My perspective, Samantha, is that other people (outside the trans* community) attach 'sexuality' to 'dress code' almost invariably — I'm sure it's socially conditioned. Put into other words, it takes a lot of education and civic sense to be able to 'look beyond the miniskirt' and find the person inside. Inside the trans community, and probably even on most of the LGB community, we 'see' beyond the dress. But that's not how the public-at-large sees us. Maybe that point was not clear on that subject.

Also note that cis women who love to dress in what we would call a 'provocative style' might have nothing specifically sexual in mind (this applies to some cis males as well, although it's far less common). They just love to feel sexy. But they are also aware that their dressing style will be misinterpreted, at least out of context. So, while going to a bar, even without any explicit sexual desire, it might be 'appropriate' (depending on the bar!) to wear micro-skirts and net stockings, because it would be 'in context'; doing the same at a formal business office (say, a lawyer's office) might just draw unwanted attention. So your question — 'why are clothing choices about sexuality?' — is answered, mostly, with 'because we have created a complex society at many levels and are socially conditioned to recognise those levels through visual cues'.

I'm sorry if the article lead to you to assume I think that all transgendered MtF people are into men. The simple, plain truth is that sexual preferences among transgendered people follow precisely the same distribution as among cisgendered people — i.e. 90% will be heterosexual, 10% will be LGB, asexual, etc. So, while clearly not all transgendered MtF will be into men, the vast majority will be. Like you, I also feel personally nauseated (and yes, it's a very physical feeling!) by the idea of having sex with a male. I'm very clearly a lesbian transgendered MtF — not even bi-curious — and my sexual orientation is very unlikely to change (despite many claims to the contrary) as I explore my inner self-image as a woman: lesbian women are as 'womanly' as any others.

I was unaware of that classification, 'autosexual' — the need to be emotionally connected with others in order to establish a relationship with them. I'd love to read more about the subject, and how that impacts your personal life (e.g. I would assume it would be hard for you to keep a functional but strict business relationship with your colleagues at work if you didn't connect with them emotionally? Or am I getting this wrong?). See, I've already learned something new today! Thanks for that 🙂

As for your last paragraph, I would tend to agree with you that this ought to be 'our' ultimate goal. 'Our', in this case, implies the group of transgendered people who are not legally going through transition, but still would wish to present themselves as female in public, in 'normal' places (i.e. outside spots specifically designated for the LGBT community), even if it means abiding by a relatively strict (female) dressing code. I'm not sure yet if that goal is achievable. However, from some recent feedback that I have been getting, it seems that this is slowly becoming more acceptable. At the moment, it means just carefully selecting a few suitable spots: typical examples range from malls (where there is a certain amount of security, and tolerance towards more 'exotic' shoppers, who are nevertheless valid customers!) to parks and gardens, and a few restaurants and bars, where people presenting themselves as the opposite gender are tolerated, so long as they do not interfere with the other customers' enjoyment of the meal/drink. We're getting there… very slowly. It's definitely not universal yet, though.

Why must the automatic assumption be that clothing choices are about sexuality? Also, I sense a double standard here. In some (seedy) businesses, a women wearing a micro-miniskirt as part of their business suit might be hired, while that same place might reject me who is dressed conservatively in something knee-length or outright slacks.
I am what is called demisexual, meaning roughly half the time I have zero libido, and I’m not into sex that consent wasn’t given. So I have to be into you to do anything. Also, this article assumes all transgender people are into men. Personally, while I do look at crossdressers online, I am personally nauseated by the idea of sex with a cisgender male (natural females, preop FtM or postop MtF is more or less my preference). I am also, autosexual, having trouble connecting with another personal that I do not have some sort of emotional connection with.
Maybe it is some hypersexual thing. But I would be willing to abide any dress code even one that is tee shirt and jeans as long as I could present as female. I don’t need to dress provocatively but I do need to present myself as I feel inside.

Maybe the article ought to be more clear; some people have also contacted me about some strange (and wrong) grammar…

I don't equate 'hypersexuality' to 'having sexual desires'/'wanting to get laid'! That's normal sexuality, and normal libido (in fact, not having such desires is 'hiposexuality' — a term little used in English — or 'low libido'). I totally agree with you about the issue that crossdreamers might have no other option but to find some 'escapes' to their normal libido, like viewing porn, etc. And I would add that the same happens on non-crossdreamers as well. A typical case are Internet users from countries where sexuality is far more repressed; heterosexual, cisgendered people in those countries, with a normal, healthy libido, might have no other choice but to watch Internet porn and hang out in (Western) webcam chatrooms as the only alternative.

So, yes, well spotted, you're quite right on that — so many sites might cater to the normal needs of crossdreamers just because they have such a restricted set of options. I not only don't question this, but I fully agree with your conclusions.

