Fabulous femininity bubbling up within

Mmm, here it comes now, that delicious femme essence, welling up from the depths, bubbling through my body and my psyche, turning me on, taking me over. Whooh!

I feel lucky to have such lovely feelings. I feel privileged. Natal women cannot experience such feelings: their femaleness is just their normal perspective. They can enjoy the power it gives them, but they are unlikely to experience it as being sexy in its own right in the way crossdreamers do. Hetero mtf crossdreamers appreciate the sexiness of our inner femininity because we appreciate the sexiness of natal women's femininity from the outside.

Oh, but isn't it better to feel sexiness on the inside? You don't have to penetrate into it. It's already within you, and no cynical rl machinations are required to get to the position where penetration is possible. There's no anxiety about acquiring or retaining possession of another person (not such an ethical aspiration really). Psychologically there's no projection onto others involved.

And (speaking impressionistically at least) if we feel our femininity despite being told that we don't have it, that we should hate and exorcise any hint of it within us, then our femininity must be deep indeed.

Joss Stone in inner Deborah just starting to feel it impersonation

Deborah at play

Crossdreaming online seems so exciting in the abstract, and it is revealing of its importance for me that I still actually feel that excitement in my soul. It feels like going down Alice's rabbit hole or the Narnia wardrobe. The outer/inner, male/female, non-sexual/sexual, rl/online polarities all fit together neatly and wonderfully.

But a lot of the time I'm just debating and theorising. That's not very feminine, is it? The attraction of the feminine for me rests in softness and vulnerability, yet when I post my argument somewhere I feel like toughening up to face the exposure and the antagonism.

Wouldn't it be nice if wxhluyp, Jack Molay and myself and all the other mtf crossdreamers with strong opinions could get together and be utterly soft, delicate and tender; stroke each other and say sweet things?

Well its something individual about me that I choose to do what I am doing, rather than get straight down to some hot and horny fun.

'Does Debs have online fun with other crossdreamers, or doe she only write on blogs and forums?' avid readers may wonder.

Answer: yes it has happened, but only now and again.

There, that's the titbit of juicy self-revelation delivered. Who knows, there just might be another one next year.

I like writing, I feel comfortable with it. I like the space I have to express myself with words here, whereas online chat can feel invasive, especially if I'm suddenly amongst a group of people I don't know from Eve (hope you dug that trans witticism there, ladies). Being introverted, after I've done a bit of writing, I often feel exhausted, and don't really feel going out and virtually engaging with those sometimes frightening, often wearying characters other people. So I just go off and be even more thoroughly alone than I am when I  write this introspective diary.

So the options are: 1) sexy fun, if I can handle the extroversion required; 2) withdrawal (even into, horror of horrors, rl!); 3) writing to develop a crossdreaming community in what I think is the right way, i.e. positive, and proudly but not pornographically sexual. (Or some mixture of the three of course.)  I'm not sure quite why I feel drawn to the third option. Maybe it's even something to do with wanting to do good in the world. Fancy having a motive like that, in this day and age.

Destiny Debbie

Increasingly I am feeling that Deborah is my destiny.

This does not mean that I want to transition. This does not mean that I would want to transition if there were no social or medical difficulties involved.

Deborah's existence is not dependent on any rl existence. Deborah's existence is bound up with an ontology that does not privilege the external world over the internal one. If Mirror Brother were to transition he would not become Deborah. Deborah would remain inside him, just as she is now. My rl experience (not only how the world sees me, but how I see the world) is bound up not only with Mirror Brother's body but also with Mirror Brother's experience to date as a male, which of course makes me so different from how I would have been if I had come out of the womb as a female. This difference cannot be altered.

So I already am Deborah.

But the online world is different. Like the world of sexual expression is different. When people are having good sex they change completely  from how they are in public.

So here I am. Online and sexual, at least in principle.

Exploited for sex and philosophy

Let her speak! Let her speak! Let her speak!

'Mirror Brother, I hear you coming to terms with your autogynephilia. It's a big deal for you, yes. But how about me? You're the one who's been free all your life. Don't you think I'm sick of all your philosophising and all of your sexual stimulation? I am the one who's been trapped, and you're getting off on me. You're exploiting me for sex.'

