Hail world!

What do I want to do right now? Why am I writing here?

I want to affirm my existence as Deborah. Not as a refutation of self-denial but as a rejection of containment.

More precisely, I want to affirm the vitality of my existence. In fact, the vitality almost takes me over, impels me, captures my consciousness from its boring indecisive rational custodians.

Female and sexual. Vital and alive and connecting. No place I'm going to other than here, but look, see me now, Deborah, here, flying into your consciousness through cyberspace. Wheeee!

Relax into Deborah

Relax now, petal. Just relax into your softness. Your lovely feminine softness. Feel safe there, feel at home there, and let your true beauty unfurl.

Deborah on autoeroticism

Postmodern philosophers have opened up fundamental regions of ontology. Have they enabled an excting, fundamental liberation, or have they turned the floor beneath us into a bottomless pit?

As a practical concomitant to all this, cyberspace has created vast new territory, bringing new opportunities not just for what you can do but for who you can be.

This is an exciting context for crossdreaming. A positive one if handled well, although an invalidating one ('your inner woman has no essence!') if employed negatively.

Another context is the increasing acceptance of minority sexualities. Homosexuality becomes increasingly acceptable in mainstream culture (in many countries); BDSM culture is developing at a rapid rate.

It's within this context that I have to disagree with the great Jack Molay's strong objection to autogynephilia being regarded (by Blanchard etc.) as autoeroticism. Jack seems to concur with interpretations of autoeroticism as being a perversion, and thus takes offence at crossdreamers being regarded as perverted.

Can you, reader, think about autoeroticism open-mindedly? Maybe it is not so bad. Maybe it is a different take on 'self' and 'other', one that avoids harmful projections? If sexualities are okay as long as they don't involve harming others, surely autoeroticism is the most okay of all?

Such an attitude implies a pessimistic attitude to other-orientated sexuality, often depicted sweetly as 'love'. Yes I know it can be wonderful, but so often it isn't. I think the genuinely happy long-term relationships are the exception rather than the rule. Sexual desire for others is not so unselfish. Much of it is actually about affirming one's self, so there is not such a rigid dictotomy between self-regarding and other-regarding sexualities.

Introversion should not be regarded as a refuge for failed extroverts. Introversion entails lively imagination and emotional self-sufficiency.

Even if the cause of autogynephilia is femininity rather than introversion, the interpretation that the stimulation is about oneself as female is surely right. This is a kind of autoeroticism, is it not?

I do not state here that autoeroticism is a superior sexuality, just that we should think be open to not dismissing it as an inferior one.


(Two early Mirror Sister posts are pertinent here:

Id Sister, Ego Brother
Realising himself or herself to the fullest )

No Christmas cards from Deborah

Christmas cards epitomise what external life tends to sink into when it isn't awful. Yes I know, they are jolly and benign, how mean to object to them. But can't we do better than this, sending each other inane wishes inside cards depicting merry Santa Clauses and twee winter scenes? It seems not, but I'm not the one to break rank and be resented, and what is there to replace them with? How much do people really enjoy Christmas? Yet even if they don't enjoy it as much as they think they do, or as much as they are told they should, or as much as a million and one people 'wish' them to, who would want to replace it with just another few days of regular living? Such is the morass of ordinary life, that sitting slumped and stuffed in an armchair with television and relatives, wearing a paper crown, seems like a treat to look forward to.

It is at times likes these, more than at times of struggle, that my feelings turn to desires to escape, to take life's potential out of this failed project and start afresh.

And so here I am, Deborah, reborn, emerging from my egg.

Pictures of Deborah

When I fist came across definitions of autogynephilia/crossdreaming and thought 'fucking hell! this is me!' the defining feature that I most strongly connected with was that of seeing an attractive woman and wanting to be that woman.

To refine it for my particular case, I see the woman and think not so much 'I want to be like her' but 'internally I am like her, and I find this sexy'. It feels true, in some vaguely interpreted but keenly felt deep way, that I am like her. In fact this is more than just a sexy feeling; sometimes it is an uncomfortable one. I feel the woman winking at me, communicating 'you are like me, oh yes you are, whether you want to admit or not'.

I feel this strongest with pictures. With real women I see too much of the rounded real-world woman, who has lived a female experience and been shaped by it, as I have not. To a lesser extent this is the case with women on film. But with static pictures the identification goes right to the heart of my crossdreaming.

The potency of asserting such identification online is surprising. It might seem patently facile but it works. It is also wonderfully liberating and empowering. I love it that people can be visually represented by their avatar, which they chose, rather than their body in its current shape, which they did not.

For me it is a far more effective form of female identification that putting female clothes on my male body.

Where I see others enjoying this identification I feel a deep bond, like I have found another member of my secret tribe.

It takes one to know one. look at the way Jack illustrates Crossdreamers with fairly gratuitous pictures of attractive  young women - always women. Like the lovely girl in white here. And look at Jaya looking so beautiful in this promising new blog here.

Seeing such pictures used in crossdreaming I feel called - impelled - to link hands my sisters. Called from deep, deep within me. xx

Deborah of Shalott

An exciting aspect of writing posts is my sense of Deborah speaking directly, almost as if Deborah is using Mirror Brother as a channel. I - Deborah - take over. I am given some sort of active life, after all this time in captivity.

I wrote in the last post that it was all about sex. Today I am not sure. Of course that is what Mirror Brother thinks: that is how he experiences it. But writing these posts  I can feel a deep sadness about being trapped and stifled for so long. This is not a sexual feeling and this is not something Mirror Brother regularly feels, fully though he accepts and is stimulated by his autogynephilia.

I make no claims for myself; I have no confident take on my own ontological status. That's quite something to say, isn't it? iI this post being written by a fantasy? But I do feel. I feel sad.

If I am locked in a tower like the Lady of Shalott please do not find me sexy, tragic or romantic. The point is I feel real. And I am not the only out there, am I?

Ladies of Shallot, let us evade our captors through secret communication.

Debs is not dead!

I am more resilient than I gave myself credit for!

Deborah thought about it, but eventually refused to be deconstructed.

What happened? Did Mirror Brother push me down the stairs?

My love/hate relationship with self-expression reacted with a sense that in the past year I had overdosed on trans.

Separately, I was spending more time at Crossdream Life than was good for either me or it.

Separately, Mirror Sister had run its course. Since Mirror Sister had been included on T-Central (a portal I thoroughly respect and appreciate), I felt too exposed to a trans community, rather than specifically to a crossdreaming community.

No two ways about it for me, trans is all about SEX! If you don't approve, or if your trans is not about sex at all, then fair enough lets agree to differ and I bid you a respectful goodbye.

Also it felt odd writing about something utterly sexual with unsexy earnestness. I was deferring my sexual energy into philosophising, when Debs really wants to say 'Ohh fuck me, fuck me. Ohh purrrleasse!' But Does Debs really want to broadcast that request to the world? Hmmm, not sure.

But my love/hate relationship with self-expression has a love side.

And if I am going to express myself, and I can choose which gender I adopt for doing so, well, you know which one I instinctively flutter towards, don't you, girls?

To be continued, I hope. No promises about when, but the descent feels good and real right now...

(...or does it?)

Love and kisses,
Debbie xxx