Lauren Hare and Vincent Harvey from the Prince Henry's Institute of Medical Research in Australia, have just published some interesting results from a genetic study of transsexuals. (Yes, I know, not transvestites, but bear with me.) The basic result was that they believe they have identified a gene which codes for androgen uptake which may be different in people who are male-to-female transsexuals. Specifically, they suggest this gene reduces the effect of testosterone on the developing brain and leads to 'undermasculinisation' as they put it. That is, males with this gene variant will develop brains which are more like female brains and this is a possible cause of their later gender identity issues.
The work ties in well with recent research that shows the brains of transsexual men and women have brain structures more typical of the opposite sex than of their own apparent sex. It also ties in with finger length studies which also suggest a hormonal influence on development. Generally, although the evidence is still weak, there is increasing support for the view that transsexuality is a natural, if rare, condition caused by hormonal influences in the womb and possibly continuing after birth.
It also ties in very nicely with what I have believed for a long time about transvestitism - that the root cause is the 'feminisation' of particular brain structures in an otherwise 'normal' male brain.
The really excellent thing about all this scientific work on the causes of transsexuality (I'm sure they'll get 'round to transvestitism eventually) is that it seems to be causing a shift in the thinking of the medical profession - away from the bizarre and inadequate psychiatric explanations to do with 'fetishes' (as in the infamous 'Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders' - the psychiatrist's diagnostic bible) and weird Freudian hangover notions like 'a preoedipal failure to complete individuation from the mother'. There are now groups like GIRES (the Gender Identity Research and Education Society) which are helping to promote a much more scientifically justifiable view of gender identity issues.
Spread the word, everyone.
Sunday 26 October 2008
Monday 13 October 2008
Expanded Horizons
Here's a venture that people like me might like to get behind and support. A new Web-based magazine called Expanded Horizons has just launched. It is free, it publishes speculative fiction and it is aimed at people who are not part of mainstream groups. Its tagline is 'Speculative Fiction For The Rest Of Us'. They particulary include, "Increasing the number of authentically portrayed transgender, transsexual, intersex and genderqueer ⁄ fluid people in speculative fiction" as part of their mission statement.
So why not go and have a look and, if you like it, give them your support.
So why not go and have a look and, if you like it, give them your support.
Monday 16 June 2008
New Brain Study Implications For Transvestitism
Yet more evidence that sexual orientation is biologically determined and has little to do with how people are raised comes from MRI and PET studies conducted at the Stockholm Brain Institute (abstract available) . The researchers found that brain shape and size was similar between gay men and straight women and between straight men and gay women. They also found that activity in an area of the brain called the amygdala had the same pattern.
Once more, the evidence suggests that gays are 'born that way' and that sexual orientation is not a 'lifestyle choice'.
What's this got to do with transvestites? Well, nothing really except that it provides further evidence that developments in the womb and early infancy can significantly alter brain structures which have outcomes in terms of sex-related behaviours. That something as significant as sexual orientation can be affected suggests to me that scientists should be looking more closely at how atypical brain development can lead to atypical gender presentation and gender identification preferences - i.e. transvestitism and transsexualism.
I have always argued that men like me, who cross-dress, do so because a part of our brains has been wired up the wrong way so that we feel the need to present ourselves as women. I believe that once we (the transgendered community), the psychological and psychiatric worlds, and the public in general accept this explanation, attitudes to transvestitism will begin to change. If the world (and especially the world of psychiatry) sees us not as 'perverts' or 'fetishists' but as perfectly ordinary people, coping with a small glitch in our brain's wiring, I can only think that we will be treated with more understanding and less contempt.
These studies on the neuroanatomy of gays don't help us directly but at least they establish the principle that such things are an accident of birth not the wilful embracing of a moral corruption.
Once more, the evidence suggests that gays are 'born that way' and that sexual orientation is not a 'lifestyle choice'.
