A
ajw16
Guest
Hi,
Allow me to introduce myself. I am a brand new member of these forums, looking for a little help and some clear answers regarding crossdressing. Please bear with me as I provide some personal information and background that should prove helpful for those trying to answer my questions.
I am a devout and orthodox 16-year-old Catholic high school student. I come from a family of eight; there are five other children besides myself, including a 6-month-old baby. My parents homeschool all of us, though I went to the local Catholic school until 3rd grade.
I am very involved in my local parish: I’m the head altar server and in charge of training all the other servers. My brothers and I also serve the Latin Mass. We go to mass every Sunday and usually twice during the week, and volunteer in many ways at our parish. I have gone on trips to help poor people in inner cities. I adore for one hour each week in our Perpetual Adoration Chapel. In short, church plays a major role in my family’s life. Also, I am seriously considering a vocation to the priesthood, though I am not sure yet whether or not God is calling me to be a priest or to be married. I know that I’m not called to be single.
My interests are more or less those of a normal, healthy and morally upright teenage boy. I don’t date, though not from fear or dislike of girls. I am not gay; period. No doubt about that. I am just as attracted to girls as most guys are. I do not ogle pornography or commit any other sexual sins such as masturbation. I try hard not to use foul language, to love my neighbor as myself, and especially to be nice at all time to my siblings and parents. I do not drink. I do not smoke. I do not drive recklessly like some teens. While I have few friends due to the fact that I am Catholic, I homeschool, and my family is just “different” from other people (in a good way), people tell me that I’m very nice and polite and fun to be around.
As far as my interests go, those are normal as well. I am deeply interested in history, literature, and theology. Studying military history is my hobby; you might say it’s an obsession. I love to learn new things about wars, especially World War II. I play WWII miniature wargames. I love to read and to write, and have written numerous articles for military history websites. I am also interested in politics and economics, among other things.
Also, I own a gun and love to shoot. I like to camp. I am physically fit, and run, bike, lift weights (in some cases 200+ pounds of them—I am not a weakling), do pushups, etc. I love blowing things up, getting dirty, playing baseball and listening to baseball games on the radio, and just having a good old time. In short, I love being a boy. I do not have any “gender identity problem.” I know that I’m a boy and that I’m going to be a man. I do not plan or want to have a sex-change operation when I grow up. God made me a man; it’s my solemn duty to be His soldier and to serve him as who I am.
However, despite the fact that I seem to be a normal, happy, religious, manly teenager, I must confess that I have a somewhat serious problem with crossdressing. It all started when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade; I decided to play with my only sister (who gets lonely a lot, being the only girl in the family). I put on a pair of her tights, and, for whatever weird reason, I was “hooked.” I loved the way that they felt. I wanted to keep them on forever (though, of course, I took them off). That was when it all started; I’ve never forgotten about that.
I didn’t crossdress again immediately, though. In fact, aside from doing it maybe once or twice while having some honest, clean play time with my sister, I don’t think I did it again for some years. Then puberty came, and, like all adolescents, I became very sexually confused, as well as naturally curious. I had the urge to wear women’s clothes again. I went through all of my mom’s clothes, until I found what I was looking for: her pantyhose. That was what I wanted, above all else, to wear. I put them on, got an unexpected thrill, kept them on for a while, and carefully placed them back where they belonged, even more confused than when I had started.
That was only the beginning. I went back and kept trying on her hosiery countless times, sort of feeling that it was wrong and a little weird, but not really knowing any better (after all, I had no clue at this point that crossdressing was a sin). Then, becoming even more curious, I started to wear her other clothes when she would be gone grocery shopping or running errands. Skirts. Dresses. Slips. Bras (which I felt really stupid in). Nightgowns. Blouses. And, of course, pantyhose. Everything but shoes (she has small feet, and so I couldn’t wear her high heels, though my sister had a size 9 pair that I wore a couple of times). A few times I went the whole nine yards and dressed up completely; it felt great at first, but every time I did it I was afraid of getting caught, and as the novelty wore off I gradually stopped doing that completely. This went on from about 6th or 7th grade until about 9th grade, when I finally told my dad about it.
