We are often asked why we believe it is harmful to indulge our desires related to autogynephilia or crossdressing. This post gives a summary of many of the reasons we have written about in greater depth elsewhere on this website. It can be a bit overwhelming looking at the number of posts that we have, so we hope this is a helpful summary and introduction to our views. You may find yourself agreeing with some points while disagreeing with others. That is okay. Hopefully it will help you as you research, analyze and think through the issues for yourself. Some points are about how crossdressing and indulging autogynephilia is “sinful” from our Christian perspective. With other points we try to show how crossdressing and indulging autogynephilia can be seen to be “harmful” regardless of one’s religious perspective. Before commenting with a criticism about a certain point, please consider reading the links to the fuller arguments. But your comments are very welcome. If you are interested more in a certain point, let me know.

1.  First, crossdressing or trying to live out a cross-sex identity actually suppresses our true identity, causing division and confusion through having two personas. Crossdressing creates a divided self. Crossdressing and gender dysphoria are both partly the result of growing up in a culture and environment in which unhelpful gender stereotypes abound. We are stifled in our cultural masculinity, not being able to experience a full range of emotion or behavior. We end up feeling like we are not allowed to be fully human. Crossdressing and taking on an alternative gender identity are both an attempt to rectify that situation, but they are not the healthy response. Taking on trans identity actually gives in to the false gender stereotypes rather than challenging them. Instead, we must learn to be fully human, as men, not forcing ourselves into the cultural stereotypes for masculinity. We should give up crossdressing and embrace who we really are, with our real personalities and character traits, even if that means we are atypical men. I have written about how to integrate the “masculine” and “feminine” aspects of our personality in this post – Integration and Contentment. And my friend’s post – Why I don’t anymore.

2. God clearly condemns crossdressing in the Bible. He does so in Deuteronomy 22:5. However, the whole story and scope of the Bible condemns crossdressing indirectly in other ways. The doctrine of creation is very clear that God made men and women and that he made them different. All throughout the Old Testament and throughout the New Testament, men and women are viewed to be equal in bearing God’s image together, but with some differences. They have different bodies and different roles. All throughout the Bible we are told to keep these sex/gender distinctions intact, and not to blur the lines of sex/gender. In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul specifically commands the church to uphold the relative cultural distinctions for differences of dress and clothing between men and women in their particular culture. The passage clearly prohibits crossdressing. See this post – 1 Corinthians 11:2-26 Prohibits Crossdressing. Also this friend’s post – Ironing it out.

3. Crossdressing, for the purposes of sexual pleasure and autogynephilic desires, is a fetish. It is a form of autosexuality. It is a misdirected sexuality that is focused on lusting after female objects, or lusting after the self rather than other people. Sexuality is supposed to be about the union of two people, a man and a woman, giving and receiving. With autosexuality, it is a distorted sexuality in which one is in love with with a disguised self. You are not in love with a real other human being, but rather in a confused relationship all by yourself. Although no one chooses to have autogynephilic desires, it is a a corrupted form of sexuality that we should resist acting upon. Autogynephilia is Self-Defeating and Lusting after Feminine Objects and A substitute for a real woman.

4. Following #3, the autosexuality and love of self replaces one’s spouse if married, or replaces a potential future spouse if not yet married. You want your own femininity instead of your wife’s. You want sexual pleasure with your crossdressed self instead of with your wife. You want time crossdressing instead of time spent with your wife, female companionship with your false female self instead of companionship with your wife, and ultimately in the case of eventually trying to live as a woman, you want to replace your wife and marriage with living as a woman yourself. For more on this point, see this post – Autogynephilia versus Heterosexuality. See this very interesting article – The Transvestic Career Path. And see these posts – Becoming the woman my wife is not and Crossdressing without sexual pleasure. While some crossdressers find ways to remain in a marriage with a woman while also trying to dress or live as a woman, this is usually not workable according to the testimonies of both crossdressers and wives of crossdressers. See these posts – Wives Answer Crossdressers’ Questions and Post-Crossdressing Marital Sexual Difficulties and Former Crossdressers Answer Wives of Crossdressers’ Questions and Former Crossdressers Answer Wives of Crossdressers’ Questions Part 2.

5. Crossdressing, sissy hypnosis, transgender fiction, trans porn or any other forms of indulging autogynephilia can easily become a sexual addiction that is difficult to stop. It very often involves intense escalating addiction. Often it causes isolation. On top of this it very often leads to other deviant sexual behaviors. The addiction can result in the loss of relationships, jobs, money, and more. Crossdressing can seem to consume someone’s life, making them seem totally out of control to their families. See these posts – Orientation and Addiction and Crossdressing is like pornography and My addiction to crossdressing fiction and Crossdressing demands sacrifice of self.