What's this got to do with transvestites? Well, nothing really except that it provides further evidence that developments in the womb and early infancy can significantly alter brain structures which have outcomes in terms of sex-related behaviours. That something as significant as sexual orientation can be affected suggests to me that scientists should be looking more closely at how atypical brain development can lead to atypical gender presentation and gender identification preferences - i.e. transvestitism and transsexualism.
I have always argued that men like me, who cross-dress, do so because a part of our brains has been wired up the wrong way so that we feel the need to present ourselves as women. I believe that once we (the transgendered community), the psychological and psychiatric worlds, and the public in general accept this explanation, attitudes to transvestitism will begin to change. If the world (and especially the world of psychiatry) sees us not as 'perverts' or 'fetishists' but as perfectly ordinary people, coping with a small glitch in our brain's wiring, I can only think that we will be treated with more understanding and less contempt.
These studies on the neuroanatomy of gays don't help us directly but at least they establish the principle that such things are an accident of birth not the wilful embracing of a moral corruption.
Sunday 6 January 2008
Finger Poll Results
Well, let's have a look at the results for the finger length ratio poll (still running in the right-hand margin by the way). After over a hundred responses, it is clear that an unusual pattern is present.
Remember, in the normal population, we would expect men to have longer ring fingers than index fingers. In women, the two fingers should be the same length with the index finger sometimes longer. Population stats are hard to come by (for me, anyway) but I tracked down one report that suggests that 61% of men should have this longer-ring-finger pattern. What emerges from the poll is that only 42% of the male transvestites who responded have the typical male pattern, while 58% have the typical female ratio. This is almost the exact opposite of the usual distribution.
It's a very strong result and in the direction predicted, so I'm feeling quite pleased about it (because it suggests I'm right in thinking that pre-natal hormonal conditions in the womb may be a cause of transvestitism). However, the study is way too loosely-controlled to be anything other than suggestive. For a start, there may have been some bias in the way people took the test or in the way they reported their results. It could be, for example, that people wanting to find a biological cause for their condition unconsciously skewed their measurements, or were more likely to report a 'feminine' finger length ratio. It could also be that not everyone who took the test were transvestites, or even males! I'll just never know.
However, if there are any scientists reading this, I believe you now have a prima facie reason to suspect there are hormonal influences at work here. Do the experiment under controlled conditions and see if it replicates. There must be a PhD in this for someone – or at least a couple of publications.
Meanwhile, I'll leave the poll running – and a huge thank you to everyone who participated!
Remember, in the normal population, we would expect men to have longer ring fingers than index fingers. In women, the two fingers should be the same length with the index finger sometimes longer. Population stats are hard to come by (for me, anyway) but I tracked down one report that suggests that 61% of men should have this longer-ring-finger pattern. What emerges from the poll is that only 42% of the male transvestites who responded have the typical male pattern, while 58% have the typical female ratio. This is almost the exact opposite of the usual distribution.
It's a very strong result and in the direction predicted, so I'm feeling quite pleased about it (because it suggests I'm right in thinking that pre-natal hormonal conditions in the womb may be a cause of transvestitism). However, the study is way too loosely-controlled to be anything other than suggestive. For a start, there may have been some bias in the way people took the test or in the way they reported their results. It could be, for example, that people wanting to find a biological cause for their condition unconsciously skewed their measurements, or were more likely to report a 'feminine' finger length ratio. It could also be that not everyone who took the test were transvestites, or even males! I'll just never know.
However, if there are any scientists reading this, I believe you now have a prima facie reason to suspect there are hormonal influences at work here. Do the experiment under controlled conditions and see if it replicates. There must be a PhD in this for someone – or at least a couple of publications.
Meanwhile, I'll leave the poll running – and a huge thank you to everyone who participated!
Saturday 2 June 2007
Take The YBATV Finger Poll
Yet another report has appeared in the scientific literature (summarised here) of a sex difference which may be linked to hormonal 'surges' in the womb during the development of the foetus. The 'marker' often looked for in these studies is the ratio of the length of the index finger to that of the ring finger. In males, the ring finger tends to be longer than the index finger. In females the two fingers are more likely to be of equal length. Finger length ratio not only correlates with a person's sex but unusual ratios (e.g. men with equal-length fingers) also correlate with unusual sex-related attributes such as homosexuality, depression, and verbal ability.