A note about my father. He is a great person, and I love him dearly as any son should. However, he has many psychological problems due to the fact that both of his parents never showed him any love unless he was perfect. That meant perfect behavior, perfect grades, getting scholarships to college, etc. He always, always felt like he had to be perfect. Well, when I was young, before he started going to some counseling about 3-4 years ago, he acted that same way towards me. So I learned not only to act perfectly all of the time, but also developed somewhat of a cold, hard attitude towards him. I saw him as someone who would protect and feed me and be there for me occasionally, but overall my relationship with him was not very good when I was younger. As a result, I think that I tended, subconsciously, to gravitate towards my mother. She became my main parent, and the fact that my dad is a lawyer and has always worked rather far from home didn’t help anything, as he wasn’t home as often as he would have liked to be. Though my relationship with him now is much, much better, I think that those earlier years might have, deep down, screwed up some of my psychology and made me, internally, more inclined to like mom. That might have been part of the reason why I ended up crossdressing.
Anyway, I told my dad, who was very kind about it, but who told me that crossdressing was a sin—a mortal sin, no matter what. I told my mom, apologized to her for invading her privacy, and went to confession, though my dad told me to just confess something like, “I got into my mother’s and sister’s things without permission, many times.” I was surprised to learn that what I had been doing was a mortal sin; my dad told me that that is because, by wearing women’s clothes, I was revolting against God’s order in that I was trying to be or pretending to be a woman.
Needless to say, the habit wasn’t broken after that first time confessing it, though the urge abated for a while. Then it came back, albeit on a lesser scale. I started crossdressing again, though not as often as I used to. Part of the reason that I started again was because I wasn’t trying to be a woman, so I thought that my culpability might be lessened. I just like certain aspects of certain articles of women’s clothing; for example, the fact that pantyhose help my leg circulation, make my legs look smooth and feel “airy,” and make my legs warmer in winter and cooler in summer. Also, since I had learned long ago that one of the conditions for a mortal sin is that the person committing it has to believe that it’s really mortal (I could use a little clarification of this as well), I wasn’t sure if what I was doing was mortally sinful, as I didn’t really think that it was. Furthermore, some of the times I crossdressed, I did so only out of habit or a sudden urge, without stopping to think first.
I tried to quit many, many times. I actually confessed crossdressing (rather than “getting into my mom’s things”) to my pastor. I told him that I knew that I was not gay, and that I wasn’t really doing it to arouse sexual pleasure. I told him that I didn’t really know why I was doing it, which was true, because, more or less, I didn’t. When I asked him whether or not it was a mortal sin and told him that, if it was, I would have to confess sacrilege as I had received Communion without confessing it beforehand, he was rather hesitant. What he told me was that, since I didn’t know that it was a mortal sin before I was told, I couldn’t be held accountable for any crossdressing done before my father told me it was sinful. As far as the times after I knew it was a sin and kept doing it anyway, he didn’t really know whether or not it was mortal, since I wasn’t doing it for homosexual purposes or simply for sexual pleasure. Furthermore, when I told him about how it wasn’t even mentioned in most confession guides, and asked him what one is supposed to do about sins like that, he said that you really just have to follow your own conscience as best as you can (or something to that effect—I don’t really remember the exact words).
I continued to crossdress even after that confession. I tried to break the habit, and continued to confess it. I remained confused about it, especially since: 1) men used to wear high heels, tights, corsets, etc., but all of that passed out of fashion (to some extent I am glad for that); 2) women are now wearing pants, suits, and other articles of clothing that were traditionally worn by men up until rather recently, but at the same time men weren’t allowed to wear articles of clothing traditionally worn by most women, simply because that’s not fashionable now; and 3) my pastor basically told me he wasn’t sure whether or not it was a mortal sin.
I continue to crossdress today, though never openly, very infrequently, and usually in the form of nothing more than just pantyhose worn under my pants and covered up by my socks. My parents only know of my earlier struggles; they more or less assume that I’ve quit, though it has come up once. It’s not a serious enough problem, in my opinion, to tell them about it, as they have enough on their hands right now, and don’t have the money, really, to give me counseling. And I’ve told them countless times that I’m not gay; the fact that they caught me once looking at pin-ups on the internet (mea culpa—I confessed it) proved that to them, in my opinion.