6. Crossdressing sometimes is an attempt to meet emotional needs beyond sexual pleasure. Those emotional needs could be wanting to feel beautiful, needing to let certain emotions out (see #1), wanting comfort, relieving stress, etc. We believe it is unhealthy to try to meet these needs through pieces of fabric. Crossdressing is often used to try to fulfill these emotional needs. But they should be met in healthy ways through other people and through relationship with God, not through a sexual fetish or escape into a false identity. Crossdressing becomes sort of like a drug, masking the real needs, acting as a coping mechanism or crutch. It is self-defeating. You feel depressed or stressed and you use crossdressing to feel calm, peaceful, and to feel comforted or to escape from stress. But the device you are using to bring comfort also brings confusion, pain, and destruction. So then you go back to the comfort device, in this case crossdressing, to get comfort again. And the cycle keeps going. See this post – Crossdressing for Emotional Comfort.

7. Crossdressing is deceptive. It is self deceptive through creating a false reality. It’s a self-delusion. It also seems to breed deception as one has to hide more and more of one’s life, possessions, and how one spends his time. This can result in a pattern of lying. Even in the cases where one has transitioned publicly, you are still deceiving people by presenting yourself as something that you are actually not. No matter how persuasive your body altering treatments and cosmetics are, you will always know deep down that you are a male and yet you present yourselves to others as female. See these posts – Telling the truth and Creating your own false reality and Fool! You will be caught!

8. Crossdressing can easily become idolatry. The behavior itself can become an idol, something that a crossdresser feels he can’t live without, what gives his life meaning and purpose. But it is also essentially about worship of self instead of God. The crossdresser looks to crossdressing to meet his needs rather than God. Further, it can be compared to an eating disorder, a self obsession with the body, which becomes idolatry. As an anorexic person obsesses about losing weight to appear beautiful, she is blind to her unhealthiness (which is also not beautiful). Crossdressing does the same thing. They both become such an idol that all other life decisions are made for the sake of the idol. The autogynephilic desires become ultimate in that person’s life. See this post – Crossdressing can become idolatry.

9. Crossdressing promotes sexist values, and it objectifies women, possibly objectifying them even to a greater degree than pornography does. See point 2 here – Crossdressing is like pornography. And Crossdressing and female sexual objectification.

10. Crossdressing has a huge component of envy, which is sin. A life of envy is also not a life of happiness. Even for those who don’t believe in God and therefore don’t believe in sin, cultivating their envy will only lead to more discontent rather than more happiness and fulfillment in life. See this post – Crossdressing is about envy.

11. Crossdressing ruins marriages, and many if not most crossdressing stories end in divorce. Our wives did not want to marry women, yet they are told to accept the crossdressing. They are even sometimes told to cultivate lesbian desires. For the few marriages that stick it out, largely crossdressing is relegated to the closet as a painful unhelpful thing the wife never wants to think about because it scares her and hurts her and disgusts her so much. Crossdressing can even make wives jealous. They want to be the woman, not their husband trying to be the woman. They want to be the femininely beautiful one, not their husband. Jealousy is wrong, but wives shouldn’t have to be tempted to feel that way by their own husbands. Further, the more one gives into crossdressing for sexual pleasure, the harder it is to be turned on to one’s wife. Sex becomes non-existent, or the husband thinks more about the wife’s clothing during sex than about her. Read my posts – Don’t force your wife to act as a lesbian and Wives Answer Crossdressers’ Questions and Post-Crossdressing Marital Sexual Difficulties and Is crossdressing flattering to women? and Book Recommendation – Living with a Transvestite. To hit this point home, imagine how you would feel if it was your wife insisting on living in a cross-gender way? This subjective feeling that most of us probably feel seems to point to a deeper truth. See my post – Imagine your wife crossdressed.

12. Crossdressing and autogynephilia often lead men to eventually try to live with a cross-gender identity. This may involve taking on a female name and may involve taking hormones and a range of surgeries and treatments. It is sinful to harm one’s healthy body that God has created by mutilating healthy body parts and trying to disguise yourself to permanently look like a person other than your true self. See these two posts – Book Recommendation – When Harry Became Sally and Paper on sex reassignment surgery and Book Recommendation – God and the Transgender Debate.

13. Crossdressing makes people feel guilty. This is quite a subjective point but it’s worth considering. I’ve so often read on crossdressing forums that those who have been crossdressing for 20 or 40 years still feel dirty and guilty about it. People feel bad about it even in cultures which are very affirming of transgender. I believe the right course of action is not to bury guilt or suppress it, but to listen to it as our conscience, and for Christians, to see it as guidance and conviction from the Holy Spirit. As people come to this site every day, most of them are people who are searching for things like, “I hate that I cannot stop crossdressing” or “help me out of crossdressing addiction!” See these posts – Guilt is an achievement! and We are not alone and The Suppression of Crossdressing Guilt.

14. Life is far better without crossdressing and indulging autogynephilia. This is a subjective point. But it is important to say that for the men of this community, we cherish the freedom and joy of life without crossdressing. And we don’t want to go back. Our lives are far healthier and satisfying without crossdressing. This is a further affirmation to us that crossdressing causes harm in people’s lives.

If you’d like to get started on reading our other posts, to read our argumentation for these points, here are links to our other articles. Read and comment as you like and we can have good discussion – All Blog Posts and Guest Posts.