It is believed that during development, the changing hormonal environment in the womb influences many aspects of a child's growth, not just their overt sexual appearance but more subtle things such as their finger length ratios and the way their brains are wired. In brain development in particular, timing is very important and an ill-timed change in hormonal mix is thought to lead to gender-inappropriate brain development. This has always seemed to me to be the most likely cause of transvestitism and transsexuality.
So, to put this to the test, I'd like each of you genetic males, who are transvestites or transsexuals, to measure your fingers and enter the results in my finger length poll on the right of this page (you may need to scroll down a bit). Measure as accurately as you can because the differences in length we are looking for are very small. Measure from the palm side of the finger, from the crease where the finger meets the palm up to the very tip of the finger.
You may only enter your result once so tell all your T*girl friends to have a go so we can get as much data as possible.
I'll leave the poll running for a few months and then see what we have.
My own index and ring fingers are exactly the same length, by the way.
Thanks.
It is believed that during development, the changing hormonal environment in the womb influences many aspects of a child's growth, not just their overt sexual appearance but more subtle things such as their finger length ratios and the way their brains are wired. In brain development in particular, timing is very important and an ill-timed change in hormonal mix is thought to lead to gender-inappropriate brain development. This has always seemed to me to be the most likely cause of transvestitism and transsexuality.
So, to put this to the test, I'd like each of you genetic males, who are transvestites or transsexuals, to measure your fingers and enter the results in my finger length poll on the right of this page (you may need to scroll down a bit). Measure as accurately as you can because the differences in length we are looking for are very small. Measure from the palm side of the finger, from the crease where the finger meets the palm up to the very tip of the finger.
You may only enter your result once so tell all your T*girl friends to have a go so we can get as much data as possible.
I'll leave the poll running for a few months and then see what we have.
My own index and ring fingers are exactly the same length, by the way.
Thanks.
Thursday 17 May 2007
Some Testable Hypotheses About Transvestitism
Most people don't know what science is. They seem to think it's about brainy people inventing exotic new technologies or tinkering dangerously with forces they don't understand. In fact science is merely a way of thinking about the world that allows us to interact with it in ways that will increase our understanding of it. Science is based on the belief that everything in the Universe is governed by rules which regulate how it is and how it behaves. There are no exceptions. Everything always obeys the rules. This means that by observing the world, people can work out what some of these rules must be. Sometimes, by observing the world, you can formulate a pretty good guess at what a rule must be but you're not quite sure. In other words, you have a hypothesis. To really be sure, you use your hypothesis to reason about what extra information you need. You say: "If this is really the rule then such and such should happen in these circumstances but if something else happens then it could not have been the right rule. So you need to set up carefully controlled circumstances - an experiment - and observe what happens. Apart from a few bells and whistles, that's all that science is about.
From what I've just said, you can see that in science, understanding a phenomenon is equivalent to being able to state the rules that describe it. The quality of our understanding is a matter of how confident we can be that the rules are right. This is a more complicated notion based on:
1. how good our initial hypotheses were (which normally depends on how accurate and extensive our original observations were)
2. how convincing the reasoning is that connects our observations to our hypothesis
3. how well we have tested our hypothesis (which amounts to how convincing our reasoning was about the efficacy of the test, how rigorously we controlled the circumstances of the test and how carefully we observed the results of the test)
4. how many others can repeat our test and get the same results we did
5. how consistent our hypothesis is with every other rule that we are confident about.
So, a scientific understanding of transvestitism will start with careful observation. By reasoning from what we observe, we can produce hypotheses. Our hypotheses can then be put to the test through more controlled observation or experiments.
On the basis of my own observation of transvestites (including myself) I would therefore like to offer the following hypotheses to anyone who fancies trying to test them.
