Those in the crossdressing community love to argue that crossdressing is a harmless hobby. Although other people in the culture find it weird, they just need more time to get used to it and see that it actually can be a fun hobby if not done to excess. Or they say that regular people are only turned off to it because they haven’t been exposed to it enough. Or they say that it is not a symptom of a confused identity but rather a healthy expression of true identity. Or they say that a man who crossdresses is actually a woman, and we should refer to him as a woman. His body doesn’t matter. Etc.
But if you find such statements convincing, let me ask you this question? What would you think about a person of white skin, who secretly made themselves up to look like a “black” or “brown” person (whatever color terms you want to use) secretly in the privacy of their home every possible chance they could get? And then you found out that they were compelled to do it. And imagine that they said it’s an expression of their true identity. Don’t you think this would be odd? Sure it might not be harming anyone, but don’t you think this person might need some psychiatric help? Don’t you think this might mean the person has a psychological problem that they need some counseling to address? Don’t you think this person is not accepting themselves for who they really are?
Let me take it further. Those of you who crossdress and actually go out in public, pretending to be women, and you argue again that it is harmless, and love it when people cannot notice you, well how would you feel about this white person trying to pretend (convincingly) that they are a black person? Or a black person being out in public trying to convince people they are white? I would for sure find this person to be odd, and maybe would even be turned off or offended. At the very least, I would again think that they need some kind of psychiatric help. Why can’t they be who God created them to be, instead of deceiving us? I would wonder if such a person feels shame about his skin color. I would counsel such a person to remember that regardless of cultural pressures and ideas, they are made in the image of God, they are valuable to God, and they do not need to be ashamed of their skin color.
Do you feel differently? Do you think the same way about people who would do that as you think about your crossdressing? Or do you think the two issues are completely different? If so, how? To me the issues are the same. In both cases there is a psychological problem. The person feeling a compulsion to change their skin color needs counseling, just as the person who feels a compulsion to change their sex needs counseling.
Let me take it further. What if you discovered your daughter in the bathroom at home vomiting up all of her food? Upon talking to her you find out that although she is skin and bones, she believes herself to be very fat and even obese? You then remember you haven’t seen her eating much in the past few months. Would you say, “my daughter, you are right, how you see yourself is how you really are. If you think you are fat, then I will accept that what you say about yourself is true.” No! You would never say that. You would take this daughter to see a counselor. Her life depends on it.
What if your teenage son was always hiding in the bathroom making himself appear as much like a frog, or falcon, or cat, or hyena, or fish as he could (take your pick of animal)? What if you found out and asked him why he did it, and he said in seriousness and tears that he was expressing his catness, and that if he didn’t express his catness he would get depressed and he didn’t want to suppress his catness? Would you tell him to embrace his catness and that it doesn’t matter if the world thinks he is odd, and he can dress up as a cat every day for the rest of his life if he really wants to? Or would you get him psychiatric help to help him realize and accept that he is a human, and not a cat? I hope for his sake, you would not indulge his delusion, but out of love, you would help him to see reality.
So why do some people think so differently about transgenderism? Is it simply because it is so easy to change our appearance these days through hormones, surgery, and makeup?
There is nothing wrong with being black or white. There is nothing wrong with being human. If people are ashamed to be black, or white, or human, then of course, we want to help them realize they do not need to be ashamed, and they can accept themselves as they are. Why do we treat sex differently? If someone is a man but feels like he needs to dress like a woman, or even feels like he “is” a woman, why don’t we again try to help him accept himself as he is instead of encouraging him to continue the masquerade? Being a man is good and being a woman is good. But we should be what we were born to be.
Some of you might want to retort that make-believe is harmless. Kids do it all the time. People who play RPG’s also role play. But there is a difference. If a kid has to stop pretending he is a fireman, or if you tell someone they have to do homework and so cannot play their favorite RPG for the rest of the year, they don’t go into a depression, they don’t feel like they are suppressing anything, and they don’t feel like you are messing with their identity.