One last important note: though I sometimes experience slight sexual pleasure while crossdressing, I never give into it, and have never had an ejaculation as a result of doing it. I also have never been led or tempted to masturbate when crossdressing.
Anyway, sorry for all of that information, but I consider it necessary for people to know if they are going to try to answer my questions, which are the following:
I apologize for the long post, but hope that it helps anyone who might try to answer my questions. I am looking for honest answers that are as clear as possible. I will be more than willing to immediately give up my infrequent crossdressing and my own personal views on it and its sinfulness should I find out that it is, indeed, mortally sinful, and that one cannot do it at all unless in grave situations. If so, then I will immediately stop once and for all, with the help of God’s grace.
Thank you to those started these wonderful forums—I am grateful to you for providing me with a place where I can honestly discuss such topics, yet do so in a discreet manner. May God bless you.
I sincerely hope and look forward to getting some answers. In the meantime, I will read all the other posts and threads on these forums regarding crossdressing, and see if I can find the answers to some of my questions there.
In Christ,
ajw16
Allow me to introduce myself. I am a brand new member of these forums, looking for a little help and some clear answers regarding crossdressing. Please bear with me as I provide some personal information and background that should prove helpful for those trying to answer my questions.
I am a devout and orthodox 16-year-old Catholic high school student. I come from a family of eight; there are five other children besides myself, including a 6-month-old baby. My parents homeschool all of us, though I went to the local Catholic school until 3rd grade.
I am very involved in my local parish: I’m the head altar server and in charge of training all the other servers. My brothers and I also serve the Latin Mass. We go to mass every Sunday and usually twice during the week, and volunteer in many ways at our parish. I have gone on trips to help poor people in inner cities. I adore for one hour each week in our Perpetual Adoration Chapel. In short, church plays a major role in my family’s life. Also, I am seriously considering a vocation to the priesthood, though I am not sure yet whether or not God is calling me to be a priest or to be married. I know that I’m not called to be single.
My interests are more or less those of a normal, healthy and morally upright teenage boy. I don’t date, though not from fear or dislike of girls. I am not gay; period. No doubt about that. I am just as attracted to girls as most guys are. I do not ogle pornography or commit any other sexual sins such as masturbation. I try hard not to use foul language, to love my neighbor as myself, and especially to be nice at all time to my siblings and parents. I do not drink. I do not smoke. I do not drive recklessly like some teens. While I have few friends due to the fact that I am Catholic, I homeschool, and my family is just “different” from other people (in a good way), people tell me that I’m very nice and polite and fun to be around.
As far as my interests go, those are normal as well. I am deeply interested in history, literature, and theology. Studying military history is my hobby; you might say it’s an obsession. I love to learn new things about wars, especially World War II. I play WWII miniature wargames. I love to read and to write, and have written numerous articles for military history websites. I am also interested in politics and economics, among other things.
Also, I own a gun and love to shoot. I like to camp. I am physically fit, and run, bike, lift weights (in some cases 200+ pounds of them—I am not a weakling), do pushups, etc. I love blowing things up, getting dirty, playing baseball and listening to baseball games on the radio, and just having a good old time. In short, I love being a boy. I do not have any “gender identity problem.” I know that I’m a boy and that I’m going to be a man. I do not plan or want to have a sex-change operation when I grow up. God made me a man; it’s my solemn duty to be His soldier and to serve him as who I am.
However, despite the fact that I seem to be a normal, happy, religious, manly teenager, I must confess that I have a somewhat serious problem with crossdressing. It all started when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade; I decided to play with my only sister (who gets lonely a lot, being the only girl in the family). I put on a pair of her tights, and, for whatever weird reason, I was “hooked.” I loved the way that they felt. I wanted to keep them on forever (though, of course, I took them off). That was when it all started; I’ve never forgotten about that.
I didn’t crossdress again immediately, though. In fact, aside from doing it maybe once or twice while having some honest, clean play time with my sister, I don’t think I did it again for some years. Then puberty came, and, like all adolescents, I became very sexually confused, as well as naturally curious. I had the urge to wear women’s clothes again. I went through all of my mom’s clothes, until I found what I was looking for: her pantyhose. That was what I wanted, above all else, to wear. I put them on, got an unexpected thrill, kept them on for a while, and carefully placed them back where they belonged, even more confused than when I had started.
