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Crossdressing and forced-fem do not have anything to do with being gay. There are a great many gay men who never have any desire to crossdress and a great many straight men who do. It's not about sexual orientation, it's about genderfuck: the presentation of aspects of "the other" gender, and fucking around and playing with notions of what gender is all about. To tell you the truth, I've never understood why people can't understand that sometimes straight men just want to be pretty and wear dresses and stockings. It seems perfectly logical to me, just like straight women sometimes want to work out and be very physically strong, muscular, and wear tank tops to show off those hard-earned biceps. These things are not about what gender(s) you're attracted to, or whom you want to fuck. It's about how you want to feel and how you want to be treated in erotic scenarios. Biological sex, the gender one performs (including dressing), and sexual orientation and attractions are not necessarily linked, and in many cases are quite independent of one another. On the other hand, crossdressing, and particularly forced feminization, isn't everyone's cup of tea. Your wife may be a little closed-minded about the issue of crossdressing, or about sexual issues generally. That's actually only one of two issues at hand when it comes to forced-fem. The other is whether or not your wife is interested in, or comfortable with, the idea of being sexually aggressive or dominant - and particularly in this particular way. She simply may not be into being a dominatrix or forcing anyone to do anything, let alone crossdress. It may not be a turn-on for her. For a lot of people it just isn't. Education can remedy some of her ignorance about cross-dressing and what it means and doesn't mean. It's also a good idea for you to learn more about it yourself, particularly if you're genuinely interested in pursuing these fantasies. There are a number of good books available on the subject of feminization and sissy maid training and so on. I highly recommend Veronica Vera's Miss Vera's Finishing School for Boys Who Want to be Girls (Doubleday) and A Charm School for Sissy Maids by Mistress Lorelei (Greenery Press). You'll probably want to read both of these, and you may also want to ask your wife to read parts of them -- it may help her understand you better. Another book which may help increase her understanding of you (and your understanding of her, and how kinky fantasies and practices often appear to non-kinky people) is the book When Someone You Love Is Kinky by Catherine Liszt and Dossie Easton (Greenery Press). It's a very open, welcoming book that explains different kinds of desires in a way that just about anyone can read comfortably, and explains the differences between "sick" and "different" very thoroughly and sanely. Ultimately, whether you leave your marriage or not is up to you. There are many, many issues which go into the decision to terminate a marriage. I think that it would be foolish to terminate any relationship simply because of an issue of sexual incompatibility in a certain arena. Sexual compatibility in a certain arena isn't the reason most people get married, after all... there are a lot of other factors at work. If there are a lot of problems in your marriage, I highly recommend finding a good therapist and going as a couple. Many people find that a competent couples' counselor can do them a world of good in improving their communications skills and the quality of their relationship. I think that breaking up a relationship due to a sexual incompatibility should be viewed as a last-resort solution. This is, of course, my own personal view, and not necessarily Holy Writ. I honestly cannot speak to your question in regard to whether or not you should continue your marriage. That said, there are several possible options for dealing with these kinds of desires within the context of a marriage, even when a partner is not particularly gung-ho about them. If your wife is not interested in being your domme and doing forced-feminization scenes with you, perhaps she would be able to consider having it be okay for you to see someone else, either a professional dominatrix or a non-professional dominatrix, who would be interested in performing those kinds of scenes with you. For many people who have strong submissive desires, it is often much more practical and satisfying to take their sexual needs to a professional who knows what she's doing and who enjoys her work than it is to go through the bullshit and trauma of trying to force an existing relationship to accomodate those desires when a partner is not interested in doing so. It can, in all honesty, also be more fair to the uninterested partner to say "Hey, that's okay if you really aren't interested in this. I think I am going to go find a professional who can work with me with these fantasies, because it feels really important to me to be able to do this and I don't want to force it on you." So this may be an avenue you want to explore. It is, of course, possible to do this on the sly, without your wife knowing, but since many people would consider this sexual behavior and therefore potentially adulterous, I think it best to at least try to reach an agreement about it with your wife first. Deceit and hiding things from a partner is never good for a relationship. Another option within relationships can be a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" deal. This would mean that you would exchange performing tasks that your wife would very much enjoy (they need not be sexual in nature) as reciprocation for her occasionally doing the same for you and helping you to indulge in a forced-feminization scene. Now, I know you probably think that offering to wait on someone and act as their slave should seem like it would be something desirable to any woman. It may seem illogical that your wife would not find that prospect attractive, particularly if it includes the offer of your doing housework and performing personal services for her, like manicures. Let me try to explain to you why it may not, and why, even if it does, this isn't necessarily adequate "payback" for the work of doing a forced-fem scene. First of all, there are several reasons that your wife might not be comfortable seeing her husband dressed up like a woman. She may find it socially disturbing, particularly if she tends to be a conservative person. She may find it sexually unsettling -- many people find gender ambiguity to be disturbing on that level. She also may feel like you're trying to turn her into a lesbian, irrational as that may seem on the surface. But as a heterosexual woman, she's attracted to men who appear like men, and is pretty unlikely to respond positively in any sexual sense to a man who is "flagging" feminine, or displaying feminine gender cues such as wearing women's clothing and makeup, because to her, responding in a sexual way to femininity is something she will likely view as an essentially homosexual response. She also may feel uncomfortable with even the idea of being waited on hand and foot. Many people are. It can feel both selfish and intrusive. All of us depend in part on our own independence and autonomy for our feelings of ability and self-worth. Being waited on hand and foot sometimes makes us feel helpless or incapable or less than fully adult. And there's another aspect to this here, and when I say this I'm speaking frankly as someone with a lot of experience as a dominant woman. Topping (sexually dominating) someone is work. It can be pleasurable