Taken from Katies link with My comments seeded within the article Davina

The author and cartoonist describes his heartfelt sense of freedom when he began to cross-dress openly all the time

I am a man who wears women’s clothes. The first time it happened was in the mid-70s. I’d recently left school and was a couple of months into an art foundation course at Manchester Polytechnic. I found myself on my own for a weekend in the flat I shared with two fellow students.

Bored, I started rummaging down the back of the sofa to see what curiosities – or money – I might find. A moment later I pulled out a single stocking, which I immediately put on. Instinctively. Transgressively. It triggered years of guilt, self-disgust and confusion.

So why did I put that stocking on?

In the early 1960s, as a little kid, I’d watched my mother dress and, I think, just expected to grow up to be like her.

Don’t think I ever saw my mother getting dressed it was more the feel of silky things and wearing tights to be Batman or Superman that sparked my Crossdressing liking the feel,

However, I soon came to realise I was a boy, which I accepted… Until in my teens I came across an article in Oz magazine.

Oz was a notorious alternative magazine and, as a rebellious, middle-class school kid, I sought out weird music, strange books and publications like International Times and the comics of underground cartoonists such as Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton. The piece in Oz was about a boy who wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a girl.

In reality, it was an excuse to publish some titillating erotic photographs, but still… An idea had been planted and from that moment on I wasn’t content to be a boy.

Again never crossed my mind what i was doing touching silky things and liking wearing tights that it was in any way associated with “crossdressing” or me wanting to be a girl or look like a girl at the start.. Like i said opaque black tights batman and the blue tights superman with pants outside and cape.

After the stocking incident, I started collecting items of girls’ clothing. I remember having a pair of tights and a pink one-piece swimsuit I’d rescued one holiday when my sister was having a clear-out. I kept them hidden at the back of a drawer and, when the compulsion became too strong, I’d wait until my flatmates were out and slip into them. All the while listening for a key in the front door and the creak of feet on the stairs.

Later when i was about 10 or 11 i suppose I pinched a pair of stockings from my mothers drawer which i kept and would put on from time to time. Same thing I’d be home alone 10 or 11 and I’d go up and at this age i was wearing lingerie stockings and heels i think looking back i was emulating a girl or woman and what i’d seen Vikki Michelle wearing on Allo Allo that i was attracted to so I’d wear myself and as I’ve added before on the forum got my first erection and realised it was nice to play with it lol so became my habit of dressing up and getting myself off what a little pervert.

There were no role models for a boy who wanted to cross-dress

For me there was Vikki Michelle and Colnel Wilma Deering sex women i wanted to sort of emulate or dress like them and fantasise about them and other women and girls in school.

For years I agonised over why I was obsessed with dressing as a girl.

I didn’t agonise until i was with Esme and started to question it as before this i was dressing to get off on it but it became more over time it was a bit of stress relief up until mid 20s just dressing before i started putting on makeup and got wigs then breast forms etc and it was a pretty rare thing and think i even stopped for a while when dating Esme which kicked off initially again when we moved in together once or twice and then again when things happened in my life work and outside work related stressing me out it became a mental health and relaxation / escapism thing and the urge to dress and want to try to look convincing.

Maybe there’d been a mess-up in my genes,

I’ve thought this as no matter what exercise i did ive always had skinny or shapely legs more fem than male but also theyve covered miles and won 100m sprints etc. I have no discernable adams apple and i have long eyelashes.. genes?

or something had happened during my upbringing? Perhaps, God had made me like this… or maybe I even, somehow or other, decided it for myself. Whatever the reason – and eventually I decided the reason didn’t matter

The key to it all Crossdressing doesnt matter its part of normal behaviour although some may not think it to be the case but in the grand scheme of life does crossdressing matter? No it harms no one.. Feelings maybe and may worry a wife of GF but think about it in real terms its clothing and an image and yes we may act different but that acting different and escapism can be good for our mental health and as i’ve said Esme says i’m nicer as Davina lol.

– I found myself floating through my late teens and 20s wishing I’d been born a girl

I’ve never wished i was born a girl

and dressing as one in secret whenever the urge became irresistible. Afterwards, I’d be filled with feelings of sadness, fear and guilt. Sadness at being back in the real world of my male self; fear of being discovered, and guilt at doing something I thought – no, I knew – was perverted and abnormal. I was clearly sick in the head.

We’ve all no doubt gone through this in particular if we’ve got off on being dressed its a weird feeling after having an orgasm crossdressed the guilt and what the hell am i doing this for!! But its a feeling that doesnt last long and the urge returns. If i gave myself an orgasm and had this feeling i used to undress in the guilt but learnt to overcome it and remain dressed as i knew id regret changing back to male mode 30 mins or more.

Back in the 60s and 70s transvestism was on a very long alphabetical list of sexual deviations. There were certainly no role models for a teenage boy obsessed with dressing as a girl. The only cross-dressers I ever saw were men playing women for laughs in films or on television – female impersonators such as Danny La Rue, comedians in the Carry On films or Monty Python’s Flying Circus. I was convinced that, dressed as a woman, I must look utterly ridiculous. A joke.