Hypersexuality, however, is a (albeit polemic) non-official classification of a disorder where such desires are so intense and constant, and the frustration resulting from 'never having enough' is so high, that in many cases it creates constant feelings of anxiety, obsession, or even depression. This is more or the less what the Mayo Clinic calls 'compulsive sexual behaviour'.

The polemic around the term mostly occurs because some individuals have above average libido but do not feel anxious or depressed about it, leading to a skeptical questioning if that disorder actually exists or not. It has been rejected as a formal definition on the DSM-V (it was proposed in 2009, I believe), but some psychologists still think it should be an official classification, since clearly some of their patients exhibit constant suffering from it and wish for treatment. Thus, when I speak of 'high libido', I'm talking about a higher-than-average (whatever the average might be!) sexual desires and urges, but which the individual finds perfectly normal, healthy, and natural for him/her. There is nothing wrong in having a high libido if you're happy about it, and most individuals with high libidos are very happy persons! The word 'hypersexuality' is used in the context where such a high libido does not lead to happiness, but rather the contrary. Maybe I should have written my article more clearly to point out this distinction. Somehow, you got the idea that I assume that wishing to have sex is abnormal! I can only blame my poor writing skills — that was certainly the opposite of what I intended. Then again, I was sleepy when writing this…

I've read several studies connecting transgenderism and specially crossdressing with hypersexuality; I'm trying to find a few links to some which have been published for free. I'll post a follow-up as soon as I find them! A few, of course, are quite old (I found some from 1971) and I would disregard them as coming from an age where there still was a lot of prejudice against transgenderity. I'm not sure if there are similar studies showing links between crossdreaming and hypersexuality; if there are, I haven't found them yet. The assumption that the correlation between hypersexuality and crossdressering/transgenderism also holds to all kinds and classes of crossdreamers is mine, and, as such, it might be wrong, since it's not based on any study I read.

In any case, I did not intend to see that relation between crossdreaming and hypersexuality as 'wrong'. It is only a disorder if the crossdreamer suffers from it. In fact, most hypersexual crossdreamers I know are actually very happy about their high libidos and enjoy themselves a lot. Some, however, don't. A sociologist that researches crossdressing and transgenderity, in a real world interview with me, explained that one way to diagnose crossdressing vs. transexuality is to analyse the patient's libido: transexuals might exhibit low libidos due to their frustration with their current gender, while crossdressers enjoy hypersexuality. This led me to read a bit about the subject, and, as far as I know, there are really strong correlations between both. On the other hand, in many cases and as many countries, applicants for SRS might have their application rejected if they desire it because 'they wish for better sex' (either because they are hypersexual, and seek new forms of sexuality to ease their urges; or because they have a low libido and expect sex to be much better after transition). There are exceptions to the rule: for example, intersex individuals in the UK, who had their genitals partially removed/changed at birth, may revert them at the adult age regardless of their libido.

I should have been more careful with the claims that the link between hypersexuality and crossdressing is 'scientific fact'. There is just 'strong correlation'. For instance, even though studies show that hypersexuality lead to crossdressing, there is no evidence of the contrary. Maybe there is an yet unknown factor causes both; a speculation exists that an increase in dopamine levels might increase sexuality and that this, in turn, sometimes produces crossdressing, but the evidence is based mostly on interpretations on animal behaviour who had their dopamine levels artificially enhanced, as well as from tests with male patients of Parkinson's disease who were administered dopamine (or dopamine-equivalent drugs) . So I guess that all I could state is that both are closely connected, and, because of that, they can be used as a diagnosis tool. This is specially true in those individuals who suffer from their hypersexuality and turn to crossdressing as a form to engage in new sexual relationships, hoping to ease their urges, but somehow 'it's never enough' and that leads to further anxiety and potential depression. So psychologists are alert to those signs and can try to deal with them separately. For instance, going through transition often diminishes the libido, and that can actually provide some relief for hypersexual individuals (here is just one of many, many studies showing that HRT reduces libido on FtM transexuals — http://press.endocrine.org/doi/full/10.1210/jc.20…

Now this whole subject poses a difficult problem.

The main problem of all studies related to crossdreaming is that most crossdreamers don't reply to studies! This means that the sample might always be flawed (for example, it's very hard to give real estimates about the population size of crossdreamers). Perhaps my own perceptions are flawed because of that. It's conceivable that the statistics linking hypersexuality to crossdressing — and I use hypersexuality now to designate someone who suffers anxiety or depression due to not being able to fulfill their constant desires — are exaggerated precisely because it is those cases who ask for therapy. Thus, the majority of crossdreamers who are happy about their libido (be it average or high) might never show up on the statistics — and that would mean that all samples providing evidence for the correlation are flawed and should not be taken so seriously. The correlation is still valid — in the sense of alerting psychologists and therapists that the link might exist, so they should diagnose for it, in order to know what to treat — but it might not be so strong as my own article suggests. This is actually impossible to know: we simply cannot speculate about data we don't have. Or, rather, we can speculate, but not argue from facts.