All of these things I’ve mentioned, including transgenderism, are psychological issues. They need psychological treatment. Indulging in the false realities of these people is not a way to love them but to hate them. We need to help them value and treasure and be proud of who they really are, not encourage them to feel shame about themselves, not encourage them to try to be other people.
1. I will not stress too harshly this point since you have been empathetic elsewhere, but this article is pretty cold even if it is right.
2. So are you saying that people who are nonbinary are inadvertently fueling the MF binary by allowing crossdressing? If one is to be truly nonbinary, they would be offended that society labels certain clothes as “male” or “female”? On the flip side of that coin, should ANYONE have a “style” of dressing themselves – a way to express who they are with what they wear? When I was growing up, society tried to stop people from pretending they are someone else – “Be yourself”. I tried being myself, and no one liked it. I tried being someone else, and no one liked it. I tried being bigender, and God doesn’t like it. What other options are there but to try and fail miserably to be Jesus?
3. Notice that when women started wearing pants was when it was a terrible time in history to be a woman? Now it’s a terrible time to be a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant heterosexual male, such as I am. I was bullied for the scrawniness of my body when I was growing up; now society is telling me regardless of my physique, my Y chromosome makes me “toxic”. Now I know better than to listen to the world, by why won’t they just leave me alone? If you don’t like me, just ignore me; why does the world drive me to self-hatred? Yes, I know Satan is the god of this world and all the people merely puppets, but HOW is this “life and life more abundantly”?
I’m sorry that my writing comes across as cold. I have nothing but compassion and love for those with gender dysphoria. But I love them enough to tell them the truth so they don’t give in to lies and hurt their bodies because they can’t accept themselves for who they are.
I don’t think nonbinary people exist. Even more intersexual conditions (which I’ve written about), it is clearly a person who is male or female but with some bodily defects. Very very very few intersexual conditions result in someone who can’t clearly be determined scientifically to be male or female. If people are calling themselves nonbinary because they don’t fit the gender stereotypes of a particular culture, than they are just confused as to what sexuality is. You are still 100% a male, even if you are sensitive and nurturing and like to cook. It is those who are promoting transgender ideology that are not allowing people to be themselves, and say that if you are nurturing, but have a male body, perhaps you are truly a woman, and you better spend a fortune to change your body as much as you can. See my post here about these gender stereotypes – I think you will find it to be a very compassionate post – https://healingfromcrossdressing.org/integration-and-contentment/
I think that that post about integration and contentment is the best way for us to learn to be ourselves, even with all the pressure and hate we might get from society. It’s our only option in my opinion
Barnabas, I love what you do and I read you religiously (8?), but this is a straw man argument: “those who are promoting transgender ideology … say that if you are nurturing, but have a male body, perhaps you are truly a woman”. Sorry, no one says that. On the contrary, TG ideologues tend to also advocate women to be stronger and more assertive and men – as men – to be more gentle and nurturing. Your positions are solid and stand on their own, without the need for fallacious argumentation.
Hi Barnabas,
This is a wonderful article on transgenderism , I have for many years resisted indulging my lifelong feelings of presenting / dressing in a T-girl mode privately , I having a somewhat feminine thin frame . I think for some of us it’s a genetic predisposition to indulge in this Sin , of course Satin will use all the tools at his disposal .If you look online at the transgender blog Queens , one sees they have made their god Transgenderism , it’s all they can think about , this Insane compulsion . I have seen online , many men destroy their marriages and purposely divorce to enter their transwoman dressing / presenting dream as a woman . I find trying to nicely tell these guys this is sin and I resist is a Waste Of Time because their god is Transgenderism although they won’t ever admit it . Without Jesus’s Holy Spirit I don’t see how one can escape this leghold trap . On top of all this , their political agenda is demonic totalitarian socialism with no moral rules .
When I was a kid in grade school I was picked on by bullies because of my thin frame and sensitive personality but I know my lifetime masculine to transfeminine feelings are not sin because they are just feelings and temptation is not sin when not fully acted on , I just look at transgender temptations from the outside looking in at them .
This is a very interesting discussion and exactly why I joined and love this site.
