Different Loving: The World of Sexual Dominance and Submission (80 page)

Being able to play on the gender line also represents the consummate form of emancipation. Many TVs feel that the period when they are cross-dressed is a time of complete psychic and sensual freedom. They are liberated from the constraints of social obligations, and the range of acceptable behavior is now vastly expanded. Men who in their daily lives feel they must always present a hard, competitive front can, while cross-dressed, display more sensitive or vulnerable tendencies.

Since the vast majority of male-to-female TVs are heterosexual, most fiction focuses on the submission to a dominatrix. This female authority may be exceedingly strict or forbidding; she may be a benevolent goddess or maternal confidante who initiates the TV into the mysteries of womanhood by teaching the TV how to pass. Many TVs, however, feel capable of a bisexual encounter. Submitting to a dominant man, for example, intensifies their sense of being female. And since TVs wish to live out the female role as authentically as possible, submissives may fantasize about being roughly treated like a girl by a man. This fantasy is not uncommon, but most TVs are extremely uncomfortable about direct sexual contact with other men.

Erotic coercion is a chief ingredient of many submissive TV fantasies: An otherwise macho man is compelled to wear feminine attire by an angry woman. Often the scenario centers on a wife who, exasperated by her husband’s inconsiderate behavior, decides to “teach him a lesson” by forcing him into a petticoat. Or the woman may announce that nothing less than his complete transformation into a painted woman will cure him of some concocted crime.

Such fantasies frequently entail a torrid emotional drama: The TV must submit to the woman’s authority or he will lose her affections, his job, or his social position.

The coercion fantasy may reflect many TVs’ uneasiness about their erotic impulse to wear women’s clothing. By being forced into feminine attire, they no longer bear responsibility for their desire and do not need to feel ashamed or guilty.

Few TVs are humiliated by cross-dressing—or enjoy coercion scenarios. Most simply wish to be perceived (and accepted) as women while they are dressed; D&S for them is often another avenue for sensual exploration. Nonetheless, humiliation scenarios are popular enough to create a cadre of professional dominants who specialize, as shown in this advertisement from
S&M News:

For those who Dare to apply BEWARE, as your HUMILIATION will reach NEW HEIGHTS as you’re encased in Nylon, Tightly Corsetted, Taught to walk in Spiked Heels and then exquisitely Powdered, Shadowed, Lined and Painted to Whorish proportions.
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Some TVs are erotically embarrassed by every detail of the outfit they are “forced” to wear. They enjoy being verbally teased or taunted about what
a sissy they’ve become and are aroused when the dominant makes them display their garters or sashay across the room like a girl. They may also enjoy being ordered to confess that they are no longer recognizable as men. They may prefer particularly bizarre or embarrassing outfits to further heighten the experience. The greater the humiliation, the more intense the arousal of both the TV and the dominant.

Fantasies of being cross-dressed as a naughty or wanton woman are particularly popular. For the male-to-female TV who wants to be a shameless hussy, cross-dressing is a license to express lust without emotional penalty. In his ordinary masculine role the TV tends to behave with scrupulous sexual tact, but in the feminine role he may not constrain to control his libido, since the dominant has “forced” him to display his deepest sexual passions.

Our research suggests that most transvestites are not interested in high-intensity activity, such as heavy pain. Instead, they tend to prefer less physically arduous activity.

Typically, there is heavy emphasis on psychological games and roleplaying: lengthy scenarios during which the TV is dressed, powdered, wigged, made up, and erotically coerced into acting like a female by the dominant. Head trips are prevalent, and many fantasize about being displayed before other dominatrices. Some TVs enjoy combining gender play with ageplay; they may wish to be a misbehaving daughter or a naughty niece. Some TVs are infantilists and wish to be cross-dressed in baby clothing.

Whatever form the play takes, the TV who engages in D&S eroticism is more likely to favor flamboyant or fetishistic clothing than are more sexually conservative TVs.

A number of interviewees said that they dressed according to their own image of the exquisitely sexy woman. The cross-dresser feels more sexually exciting—and may have better access to submissive feelings—when emulating these role models.

Ultimately, the diversity of interests and activities for the TV is as wide-ranging as for any other D&Ser. Nearly every activity listed in this book is likely to have some constituency among transvestites.

