If you know your Bible stories, you know that there is some really dark depressing stuff in the Bible. There are some stories of detestable actions people have committed. Not only are these stories true and interesting to read for that reason alone, but through them God teaches us about sin and life. Ultimately, these stories show us sinful people who can only be forgiven out of God’s great mercy. They point us to the need for Jesus. These stories teach us about God’s character.
Anyway I would like to write about Samuel 13. In the story King David’s son Amnon is extremely desirous of his half-sister Tamar. He is consumed with lust for her. He and a friend hatch a scheme in order to get Amnon alone with Tamar. He does so and then does the despicable; he rapes his sister. He does so even after she pleads with him to stop, and even after she seems to offer herself in marriage if he doesn’t rape her.
Then here are the verses I’d like to comment on in relation to crossdressing –
14 But he refused to listen to her, and since he was stronger than she, he raped her.
15 Then Amnon hated her with intense hatred. In fact, he hated her more than he had loved her. Amnon said to her, “Get up and get out!”
It’s so interesting that the thing Amnon was consumed with lust for, Tamar’s beauty, the person he was so passionate for, suddenly changed in his mind. She was the person, or thing in life, that Amnon wanted the most. He couldn’t figure out how to stop himself he wanted her so badly. He didn’t think about the consequences, or his own disgrace and shame, he didn’t think about the wrongness of the action before God, he just had to give in. But then after he committed the sinful action, and the sexual frenzy went away, suddenly he hated Tamar, for she reminded him of his sin and disgrace. He looked at her and remembered his incest, his rape. Looking at her reminded him of how evil and messed up he was. (This passage is a good illustration of the blame-shifting, the victim-shaming, that unfortunately commonly happens even today with rape victims. Amnon was trying to shift his shame onto her.)
How often do we think about crossdressing in this way? Some fancy prom dress, or sexy bakini, or babydoll, or tall high heels, just seem irresistible. They are just sitting there in a family member’s closet or in your secret stash. It’ so hard to resist. You might think about that object all day, trying to resist, and trying harder. But you become consumed with a sexual frenzy over those objects. You just have to wear them. And then you do, and the sexual pleasure and release comes. And then afterward, only four seconds after the orgasm, you immediately feel foolish. You feel dumb. You feel dirty. You realize how ridiculous you look even though you thought you looked beautiful 10 seconds ago before the sexual release. You feel messed up. You feel ashamed. You feel confused. You feel like you have been deceived by yourself. Suddenly you get angry and full of hate, sometimes hating your very self, sometimes feeling hate towards the clothes, and sometimes at both. You might get so angry and full of hate at the clothes which remind you of sin that you just want to throw them out. And crossdressers who have their own collection of female clothing often do throw those clothes out, (only to buy more later).
Or maybe you’ve experienced this anger after reading crossdressing stories online, or looking at pictures of crossdressers online. You just want to look at those pictures and it seems pleasurable. But as soon as you stop, you feel tremendous anger at those people in the pictures at how messed up they are and how they tempted you. Really you are the one to blame, but you try to shift the shame and blame on to them. It is misplaced anger. The people who wrote those stories or shared those photos did not make you sin. It was your own failing.
Or you hate yourself afterwards thinking of what you did. Maybe you try to punish yourself. I’ve even physically slapped myself and hit myself. Or you punish yourself with depression. Or you punish yourself by depriving yourself of certain things. You might deprive yourself by not having sex with your wife because you feel like you don’t deserve it. You punish yourself by telling yourself you are no good, messed up, and that you are a worthless man. You punish yourself by believing Satan’s lie, Satan who whispers to us, “you can’t be forgiven by God, because your sin is too great, or you’ve sinned too many times for Jesus to be able to forgive you.”
So what’s the solution? It seems to just be a fact that when we give in to sin, this hate and anger comes about afterwards when we realize what we’ve done. I think part of the solution is not giving in to the anger, but running to God for forgiveness and relishing in his grace with joy. This Amnon did not do.
We also need to make sure not to blame-shift. Take responsibility for what you’ve done. Repent and confess. Don’t get angry. Don’t blame others for leaving clothes out. Don’t get angry at people online. Acknowledge what has happened clearly. Own it. Even tell someone else. And again, go to Jesus for forgiveness.
But also I think the solution is of course to not fail in the first place. Then we can avoid this bad cycle of shameful actions accompanied by misplaced anger. A lot of crossdressers will say you just have to learn not to have this hate and anger at the clothes or yourself after crossdressing, and just learn to not feel any guilt or shame while crossdressing. Dismiss and put away those feelings. But I think that is wrong.
In the past, after a failure I did have anger against crossdressers who posted pictures online and the authors who wrote transgender fiction. But now, I just feel pity and compassion. I feel no hate at all. I want to help others find the freedom that I have. That love is what drives me to keep working on this website and reaching out to others gently with the truth.
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