Hi, Felicia.
“I was not prepared for the impact of seeing myself as a woman at all. At the same time I began to realize that it seems more than a bit inevitable or the logical end game in the process.”
My theory is that your are aroused by your own femininity. This is consistent with being a male attracted to femininity (i.e., supposedly ‘heterosexual’). This can progress to a desire to be seen as sexually attractive by other males and so on.
Being primarily attracted to femininity your own femininity can be a revelation but what is most surprising is not only seeing yourself as attractive but as potentially the feminine partner in an intimate encounter with a masculine (and generally male) partner. That seems to give most cross-dressers the willies (as Slartibartfast might say).
This is why I try to emphasize the separate aspects but connectivity of gender identity and sexual identity. As is often repeated, cross-dressers, when presenting a masculine persona, are only sexually attracted to women but, when feminine, consider the possibility of a romantic connection with another male. That is, your present gender identity influences your present sexual identity. If you are gender variant then your sexual identity is potentially variant as well.
The thing is that some people are fully gender variant but most people are pretty much gender invariant and those who are gender invariant cannot comprehend those who are gender variant. It does not make sense to them so the attitudes they express tend to be irrational.
Trying to define sexual orientation with terms based on attraction to another person’s sex rather than their gender is fairly illogical. If one is attracted to females that does not mean one is attracted to all females. It also means that one can easily be attracted to feminine males without being ‘homosexual’. The rather perplexing attraction to and the long-term perpetuation of shows dedicated to drag queens shows is an example.
It is gender that provides the basis for attraction, even rather extravagant femininity. (Hence, for example, male fascination with mammary glands.) Granted that femininity is a social convention usually indicating that one is female but we need to stop being fixated on the concept that this is objectivity.
I feel that one thing that needs recognition and normalization is the concept of male femininity, either full-time or part-time.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that I found your feelings exceptionally mornal (moral and normal) and consistent with other accounts. “One is not born a woman but becomes one.”
Araminta.
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