Barnabas I think that your basic concept, that transexualism (in all its forms) is essentially a phyciatric problem, is with out doubt correct. There is no proven physical link for transexualisim. Certain diseases can indeed cause gynocomastia and shriveling of the male sexual organs, but are not in them selves an argument for transexualism.
I think that some of your arguments regarding people who may wish to become animals, strain the limits of credulity (yes I know of the cat man in the US, which I belive is just a “look at me” instance and not a phyciatric case). As a human being I can empathise with the situations of other humans, but not animals for which I have no frame of reference. I would love to be able to fly but can have no idea what a bird may think about the world or of themselves, so cnnot imagine being one. It is also obvious that I can not physically transform myself to become a bird, nor actually can I physically change myself from a genetic male into a genetic female.
As for psychiatric disorders such as Anorexia, of course you would seek to get the person into treatment for without treatment the person will almost certainly die, with treatment most recover but may end up with chronic health problem. Transgenderism is not going to cause a physical illness, therefore I cannot see the use in this as an argument against crossdressing.
On the other hand I can appeciate, though maybe not understand another humans point of view. I know what a humans basic needs are and believe that Maslows “hierarchy of needs” are pretty good at describing the human condition, no matter who you are. Once the basics are taken care of then the mind is free to wander and consider what if and may consider what would it be like to have a penis or a vagina or be white instead of coloured. Some men and women can and do transform themselves convincingly to present as the opposite sex (this has gone on for centuries with women joining male armies). This is achieved with make up and clothing and generally having the correct build as Aq points out above. People of different colours who crossdress tend to stick to the same colour – its much easier! And you would know how a person of your particular colours is likely to act. People who try and pass as a different colour are general unsucsessful as the physical characteristics are basically different and hard to disguise (poor Micheal Jackson). Yes they should be urged to seek help (as should we who CD) but for them to do this will not cause them physical harm.
If we were created by a god, did he provide a wardrobe and assign this to male and that to female? I think not, clothing has emerged over hundreds of thousands of years (Neanderthals wore clothing made of skins) and it is our cultures that have determined who should wear what and not a god. In some cultures men wear skirts i.e. the Lavalava among the polynesian islands. So a skirt is not a feminime item of clothing to all peoples. The only item of clothing that is relevant to only male or female is the bra (which is personally why I love(d) them so much).
Standards of dress are therefore set by culture. Culture is in constant flux and as Signpost says above women did not traditionally wear and were frowned upon for wearing trousers (pants) in the 1800’s and women wearing trousers did not become common place until the first world war.
So I agree that CD is a psychiatric problem and that people should be encouraged to seek help, but I do not feel that some of the arguments you have used do not really support this pretext.
Keith
The question to ask yourself, Keith, since Jesus’ discourse with the Pharisees showed us that a relationship with God should not be about the “doing” or “not doing”, is, “If I were allowed to wear skirts and bras, would I even want to?” Most of MY desire is to rebel against a society which so completely and explicitly rejected my very existence almost to the point of mouth-foaming murder BEFORE I ever CD’ed.
On clothing and culture change, I think Signpost is getting at the core issue. People like to say it’s just an issue of clothing preferences. But it’s clearly not. Crossdressing is crossdressing precisely because it’s not “just clothes” but the clothing that is culturally conditioned for the opposite sex. It is trying to wear clothes of the opposite sex for the thrill, or for the comfort, or it is trying to actually look like the opposite sex. It is never about just clothes. Let me post another blog post on this – https://healingfromcrossdressing.org/they-are-just-clothes-right/
And to copy from my post on Deuteronomy –
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.
You are right, none of the analogies are perfect. Let me push back though. An analogy is just an analogy, they are not the same thing. In this case, people wanting to be another race, or another species, or having a different body type, yes those are not the same as trangenderism. Some are more dangerous than others. Some are more confused than others. But in analogy, they are the same in a key way. They are the same in that how a person feels in their mind about who they are, does not fit the reality everyone else clearly sees, and what science clearly proves, and in all those cases they do need some counseling help to adjust to their reality.