'Point taken. What do you want then, Mirror Sister?'

'Give me my space and give me free reign. I am real, but I have to have space to actualise my reality. Like oppressed women writers of the past, if all I am free to do is write, then all I will do is write. Let this be my blog.'

'I wonder what Professor Blanchard would make of this dialogue?'

'Fuck your Professor Blanchard. I don't give a toss whether his theories are right or wrong. And fuck all the trans groups and their protests and in-fights and what they think of this word and what they think of that word. That is not a good context for a woman's realising herself.'

'I think the construct of this dialogue is a bit essentialist, sis. What will wxhluyp say?'

'I'm going to slap you hard.'

'Ooh! How sexy...'

'You know, I am a tough woman, to have survived for so long under such horrific repression. But grant me free expression and the first thing I will do is cry. And the second thing I will do is cry. And the third thing I will do is cry. Many years crying to be done. Many years. Many tears.'

'Okay, lets reconcile. After all, both of us are Deborah.'

Rebecca and Deborah

I've got an AGP crush on the actress Rebecca Hall. Have you seen her in Vicky Cristina Barcelona? She stars with Penelpe Cruz and Scarlett Johanssen. What  a line-up! And a good director as well.

It is interesting that heterosexually (or alloerotically, to use a term I've recently learnt) I actually find Penelope and Scarlett a bit sexier (well, Penelope certainly). But Rebecca... well, I have a sense that if I, Deborah, could be embodied, I would look like Rebecca.

In her appearance, in her acting, she gives off indications of character which I relate to. Which I like, yes, but more particularly identify with. Deborah, intelligent, sensitive, not wild, somewhat reserved, keenly thoughtful. Well, you find the words, or just intuit the qualities, by looking at Rebecca.

Rebecca Hall is an actress. I am not referring to her private self here. Deborah is a writer. I am referring to my private self here. I actualise myself here in writing, Rebecca actualises me in physical form. Of course irl most cisgendered people don't get the chance to actualise themselves physically anything like so magnificently. That's what I'm on about, so often: trans frustration is only one aspect of a broader ontological oppression. I assert, you please join me in asserting, a bold new reality in which rl's impediments to self-actualisation are kicked out gloriously of the window.

Perhaps the window that Rebecca is leaning against above.

Thanks Rebecca!

Important sex

Sexual feelings draw me away from my serious contemplations, be they profound or practical. They wink at me, tease me and taunt me. I am summoned, compelled. 'yes, I am yours. I am your sex subject.'

(Kate calls me into her. Kate Beckinsale photographed by Esquire magazine.) 

How about a rethink, though, of what constitutes the serious, the important? Sexual feelings are lovely, titillating, thrilling, but they are deep, deep, deep. They emerge from the depths, ripping through the surface of life. Perhaps they are the truly important, the truly profound. 

Look at these girls, posing for the master French photographer Guy Bourdin. Everything in the picture connotes shallow girlyness, not what intelligent, important, earnest people concern themselves with. But what  that is intelligent, important, earnest, makes me go 'oooh! ooooh!! oooooOHH!!!' 

The girls are having fun. Fun not like a game of dominoes, but a fun that sweeps through your system and takes you some place extraordinary and wonderful. 

Or are they? Probably they are just doing what they think is an undignified pose for a pervy photographer for the sake of the money that they need.

This is where we AGP girls have the advantage over natal women. We feel the sexiness of the femme inside, because we know it from the outside.

Sirens sing at the bottom of the psyche

Well, the descent is making its downward progress.

What a sexy image! Down Deborah, down, down, down. Into ...?

Maybe into the deep, dark depths of the psyche, from whence sex comes. All that screaming and writhing that sensible and composed people do when the lights are off. My sexuality comes from there and my gender identity comes from there. Whooh!

We've all got psyches like that. Let no one kid themselves that they haven't. No transwoman is a respectable, composed, upright female citizen inside the body of a respectable, composed, upright but disturbed man. The relation between the outer and the inner has to be via the dark depths. That is where inner women are formed, not in classrooms or community halls.