I
NTERVIEWS

My experience, outside of my marriage and what I’ve done on my own, has really been very limited. I’m a very private, cautious person. I’m not one [who went] out and made the rounds of the clubs in New York. I’ve always been circumspect. I check things out very carefully. Being interviewed is a major exposure for me.

I’m very much into sensuality and touch and scents. I have very vivid fantasies and [a vivid] imagination. I’m just as happy [with] cuddling as sexuality; so it tends to be a complete range of physicality. In terms of D&S, I’m turned on by bondage—mostly doing it to other people, but also having it done to myself on occasion. I am [also] a cross-dresser. I’m primarily dominant, although when dressed there are times where I’d like to switch and be placed in bondage.

[D&S] does not extend outside my relationship with my wife or our relationship at home. For all intents and purposes, to anybody who knows me, to any of the neighbors, there would never be any awareness that I was interested in D&S, much less involved in it. But as far as our relationship, it’s icing on the cake. I like a lot of variety, and my feeling is [that] one way to keep a relationship from getting stale is to have a lot of variety, to approach sex [just] as you look for different things to do in the relationship. D&S is one of those things.

D&S makes it possible to really draw out and extend an evening’s entertainment or pleasure. And it heightens the intensity of sex. It’s not something that we have to do every time we have sex, and if I had to put a percentage on it, it would probably be about 30 percent or 40 percent of the time. Within that, the range can go from something very simple and almost symbolic to a full three- or four-hour scene. [D&S] is strictly a form of sex play.

The cross-dressing goes back into my very early teenage years. It was there for a while, [but] I had no involvement. Then in my 30s I started to pick it up again. The first time that my interest in [bondage] was piqued was in my early 20s, when I stumbled across reprints of Japanese bondage photographs. It was the first bondage magazine I’d ever seen, and I discovered that well, wow! This is something people actually do! It’s really in the last [decade] that it’s become enough of an interest that I’ve gone out of my way to make it part of my sexual life.

My philosophy about virtually anything is that as long as it’s between consenting people and it doesn’t really hurt people, I don’t question other people’s values and judgments. That’s their right. If [people] question mine, it’s none of their damn business. I had more problems coming to terms with cross-dressing than with D&S. Where I may have some problem with D&S is the relationship of what I would do in fantasy as opposed to what I would do in reality.

I think my interests probably [have] to do with being highly sexed: very interested in sex, very imaginative. I like a lot of intellectual stimulation; it goes along with the physical stimulation. I like a lot of variety, not only sexually but in my life in general.

Probably the easiest way to do it is when my wife and I decide that one evening we’re going to do some serious D&S playing. Generally, we’ll start fairly early in the afternoon; we’ll set aside time to take showers and get dressed. Both of us will choose outfits that are fairly erotic, and in her case, provocative [is] an understatement: leather, PVC, all the accoutrements that normally go with a D&S lifestyle. We’ll have a fairly light but romantic dinner, a little bit of champagne, not a lot of alcohol, and no other drugs. Rather than create a whole fantasy game and roleplay, at some point we’ll move into the dungeon area that we’ve set up in the basement. It is not a permanent setup, it’s simply something that can be set up fairly quickly and easily. I have a variety of toys which I’ll use in the course of an evening.

Generally, [the D&S] is very spontaneous. [There’s] a lot of teasing, a lot of physical playing. I like to tease with a vibrator, nipple clips. We don’t do much in the way of gags, because my wife is not real big on that, although slowly but surely I’m trying to get her to accept that a little bit. I’ll blindfold her very often. And we’ll pursue that for about two or three hours. [Or], if we’re lucky, until either she can’t stand it anymore or I can’t wait anymore and we [have] reached the sexual portion of the evening’s entertainment. [For us, D&S] is always a part of lovemaking. There’s no humiliation involved. I don’t tie her up and leave her there for an hour. It’s always very physical and very much a question of lovemaking; it’s simply extending the intensity and the timing of making love.

When I’m submissive I like the feeling of restraint and of being totally helpless, out of control, that there’s nothing I can do about it. I also like the physicality of being in restraints and not being able to move. Before I met my wife I occasionally tried self-bondage, but I never found it very satisfying, because to do it, you always have to leave an out, and by leaving an out, somewhere in the back of your mind there’s an awareness that there’s an out. Because I tend to be a little cautious about things, I was never willing to risk doing it to the point where I might not be able to get out of it.