense & puts perspective on your question, hope I ws of help & gave adequate clarity...I tried to be as candor as possible
With Love and Light, and Smiles so Bright!
Erin Amelia Fletcher
Punishment . . . Ick
I'm so lucky. The only person who's ever punished me for cross-dressing -- is me. And, I've made myself quit doing that.
Your life description makes me angry as does all small-minded bigotry.
It's wonderful you've survived.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Cross dressing or is it?
A couple of years ago a cis female friend of mine asked me if it counted as cross dressing when she wore trousers. She was serious, and so was I when I said I had no idea. It seems to me the term means something subtly different to different people. I had an elderly aunt who certainly did consider women wearing trousers as cross dressing and had never for a second even considered wearing a pair in her entire life. I asked my friend would it stop her wearing trousers it it did so count. She replied, 'No,' and I said so I guess it doesn't matter does it?
I'm not trying to trivialise the issue for anyone but Angela had the right of it when she said she been punishing herself and now has stopped.
My point is there is more than enough pain heaped on the heads of those in the trans community be they of whatever type of membership, there is certainly no need to add to it by hurting oneself.
Eolwaen
CD & TG
This is very much dependent on how you define these terms.
Some say that they are the same. I think not. Cross-dressing is an activity while Transgendered is a state of being. Do people who are TG cross dress? Yes. Do cis-gendered people cross dress? Yes. We then must ask about the motive for/to cross-dressing.
Why do cisgendered people cross dress? It could be a variety of reasons that could range from a social activity for fun all the way to the fetishistic method of sexual gratification. Are they TG? No. They are probably very comfortable within their on skin as to whether they be male or female.
Western society seems to have an issue with people who do not fit the binary model of gender assigned at birth. I have been present at the birth of thousands of babies. I’ve never seen a baby with ambiguous genitalia. Every one of them has been defined as male or female with just a glance. I’m not so sure that all of them have grown up in the cisgendered binary model.
I am post-op having had MtF GRS. I am delighted with my result. My gender dysphoria has gone to a place where it no longer has an impact on my daily life as it once did. I am pragmatic enough to realise that forty plus years of exposure to masculinising androgens have made permanent changes to my body structure (particularly my larynx) that won’t ever be changed. For me, I am happy with my result.
Even those of us in the TG community must lift ourselves out of a binary model of gender where body MUST match gender. There are many out there who for one reason or another cannot surgically alter their body to help treat their dysphoria. I would hope that they can find that happy place within themselves where their dysphoria no longer rules their lives making every day a day of hard work and unpleasantness.
Am I dysphoric? This depends on how you define dysphoria. Dysphoria is a state of mind that has actual painful impact on our daily activities. This state of mind can bring on a depression that affects the way we perform our daily tasks including the quality of our work performance. I am no longer dysphoric. Do I get annoyed when people on the phone address me as ‘sir’? Yes, but does that make my day fall apart to the point of despair. Not anymore.
Does this define you, Jill, as a cross dresser and not tg? I think not. You are a person who is just trying to put one foot in front of the other every day, just like the rest of us. Cross dressers, in the fetishistic sense, dress for transient enjoyment or to get their rocks off. TG people cross dress just to be able to survive their daily situation which can be different for all of us.
Your choices Jill, are ones you make depending on what daily life brings you. Are you being a coward for not proceeding with any form of surgery? I think not. Does that make you a lesser person? Certainly not.
You describe yourself as ‘functioning at a high level’. It would seem that any dysphoria you experience does not negatively affect your daily life. I certainly do not see any mental disorder. I see someone who, like me, is pragmatic enough to recognise her situation and does the best that she can...
Robyn B
Sydney
What is a mental disorder anyway?
Some would say it's someone who's mind works differently than the majority. Of course using this definition then those of us that are smarter than the majority would be considered having a mental disorder :)
Honestly what does it matter if a guy gets pleasure out of wearing clothing that is feminine? Why is it acceptable for a woman to dress in male orientated clothing but unacceptable for a man to dress in feminine clothing?
And to put it bluntly, Who cares if a lumberjack looking guy walks down the street in a knee length blue checkered pinafore and white blouse... Got this image of big hairy, bearded Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz stuck in m head from writing that :)
But seriously does it hurt anyone? No it does not!
What they need to focus on when speaking of mental disorders are those conditions where the person can become a danger to themselves or others. Anything else is just someone utilizing their freedom to do what they want.
We the willing, led by the unsure. Have been doing so much with so little for so long,
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
NO, not a disorder.
I read just lots, LOTS, about genetics and procreation because of my own genetic issues and genetically carried conditions.
I think that there is a fair chance that many/most/all transgender, and perhaps LGB issues are caused by a partially failed set of twins. There are lots of people around who are called Chimera or other things. There are examples of these folk having some organs that are XY and some that are XX. This would account for those XY males who feel they are XX females trapped in the wrong body.