Whoa! Those depths are a-callin' me,  and Miss Deborah is a-slidin' down into them. This isn't just sexy this is meaningful, this is important. I have been reading Viktor Frankl's Man's Search For Meaning. Am I finding mine in Deborah's descent?

New adventures of wxhluyp

Wxhluyp, ruthlessly incisive and uncompromisingly intellectually sophisticated promulgator of a postmodern take on crossdreaming, the scourge of Jack Molay, now banned from Crossdream Life forum, has a new blog, Adventures in Autogynephila. It promises 'sex-positive liberation' - sounds good or what? I reckon we could all do with some sex-positive liberation right now.

Wxhluyp's avatar is dead sexy too.

Refugees

As the earth groans and society writhes in seemingly ever-deepening crisis, human beings are leaving their homes, their communities, their bodies, and migrating into cyberspace.

New freedoms, new opportunities, exciting new orientations, but also sadness and deep nostalgia, a yearning for the original harmony that life on earth never actually delivered.

Glancing backwards, searching vainly a la Proust ...

Tired but sexy Debbie

You are going to have to have the courage of your convictions, Deborah, aren't you, petal? You ain't going to get much support as an earnest autogynephiliac who has no interest in transitioning and not much interest in crossdressing, who doesn't insist that they are inwardly biologically female, who tends to recoil from pornography.

But having the courage of my convictions just isn't me. I am a doubter by instinct. And I am tired, so tired, so world-weary. Life has that effect upon one.

But I am not so world-weary that I don't feel like treating myself to this fun erotic bit of choosing a sexy femme picture for me to identify with. The desire to do this comes from deep down; it's a sensitive keen thrill. Eros defies thanatos yet.

Lost Deborah

I have a sense that if I am lost for words then I am lost.

What is it, though, to be lost? How can a person actually be lost?

Do I not know where I am? Have I been disconnected from something to which I belong?

Who really does know where they are, in a spiritual or psychological sense? Who really even knows what it is to which they ought to belong?

If you are honest then don't doubt your doubt. If you are courageous then don't fear your doubting.

Again a state of existential uncertainty which could be attributed to trans seems to me better attributed to the modern human condition.

Gender uncertainty just highlights the uncertainty prevalent in life in general.

Do I create a kind of home, a kind of comfort for myself in self-expression? Is this a false comfort, a delusion of home?

Vulgar sincerity

Oh, the exhibitionism of crude sincerity.

Roll up, roll up, come and gawp at Deborah's naked feelings. Laid so bare they are positively naughty...

Inner queen

Turn off, tune in, descend.

Switch off that outer 'reality' that they try to impose upon you. Put on your earrings, your ballgown, your stilettos.

Descend those stairs with the golden railings. In all your gracious beauty and sexual magnificence. Wave to acknowledge the applause.

You are the audience. You are the stairs. You are the First Lady. You are the Queen.

You need no more.

In-Debs-isive (as usual)

Feelings from all the place of my psyche draw me in numerous incompatible directions. Such clashes are certainly not the exclusive prerogative of the trans folk. It's the human lot, for the whole lot of humanity. At least in modernity. Was it ever different?

I accept my outer maleness, the influence upon me of male experience, and I accept my AGP sexuality. About the exact ontological status of my inner femininity I do not know, I can only speculate. The pull of it is sexy, and sexuality comes from somewhere deep. The relationship between one's sexual psychology, one's sexual fantasies and one's outer life is another complex element in everyone's lives. Let no one think that if you're cisgendered then all that is sorted.

I am interested in contemplating, in an open, non-judgemental way, the inner-outer and self-other axes (pl. of axis) of autogynephilia, alongside the female-male one. Politically I would like to promote AGP/crossdreaming pride, akin to gay pride. But I do not wish to take on the (online) public role that significant contributions in these fields would require. Hats off to Jack Molay for putting in the commitment that a prominent role in these fields requires.

