By Allison Marsh
Dear Cindy, I just had a correspondence exchange vie e-mail with a TV in England, named Carol. She wrote to me because I had sent some material I had written to a friend (Vickie Terne in New York), who forwarded it to Carol. I think the contents of the letters, taken together, might be of interest to TGForum's readers. The exchange is as follows: -------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 22 Jan 96 22:25:51 From: A new friend in England Organization: None Reply-To: To: good1@halcyon.com Subject: Hello Lines: 45 Hi Allison, I have recently joined the Transgen List looking for some answers to the origins of my need to crossdress for the past forty years or so.I was warmly welcomed by Vickie,who has just sent me a copy of the letter you sent to Marilyn Gregson. Vickie assures me that you would not be offended if I wrote to you personally. I hope this is the case I do not wish to offend anyone,if I have I'm truly sorry. This is really just a line or two to say thank you for giving me some real answers at last. I feel so relieved that this condition is something I was born with and is not some perverse invention of my subconscious. I have had some difficulty in the last few years coming to terms with something that I felt I should have grown out of in adolescence, and here I am 50 next month and crossdressing on a daily basis. I have always felt close to my 'female side' and always been a gentle and sensitive person,really quite emotional,I remember when I went with what is now my ex wife to see Love Story. I was unbelievably upset.Tears began to fill my eyes about half way through the film and continued to the end. And on the drive home,and for the rest of the evening. Even the next day I felt myself filling up as I recounted the story in my mind. Emotional or what? I was called a big softy but that was ok. Just last summer I took a friend to the airport to put his 10 year old son on a plane to St Louis to visit his mother for a holiday. I felt ok about it until he began to go into the departure area and he became upset,well I went off again,tears streaming down my face,and I was just giving them a lift to the airport.His father waved his son goodbye and then put his arms around me and gave me a hug,and I cried all the way out of the airport.What a sight.It was the unfairness of the situation of a father wanting to be with his son but unable to be which took me back to feelings I had experienced in my own marriage split up some 14 years ago when my children were around the same age. I hadn't felt that way for a long time,thought I had experience all the pain I was going to have in my life long ago.Still waters run deep I guess.My life is uncomplicated now and I try and keep things simple.I live alone at the moment and my time after work,is my own.I thought it was time to find out who I am and gain some help in accepting and loving myself for who I am and not beating myself up mentally about feeling the way I feel.Your letter has helped me So Much on my journey. My thanks to you once again for putting my mind at ease. Warm thoughts,..... ************************ To: My new friend in England From: good1@halcyon.com (Allison Marsh) Subject: Don't worry; be happy. X-Attachments: Dear ....., In your explanation of your feelings, you are giving a fairly standard history for transvestites. You are not experiencing something you should have outgrown. You are experiencing something that was built in a long time ago, before you were born, which (for most crossdressers) does not hit with full force until about age 45. Until then, they have feelings of being attracted to women's clothing, makeup, things that are tokens of womanhood, and often wish they might be women for a while at a time, though not necessarily to be one ALL the time. This is a feeling that gets stronger, not weaker, with age. You are very wise to be exploring it now. But first you must understand that this is not a sickness, any more than male pattern baldness, or older men growing hairs in their ears or developing heavy hairs in their eyebrows. You see it all the time, but you seldom stop to think that these hair patterns were passed down in one's genetic and hormonal makeup so long ago. Not everyone grows thick eyebrows, hairs in their ears, or baldness on their tops. Now wouldn't it be silly if everyone who did, felt that perhaps this was caused by too much participation in competitive high school sports, or by those two years when they drank too much and smoked 30 years before? The feminine feelings you are experiencing are not anyone's fault, nor are they wrong. They are simply different from what some other people feel. They are a part of who you are-a natural state for you; that's the way your brain was wired. Consider for a minute how stupid it is for all our American politicians to run around damning 10% of our population for "choosing" to be gay. That's the same as damning the black people for choosing not to be Caucasion. Our papers carried a story last week that a very large study has proved conclusively that the chances of the next boy in the same family being born gay directly increases each time an older brother was born into that family. The chances never receded with additional brothers; they always increase. Left handedness is more than twice as great among male to female transsexuals than in the population as a whole. The hypothalamus gland, which controls sexual drive and direction, is twice as large in straight men than in straight women. But that gland is only half