I'm XXY an I think that is likely another example of failed twins.
This is an admittedly half baked theory, and I have never heard this stated by anyone else. Still, perhaps in a decade or so, who knows?
Gwen
Psychology
Is crossdressing a mental disorder, of course not. The west is known for its hard gender roles, beware of you cross them. These 'rules' of course of often tied directly with religion belief. Remember what you call normal now was considered wrong years ago and will change in the future. Go to another country and its completely different. Looking back, many cultures in the past it was not a big deal. In fact, most of the Norse gods often portrayed themselves as woman, including Odin.
In the US, a woman wearing pants (crossdressing) in the workforce was unheard of 50 years ago. They were considered deviants. I believe the first congress woman to wear pants on the floor of congress was 1972. Which is absurd telling a woman they cant wear pants, just as absurd as telling a man he cant wear a skirt.
Is fearr Gaeilge briste, ná Béarla clíste.
Broken Irish is better than clever English.
Actually...
Painting your face the team colors and jumping up and down and screaming at your favorite ball team is a mental disorder.
Cross dressing? Fursuiting? Cosplaying? LARPing? RPing? All perfectly fine. Not normal, but who wants normal?
My initial thought/question
How OLD was the story? This site has been around for quite a long time and views have changed drastically in the last decade.
I'm Relatively Sure Its Publication Here...
...was very recent, assuming I'm thinking of the same story as Angela/Jill. Of course, that doesn't necessarily tell us when it was conceived or written, though it does suggest that the author still feels comfortable with it.
Eric
We all have have strong opinions about this, and here's mine
We all have have strong opinions about this, of course - after all, we're in a site that deals with this and other aspects of LGBTQ (insert "duh" here. lol). And here's mine.
I can only speak about my own experience, and, with me, dressing in the feminine was somehow shameful, since, for a long time, I thought my transgender thoughts, feelings and ideas was not something to be proud of - after all, being on the outs with most everyone for being effeminate and small, and getting beaten up, too, doesn't really give you a positive take on it.
But even as I grew older, and learned more about transgenderism and gender disphoria, my deep-down feelings had not changed much in this area, even when I decided to transition. I never did wear female clothes (except for a few items, and never in any obvious way) until I officially started my one-year RLT. My feelings then was that I wouldn't want to be "partly female" until I can be femininely complete, or was on the way to being complete (or as complete as is currently possible), and sexual arousal and so forth was never really a part of the cross-dressing. Anyway, I am sure at least a few of you will understand my feelings, especially those who also have GD.
In any case, I think cross dressing isn't necessarily a bad thing, much less a disorder, but it can be. As to when it is a disorder, I think the doctors have established that, and I agree (just my opinion - no need to have an argument, okay?).
Anyway, according to them, it is a disorder when there are TWO things that are true for the person (not just one but two things):
(1) the person must be sexually aroused by cross-dressing, and
(2) The person must experience significant distress or impairment – socially or occupationally – because of it. (the italiciized highlights are by me, btw)
They even have a medical term for this disorder - they call it "transvestic fetishism."
If you think about it, it seems a reasonable characterization of the disorder version of cross-dressing, and, if you extend the thought some more, then if either or both characteristics aren't true for the cross-dressing person, then it isn't a disorder. Right?
Anyway - that's my take.
I got the info, btw, from the DSM-5 - that's the 5th revision of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (I don't have the book, but my therapist provided me photocopies of some of its pages, which she thought relevant to me).
But I heard that most medical and psychiatric professionals now prefer the more internationally recognized "International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems" reference (the 10th version is called "ICD-10") published by the World Health Organization, mostly so that they use the more up-to-date and more internationally recognized terminologies for disorders, diseases, etc.
If you're curious, you can access the online ICD-10 catalog, which the WHO released in 2016: https://icd.who.int/browse10/2016/en (note that this is the catalog only, and not the actual book).
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can of worms
But ill throw my two cents in.
Gender dysphoria is a mental condition, just not a debilitating one. Whether that leads to crossdressing, transvestism, transsexual, or other isn't the issue.
There are those that love to play with words, ill let them have their fun.
Back in the day
a male wanting to wear women's clothes was considered a mental illness. Just like Homosexuality was before it.
I'm like you in that every day, I wish I'd been born a woman. At home I dress as a woman most fo the time. Coming out as a woman? Forget it. There is no way that I'd pass and the mental torture of being exposed like that is just not worth it. Perhaps in time society will one day be tolerant enough to let us dress the way we want to.
If wanting to wear nice pretty clothes is an illness then an awful lot of us have been afflicted by it since birth.
Sorry, those who preach the idea that we are all mentally ill really have no idea what it is like to be us. I'm sure that if they did, they'd soon change their tune but somehow I doubt it.
Samantha
This is all I have to...
... say about this.
If you can be true to your honest authentic self and live a life where you find peace with yourself without hurting another in the process, then you become a success as a human being.