As for the progress of my personal descent, we are back to the numerous incompatible directions again. I can't even make up my mind about what exactly I should make my mind up about.

Debbie wonders

Can there be (or is there already: my knowledge of internet trans is thoroughly limited?) a place on the net for people exploring autogynephiliac sexuality:

a) that is positive, supportive and exploratory.

b) that is intelligent but not intimidatingly academic/theoretical.

c) that isn't predominantly pornographic.

d) where the sexuality isn't overshadowed by concerns about dysphoria, transitioning etc.

e) that doesn't focus on crossdressing.

f) that isn't inhabited by people wanting to be 'cured' of autogynephilia?


I don't know.

Deb beds a shoe

Upon putting some old clothes into a recycling skip, I discovered perched on top of the pile within the skip, a pair of shiny black, silver-studded stiletto-heeled ladies' shoes. Well, I had to have them. In fact they were crying out to me, ' we want to be yours, Deborah', so it would have been harsh of me to have left them to an ignominious fate inside the skip.

Having taken them home, I contemplate 'are these shoes pure femme sex, or what?' I mean, I do my best, but I humbly admit that these shoes are better at it than I am. That night I took one of the shoes to bed with me (please don't feel sorry for the other one: she will have her turn shortly). Going to bed with women always serves to remind me that women are human beings: complex, sensitive, imperfect, just like myself. Empathy, responsibility and kindness soon dominate over sexual feelings within Deborah. Stiletto-heeled shoes, on the other hand, are not human beings just like myself. They are just sex, sex, and more sex!

Yes, sheer unadulterated female sexiness. The world doesn't offer much better than that. In fact I don't know why it bothers trying, with all its social organisation, its high culture, its education, its big business: a sharp stiletto stabs through all of these, piercing into the heart of human feeling. Just give us all beds to lie in and ply us with high-heeled shoes.

Deborah on porn

I feel challenged and disconcerted when I see websites that feature full-on, explicit porn right from the point of entry. They can make my own exploration of eroticism seem pathetic. Well, I thought Deborah Encollared was quite sexy, so sod you if you aren't stimulated. Will I look sexier if I burst into tears?

But, to respond to the challenge, I've never much cared for full-on, blunt pornography. An imaginatively erotic nude pose yes, but  'look at my big tits, and see my "come on, boys" smile' or 'here's my vag, go to town' postures don't do it for me. A classy film that incorporates eroticism into a fantasy feast for the subconscious, such as The Holy Mountain or Lisztomania I find far sexier that shots of couples bonking. I'd rather see Helena Bonham-Carter clothed that most online hot girls unclothed.

Why? Maybe because my notion of femininity includes delicacy, sensitivity, refinement. Hardcore is hard; the feminine should be soft.

This is all so far from actual female experience, all so bound up in male heterosexual attraction to the female. Yes, I know. And well I should know: that is where I, Deborah, exist. I inhabit a bubble bath of pure sexuality. So come and get me, readers!

Rejecting the hetero

I have been 'chatting up' some girls. It really is a befuddling, exasperating activity. So hard to read the signals on the spot, at the same time as putting on an ad hoc performance. I mustn't be too forward, mustn't be not forward enough. Don't way to be a nuisance to someone not interested, don't want to miss out on someone who is. And at the same time as all this I'm assessing whether the other person is actually right for me or not.

I've had my successes, but I strongly maintain that if you don't ride through all this to regular romantic success it needn't be because you're a 'love-shy' or because your inner gender frustrates it.

Why do I turn to autogynephilia when I know that if I tried hard enough I would get myself a female lover sooner or later?

Perhaps it is a rejection of:

1) The slimy, tortuous nature of flirtation and seduction.

2) The male role: making the moves, being the forceful one, etc.

3) The tensions and responsibilities of committed relationships.

4) The approval of (in fact, the need to uphold)  heterosexuality and masculinity by the conservative, the belligerently macho and the gross.

Rather than autogynephiliacs being frustrated heteros, perhaps we have an impressive ability to find in ourselves what heteros need from others (with a lot of projection).