I mildly disagree that 'heterosexual hypersexuality' is socially acceptable, while non-heterosexual hypersexuality (e.g. homosexual, crossdreaming, etc.) is not. Of course exceptions abound in environments where public display of hypersexuality is encouraged, but, on average, societies tend to shun displays of hypersexuality. There are far more studies about hypersexuality in heterosexual cisgender people than on transgendered people. It is true that there is no statistically significant difference between hypersexual heterosexuals and hypersexual homosexuals/bisexuals; the proportion is about the same. The difference is, however, quite visible in the transgendered group. Again, as said, that might just be the case because the samples are flawed. I assumed they're not, but without solid evidence, merely parochial evidence: while almost all my cisgendered acquaintances (real or online) are not hypersexual but have a normal libido, almost all my transgendered acquaintances have extremely high libidos, and a substantial amount of them actually suffers from that. Now postulating things from parochial evidence is always prone to flaws. My amount of acquaintances might simply not be large enough to constitute a valid sample. My cisgendered acquaintances might have learned not to display their hypersexuality publicly, so I wrongly 'read' them as having normal libidos. By contrast, my transgendered acquaintances might have no such inhibitions — because they are more trusting in their environments — and thus my parochial sample can, again, be flawed. Therefore, I should not make any claims. But I can certainly point out that my own parochial evidence mirrors very closely the published results. This still doesn't make it a 'fact', it just tends to make the correlation stand out more.

Now, my final thoughts were deliberately provocative! I assume that the main issue surrounding transgender rights comes not from transgenderity itself (i.e. it makes cisgendered people uncomfortable), but rather because the public in general stereotypes crossdresser/transgendered people with hypersexual individuals. And, as said, at least in some samples (which I admit being flawed), the public seems to be correct. So I argue that the stigma is mostly about public displays of hypersexuality (and that means that 'coming out' as a transgendered person will immediately tag them as 'hypersexual' and thus be stigmatized because of that). By making public displays of hypersexuality socially more tolerable — I like your phrase, 'the right to dress up sexy' — which I fully agree that applies to both transgendered and cisgendered people — we might go a long way to allow other transgendered rights to be more easily adopted (namely, the right to get support — medical, financial, etc. — during transition, the right to change their names and IDs, the right not to be discriminated in the workplace or on public spaces, the right to privacy about their transition, and so forth).

I know this is deliberately polemic and provocative! But I hoped to get the discussion rolling just to see what the reaction is. And because of that, I'm very grateful that you bothered to read everything and commented. You've encouraged me to write a follow-up article, where hopefully I'm more rigorous with my language.

Unless you buy into the myth of women being asexual and unwilling, nearly all people want to get laid. Indeed, in our societies men are allowed to take pride in their "manly prowess". So why use this word about crossdreamers in particular? Have you data that show, for instance, that porn consumption is higher among crossdreamers than non-crossdreamers?

It is certainly true that some crossdreamers may get obsessed with so-called "TG erotica" or erotic crossdressing, but this is very often caused by the fact that they often have no other places to channel their crossgender desire.

Persons who present as men and dream of being a woman (including having sex as a woman) do not have the same dating pool as your average non-transgender man. Female to male crossdreamers often struggle to find male lovers who will embrace the girlfag's masculinity.

However, if they do find a lover that accepts them as they are, their desire is channeled into that relationship in more or less the same way as for other people. Then a strong libido becomes something positive and life affirming, and not a "condition" as the word "hypersexual" implies.

The idea that crossdreamers, crossdressers and transgender people are more "hypersexual" than other people is not, as you seem to argue, a scientific "fact". I know of no reliable research that gives proof of this.

But if your point is that crossdreaming, crossdressing and transgender experiences have a sexual side, you are — of course — right. I have always found the idea that sex (as in identity) can exist without sex (as in sexuality) strange and unbelievable.

It is also true that many trans activists have tried to downplay this aspect of their lives. But that is exactly because the sexuality of minorities tend to be taken as proof of them being perverted in some way or the other. Keep in mind that both people of color and homosexuals used to be called oversexed predators by the medical establishment. The libido of straight heterosexual people, on the other hand, was always taken as a sign of mental health — at least as far as the men were concerned.

There is no reason to play up to these stereotypes.

This is why I also question the idea that the fight for transgender rights should be a fight for the right to accept "public displays of hypersexuality". The right to dress up sexy is a completely different discussion that applies equally to transgender and non-transgender people. It should not be mixed up with the struggle for transgender rights.