Okay so this is a hard one to write about but it is important because it’s one of those things that I keep pushing to the back of my mind but comes back every time I think I am feeling confident that I am trans. Judging by comments others are posting on trans twitter I think it’s quite a common thing we feel, so worth discussing. Even though I think quite a lot of trans people get to know themselves and their female side through a kind of gateway of cross dressing or kink or fetish, to talk about it still feels quite taboo.
I think this comes from a place of uncertainty and the attendant fear that brings. “Am I trans enough” or “real trans” is something we all agonise over. I don’t think anyone wants to admit to themselves, never minds anyone else, that they might have done or felt anything that could invalidate their transness. Combine this with the likelihood that anyone you confide in might assume that “it’s a sexual thing”; or that you might be accused of autogynephilia and there is a motivation to hide it and feel ashamed. Layer on to this the controversial categorisations of ‘real trans’ and ‘false agp trans’ and one can feel invalidated and wrong.
How can it be wrong though? Gender and sexuality are personal to the individual and for no one else to question. However we come to be who we are, does not invalidate where we end up.
So let’s be open and honest about it.
I have put on female clothing, lingerie mainly, for the way it feels, as a fetish and to turn myself on for self gratification. Sorry, but that’s the truth.
I’m a bad person. A “pervert” who wears a bra and panties to play with himself?
Ok, to some extent maybe. I do find bras erotic, because of the tightness of the band around my chest and the shoulder straps. Panties less so, unless they are the body shaping kind that is tight and restrictive because that feels so different to my male underwear.
This is actually quite hard to admit to you, but I am trying to be open.
If that were all it was, a kink for tight lingerie and how it feels, then I could draw a line there, declare myself a fetishist or pervert and guilty as charged but certainly not real trans.
I have done that, and still do, but to understand this, I have to ask why, or how it started.
I didn’t put on one of my mum’s bras because I had a kink and wanted to try it out. I was going through puberty and seeing girls change in a way that seemed so much more than I was getting. I wanted to be like the girls in my class who were developing breasts and wearing bras to contain their new shapes. I put on a bra because I wanted to feel how the girls felt. At the same time, I was a hormonal teenage boy and therefore constantly horny and masturbating and well the two things came together. I wanted to feel like a girl and try on female clothing, That felt nice and different and sexy and I got aroused and…well we don’t need to go any further.
The first time I touched a girl’s breasts through her bra and felt her nipple was one of the most exciting things ever to happen to me. But the number one feeling I wanted to know was how it felt for her. So I put on a bra and touched my own nipple through the fabric, which is very nice and sexy and erotic and that led to more of the self pleasing. So what does that make me? A pervert with a thing for lingerie? Or a trans girl desperate to feel things as a real girl would? Bear in mind that at the time (1980s) the latter wasn’t really an option so furtive cross dressing was my only recourse.
As I got older and acquired my own female clothes, I found that although I liked to wear a dress or skirt around the house, there was nothing erotic about that. It was just normal clothing. If I wanted to feel sexy, it was tight clingy things like shapewear lingerie, bodysuits, swimsuits, waist trainer corsets and tight bras that did it for me. That’s a lot about the feeling of them when I put them on and I do still enjoy that. But also I love the shape they give me. Shapewear knickers or tights / pantiehose can be arousing, but they can also hide any unfortunate male bulge and give me a female shape that I really love. I’m actually wearing an all in one body and thigh shaping bodysuit which I chose because it is tight and clingy all over. By cinching my waist, that is tight and kinky, but it gives me curves and a feminine body shape that I love. My bras give me the illusion of a chest. Sometimes these items are a turn on and I use them for pleasure but other times there is nothing erotic about them at all, they give me the body shape I wish for and that pleases me in a completely non sexual way because I look like a woman.
Outer wear, like skirts and dresses are still not a sexy thing for me. Wearing a skirt when working from home is not a sex thing. It’s a feeling like Nicola thing and I feel free and myself. My limited experience of being out in public in a dress was definitely not in any way erotic, I was just going out as myself and seeing how it felt.
I feel bad about cross dressing for sexual pleasure but it is separate from being Nicola. To be fair to myself, I have cis female friends who wear sexy lingerie for their own pleasure and it’s not that different. I may have chosen shapewear underwear that feels a certain way if I am in that mood, but also because they shape my body to look more feminine because that’s what I want too
I think my conclusion is that I am trans and cross dressing and fetishisation of lingerie was an outlet for those feelings but the transness came first. I don’t believe that I have talked myself into thinking that I’m trans because I get off on wearing bras and panties.
That does still leave the question of autogynephilia Does thinking of myself with a female body arouse me and is that wrong? That’s similarly hard to answer. For the same reason that wearing a bra can feel erotic or just part of shaping myself as I want to be, so too thinking about myself with breasts. Sometimes the idea of that is the sexiest thing I can imagine and that is basically female embodiment fantasy. But why am I imagining myself developing breasts? Because I want to know how it feels to be a woman. I’m thinking about the stages of development from budding through to fuller growth because all my life I dreamed of going through puberty as a girl and feeling everything the girls did and experiencing life as a girl. That’s my dream. Is that autogynephilia or female embodiment fantasy, or is that the natural way a trans woman feels who wants to become the person she always felt like inside?
I’m strangely less conflicted about my feelings about a vagina than I am about breasts. Probably because I have no way of imagining how it feels to have one. That and vaginas are pretty much for sex, so I don’t think that daydreaming about sex with one’s vagina is exactly controversial, what else would I think of doing with it? I think mainly it’s just that I can’t relate to it so have no basis for imagination. I have no idea what it is like to become aroused as a woman, to become wet or how it feels to be penetrated. Breasts I can relate to, they are less hidden and I sort of have a chest and nipples myself, just not as good.
Still, I think that to the extent that visualising myself with a female body and my own real breasts and vagina can be arousing sometimes, often it isn’t and it’s just trying to see myself as a woman and having the right body to pass in the world and feel like myself. Again, I think any female embodiment fantasy or autogynephilia is a symptom of being trans, not the other way around
And yet, I still have this voice in my head telling me that I can’t be proper trans
Comments
Post a Comment