That was only the beginning. I went back and kept trying on her hosiery countless times, sort of feeling that it was wrong and a little weird, but not really knowing any better (after all, I had no clue at this point that crossdressing was a sin). Then, becoming even more curious, I started to wear her other clothes when she would be gone grocery shopping or running errands. Skirts. Dresses. Slips. Bras (which I felt really stupid in). Nightgowns. Blouses. And, of course, pantyhose. Everything but shoes (she has small feet, and so I couldn’t wear her high heels, though my sister had a size 9 pair that I wore a couple of times). A few times I went the whole nine yards and dressed up completely; it felt great at first, but every time I did it I was afraid of getting caught, and as the novelty wore off I gradually stopped doing that completely. This went on from about 6th or 7th grade until about 9th grade, when I finally told my dad about it.
A note about my father. He is a great person, and I love him dearly as any son should. However, he has many psychological problems due to the fact that both of his parents never showed him any love unless he was perfect. That meant perfect behavior, perfect grades, getting scholarships to college, etc. He always, always felt like he had to be perfect. Well, when I was young, before he started going to some counseling about 3-4 years ago, he acted that same way towards me. So I learned not only to act perfectly all of the time, but also developed somewhat of a cold, hard attitude towards him. I saw him as someone who would protect and feed me and be there for me occasionally, but overall my relationship with him was not very good when I was younger. As a result, I think that I tended, subconsciously, to gravitate towards my mother. She became my main parent, and the fact that my dad is a lawyer and has always worked rather far from home didn’t help anything, as he wasn’t home as often as he would have liked to be. Though my relationship with him now is much, much better, I think that those earlier years might have, deep down, screwed up some of my psychology and made me, internally, more inclined to like mom. That might have been part of the reason why I ended up crossdressing.
Anyway, I told my dad, who was very kind about it, but who told me that crossdressing was a sin—a mortal sin, no matter what. I told my mom, apologized to her for invading her privacy, and went to confession, though my dad told me to just confess something like, “I got into my mother’s and sister’s things without permission, many times.” I was surprised to learn that what I had been doing was a mortal sin; my dad told me that that is because, by wearing women’s clothes, I was revolting against God’s order in that I was trying to be or pretending to be a woman.
Needless to say, the habit wasn’t broken after that first time confessing it, though the urge abated for a while. Then it came back, albeit on a lesser scale. I started crossdressing again, though not as often as I used to. Part of the reason that I started again was because I wasn’t trying to be a woman, so I thought that my culpability might be lessened. I just like certain aspects of certain articles of women’s clothing; for example, the fact that pantyhose help my leg circulation, make my legs look smooth and feel “airy,” and make my legs warmer in winter and cooler in summer. Also, since I had learned long ago that one of the conditions for a mortal sin is that the person committing it has to believe that it’s really mortal (I could use a little clarification of this as well), I wasn’t sure if what I was doing was mortally sinful, as I didn’t really think that it was. Furthermore, some of the times I crossdressed, I did so only out of habit or a sudden urge, without stopping to think first.
I tried to quit many, many times. I actually confessed crossdressing (rather than “getting into my mom’s things”) to my pastor. I told him that I knew that I was not gay, and that I wasn’t really doing it to arouse sexual pleasure. I told him that I didn’t really know why I was doing it, which was true, because, more or less, I didn’t. When I asked him whether or not it was a mortal sin and told him that, if it was, I would have to confess sacrilege as I had received Communion without confessing it beforehand, he was rather hesitant. What he told me was that, since I didn’t know that it was a mortal sin before I was told, I couldn’t be held accountable for any crossdressing done before my father told me it was sinful. As far as the times after I knew it was a sin and kept doing it anyway, he didn’t really know whether or not it was mortal, since I wasn’t doing it for homosexual purposes or simply for sexual pleasure. Furthermore, when I told him about how it wasn’t even mentioned in most confession guides, and asked him what one is supposed to do about sins like that, he said that you really just have to follow your own conscience as best as you can (or something to that effect—I don’t really remember the exact words).