And if you do a little searching, there are an increasing number of people identifying as other species! Strange times we are living in….
Thanks Keith for the great comment!
Barnabas, I love what you do and I read you religiously (8?), but this is a straw man argument: “those who are promoting transgender ideology … say that if you are nurturing, but have a male body, perhaps you are truly a woman”. Sorry, no one says that. On the contrary, TG ideologues tend to also advocate women to be stronger and more assertive and men – as men – to be more gentle and nurturing. Your positions are solid and stand on their own, without the need for fallacious argumentation.
Sorry for that. It is a paraphrase of the types of things I’ve heard people say, but not a direct quote. If you listen to testimonies of people who have transitioned, when they talk about knowing they were not the sex matching their body, they will say things like, “I played with dolls, I didn’t like sports, I was more gentle” etc. They will say things like that as the evidence that they didn’t fit in, and they knew they were the other sex. I’ve read a lot – including everything linked to on this page, and a whole lot more not linked there – https://healingfromcrossdressing.org/links-resources/ I don’t say that to boast, nor to say that that means I’m right. But I do still have the idea, from things I read, that people promoting transgender ideology talk about things in those terms. But I think I wrote that comment above too quickly and didn’t write it as well as I should have. One of the things I always want to try to do is to present my opponent’s arguments in the most persuasive way possible before refuting it. So I’m sorry for that. I did not present their view well in this case. Thank you for calling that out.
I agree. In my own limited experience so far, psychiatric medications have had a significant impact on my urges (see my other posts). Why would they have any effect at all if the core issue is that I have a different gender than my biology ?
The big problems are:
(1) Psychological and medical approaches have failed to cure CD after a century or so of trying everything, and
(2) Psychological and medical professionals are increasingly absorbing TG theory and the younger ones no longer consider CD/GID as pathologies and have basically given up treating them, instead facilitating transition and acceptance. This seems to me to be a social phenomenon driven by politics that has happened without any real scientific studies to back it up.
We are being ill-served not only by the bigots, but also the psychological and medical professionals who have abdicated their responsibilities.
I believe that quitting smoking or alcohol is a much better anology. I have just come across a really excellent letter discribing quitting smoking that would apply really well to CD.
“I failed many times to stop smoking from 20 to 30 a day. Eventually recognising that it was too much of a battle, I scaled down the challenge to just not smoking the next cigarette. So after 40 years, I still regard myself as a smoker, but just haven’t had that next cigarette”
I think that this guy has put quitting CD in a nutshell for me. I am still a CD, i’m just not going to put on the next item of female clothing. Make the battles small and winable!
Because of my various childhood events of being demeaned I see my own physiological damage , I understand my transgender desires , I loveinly accepted a transfeminine identity and have deeply rooted transwoman feelings and emotions , yes I have them . I have an endorphin release which feels so good in just thinking about my trans-womanhood and just planning dressing . But most of us T-girls have guilt about our transfeminine identity at the beginning . Many of my T-sisters seek a therapist and will be taught to love themselves as being the woman we are inside and should have been born to be with All Kinds Of Psychobabble , so one can accept and love their female identity and Really feel Very Happy getting rid of all that guilt and also feel physically much better . Well at this point one is in love with herself as a woman and any Christian belief that this is Sin is abhorrent to any trans-lady who has Accepted her identity , in fact Now most will hate all Christian teaching about this being Sin and also hate All Conservatives who believe in moral laws or moral rules . At this point we love ourselves as being our own created god and love not God The Father who sent his only Son Jesus to show us the ONLY WAY to Heaven when we leave this Earth . We need to replace transfeminine self as little god and seek forgiveness for our trans acceptance and completely seek and follow Jesus Christ to be saved NOW here on Earth before we die . I am very afraid that inside my being I will always feel transfeminine transwoman desires and will always have to battle against them but the Holy Spirit will Never let me accept them as being OK . Maybe ? , I don’t know but maybe ? many T-girls being sensitive people could have been strong Christians if they had not fallen into this sin . But I know for Sure most people on this Earth will not go to Heaven on their own made up beliefs and the Bible says most will not find the way .