as large in male to female transsexuals than it is in straight women. Conclusion: male to female transsexuals probably have brains that are more female than the average female. Was this a choice? An over-indulgent mother? An abusive father? Something in the atmosphere, like living under high-tension power lines? There is only one sensible answer to all these things and it lies in the interaction of the Y Chromosome and the production of testosterone by the embryo in the right amounts at the right time, and without interference from an oversupply of estrogen from the mother. If all this brain rewiring doesn't come off exactly the same for everybody, then not everybody will have the same gender inclinations, nor necessarily the same sex desires or practices. You are not sick because your brain was formed in a bit more feminine a pattern than most men's was. If you were, think what all women would be, poor things. So if you are not sick, what's to wonder about? Well, some of the things are: What does this difference in my brain make me want to do that I am not doing now? Could I do more of what I am not doing that I want to do? How much more do I WANT to do? How much more can I do safely? (Job security; social contacts; family, etc.) Does this mean I am gay? Does my attraction to womanly things, and perhaps acting out as a woman part of the time mean I'm a transsexual and will want to change into a woman? Will I change in my idea of which sex would make a good marital partner? If I start crossdressing and like it, will I just want to dress more and more and more? Is it addictive? How will I know how to stop? Most people just starting to explore their transgendered emotions don't know for sure where they will end up on a scale of 0 Male to 10 Female. Nearly all transvestites wish sometimes that they could be a woman part of the time. Sometimes, usually for a short period, we wish we could be a woman for ever. But most commonly, we wish we might have real breasts with real, sensitive nipples-until we need to take them off to go to the beach or swim in the pool or be examined at the doctor, or have a hot date with a woman we'd like to impress. Still there's a lot to explore. You can shave closely and cover a beard with Max-Factor Pan Stick or theatrical makeup, then learn to do eye make up, cheek and lip color, etc. You can start to accumulate a wardrobe of women's underthings to wear undetected under your male clothes if you haven't already. You can wear clear fingernail polish without detection. You can trim your sideburns higher toward the top of your ears so they don't show below a blond or light-colored wig. You can even undergo electrolysis and have your entire beard removed, as I have, and no one--NO ONE--will ever notice that it's gone. (But boy, does that ever make it easier to stay made up without having to shave every five hours! You can start accumulating a street wardrobe, usually (unless you're rich) by shopping in consignment or used clothing stores. Nobody will ever ask for whom you are purchasing the blouses, skirts, or slacks. Away from home, you can even get up the nerve to try on some women's shoes until you can assemble an outfit that allows you to shop as a woman. You may find at each step that you are thrilled with your progress; that you have achieved a new level of freedom. You'll be self-conscious away from home until (1) you get skilled enough in your choice of clothes and makeup application to pass without raising questions and (2) you realize that even if people do sometimes "read" you, nothing bad will happen if it is evident that you are well-groomed and that you are trying to present a pleasant and dignified appearance. Lastly, when you reach a point where you don't care, and you know people usually will not notice you as a pseudo-woman, your confidence will radiate--people who would have wondered will do so no longer. Will you get addicted? Sure; it's adventuresome; it's fun; it is mildly sexually satisfying, though less and less stimulating; it's relaxing some of the time, and it's very funny sometimes. Lots of new experiences to be had. At some point you will crossdress enough to satisfy your needs, and you will level off on a plateau. That may be far beyond your wildest dreams of possibility right now, but it will almost surely happen. A few people, who find that life as a woman is infinitely more satisfying than life as a man, decide to take hormones to enhance their breasts, trim their waists, enhance their hips, and then dress and live as a woman--perhaps even with breast implants, tracheal shaves, and vocal cord surgery, though most transgenderists do not feel a need to go to that much trouble and expense. Then a few feel that they have always been women in men's bodies; they hate their genitals; they hate every part of the male anatomy; and they will damn well have sex reassignment surgery or die in the attempt. But this group of people were nearly all SURE they had the wrong bodies ever since they were little children. I sometimes wish I might be a woman. But I don't hate my genitals; I rather like them. I still derive pleasure from them with my mate, and I'm 70. I think it would be a lot of fun to have real breasts, and I have every assurance that if I did have, my mate would play with them to my heart's content, as she does the ones I have now. But the trade off in embarrassment or curtailment of activities where a healthy set of breasts would be a detriment is too high a price for me. I just don't want real ones that badly. (But it makes