I continued to crossdress even after that confession. I tried to break the habit, and continued to confess it. I remained confused about it, especially since: 1) men used to wear high heels, tights, corsets, etc., but all of that passed out of fashion (to some extent I am glad for that); 2) women are now wearing pants, suits, and other articles of clothing that were traditionally worn by men up until rather recently, but at the same time men weren’t allowed to wear articles of clothing traditionally worn by most women, simply because that’s not fashionable now; and 3) my pastor basically told me he wasn’t sure whether or not it was a mortal sin.
I continue to crossdress today, though never openly, very infrequently, and usually in the form of nothing more than just pantyhose worn under my pants and covered up by my socks. My parents only know of my earlier struggles; they more or less assume that I’ve quit, though it has come up once. It’s not a serious enough problem, in my opinion, to tell them about it, as they have enough on their hands right now, and don’t have the money, really, to give me counseling. And I’ve told them countless times that I’m not gay; the fact that they caught me once looking at pin-ups on the internet (mea culpa—I confessed it) proved that to them, in my opinion.
One last important note: though I sometimes experience slight sexual pleasure while crossdressing, I never give into it, and have never had an ejaculation as a result of doing it. I also have never been led or tempted to masturbate when crossdressing.
Anyway, sorry for all of that information, but I consider it necessary for people to know if they are going to try to answer my questions, which are the following:
- Is crossdressing a sin? If so, is it usually mortal or venial?
- Why isn’t it a sin for women to wear pants? If crossdressing is a sin, and if the changing fashions are almost always aloof from morality and usually amoral, wouldn’t it be better for women not to wear pants but rather “play it safe” and wear skirts/dresses all of the time? Even “feminized” pants are still pants and are derived from men’s pants. How come it is perfectly acceptable for women to wear pants (even manly looking pants), suits, etc., but men aren’t allowed to wear anything that even remotely resembles women’s clothing without sinning and being labeled gay? Aren’t morals unchanging, more or less? Yes, clothes depend on culture; but if the current culture promotes something that may be a sin or borderline sin, wouldn’t one do better to stick with tradition? I am very confused about what appears to be something of a double-standard here with the women in pants issue. While I do not mind women wearing pants per se, as long as they’re womanly pants and aren’t too tight, women wearing pants and other more manly clothing has confused me even more. Yes, women have worn pants or pants-ish clothing for centuries in other parts of the world, but not here in America. I guess my point is that, if it suddenly became the fashion for men to wear skirts and heels, would it be acceptable for men to do that and would they not be sinning, as it suddenly became fashionable for women to wear pants and yet not sin about 30-40 years ago?
- Is crossdressing a sin if you’re not doing it to be sexually alluring to other men, if you’re not doing it to arouse your own passions, and if you’re not doing it because you want to be transgender? What if I simply like the feel of pantyhose, or appreciate certain aspects of them such as the ability to relieve leg stress? Is it a sin for me to wear pantyhose under my pants, for reasons not involving personal sexual pleasure or “gayness?” I know that it is a sin to place yourself in a near occasion of sin, but as I don’t really experience the “thrill” I did when I first wore them, wearing pantyhose doesn’t pose a problem in that respect for me anymore.
- Is there a difference, in moral terms, between crossdressing and transvestitism? I know that there is some difference in terminology there, but I’m not sure if it makes any moral difference.
- I know that people are allowed to crossdress in certain situations, including, according to St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica, if there aren’t any clothes of your gender available, or if you need to save your life and escape detection by your enemies. He also says that there are certain other instances in which crossdressing is permitted out of necessity; does anyone know what those might be?
I apologize for the long post, but hope that it helps anyone who might try to answer my questions. I am looking for honest answers that are as clear as possible. I will be more than willing to immediately give up my infrequent crossdressing and my own personal views on it and its sinfulness should I find out that it is, indeed, mortally sinful, and that one cannot do it at all unless in grave situations. If so, then I will immediately stop once and for all, with the help of God’s grace.
Thank you to those started these wonderful forums—I am grateful to you for providing me with a place where I can honestly discuss such topics, yet do so in a discreet manner. May God bless you.
I sincerely hope and look forward to getting some answers. In the meantime, I will read all the other posts and threads on these forums regarding crossdressing, and see if I can find the answers to some of my questions there.
In Christ,
ajw16
Welcome to the forums, ajw16! 