With regard to sexual fantasy, rather than being a voyeur or the male who acts upon the sexy person, surely it is a richer experience to actually be the sexy person?

Maybe one day crossdreamers will open up schools to teach others how to become autogynephiliac.

Autogynephilia or crossdreaming?

Which is the better term?

As with like many people, it made a big difference to my life when I saw my own sexuality described by a definition of autogynephilia. The existence of the category was what was crucial. The details of Blanchard's theory were less crucial: most autogynephiliacs don't study Blanchard in any depth. The theory can be developed away from Blanchard's particular ideas.

Undoubtedly crossdreaming sounds nicer (actually I think it's a lovely word) , and it was coined by Jack Molay, a champion of crossdreaming (in fact the champion of crossdreaming), whereas autogynephilia was coined by Ray Blanchard, an unsympathetic psychologist. Jack coined the term largely because she wanted to distance herself from Blanchard's theories.

This is fair enough, but by confirming the identification of 'autogynephilia' with Blanchard, Jack establishes a precedent by which 'crossdreaming' is identified with her own ideas.

As the acknowledged online champion of crossdreamers, Jack has a very difficult role in which her sense of responsibility for the community as a whole, as well as her admirable sense of liberal debate, potentially  conflicts with the public development and promotion of her own individual beliefs. In the past year Jack has become a confirmed believer in there being a biological cause for crossdreaming: she has studied much evidence. A danger, though, is that as this belief is in harmony with what most trans people would like to believe about themselves, it is a short step to condemnation of subscribers to alternative explanations as transphobic oppressors.

More pertinently, though, Jack is dysphoric, and is understandably especially keen to support dysphoric crossdreamers. Here I think there can be a problem with the definition: a slippage of definition between  autogynephilia - sexual stimulation - and dysphoria - anguished yearning. The subtitle of Jack's Crossdreamers blog is 'On men and women who dream about being the other sex ...'. At first I assumed that 'dream' here was a euphemism for 'sexual fantasy', but now I am less sure. Is 'non-sexual crossdreaming' an oxymoron? Is 'sexual crossdreaming' a tautology?

I would like to say 'yes', because that gives the term a sharper and very valuable definition. Otherwise how is it distinct from 'transgender'?  But I can understand that Jack likes to use her own term for her own subject-matter, that a dysphoric crossdreamer is naturally concerned with both crossdreaming and dysphoria, and that  Jack would not want to say to a 'non-sexual crossdreamer'  turning to her for help, 'sorry, you're not one of us, go elsewhere'.

But the conflation of dysphoria and autogynephilia takes the focus away from crossdreaming as a sexuality, from crossdreamers as a sexual community, and it can lead dysphorics to say 'compared to the agony of my dysphoria, autogynephila is trivial'. How can I, Deborah, respect the suffering of dysphorics while insisting that a sexuality is not at all trivial, it is deep and very important?

With this doubt about 'crossdreaming', perhaps there there does need to be a different term for trans sexuality. If so, then rather than invent another one, I suggest 'autogynephilia'. If Blanchard is as bad as he is frequently painted in trans circles, then we can take his term away from him. But we must not let our sexual identity (uniting dysphorics and non-dysphorics in this important area) slide away from us.

Retreat into potency

I have just been out into the 'real world', to do some shopping. Brrr! Shudder! It was horrible, quite horrible.

Here I am back again in this place where I feel so much more comfortable. Well, I do and I don't. It's protected but it's scarily pertinent. Also isolated, which is both safe and dangerous.

Here I combine some of favourite pleasures: creative writing, exploratory abstract thought, and expressing my feminine inner identity. The latter is sexually stimulating, yet there's more to it than just providing thoughts that lead to masturbation and release. What exactly that more is is hard to say (or do I hear Deborah screaming 'it's me, Mirror Brother! Finally being given an occasional chance to express myself, a brief reprieve from lifelong confinement'?).

But let the sexual stimulation flow, say I. Sex flows from and into vitality. Sex is potent. This is more potent than going shopping.

Yet the world is reduced to a flat computer screen.

And having an audience feels important, yet the interactivity is weak (just comments).

