A couple of friends of mine went out to a bar. It was a boring night, but soon an eager fellow came in.
He was travelling from Charleston to Montgomery, but had told his wife he arranged his trip with an overnight in Atlanta.
As soon as he saw the two transgrrls at the bar, he came over to buy them drinks and chat them up.
Soon, they had agreed to take him home.
Once there, they put him in a wig, heels and makeup. He was happy.
Then he started making out with one of them.
Next, he got her on the bed and entered her.
He was taking some time, so the other gal, seeing that rump bouncing up and down, decided to “put on a raincoat” and enter him. Voilà, Lucky Pierre!
The fellow started squealing.
“Your friend is turning me into a faggot! Your friend is turning me into a faggot!”
Stopping in town to go to a gay bar didn’t turn him into a faggot. Buying drinks for two transwomen didn’t turn him into a faggot. Going home with them didn’t turn him into a faggot. Putting on womens clothes didn’t turn him into a faggot. Making out with one of them didn’t turn him into a faggot. Sodomizing one of them didn’t turn him into a faggot. No, it was only taking a penis up his own poop chute that crossed the line.
We draw our lines so personally, don’t we? “Sure, I shove gerbils up my ass, and that’s normal, but he shoves guinea pigs up his butt, and that’s just sick!” Somehow the line of normal exists just past where we stop, doesn’t it?
TBB sometimes feels I don’t respect crossdressers enough. I reply that I very much respect transpeople whose presentation is episodic because of family obligations, but that yeah, crossdressers often squick me.
Being trans and exploring your nature, even with the constraints of having to hold onto your birth gender role for good reasons, well, that’s always something to respect.
Being a crossdresser who wants to be forced into some kind of titillating situation to get his rocks off, well, that’s sometimes not as easy to respect. I’ve met lots of crossdressers whose constraints don’t only limit their choices, but also limit the way that they can see other transpeople, assuming that if they are just in it for the thrill and can’t change their birth gender, no one else can either.
There’s an old saw in therapy: “The first year a man is in therapy is about convincing him he actually has feelings, and the second year is about convincing him that he won’t die or lose his manhood if he actually feels them.”
Too damn many crossdressers don’t want to do the work of engaging and understanding their own emotions, of taking responsibility for their own choices. This also means that they cannot understand or respect those people doing the work, instead just seeing them as a someone like them.
Ms. Ava has been out in the world of crossdressers for a while after attending gender conferences. The truth of classic gender conferences is that the majority of participants are crossdressers who want a a bigger closet for the weekend. Obviously this is not true of newer academic, health or youth focused conferences, just the old style ones. There may be room for the activists around the edges, but the bulk is weekend wankers, working still to compartmentalize their life and not to integrate it.
When Ms. Ava gets around these people, she often wants to follow and not to lead. That’s not what I suggest to her.
The key thread through crossdresser fiction is simple: someone makes them do it. There is a force that pushes them to “be a faggot,” be that force an encouraging woman, a scheming woman, an old crone with magic, out of control technology or whatever. The responsibility for their erotic pleasure is pushed out onto someone else, so they have no control over having their precious manhood breached, their sensations and feelings activated, their own masculinity surrendered to the feminine.
As Flip Wilson’s Geraldine character used to say, “The Devil Made Me Do It!” a perfect crossdresser mantra.
So where is the position for women in this world of crossdressers, even trans women?
Why, it’s to make them do it, of course. Eve and the devil had a pact, you know? We are supposed to “turn them into a faggot,” into someone who isn’t required to hold onto masculinity with their fingernails. It’s the same challenge for therapists who have to make men confront their feelings and then make them get over the fear that engaging their feelings will destroy them. And it’s a very uncomfortable demand for the partners of crossdressers.
Ms. Ava and TBB understand this. Crossdressers tell us what they desire all the time if we just listen. The problem is that they don’t listen to themselves. They aren’t going to do the work, they are going to resist the work, unless someone makes them do it. And women who are willing to take responsibility for forcing crossdressers to engage their own desires can often be rewarded handsomely for the work. Just ask Miss Vera.
“You need to wear a butt plug to dinner tonight.”
“Really? Do I have to?”
