I am now within the definition of GLBT.

With my acceptance of myself as a transgender female I find myself within the definition of GLBT, or gay lesbian bisexual trnansgender. This is a fact. The common use of the term GLBT makes this fact politically active and merges my case with those of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, in ways that may or not be to my liking but nevertheless represent a certain reality that I have to deal with. Each of the four types has its own distinctive social milieu, but these are sufficiently related to one another that the GLBT term serves a definite social and political purpose and is not to be ignored. I don't get so much value out of categorizing myself as a transvestic fetishist, which I am. It links me to transvestites in general and does not have much political power behind it, or at least so far as I can tell from having to keep my condition a secret for so long. It also, the transvestic fetishism, is not commonly known as a subgroup within transvestites, and what is believed is that it isn't a type of gender identity disorder, usually. This makes it more trouble as a category for me than it's worth.

Suspected cause of my turn to female as a child.

It is possible that my childhood development of transvestic fetishism, and with it gender identity disorder, has an origin in a traumatic event that dislodged me from my beginning in the male identity enough to bring on the disorder. This is something of a speculation. It involves my stepping on a board with a rusty nail sticking out that was on the border between our house lot and the prairie in back of the row of houses on Lexington Street. The origin I hypothesize here is that the incident caused me to pull back from the aggressive exploration of outside worlds typical of young males given such a large almost wild territory so ready at hand.

That being said, and acknowledging that it is entirely speculation, there would seem to be no way to avoid the consequence in gender identity disorder, and the decision I made to become trans gender will have to stand unless my female identity decides, after further review and analysis, to abandon the conversion to female.

If the incident is to blame, then there is nothing about my father that produced the disorder.

Why my condition went undiagnosed

I think the reason no one ever diagnosed my condition properly is that individuals with transvestic fetishism almost all do not identify as the other gender, so this would be assumed to show that my condition is not one of GID, or gender identity disorder. I am a rare transvestic fetishist in that I have GID.

My current thinking is that now that wanting to be female is something I have to consider a part of my identity, I can relax about the fetish element of crossdressing, even not play it out anymore at all. We will see.

I'm nervous about the inevitable acceptance of men as sex partners. Although my orgasm phantasies involve basic male participation, it would seem unlikely that without surgery a real partnership with a male would be at best awkward and more probably impossible. I don't imagine actual men. Just motifs.

Over the past seven days I have had 15 orgasms, six days with two and one day with three. One of these was through imaging myself in a male role. The rest were imagining myself in a female role. The male role was had just before my first order of female clothes was delivered, about half way through the seven days.

Preparing myself for becoming a transgender female is now my primary concern, and conducting a program of twice daily orgasms seems less immediate a desire. It also becomes a serious cleanliness problem, because the consumption of my thoughts by female associations leaves no time for providing for the well-ordered tending of the accompaniments of the male anatomy to orgasm.

As a female I will have no possibility of having my own children, I am guessing.

A diagnosis for my condition.

Although I have been given various diagnoses all within the mental illness category, I now believe my diagnosis is not mental illness and the mental illness I have is completely an effect of my actual condition--transvestic fetishism.

I come to this conclusion after reading the wikipedia entry on transvestic fetishism. This is not the end of the matter. This wikipedia entry says that,

"Occurrence of transvestic fetishism is uncorrelated to occurrence of gender identity disorder.^[1] Most men who have transvestic fetishism do not have a problem with their assigned sex."

After long soul-searching I have come to the conclusion I do have gender identity disorder. I used to not exhibit it, but this was mostly because I was afraid to embrace my condition and live it as fully as I really wanted to.

Since beginning cross-dressing in my apartment--and never outside it--I have seen that I am picking up little cues at every turn to my preference for having female anatomy. This is difficult to a certain extent because the two genders have primary characteristics that are different. But the imagination, once it sets its mind, can make up for a lot of this.

I don't like the stories I have heard about sex change operation results and I don't have the money for one even if I did.

The wikipedia entry says that transvestic fetishism

"is categorized as a paraphilia in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association."

I'll have to look that up.

The entry also says that the condition

"causes clinically significant distress or impairment, whether socially, at work, or elsewhere."

This is the explanation for my diagnosis of various mental illnesses. The wording here is critical--"clinically significant."

Now I can tell my psychiatrist about it.