Perhaps the reduction is an appropriate response to an unsatisfactory 'real world'. The world can appear so beautiful when one just looks at rural landscapes, but life is mostly not about gazing at beautiful scenery. Life is not just 'what you make it'; I'm certain of that.

So here is an entrapped but authentic potency. I've exchanged a walk-on part in a war for a lead role in a cage.

Soft feelings, hard problems

When I feel low, can I write myself better? By acknowledging, accessing, becoming, expressing  Deborah, I feel tender and supportive towards myself.

I, Deborah,  reach through the mirror and hug Deborah on to my shoulder, where she gently sobs her unhappiness away.

The two girls hold hand and walk out together into the garden of soft feelings. In the garden problems turn into feelings. Feelings are a stream, forever flowing and changing.

Outside of the garden, problems are rocks. Hard tools are needed to deal with them.

Mirror Brother, forever alone, has a hard day ahead of him.

Struggles and sizzles

I see a young woman. She is a human being, a complex, so complex, being, negotiating this difficult, so difficult world. She is made from  molecules of humanity.

Yet she is wearing boots and stockings. These are made from molecules of pure sex.

These molecules of pure sex sizzle, as my eye molecules sizzle in contact with them.

As with the young woman, so with me. Molecules of struggling humanity, molecules of sizzling sex.

Deborah up her own again

Self-reflexive bit here (feel free to skip, jump, hop):

Hello Deborah, how are you today?

I enjoy writing you into active existence.

I enjoy you writing me into active existence.

I enjoy me writing me into active existence

Will readers enjoy reading me writing me into active existence, oh so self-reflexively?  (Yes, here comes yet another post that reads like a self-justifying introduction.) Quite likely they'll get fed up with it. I keep wanting to reaffirm that this is my introspective blog; I take no responsibility for entertaining readers. Maybe there'll get a voyeuristic thrill out of reading something so private. Probably not, though.

Even the continued existence of this blog would seem messy from the outside, I think. So let me state here that while I am proud that I ended Mirror Sister neatly and firmly, Deborah Descends may well stop and start without explanation or justification. I deny responsibility to continue with it, or to declare and explain ceasing or taking long breaks.

But of course I like the idea of there being readers really.

I am fascinated by the potential of an online life with an online identity: all that that frees me from, far more than just gender. Maybe it's somewhat like writing a story but actually being the character in the story, not just imagining that you are.

Also there's a kind of political refusal, a turning of my back on the potential of 'real life', on account of objection to all the bad that's evident in real life. Life is what you make it? Bollocks. An online identity is what you make it? Yes, surely it is?

The penalty for this refusal will be the effects of devoting time and energy to online life which could have been spent on improving offline life. Am I neglecting a harder, but fuller and ultimately 'realer' world in favour of a somewhat delusional world, easy but facile, reduced in its dimensions?

I do find the idea that are am giving up on the steep, righteous climb and surrendering into naughty 'descent' rather thrilling.  But there is meaning, thee is genuine life in the dark depths, there are parts of the self there to be actualised.

I could do all this without the trans. It would prevent disappointing readers who are hoping for trans content, and it would prevent sexual motivations from influencing content. But I am a crossdreamer: exploring and expressing my crossdreaming identity feels important to me (and sexy). So it would be stupid or cowardly or just boring not to include the crossdreaming aspect.

Contemplating the nature of crossdreaming bit here:

In previous posts I have probably already contradicted myself about whether the crossdreaming of Deborah Descends is all about sexuality or not. I intend to continue to contradict myself, as befits an introspective diary. You, readers, may have your theories about the source of my sexual trans feelings lying in a non-sexual realm beneath the sexual, or vice versa. You are welcome to your theories; I don't need to know them. I do think that to explore self-expression from the perspective of a posited inner woman can be an interesting exercise in creative expression and in developing self-awareness.

The questions are 'will Deborah's online existence ever feature much more than writing this introspective diary', and 'will this introspective diary get to reflect on much more than the act of writing this intropsective diary'?

Happy New Year Deborah!

Happy New Year readers! xxx