Written by Jack:
A lot of people look at cross dressing as harmless. It is fun. It doesn’t hurt them. As Christians we can see that it is disordered and spiritually it can separate us from God. But how about physical damage? It really can’t be harmful to you, can it? Dr. Trish Leigh, a neurologist with an online presence and private practice that focuses on porn addiction, talks in detail about how porn causes physical damage to your brain. Basically, when you engage in artificial highly stimulating sexual activities it causes your brain to operate at a speed that is too fast (think about keeping the TAC in your car in the red). Once your brain is operating at this “too fast” rate it tries to slow down and pulls you into a “too slow” rate. This causes a pendulum effect. Not only does it prevent your brain from operating at the optimum level, it can cause physical damage over time. One of Dr Trish’s strategies is to help people train their brain to increase the calm state. You can actually monitor the amount of “calm” in your brain with an App and some simple tech. I have been doing this for about a year. The following are my observations based on personal experiences. I am a numbers guy, so putting specific numbers to actions shows me the impact a lot more than just saying this is bad. Don’t worry about what the numbers mean, just look at the change.
I am pretty consistent and try to do some brain training every day at the same time each day. When I am 60 to 90 days free of all addictive behaviors, my brain is consistently around 55% calm. If I have a good day, it will be around 65% and on a stressful day around 45%. I find this to be a very stable range. I have never been into porn, my addictive behaviors deal with cross dressing and cross-dressing chat (I have seen similar impacts with a variety of types of chat from things that are very explicit to things that are just talking about cross dressing). When I have been engaging in these addictive behaviors, I have noticed at first my level of calm doesn’t change. Sometimes it will even go up by 5 or 10 percent. Within 2 or 3 days, my calm will usually drop into the low 30’’s or mid-20’s. Within a week I will usually be into the teens. On two occasions, I have had my level of calm drop all the way to 0%. If I am involved in daily use, I have noticed when I am able to walk away, it takes at least a week for me to see any improvement in my level of calm. I have seen my calm stuck in the teens for two weeks on several occasions. The scariest thing to me is even if I just have a one-time slip, I will usually see my calm drop into the teens for several days. It rebounds a lot quicker than if I fall back into daily use but it usually stagnates in the 30’s and then goes into the 40’s. It takes about a month for my mind to get back on track.
This is just my personal observations but I feel the type of brain impacts that Dr. Trish talks about with porn can be applied to other types of sexually stimulating activity. When you lose the calm in your brain it is harder to focus and concentrate. I notice it, also, has a negative impact on how I deal with other people. My opinion is that anything that gets a person unnaturally revved up sexually will have some type of negative impact on brain function. Some may argue that cross dressing is not going to affect your brain like porn. There are several factors that make cross dressing highly arousing to the brain. The sexuality, the fact it is in some ways a social taboo, and the fear of getting caught or exposed. My personal observations are that cross dressing and its related activities (no one just dresses, it leads us all somewhere) affects the brain in a similar manner to porn.
One of the reasons we usually underestimate the negative effects of cross dressing is that we focus on the dressing part. How can just putting on a dress be a problem? This comment is one that shows a lack of understanding of the true nature of cross dressing. It tries to equate it to me putting on a shirt and going to work. The two activities are as dissimilar as me walking to my mailbox and running a marathon. I may be engaged in forward movement in both but the similarities end quickly. Every time I have crossed dressed, I have thought and planned out what I would do ahead of time. This may include shopping, going somewhere to do it, or looking for the right time. My mind is impacted before I even touch an article of clothing. Once I do it, I have to do something. It could be as simple as looking in the mirror or as complex as going out dressed. Even after I have done it, the event lingers in my mind for a long time. It will always be there if I want to reach out and grab it. Finally, I can participate in other activities (chat, erotica, memes, etc.) where I am not physically dressed but I am mentally dressed in my mind. Cross dressing has its own mystique that can consume and destroy a person’s mind. The bottom line is cross dressing is not just clothes. It is an alternate reality that is built in my mind that will damage and destroy me if I embrace it.
Jack
Thank you, Jack!
so good, as usual, Jack…can you share the ‘tech’ and the app you use to track the brain’s calmness? I’m also a numbers guy and would like to train my brain better…I’m working diligently on becoming more content, and hopeful this is a possible solution.
Hi Jack
I am a science sort of person and an always a bit sceptical of such apps and tech. What app and tech are you actually using to measure you level of calm? What is the provenance of such tech?
I appreciate the comments. I am posting a link to a video by Dr Trish Leigh on how she recommends to do Brain Training. She has several other videos on the issue you can easily find on YouTube This one gives you an overview of how it works.
Hello Jack,
Your article raises important concerns about the negative impacts of addictive behaviors related to crossdressing. However, you seem to assume that crossdressing is primarily motivated by sexual reasons for most individuals.
Crossdressing, like any form of self-expression, is deeply personal and done so for a variety of reasons. While some men engage in crossdressing for sexual reasons, it’s inaccurate to generalize this to all crossdressers. In reality, many men crossdress for reasons unrelated to sexuality, such as self-expression, or a form of creative expression.
Moreover, the article overlooks the arbitrary nature of social norms surrounding clothing style. Throughout history, these norms have evolved and shifted dramatically, reflecting changes in culture, fashion, and social attitudes. For example, the idea of women wearing pants was once considered scandalous and socially unacceptable, yet today it’s a commonplace and widely accepted practice. Is this not a double-standard?
