Cross Dressing and the Guy Next Door?

After the Cyrsti's Condo "20 Word" post on words you believe to be female in nature, Connie came up with an idea to do 20 for cross dressers and Jeni even directed me over to a Paula Goodwin Facebook post on "Crossdressing Success Stories." Both are incredibly interesting. 

First, Paula's- being the bitch I am (on the 20 word list) or inquiring minds want to know, doesn't one have to define what dictates "success" as a crossdresser? I mean if you can go shopping or whatever as a girl and not be "busted as a guy",is that "success? In that case, I'm pretty sure I had tons more failures than success. I guess the biggest success I had though was figuring out the clothes actually had very little to do with the process. Something much deeper was going on. Which brings me to another comment sent in from Jeni (I paraphrase) - how many times does cross dressing lead to a person becoming transgender. 

Number one, I don't believe someone "becomes" trans. Either you is, or you 'ain't.' It may manifest itself in your life at any time, but it's there. So, like marijuana leading to doing heroin, a cross dresser will not automatically take the path to a transgender future. If the dots are already there-they are easier to connect.

As far as 20 "crossdressing words", here is part of Connie's comment:

"OK, we could try to come up with a different list: 20 Reasons People Cross Dress. Notice that I say "people", as the lists may be different for men than for women. Also, and more importantly, designating the sex of the cross dresser would change the whole definition. That is, I believe there is a difference between a cis male who identifies as such, but partakes in the activity of wearing women's attire (to whatever degree and for whatever reason) and a cis male who (gender) identifies as a woman wearing women's attire (to whatever degree and for whatever duration).

 I know many more (self proclaimed) cross dressers than (self proclaimed) transgender women ("full-time" or "part-time"), yet I'm not sure that the self-proclamations are always accurate. Many of the cross dressers may have just settled for the lifestyle out of fear of the loss of loved ones or a career, but they, at the same time, identify their genders as being female in secret. So, they cross dress (or do they?), when they can get away with it, as a coping mechanism. Furthermore, their self-proclamation could very well be a coping mechanism (denial) in itself. *Been there-done that."

Go here for the rest!