work for those who enjoy it, but make no mistake: this is not a day at the beach. It takes energy, both mental and physical. It is a big responsibility to take control over realizing someone else's fantasies, controlling the actions and environment, and making sure that they are safe and healthy, mentally and physically, throughout. This is why professional dominatrices charge as much as they do - believe me, they earn every penny. Topping someone is an awful lot of rigamarole to go through just to get a manicure when you could plunk down $20 and just get your nails done at a salon. It can be more trouble than it's worth. If I can scrub my own toilet in 3 minutes, between writing a column and picking up the mail, what's the percentage for me in spending an hour in a scene with a slave just to get that chore done? So just because you are willing to offer yourself up as a lady's maid doesn't necessarily mean that looks like a fair exchange from the other side. Making it worth someone's while means going the extra distance to do so...even if your work as a slave or housemaid is accepted as a form of exchange, you must make sure that what you are giving is truly commensurate with what you are receiving. Going beyond the call of duty is an excellent, excellent start. When I talk about an arrangement of mutual, reciprocal exchange, I'm talking about something like perhaps your agreeing to take care of all the laundry and marketing and housework and the children (if you have them) over a long weekend so that she can travel to see a friend or family member or do something else that she enjoys, or simply so that she doesn't have to be responsible for things for which she normally must be responsible. Or voluntarily and cheerfully buying tickets to, and attending, a cultural event she enjoys which you aren't as keen on as she is -- season tickets to the ballet, perhaps? You get the idea. After all, you are asking her for something very similar. What you are asking her for is to put you in a situation you would enjoy in a way that you wouldn't have to be or feel responsible for it, and where you would simply get to enjoy the freedom of being told what to wear, how to look and act, and what to do. As a sidelight, you'd get to enjoy the humiliation you find in being told to do those things (I should mention here, because it's important, that not everyone finds crossdressing humiliating, and that not everyone who wants to be sexually dominated wants to have humiliation be part of that. This is all a matter of personal perspective and taste.). It is a way to feel free of responsibility and enjoy it. Different people find their freedom in different things, and it is always a nice vacation to not have to be responsible for all the everyday routine stuff that we all have to do. Scratching one another's backs in this respect is one of the ways that people sometimes work out mutually satisfying ways to fulfil the desire to have that kind of "vacation" from the everyday. If she is utterly unable to consider even dealing with your desires on any level -- even if only to try to understand them enough to say "yes, go ahead, get a dominatrix and let a professional do that with you!" -- it is very possible that finding a sex-positive, kink-friendly therapist would be helpful to facilitate communication between the two of you. Now, all of this may seem like it puts a lot of power in your wife's hands. You're right. It does. No one ever said it was easy to be a submissive. One of the ways in which it is difficult is that being submissive is a lot less fun when you don't have anyone who is interested in being dominant toward you. Them's the breaks, kid. And so are these. Simply put, there are not an enormous number of heterosexual women who become interested in the kind of play you are after of their own accord. From what I have seen personally as well as the research I have read, there are far more men who wish that the women in their lives would dress them up and put them in makeup and so on than there are women who wish that the men in their lives would let them do so. So if you've been entertaining any notions that you could simply divorce your wife, put up a personal ad looking for someone who would be interested in forced-femmeing you, and have scads of women knocking down your door, it's time for a big old reality check. That's something that just isn't at all likely to happen. Yes, there are some women who are genuinely interested in feminizing men and who get turned on by it. They're rare. Much more common are women who inclined to be sexually dominant and who find it erotic to be dominant in various ways, and who may be willing to do forced-feminization scenes as one of the types of sexual dominance they are willing to perform. This isn't because forced-feminization is particularly icky or awful. It's because in the world of BDSM sexuality overall there are many more bottoms (submissives, masochists, those who want to be done-unto) than there are tops (Dominants, sadists, those who want to do the doing). So there simply aren't as many people who are going to be interested in being dominant as there are people who are going to be interested in being submissive to those dominants. Add to that the fact that women (and particularly heterosexual women) are generally more strongly discouraged from expressing sexual aggressiveness, and you come up with the none-too-surprising result that there are genuinely not enough heterosexual dominant women for all the heterosexual submissive men in the world to be able to find one when they want one for a relationship (or even at all). This is true no matter what flavor of kink they're into. I hear a lot of griping about it, but there it is. For whatever it's worth, submissives in general, regardless of their gender or sex, complain that there aren't enough dominants to go around. Also, not too surprisingly, quite a few heterosexual women who are inclined toward being sexually dominant have realized that there's a huge demand out there for what they are and what they are prepared to provide in terms of sexual services. You can't blame a girl for wanting to make a living, and the demand is certainly there. Many professional dominants are extremely skilled, and a dominant who does forced-feminization work is pretty much guaranteed to understand and accept your desires and work with you to achieve them. I wish you all the best of luck with it. Honesty and communication are important, and so is knowing what you want. Do some reading and do some talking with your wife, and rest assured that it's really not at all unusual for a heterosexual man to want what you want. Here's hoping there's a kind-but-firm Mistress and some very pretty dresses waiting for you down the line. Want to ask the Fat Broad a question? Email her. |
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12.07.06: Scarlet Letters -- in case it isn't glaringly obvious -- is currently
on an extended hiatus. The web has changed, we've changed, and
we're trying to figure out how we both fit together now, which isn't a process we want to rush. If you're looking for more current SL-related content, you can
have check out upcoming books from editor Heather Corinna and previous co-editor Hanne Blank, check out Heather's current sexuality sites, or explore sites through the femmerotic network. We hope to be back with you soon, as fresh, challenging and
unexpected as ever.
In the meantime, by all means, enjoy our years of past content,
all of which still remain in the public and subscription areas.
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