The Feminization Project - Fetish or Being True?

My good friend Cheryl has put up a post over at Crossdream Life that should be of interest to many of the readers of this blog.  Cheryl reflects on her own life as a male to female crossdreamer, and on her struggle to find some balance in her life without transitioning. 

What I like so much about this post is that she speaks plainly about many sides of what it means to be both crossdreamer and transgender, in a world which rarely welcomes such longings and fantasies.

She touches upon crossdressing, crossdreaming, gender identity and the use of hormones.

Here are a few paragraphs on the effects of using estrogen:

"During the time I was on hormones I really did become very consumed by appearing as Cheryl. I was a kid in a chocolate factory. I was determined to experience the gender crossover in as much honest detail as I possibly could. This caused a shift in what was at the centre of my arrousal mechanism. I no longer felt that cross gender presentaton or the thought of it carried an associated sexual component any more. I was more sexually interested in the more mundane or normal. 

"On trying to express the sexual side of crossdreaming I could not get to the top of the mountain any more and no longer understood the original attraction to those thoughts. Yet I still pursued the cross over of gender presentation, and was on the conveyor belt of transition in 5th gear. I was happy mentally and perhaps realised that this was as good as it gets. I encouraged myself to come off hormones which was rather difficult as they make you feel good. I realised fully that this was no fetish driving me but a forced deep within myself wanting to continue."

Cheryl's conclusion is that this is much more than a fetish, but that being transgender does not automatically mean that you can or should transition. If you cannot, then what do you do?

Cheryl presents her approach to this problem.

You can read the whole post over at Crossdream Life.