Thank you: Debbie Hayton in the Mail

Children make sense of the world through play.

I could retrofit plenty of theories about my nascent sexuality as a child, but I was a child who was playing and reacting to what was going on around me.

Also, kids dressing up in opposite sex clothes is not an indication of their future sexuality. Because all kids do it, ask any nursery worker.

People suggesting that dressing up is an indication of sexuality are as icky (and misguided) as people who see tiny kids hugging and say "ooh is that your girlfriend Freddie!" Just no. Ordinary child behaviour is not sexual behaviour.

Pre-pubescent children don't have sexuality. They are children. The political movement that suggests that they do, is the one that tries to break down boundaries around age of sexual consent.

Sometimes I think that Aldous Huxley's Brave New World should be recommended reading on the school syllabus.

Well all children have sexuality, it’s just not developed.

In what way do children "have sexuality"? I would say that sexuality develops at and after puberty.

It's a no from me.

Christ, it takes a certain kind of twisted psyche to ask a transwidow to analyse the nascent fetish of an AGP who, in her opinion, is trying to gaslight and manipulate women just like her.

Well all children have sexuality, it’s just not developed. But not all children want to dress up in clothes of the opposite sex specifically. Some adults say they always wanted to be the other sex from childhood and indeed some children express this. Just as some say they always knew they were gay.

At what precise point in his life do you think this fascination with wearing women’s clothes morphed into AGP?

@MrsTwatInAHat Really interesting post that illustrates the complexities of human consciousness. IQ is not the same as EQ. And even someone with a good EQ can fail to realise, or refuse to acknowledge or examine aspects of their personality, or intentionally deceive themselves about them. Sometimes from a need to believe they’re a good person, but sometimes it’s just laziness - being honest can be hard work.

And yet, he has early childhood memories are of wanting to wear girls’ clothes and wearing his mothers’ tights.
All children dress up. Thats not AGP. The tights thing has probably been retconned back in time.

Exactly. How would he have identified or even heard as a child of AGP, and been able to analyse that this was his issue not gay or bi or curious - when his sexual and gender orientation hasn’t even formed yet.

I've known one or two erotic cross-dressers aka TVs, and they practised their hobby in private, eg with their girlfriend.

In the last twenty years, the law changed, a certain charity needed a new moneyspinner, the world wide web exploded, pornification took off, and 'trans' became modish and respectable.

I think this prompted a load of TVs who never would have done it otherwise, to smash up their families.

If all the things DH is proposing come to pass, then we will have good things. Data integrity. Free speech. No proselytising to minors. Women-only stuff.

But we'll still have a shedload of public erotic cross-dressers. Which is a weird outcome that I could not have imagined thirty years ago.

And yet, he has early childhood memories are of wanting to wear girls’ clothes and wearing his mothers’ tights.

A lot of gay men have similar experiences though.

I think there is an insistence that I often see on MN, that if someone behaves in a selfish, abusive, misogynist or solipsistic way, they absolutely know what they are doing and it's deliberate. I struggled with this a lot with my ex, when his incredibly difficult behaviour led me to end the relationship. He had to know he was passive aggressive, irrational selfish, lazy, sexist and a liar, right? But he would insist he wasn't, leading to massive arguments.

It's taken me a lot of thinking to really get my head around what was going on. I've realised he needed to see himself as Mr Nice Guy so deeply, he would lie to himself and believe his own lies. He would swear black was white to make himself look good and I was always so frustrated thinking why isn't he embarrassed to just spout bare-faced lies? But he was convincing himself, so that he never had to say OK, I was in the wrong. To this day he thinks he is Mr Nice Guy. And he can be nice when he wants to be, and he performs that well to friends, so they feed that back to him.

This guy is a high-level professional, multiple-degree-holding scientist and extremely intelligent.

When you've seen this level of delusion up close, ongoing for years, you understand that some people simply cannot stand to be in the wrong or called out on anything or be a "bad person", and they will twist reality so that they can assure themselves they never are.

I'm not saying this is DH necessarily, but I am saying it can be very complex, and psychology does back that up. It absolutely is not true that just because someone has a fetish, they clearly perceive themselves and their motivations that way. The mind can be extremely good at building an alternative reality that makes your self-image feel more comfortable – and trans ideology offers that on a plate to AGPs.

And yet, he has early childhood memories are of wanting to wear girls’ clothes and wearing his mothers’ tights.

Other men and other parents have reported the same.

The concept of male/female clothing is complicated by the fact that historically gendered clothing wasn’t always distinct. In Ancient Greece and Rome male and female clothes were fairly similar, particularly Roman. Essentially both men and women wore robes, thus a publicly cross-dressing Roman would just look like a bloke. In Asian, Arab and African countries, robes were worn by both sexes, and still are.

Then there were periods where mens’ clothing was very elaborate, ostentatious, highly coloured, lacy, frilly etc - styles we would now identify as “feminine”, and of course makeup was worn by both sexes.

How likely is it that he told himself in early childhood that he was AGP?
Well he won't have told himself anything about it in early childhood because the idea that it emerges in early childhood is made up.

I mean, we could go on all night.

I will end with the fact that the Passport Office offers 'Female' passports to Crossdressers.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/gender-recognition/gender-recognition-accessible

Exhibit D: Jordan Gray on Channel 4 sings 'I'm better than you' at women and plays the piano with his penis.

Channel 4 defends this.

Exhibit C: WPATH guidelines linking to 'the Eunuch Archive', containing detailed CSA fantasies, hosted on NHS Scotland's website.

Exhibit B: The Family Sex Show.

Your hope (that society concludes gender identity is bunk) and Tinsel’s concern (that society will be rather thrilled to accommodate erotic cross dressers and rather unconcerned about the impact on their wives and other women) are not mutually exclusive. They could both happen.

I am thinking right now of the 'CabababaRave', does anyone remember? When they had actual strippers stripping in front of babies. Pole dancers in thongs, etc. And last year's Margate Pride, a stripper stripping in front of a row of small children.

Women here have been saying for years 'when everyone realises what's really going on they'll be up in arms'.

Some are. Some are quite happy to flag wave a movement that is openly determined to remove all sexual boundaries from society, and will call anyone that suggests there maybe ought to be some boundaries and rules a 'prude' or a 'bigot'.

You’ve completely missed the point.

How likely is it that he told himself in early childhood that he was AGP?

Oh I see it's not escalation and boundary pushing it's "developmental psychology".

Yeah, in early childhood he decided: “Hey I’m AGP, I won’t tell anyone til I’m 50 & then write a book”

That entirely tallies with developmental psychology.

to encourage society to regard erotic cross dressing as entirely compatible with being an upstanding member of society.

In fact it is compatible with that and has been forever - the difference was that it was secretive and seen as shameful so kept hidden. What is happening now is not that you can be a cross-dresser when you couldn't before, but that gender ideology has encouraged men with a fetish for cross-dressing to make it public and claim the right to be seen as women - which unfortunately appeals to their fetish and leads many of them to think transitioning is a good idea. And because of the definition of trans as self-identified, people are scared to challenge that for fear of being "transphobic".

The idea of cross-dressing itself only applies male-to-female because women have been able to wear "men's" clothes for centuries and that has been entirely normalised. If men could wear their pick of any clothes and that was normalised, that would undermine the reasons for AGP being a thing.

When men wear kilts, or djellabas, they are seen as male clothes and masculine, despite being essentially a skirt and a dress.

It's more complicated than just "cross-dressing is bad".