By Dr. Goodfellow.
(Dr.Goodbody is a clinical child psychologist. His real name is concealed for professional reasons.)
While the two main reasons for a person to crossdress are fairly well know, a feeling of releasing the female within or for personal sexual satisfaction, there is another reason which occasionally presents itself.
This is "forced dressing" and manifests itself in two forms, Deliberate Forced Dressing and Co-operative Forced Dressing.
This is not as common today as it was in the early years of the century although cases are still occasionally seen by psychologists/psychiatrists and are reported from time to time in the literature. However, the earlier literature is full of reported cases.
Most of the cases of forced dressing were the result of a Victorian attitude to discipline. It was considered that the best method of taming an unruly boy was to dress him in feminine attire, complete with tightly laced corsets. The idea was to completely tame an unruly spirit. From accounts in various contemporary magazines it appears that these methods were highly successful. However, occasionally they had an unexpected result. The victim became mere feminised than intended and in later life this manifested itself as voluntary transvestism.
Today with so little difference between the attire of young boys and girls it is hardly surprising that so few cases come to light.
While this is uncommon, it is by no means rare. Here the initiation of the dressing comes from the young boy. Most very young boys, up to 5 or 6, from time to time fantasise that they are girls. In some cases a harassed mother will agree with him for a quiet life. He then perhaps will try on his sister's clothes, showing himself off to Mummy as a little girl. Mummy may find this funny and give him a hug calling him "Mummy's pretty little girl". Small children are extremely manipulative. If the child now finds that by dressing as a girl he gains extra affection or extra privileges, he may now associate the dressing with his new power and begin to push for more dressing.
I have personal knowledge of two such cases. In one a five year old with very "progressive" parents has blackmailed them into dressing him as a girl. "Let me be a girl or I'll do so and so, then you'll be sorry"!
The second case involved a boy of 11. He was a nice quiet studious boy and so didn't fit very well into his school where the other boys were of rougher types. Since he lived in a small rural town there was no other schooling available. He didn't play games, preferring to study, so he had problems from the others. He also grew his hair longer than the norm which didn't endear him to the teachers. All his friends were girls though mainly younger than him.
He eventually formed the opinion that he was in fact a girl and demanded that he wear his sister's clothes. This was totally opposed by the parents but after much tears and screaming the mother finally agreed though the father is adamantly opposed. He now wears androgynous clothing to school, jumpers and jeans, but immediately changes to blouses and skirts when he arrives home.
In discussions with him, he has not so far exhibited any signs of wishing for GRS.
Last Modified 19 Jan 2002