“Yes!”
“Well, if I have to….”
The devil made him do it.
I respect people who take responsibility for their own feelings, desires and needs. It’s damn hard work, I know, and I get why it would be so lovely to be able to palm off the responsibility for challenging choices to someone else. It’s just I think its not a healthy or fair choice to put someone else in charge of your own choices unless that’s a defined power swapping relationship and you acknowledge your slavery. Otherwise, it’s just topping from the bottom, without consent. I believe that you should treat your devil like the professional she is, reading your mind and forcing your choices.
To paraphrase Eleanor Roosevelt, “No one can turn you into a faggot without your consent.”
And, in the end, we each own our own devils.
Callan 
I think you are too quick to compartmentalize all crossdressers into “unthinking sex fanatics”. Part of my journey was certainly finding out if I was as submissive as i imagined I would be as a female. Turns out I was wrong, Being submissive was simply not in the cards. I still had to go theire and figure it out for myself. 99% of all people who identify as transgender started out wearing the clothing of the opposite gender. Surgery is not the ultimate goal, and labeling someone who has not reached that goal as “Simply a Crossdresser” can be viewed as demeaning.
Our debate here is over language, of course. I never identified as a Virginia Prince style crossdresser, but you did. And that makes the term crossdresser more potent to you than it is to me, because it was a position you occupied and still hold dear.
We agree that surgery is not the goal, and that few who express transgender through clothing and other symbols will ever need to go full time. I respect all range of trans expression, and know that we need to explore and find out what place is close to us. I respect transpeople whose expression is episodic because they need to take care of their family and other obligations.
I just wouldn’t call all these people crossdressers. To me, the term crossdresser has a very specific FPE/SSS kind of meaning, while to you, crossdresser is just a way for people to identify their episodic expression of trans.
In my experience, I have found the people who identify as FPE/SSS style crossdressers as often demeaning to other transpeople who are working to find their own location. By compartmentalizing their own trans expression, they then tend to see others as also compartmentalizing their own expression, which demeans and diminishes their journey.
To me, the difference is between tourists and travelers. Tourists come to a new place bringing their home with them, for just a break and a diversion before going back to be themselves again next week. Travelers go on a journey of exploration, exploring not only new places but also what they can learn about themselves from new experiences. In my terminology, crossdressers are the tourists of gender, going for the thrill, bringing a kind of ugly baggage rather than a respect for cultures they pass through.
Can tourists ever become travellers, transformed by the people they meet, the experiences they have, and the cultures they touch? Of course they can, but they are no longer tourists then.
I don’t mean to demean any person when I say something like “simply a crossdresser.” I know that our first steps in gender exploration are always timid, tenuous and guarded. We all do that, whatever we call ourselves.
I do mean, however, to challenge a mindset when I talk about crossdressers. It is specifically those crossdressers who are “unthinking sex fanatics” who I am challenging, though I would call them “erotic thrill seekers” or “sex tourists,” unable to engage or respect the rich cultures they pass through, including the culture of women and the culture of transgender.
It is vital for us to identify what we share, and we do that by approaching others with respect and openness, honouring and valuing diversity, knowing that everyone has something to offer, as you have always done. But we can’t do that until we take responsibility for our own feelings, thoughts, choices and actions, rather than compartmentalizing and just trying to find a quick thrill that does not demand we open and grow.
You know what the word crossdresser means to you, and to you it is a valued place that allowed you a first step on a journey to self-expression, self-knowledge and self-actualization. You want to make sure that people in this place are respected and given a chance to take the first baby steps they need to take to start their own process.
I know what the word crossdresser means to me, and to me it is a mindset that encourages compartmentalization and twisted thinking, working hard to keep up walls that separate men from women, gays from straights, queers from normies, real from fake, erotic from integral, transformation from constancy and on and on and on.
I would never choose to demean any person. I would choose to characterize a mindset that I see as being against empowerment and growth.
I welcome all transpeople whose expression is episodic because they honour their commitments to their family and their communities. Those people deserve our caring and our respect, as they struggle to find balance between inner expression and outer commitment, between wild freedom and tame assimilation.
I just wouldn’t call all those people crossdressers.