If transvestitism is a pleasure response to making oneself appear attractive in a way that is a cultural norm for women, several things should follow:
1. the more like a woman a transvestite looks, the happier he should feel
2. the transvestite will dress to match his own model of female attractiveness, so his style of dressing should correllate better with his own preferences for female attractiveness than with people's in general
3. the transvestite, being male, will dress in ways that are more attractive to males in general than to females - it should follow that males would rate him more attractive than females would.
If transvestitism is due to exposure to inappropriate environmental conditions in the womb then:
1. transvestites should show other signs (eg unusual finger length ratios) of the same exposure.
2. the incidence of such conditions should match the incidence of transvestitism.
From what I've just said, you can see that in science, understanding a phenomenon is equivalent to being able to state the rules that describe it. The quality of our understanding is a matter of how confident we can be that the rules are right. This is a more complicated notion based on:
1. how good our initial hypotheses were (which normally depends on how accurate and extensive our original observations were)
2. how convincing the reasoning is that connects our observations to our hypothesis
3. how well we have tested our hypothesis (which amounts to how convincing our reasoning was about the efficacy of the test, how rigorously we controlled the circumstances of the test and how carefully we observed the results of the test)
4. how many others can repeat our test and get the same results we did
5. how consistent our hypothesis is with every other rule that we are confident about.
So, a scientific understanding of transvestitism will start with careful observation. By reasoning from what we observe, we can produce hypotheses. Our hypotheses can then be put to the test through more controlled observation or experiments.
On the basis of my own observation of transvestites (including myself) I would therefore like to offer the following hypotheses to anyone who fancies trying to test them.
If transvestitism is a pleasure response to making oneself appear attractive in a way that is a cultural norm for women, several things should follow:
1. the more like a woman a transvestite looks, the happier he should feel
2. the transvestite will dress to match his own model of female attractiveness, so his style of dressing should correllate better with his own preferences for female attractiveness than with people's in general
3. the transvestite, being male, will dress in ways that are more attractive to males in general than to females - it should follow that males would rate him more attractive than females would.
If transvestitism is due to exposure to inappropriate environmental conditions in the womb then:
1. transvestites should show other signs (eg unusual finger length ratios) of the same exposure.
2. the incidence of such conditions should match the incidence of transvestitism.
Monday 5 March 2007
The Causes of Transvestitism
From my own introspections, transvestitism is essentially sexual in nature. The wearing of women's clothing by men is about sexuality.
At first, when I did it, the degree of arousal was so great it was impossible to analyse it and understand where it came from. Now, I habitually cross-dress and have done for years and I can take a more dispassionate look at how I feel.
It is a complex feeling. The ingredients are:
Let's focus on this feeling of attractiveness, since I think it may be the key to understanding transvestitism. As I said, when I cross-dress I feel attractive. Let's just look at that feeling.
It is not an objectively-based feeling. I know that, compared to real women that I find attractive, I do not look anywhere near as attractive as I feel. Yet there is a warm and happy feeling of looking good and being beautiful, indeed, of being immensely desirable. Yet I do not at all enjoy the idea that a man would find me attractive, nor do I believe that any woman would like the look of me in drag! So what is going on?
The situation of feeling attractive without actually being attractive reminds me of something else. I have lived with and among feminist women for almost 30 years now and it I have often noticed that, for some of them, their feminist views do not prevent them from dressing as attractively or sexily as any other woman. They will wear short, tight skirts and high heels, push-up bras and low-cut tops while at the same time complaining that similarly-clad women in advertisements or entertainments are only there to titillate men. When I have pointed out the apparent inconsistency, I invariably get an answer to the effect of "I don't dress to please men. I dress to please myself." I have heard this from so many sources that I am inclined to believe it is true.
If so, we have the two separate cases of women dressing for their own pleasure and me - a transvestite - doing the same. Both feeling attractive and happy with their dressing up and both sincerely denying that they are trying to titillate anybody! Can we reconcile the apparent inconsistency and can the two cases be seen as part of the same phenomenon? I believe so but in order to do so, I will need to take us on a detour through the evolution of animal behaviour.