a hell of a fantasy!) Does it make me gay? Well, no. I never was attracted to men as sex partners, although I admit to having been attracted to a couple of very feminine and pretty transsexuals I have met. My choice in sex partners is set in my brain. No amount of hormones nor playing girl will change that. If I wee now attracted to men as sex partners, then took hormones and went the whole route to womanhood, my choice of sex partners would probably remain for men. But since I am attracted instead to women, if I bombarded my brain with estrogen, had the surgery, and lived as a woman, I would remain attracted to women and be one of the army of "transsexual lesbians". (I've always felt that's the way it would be, even when I was younger. But at 70, the whole idea gets pretty ridiculous.) Another thing you can do that is more than you are doing now is read some good books related to crossdressing. You can buy a copy of "BRAIN SEX" by Anne Moire and David Jessel (1992) and find out all you need to convince you that you are a product of your chromosomes and your hormones prior to birth. (You also get lots of laughs, and recognize a lot of your friends among the examples they give of how brain differences play out in human behavior.) You can buy a copy of "MY HUSBAND WEARS MY CLOTHES" by Dr. Peggy Rudd or "COPING WITH CROSSDRESSING" by Dr. JoAnn Roberts through the CDS BOOKSTAND. And if you are interested in learning more about whether you might be a transsexual, try a book called, "THE UNINVITED DILEMMA" which is also available from the CDS BOOKSTAND. . It deals primarily with M to F transsexuals, their feelings, and how they manage the change. You can join a group of transvestites if there is one in a city near you. TAPESTRY MAGAZINE and LadyLike Magazine lists the TV groups in all U.S. cities, and I think the main ones in other countries. Otherwise you can write to IFGE and ask them about organizations they may know about near you. I think it is urgent that you mix with others who feel as you do. You'll find this a tremendous help in recognizing that your own emotions are common among many, many people, though we don't make a large percent of the population. This will do two more things for you: it will put you in a position to help other people, which will make you feel good; and it will acquaint you with many intensely interesting people whom you would never otherwise have had an opportunity to meet. Your life is guaranteed to become more interesting from the contacts you make in the transgendered groups. Lastly, keep on writing to Vickie. She's so witty she'll keep you laughing with every communication. She knows darned well that she's very smart, but I don't think she appreciates it as much as the people the people who receive and enjoy her correspondence. I do know that she is very supportive, and a wonderful person to have as a friend and correspondent. Besides, she'll be a challenge to you to write about the lighter side of your emotions, as she does. It's like always playing tennis with someone who is more skillful than yourself--you improve your game every time you play. (I don't play tennis, but I think I heard that at a church once when God told me I should go and give money.) As to your tendency toward crying, I'd guess that might come from one of two sources. (1) You might be just that much more female than most men are that crying has always and always will come more easily. (2) More likely, you have experienced some severe traumas in divorce and family break-up which put you in such great emotional pain that you cried as all men cry in such pain. I remember shortly after my divorce and the emotional tearing that caused with my children, I was asked by a girl to attend "KRAMER VS KRAMER", which was a heart rending story of two people who loved each other and broke up anyway, and about the little boy who became attached to his father as a single parent, and finally was lost to his father in a custody battle with the mother. That picture show was so close to home that I cried uncontrollably all the way back to her house, and all the way to my house after I left her. And during my divorce, I always cried very loudly on the freeway with the windows rolled up, where no one had no time to look over and see the tears running down my cheeks. That break up taught me to cry, sometimes about pretty small things. Each time I came home from work and opened the kitchen cupboard doors to see what I could cook for myself in an empty house, I cried. Why? Because damnit-men aren't supposed to have to cook for themselves, and I didn't know what to fix. I wouldn't worry a whit about the fact that you are moved to tears sometimes. It doesn't make you more female--just more human. I have been asked to address a group of high-school age gay, lesbian, and transgendered students who belong to a parent-sponsored support organization. I plan to give the talk while crossdressed. The first line opens with, "Hello. My name is Allison Marsh. I am a man, and I am a transvestite." I have a terrible urge to follow that with, "Earlier this afternoon I screwed your little sister." But, like I said, it's a parent sponsored organization, and a great many people in the transgendered community tend to take life very seriously. I might not escape with my life at all if I start on that note. There is some additional information you might be interested in the talk, which is nearing it's final draft. I'll send you a copy. Good luck in your search for the truth as you need it to be. Goodnight, Allison Marsh