By highlighting these historical shifts in clothing norms, we can challenge the notion that there is a fixed and immutable relationship between clothing and gender identity. Instead, we should recognize that clothing choices are fluid and subjective, and that individuals should be free to express themselves in ways that feel authentic and meaningful to them, without fear of judgment or stigma. I hardly think God cares about the silly little lines we draw in the sand.
Hi Sam, thank you for the comment. I wanted to chip in though I’m sure Jack will also respond. I agree with you that people crossdress for a variety of reasons, but in my extensive reading and talks with people, I think most crossdress for sexual reasons even if they have other additional reasons to do so as well. But I’m not going to try to argue for that position here, but just a quick thought about it. Very few men care enough about creative expression to dress in women’s clothing just for that reason.
You raise a good point about changing cultural norms for clothing. I’ll copy and paste what I’ve written in another post on Deuteronomy 22 –
“2. This means women today can’t wear pants.
If at one time, women were wearing pants, not for comfort, but for trying to appear and dress as men, I think they would be going against this command. And even for the women who wanted to do so for comfort, they possibly could have been going against this verse if they were trying to dress like men, instead of making pants for women. But today pants are for both sexes, and they no longer constitute one of the distinctions in our dress (though there are different cuts of pants for men and women). The women who made this cultural change over history were not disobeying this verse, they were not trying to dress like men. They were just trying to be able to do farm work and factory work while wearing practical clothing. And perhaps some also saw that pants can be flattering on the female body and they wanted to wear pants as a style choice.
This is a difficult thing, but culture and dress changes. And I don’t want to stop that. I don’t think it’s sinful for that to change. And I don’t think we should try to stop it from changing. I think it is good that women can wear pants now. But we need to be careful how we go about the changes.
As far as changing the culture, I think it needs to happen gradually as dress codes are so ingrained in our minds. It’s going to take more than one generation for people to get comfortable with men wearing skirts. If there is a man out there who really finds skirts comfortable, and doesn’t feel feminine while wearing them, and it’s nothing to do with gender, or sexual pleasure, or comfort, or deception, or femininity to wear them, then so be it. Let him invent a skirt for men and try to change the culture. But I think as Christians we should be cautious about being the ones trying to make the changes, and we have to make sure our motivations are okay. And for those of us who are confused about our gender, and lean towards transgender, or fetishistic crossdressing, or anything similar, we should NOT be the ones to try to make those changes in the culture. We can’t do so in an unbiased healthy way. My impression is that most of the men who are trying to change dress codes in Western cultures today, to allow men to wear skirts or high heels are makeup, are not doing so for practical reasons, but they actually have sexual or gender motivations, or in some cases they just enjoy shocking people by dressing in a deviant way.
Right now in our society men crossdress and people are disgusted or tease men for it. But women can crossdress by wearing clothing specifically tailored to men and people tend to think its just fine. I don’t think this is good. Maybe society accepts it, but I don’t. Society has always been at odds with the Christian faith in some ways. Women should not be allowed to crossdress either.
The important thing though is not making detailed rules on what clothing is okay or not. The important thing is our motivation, what is going on in our hearts or minds. Are we attempting to appear as women? Are we trying to deceive others? Are we dressing like this for sexual arousal? Are we confused about our sexual identity? Do we hate our bodies that God has given to us? Are we harmfully addicted to this activity? When deciding what men or women can or cannot wear, the spirit of the Deut. 22:5 verse is important. So we should focus on discerning our motivation for dressing in a certain way, rather than making lists of rules about male versus female dress.”
Are you a Christian? I ask because you mentioned God. Do you believe in God? What is your view as to how a person discerns what God cares about and doesn’t care about? For Christians, we believe the Bible is God’s revelation, through people, to us, to understand what he cares about (and much more, such as how we can know God’s love and be forgiven). But for you, how do you discern what God cares about and doesn’t care about?
Thank you for you comments Sam. Thank you for your insights, Barnabas. I see three main issues that were brought up. I will address them briefly.
1) That cross-dressing is not sexual in nature. I have not met everyone who cross-dresses, so there may be someone out there who does it for reasons that have nothing to do with sex. However, I have talked to a lot of people who cross dress online, over 1,000, and I have never met anyone who has not related some sexual aspect to it. It could be porn, a fantasy, a way to get aroused, or just a turn on, but everyone has something.
2) Social norms are arbitrary and change over time. So what? The nature of cross-dressing is to dress today in what is considered the clothing of the opposite sex today. The fact that wearing a toga in ancient Rome was not considered cross-dressing is irrelevant. The entire point of cross-dressing is to dress or present as someone of the opposite gender. If women wore pants and men wore skirts, as a cross-dresser, I would wear pants. The taboo of breaking social norms is part of the draw of cross-dressing.
3) You think God approves of cross-dressing. What you are really saying is you want God to approve of cross-dressing. There was a time when I would have agreed with you. Who cares what people wear? God desires what is best for us, even if our fallen nature prevents us from wanting the same thing. No one knows the mind of God but a possible reason for him not wanting people to cross-dress is it can lead people to homosexual ideation. Every major world religion views this as a grave sin. I don’t know where you are in your journey, my friend, but cross-dressing can lead you into serious darkness. It is easier to have never gone there than to get out. Maybe God wants to help people stay on the straight path? The hardest lesson I have had to learn is God is God and I am not. Have a blessed day brother! I am praying for you????