I believe that human nature - like all animal natures - has been fashioned by evolution. Mostly what evolution has fashioned in us is a set of drives and a set of emotional responses to stimuli that will, under natural circumstances, tend to keep us alive, cause us to mate and help us keep our children alive until they are able to survive on their own.
The way these drives work on us is not always appreciated by people. Take hunger as an example. We feel hunger because if we don't eat we will die. Evolution has furnished us with a powerful urge to eat so that we will keep eating and thus survive. However - and this is an extremely important point for my argument - we do not eat in order to survive, we eat to satisfy our hunger - surviving because we eat is a side-effect. Sex is just the same. In order for the species to survive we must have babies. In order to have babies, we must have sex. So evolution solves the problem of our survival by giving us a powerful drive to do sex. Again, please note, we do not do sex so that the species will survive, we do sex because we want to do the act itself. Having babies and the survival of the species are side-effects.
The sensation of being driven by an innate urge is actually different in each case. The urge to eat or to defecate is accompanied by physical sensations of mounting discomfort. The urge to mate is felt as a yearning. Other urges manifest themselves as anxiety, fear, love and so on. Some appear simple and straightforward. Others are complex and deeply mysterious. Some are precisely focused on particular objects. Others are diffuse, generalised or vague.
If we look at how men are attracted to women we see that the stimulus is primarily visual. The very fact that most men find pictures of women sexually arousing attests to this. Although there is little sexual dimorphism in the human species, there is enough clearly to distinguish women from men when they are both naked. However, for a very long time, in many places, men and women have not been naked - they have worn clothes. Since clothing tends to hide sexual characteristics, it seems reasonable that human societies would adopt clothing conventions which themselves will show sexual dimorphism. That is, there will, in any society, be one way of dressing for men and another for women. It doesn't matter what conventions a particular society chooses. It is only important that the sexes can be distinguished visually.
To see why this should be important, consider a world in which men and women, when clothed, could not be easily distinguished. Each sex would waste half of its potential courtship advances and would need to reject a similar proportion simply on the grounds that the subject or object of the advance was of the wrong gender. Evolutionarily speaking, this would be an incredibly inefficient system.
It is reasonable to assume that evolution has built safeguards into our behaviours to prevent us from wasting time in pursuing same-sex 'mates'. Largely, this seems to be managed by a sexual indifference to same-sex people. However, we might also expect to feel negatively about inappropriate 'mates' who fool us into approaching them. Indeed, the common reaction to people who do or because of their appearance could attract us inappropriately, is one of anger and revulsion.
Thus, a man dressed as a woman is something for which most people would feel an inate dislike which is born of an evolutionary mechanism to avoid wasted sexual approaches.
So why do men dress as women?
Let's go back to this feeling of attractiveness. I suggest that there is, in normal women, an urge to look attractive which they satisfy by adorning their bodies in culturally appropriate ways. A side-effect of this behaviour is that they receive more sexual advances from males. However, the urge and its satisfaction are all that the woman is aware of as 'motivation' for the behaviour. Thus women really can dress up purely for their own benefit and, at the same time, on an abstract, evolutionary view of cause and effect, be doing it to attract men.
To explain transvestitism, we need now invoke only one simple mechanism whereby the female urge to look attractive is erroneously expressed by a male. No other aspect of the transvestite's behaviour need be affected since it seems that this urge to present sexually as a female is not related to sexual preference or any other trait. It need not even be caused by defective genes or some kind of fault of inheritance. It may be that all males inherit the necessary genes but that some environmental influence causes their inappropriate expression. Indeed there is some suggestive evidence that the hormonal environment in the womb at a critical period may be such a cause.
If this were so, why do so many transvestites find it sexually arousing to cross dress? I think that, here, we don't have to be particularly ingenious about finding an explanation. I believe that the answer lies in one or, more likely, all of the following phenomena:
At first, when I did it, the degree of arousal was so great it was impossible to analyse it and understand where it came from. Now, I habitually cross-dress and have done for years and I can take a more dispassionate look at how I feel.