Same ref TV i’ve referenced carry on films on here before but he’s right no role models and its only the last 10 years really that ive been more bothered with my look well 15 years maybe mastering makeup and better wigs and trying to look convincing which is now part of the fun.

Then, in 1981, something amazing happened. I moved to London and one day in a remainder bookshop found a copy of Dressing Up, Peter Ackroyd’s 1979 history of transvestism and drag. I learned that, for centuries, in almost every country in the world, men and women had worn each other’s clothes. I also saw Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Picture Show – a glorious celebration of dressing up in women’s lingerie. It seemed I wasn’t quite as weird and alone as I’d thought.

Rocky Horror show - Mentioned this to Esme once and she said you’re not going dressed as a woman.

By the mid-80s my artwork was being published in newspapers and magazines and I couldn’t resist slipping my secret dressing-up obsession into my comic strips – disguised, of course. I peopled my cartoons with humans who feel compelled to dress as plants or fish; aliens who camouflage themselves as coat hangers; dissatisfied items of furniture – chairs, for example – who yearn to be tables. In my drawings, as in the real world, things weren’t always quite what they seemed.

When the internet arrived in the 90s, one idle evening it occurred to me to type the word “transvestite” into an early search engine – and everything changed. Hundreds and thousands of pages of hits came down the wires and filled my computer screen. Millions of men, just like me, were wearing women’s clothes behind closed curtains and locked doors. I was not alone, I was one of many. If I was a pervert, then I was in the company of countless numbers of other perverts.

The internet really opened my eyes too i was not alone .. i’d never considered or thought at all that others were crossdressing like me behind closed doors, it was years later again when i joined tvchix and started chatting to other t girls.

Slowly, I started seeing cross-dressing as a positive, magical thing rather than a curse.

For me its a positive thing

In my arty way I began thinking of myself as transforming from a man into an exotic, mythical creature, like a faun, perhaps, except I was part boy and part girl, rather than part boy and part goat. In my head, putting on the clothes of the opposite sex gradually shifted from a sickness to feeling more like a delightfully naughty blessing. Dressing up was a way of stepping through a wardrobe from one world into another. It was liberating – and fun!

It’s escapism!!

I soon discovered there were clubs and events I could go to, from huge, all night dress-up parties where everyone with every possible kind of kink was welcome, such as Torture Garden, to more specifically trans-orientated clubs, like the WayOut – the first trans nightclub I ever went to.

Have heard of the Wayout and have thought chatting to others like Juliette Noir what it would be like to go to a trans club probably easier and safer than in public as Davina.

I remember my first visit vividly. The hours spent carefully applying makeup and trying on outfits; the waiting until it got dark before daring to slip out of the house in case one of the neighbours saw me; driving to the address convinced that everyone in the other cars could spot that I was a man; sitting in the parked car until the street was deserted before opening the door and tottering, in unfamiliar shoes and skirt, to the club entrance. It was utterly terrifying and completely exhilarating at the same time.

Transvestites began making appearances in my books and comic strips. A female version of myself featured in an episode of my BBC Radio 4 series, Steven Appleby’s Normal Life, and a musical play based on my work was titled Crocs in Frocks.

Finally, I decided I’d had enough of leading a double life. My wife and siblings knew I cross-dressed – I’d come out to them in the late-90s, which had been terrifying because… what if they’d rejected me?

Thats the fear rejection

Luckily they all accepted it as a part of my artistic temperament, I think. But, even so, I was finding that only being able to dress up once a week or so was stifling. I’d learned to be comfortable with being a transvestite and now I was desperate to be honest and open and live as one. Also, I had young children and wanted them to grow up knowing their father as a complete person, not someone with a huge secret that would – inevitably – come out… What effect might that have had on our relationship?

My kids don’t know as i say they think im Batman not Harley Quinn

I took to wearing increasingly androgynous clothes, jewellery, nail varnish and a little subtle makeup – being careful not to embarrass my boys at school parents’ evenings – and began opening up about my transvestism to friends and employers.

Never done this I’ve always split things male 100% and Davina 100% or not at all

Thankfully, I never had a bad response. And then one day 12 years ago, I went out with my wife and two of our closest female friends on a shopping expedition to select a wig.

Wow that’s a fun thing to do and an amazingly understanding wife and friends

Trying on a dozen different styles in the wig shop was great fun, but nothing looked quite right until I put on perhaps the 10th or 11th and everyone said unanimously: “That’s the one!” I left the shop wearing new hair – and stepped into a new, trans life.

Back home, I stuck my head through the door into the sitting room and the boys barely looked up from watching TV. They didn’t seem to notice my change. I asked them about it recently and they said: “Dad, you were always just you.”

For many years now I haven’t owned a single item of male clothing. I’m trying to be me, so I am comfortable looking feminine, but continuing to be called Steven. Surely there don’t need to be any rules? And the boys – now young men – still call me Dad. Because, of course, however I have chosen to look, I’ll always be their dad.

I couldnt do this i split my time 99% Male and 1% Crossdressed I dont want to only own fem clothing and live as a woman thats not me and my marriage wouldnt survive if i was like that as i know Esme wouldnt want that so the occasional urge to crossdress is all i want and all i expect she’ll accept