And in the 'trans' situation, the whole spectrum of it, fuck the rules and theories of the pseudo 'know it alls' and listen to your heart. And do what calms your demons and stills your pain.
Because if you do not do it for yourself, no one else will do it for you.
but it is the rare moments of beauty and peace
in between the chaos,
That makes it worth living."
- Tertia Hill
If you'd take the opinion of a cis guy...
Crossdressing to me is a form of transsexualism. Kinda sorta not biological, but social one. (Or maybe biological too, if the crossdresser wants to have been born in the other gender, but for some reason won't transition physically.) So, if transsexualism is not a mental disorder, crossressing won't be one too.
I would ask a similar question: Is shaving your face (if you are male) a mental disorder? No? Think about what the older Romans probably thought and said about it when the younger ones started trying it...
Which one has the mental problem
Who made anyone or group the social police or the fashion police? Remember Joan d' Arc or you might remember her as Joan of Arx. She was burned at the stake for heresy. The crime? Wearing pants. Up until WWII women wearing pants was an almost unforgivable sin. Desperate need for women in the factories, pilots, and other jobs where dresses were a hazard to one's health meant the mindset of a whole civilization was changed.
Would you bungee jump off a thousand foot bridge? Parachute out of a perfectly good airplane? Now that's a real mental disorder. Damn it Jill, those like you, me, and all the others have been diagnosed as insane by someone or another since the dark ages. Who are they to judge? I don't remember giving anyone authority to personally judge me. I'm pretty sure God didn't either. Until the next time I visit Him, I'll hold to that opinion.
I use to fly airplanes, ride motorcycles, fly gyrocopters along with a whole bunch of other things I was called crazy for doing. Being myself I'm an abomination, a monster, a demon, Satan's child, a freak, and a lot of others not printable here. Lot of parsing of the bible used by a whole lot of self righteous people to point it out to me.
The bottom line Jill, I hate to break it to you, but sweety, yes, you are insane. Just like every other single individual on this screwed up Star Ship we call Earth. And if you don't believe me I'm sure I can get a committee together, appoint myself in charge and declare you mentally deficient.
Jill, just be glad some of those butcher's didn't get their hands on you. Even up until the middle of nineteen sixty they were putting those like us in mental institutions. Still practicing electric shock, mind blowing drugs, and lobotomy. I'd call that mentally insane. Only problem, the insane were the ones running the institutions.
Hugs hon and if you need a pat on the head and someone to say you aren't any crazier than all the other crazies on this piece of rock..., Come see me and we'll discuss it after you buy me a chocolate malt.
always,
Barb
The life you live is the one given to you. What you do with it is your choice even if you made that choice because others influenced you.
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
Carl Jung
Carl Jung said that there was something feminine about every man and something masculine about every woman. I think he was right; gender is a spectrum with masculine on one end and feminine on the other. Under Jung's postulation, no one fits neatly on one end or the other.
Consider Rosey Grier: NFL football player, Protestant minister, and considered a man's man by everyone. Nobody would have dared call him a sissy, yet according to Wikipedia: "Grier is known for his serious pursuit of hobbies not traditionally associated with men. He has authored several books, including Rosey Grier's Needlepoint for Men in 1973."
Dictionary.com defines mental disorder as:
noun
1. any of the various forms of psychosis or severe neurosis.
Merriam-Webster
: any of a broad range of medical conditions (such as major depression, schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, or panic disorder) that are marked primarily by sufficient disorganization of personality, mind, or emotions to impair normal psychological functioning and cause marked distress or disability and that are typically associated with a disruption in normal thinking, feeling, mood, behavior, interpersonal interactions, or daily functioning.
The act of cross-dressing certainly doesn't fit in either of those.
As to transgender: Well, I think Jung covered that. The whole world is somewhat transgendered. It's a human condition. We run into to trouble when our deviation, not from the norm, but from the idealized perception is noticeable to the causal observer. Couple that with over zealot Bible readers who are willing to pick a single verse out of context (the one they usually pick doesn't really have a context) and close their mind to reality because of it, and we have people throwing around all kinds of accusations mental illness among.
If you are functioning adult, who succeeds in daily living, there's not a psychiatrist who in the country who would waste their time treating you for cross-dressing.
I did an article here, "How Trans is Trans" that explores the concept of cross-dresser being trans.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
The definition may help explain a few other things
If crossdressing can be defined as a type of mental disorder, And just about every female I have known likes to dress-down in male patterned style of clothing, that may explain why about 90% of the women I meet lately seem to be bat-shit crazy. Lol! It is still hard to work past all the years of guilt that weigh on your mind with this..'condition'. Why it can make me feel good and relaxed and guilty all at the same time is the real mental conundrum. Maybe some day peace of mind may come but I can't visualize it in my current 5 year plan. I got plenty of other things I can be mental about. Wearing what I wish to wear is not one of them.
Francis G.