It is a complex feeling. The ingredients are:
- a feeling of relief - as if I had been tense or anxious and now I could relax - this could just be the feeling an addict gets when she finally gets her hit
- a sense of naturalness - as if being cross-dressed was my proper state
- a feeling of being attractive - this is perhaps the strongest feeling of them all - it begs the question; "attractive to whom?" as, like most transvestites, I am strongly heterosexual
- a feeling of sensuality - this is very closely tied to feeling attractive but it is enhanced by feeling satin or lace or other flimsy and sensuous fabrics against my skin
- sexual arousal by the sight of my own body - my stockinged legs, a skirt pulled taught across my thighs, my painted finger-nails - all cues that would arouse me if I saw them on a woman.
Let's focus on this feeling of attractiveness, since I think it may be the key to understanding transvestitism. As I said, when I cross-dress I feel attractive. Let's just look at that feeling.
It is not an objectively-based feeling. I know that, compared to real women that I find attractive, I do not look anywhere near as attractive as I feel. Yet there is a warm and happy feeling of looking good and being beautiful, indeed, of being immensely desirable. Yet I do not at all enjoy the idea that a man would find me attractive, nor do I believe that any woman would like the look of me in drag! So what is going on?
The situation of feeling attractive without actually being attractive reminds me of something else. I have lived with and among feminist women for almost 30 years now and it I have often noticed that, for some of them, their feminist views do not prevent them from dressing as attractively or sexily as any other woman. They will wear short, tight skirts and high heels, push-up bras and low-cut tops while at the same time complaining that similarly-clad women in advertisements or entertainments are only there to titillate men. When I have pointed out the apparent inconsistency, I invariably get an answer to the effect of "I don't dress to please men. I dress to please myself." I have heard this from so many sources that I am inclined to believe it is true.
If so, we have the two separate cases of women dressing for their own pleasure and me - a transvestite - doing the same. Both feeling attractive and happy with their dressing up and both sincerely denying that they are trying to titillate anybody! Can we reconcile the apparent inconsistency and can the two cases be seen as part of the same phenomenon? I believe so but in order to do so, I will need to take us on a detour through the evolution of animal behaviour.
I believe that human nature - like all animal natures - has been fashioned by evolution. Mostly what evolution has fashioned in us is a set of drives and a set of emotional responses to stimuli that will, under natural circumstances, tend to keep us alive, cause us to mate and help us keep our children alive until they are able to survive on their own.
The way these drives work on us is not always appreciated by people. Take hunger as an example. We feel hunger because if we don't eat we will die. Evolution has furnished us with a powerful urge to eat so that we will keep eating and thus survive. However - and this is an extremely important point for my argument - we do not eat in order to survive, we eat to satisfy our hunger - surviving because we eat is a side-effect. Sex is just the same. In order for the species to survive we must have babies. In order to have babies, we must have sex. So evolution solves the problem of our survival by giving us a powerful drive to do sex. Again, please note, we do not do sex so that the species will survive, we do sex because we want to do the act itself. Having babies and the survival of the species are side-effects.
The sensation of being driven by an innate urge is actually different in each case. The urge to eat or to defecate is accompanied by physical sensations of mounting discomfort. The urge to mate is felt as a yearning. Other urges manifest themselves as anxiety, fear, love and so on. Some appear simple and straightforward. Others are complex and deeply mysterious. Some are precisely focused on particular objects. Others are diffuse, generalised or vague.
If we look at how men are attracted to women we see that the stimulus is primarily visual. The very fact that most men find pictures of women sexually arousing attests to this. Although there is little sexual dimorphism in the human species, there is enough clearly to distinguish women from men when they are both naked. However, for a very long time, in many places, men and women have not been naked - they have worn clothes. Since clothing tends to hide sexual characteristics, it seems reasonable that human societies would adopt clothing conventions which themselves will show sexual dimorphism. That is, there will, in any society, be one way of dressing for men and another for women. It doesn't matter what conventions a particular society chooses. It is only important that the sexes can be distinguished visually.
To see why this should be important, consider a world in which men and women, when clothed, could not be easily distinguished. Each sex would waste half of its potential courtship advances and would need to reject a similar proportion simply on the grounds that the subject or object of the advance was of the wrong gender. Evolutionarily speaking, this would be an incredibly inefficient system.
It is reasonable to assume that evolution has built safeguards into our behaviours to prevent us from wasting time in pursuing same-sex 'mates'. Largely, this seems to be managed by a sexual indifference to same-sex people. However, we might also expect to feel negatively about inappropriate 'mates' who fool us into approaching them. Indeed, the common reaction to people who do or because of their appearance could attract us inappropriately, is one of anger and revulsion.
Thus, a man dressed as a woman is something for which most people would feel an inate dislike which is born of an evolutionary mechanism to avoid wasted sexual approaches.
So why do men dress as women?
Let's go back to this feeling of attractiveness. I suggest that there is, in normal women, an urge to look attractive which they satisfy by adorning their bodies in culturally appropriate ways. A side-effect of this behaviour is that they receive more sexual advances from males. However, the urge and its satisfaction are all that the woman is aware of as 'motivation' for the behaviour. Thus women really can dress up purely for their own benefit and, at the same time, on an abstract, evolutionary view of cause and effect, be doing it to attract men.
To explain transvestitism, we need now invoke only one simple mechanism whereby the female urge to look attractive is erroneously expressed by a male. No other aspect of the transvestite's behaviour need be affected since it seems that this urge to present sexually as a female is not related to sexual preference or any other trait. It need not even be caused by defective genes or some kind of fault of inheritance. It may be that all males inherit the necessary genes but that some environmental influence causes their inappropriate expression. Indeed there is some suggestive evidence that the hormonal environment in the womb at a critical period may be such a cause.
If this were so, why do so many transvestites find it sexually arousing to cross dress? I think that, here, we don't have to be particularly ingenious about finding an explanation. I believe that the answer lies in one or, more likely, all of the following phenomena:
- Women's clothing becomes associated with sex. Items like bras and panties, even for normal men, become fetish objects by a simple process of association with the arousal they feel when they see or feel them on desirable women. Actually wearing such inherently arousing garments under the influence of a drive to feel physically attractive leads to inevitable arousal.
- For men, sexual arousal by visual cues is easy. This is even more easy when the mood is sexually oriented or the man has been primed in some way to be sexually aroused. Thus the sight of a stockinged foot in a high-heeled shoe, or of a satin dress pulled taught across a soft belly, even though these things on your own body, still evoke the usual arousal response.
- Physical intimacy and touch also lead to sexual arousal. One's own body is about as physically intimate as it is possible to be. In the already sexually charged atmosphere of a cross-dressing session, the touch of sensual fabrics against your body, the feel of the smooth lines and surfaces, the swell of a hip or buttock as your hand caresses it are all deliciously sexy.
Some transvestites talk about a kind of sympathetic magic as part of the auto-erotic experience of cross-dressing. Cross-dressing, they argue, involves turning themselves into the object of their desire, thus gaining mastery of it. It is certainly true that, when cross-dressed, it is something like having an eager and willing woman to touch and admire, who will pose for you and who will let you watch her, touch her and fondle her as much as you like. However, I think that to say this is a reason why men cross-dress is to confuse cause and effect. In fact, I suspect that this whole sexual side of transvestitism is merely a pleasant side-effect.
The picture I paint of the causes of transvestitism shows the transvestite as a man afflicted with a developmental abnormality. It is by no means a positive lifestyle choice. The transvestite is driven by urges he cannot control and doesn't want, to behave in ways which normal people will naturally find abhorrent. The transvestite is the victim of an affliction that sets him apart from his fellow men and from women.
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