Crossdressing Behavior
Start Age
The average age at which a respondent started crossdressing is 10.9 years old. The youngest start age reported was 3 years old and the oldest start age reported was 55.
Shopping
As a group, crossdressers are not shy. An overwhelming 80% said they shop for women's clothing "as a male" and another 73% said they shop for cosmetics "as a male." A surprising 26% said they shop for clothing "en femme" and another 24% said they shop for cosmetics "en femme."
"As a male" "En Femme" Shop for clothing 79.9% 243 26.3% 80 Shop for cosmetics 73.0% 222 24.3% 74 Appearance
I asked what parts of the body people shaved because this represents a noticeable change to the body, one that might prompt questions. I mistakenly forgot to ask about eyebrows.
The most frequently shaved body parts are face, legs and chest. Interestingly, of the 32 crossdressers who said they shave everything, 18 considered themselves "passable." That's a somewhat higher percentage (56.3%) than the overall group, of which about 45% felt they were "passable."
Face 263 86.5% Legs 168 55.3% Chest 140 46.1% Hands 102 33.6% Arms 77 25.3% Back 49 16.1% All 32 10.5% Face Only 56 25.0% Passing
Speaking of passing, I deliberately did not specify in the survey what I meant by this word. I wanted each person to apply their own interpretation. The result: less than half (44.7%) think of themselves as passable. A slightly higher number (48.0%) said that they go out in public when they are crossdressed.
My favorite however is the 15.8% (48 of you) who do not feel you are passable but go out in public anyway. Kool! Very, very kool! Let me know if you are ever in my area. We must get together for dinner. You are my kind of lady.
Not surprisingly is the fact that 96% of the respondent said they would like to crossdress more than they do.
Passable 136 44.7% Go out in public 146 48.0% Go out in public - not passable 48 15.8% Shave everything - passable 18 56.8% (of 32) Would like to crossdress more 292 96.1% Frequency
This question actually provided some interesting insights, when combined with other answers. I basically offered seven choices as answers to this question, but I didn't really define them well. Here's what I had in mind for my choices:
Choice on Survey My Meaning Daily Crossdresses every day Several Times/Week More than once a week but not every day Weekly Once a week Several Times/Month More than once a month but not every week Monthly Once a month A few times a year Less than once each month Not active right now Does not crossdress at all Here are the results:
Daily 55 18.1% Several Times/Week 82 27.0% Weekly 46 15.1% Several Times/Month 47 15.5% Monthly 23 7.6% A few times a year 26 8.6% Not active right now 14 4.6% The next thing I did was to assign weights to each of these answers. Not being a bona-fide statistician, I used the simple approach of assigning consecutive integers to each response, starting with a weight of six for a response of "Daily" down to zero for a response of "Not active." This allowed me to compute an average frequency. For example, an average frequency of 3.8 would be interpreted as not quite weekly (4) but somewhat more than several times a month (3). I agree this is probably not completely reliable.
But there were some interesting results. For example, the crossdresesrs who seemed to dress most frequently are married crossdressers who have a supportive wife. When crossdressing is a secret, the frequency of crossdressing is very low, not quite several times per month. Also interesting is the fact that frequency does not increase when a crossdresser gets divorced:
Frequency when wife is supportive 4.5 Frequency when not married 4.0 Frequency when divorced or separated 4.0 Frequency when wife is not supportive 3.3 Frequency when wife does not know 2.5 Crossdressers who consider themselves "passable" were likely to dress more frequently:
Frequency and passable 4.0 Frequency when not passable 3.5 Membership
The survey confirmed something I was reluctant to accept: crossdressers are not joiners. Only 19.7% of the respondents (60) said they were members of either a Tri-Ess affiliated support group or an "open" transgender support group. However, a much higher percentage said they had attended at least one meeting of some kind, almost always en femme.
Tri-Ess Member 26 8.6% "Open" Group Member 51 16.8% Member of both 17 5.6% Has attended a meeting 113 37.2% If so, attended en femme 100 88.5%
(n=100)All Dressed Up and No Place to Go
A high number of people said that their favorite activity when crossdressed was staying home: 56.4%. However, this correlates nicely with the earlier stated finding that about 46% of us go out in public. Here's the complete list of responses to the choices I offered on the survey:
Staying Home 166 54.6% Shopping 30 9.9% Attend Meetings 23 7.6% Driving 21 6.9% Club Hopping 19 6.3% Dancing 13 4.3% Dining 6 2.0% Movies 5 1.6% Finally, 169 people, 55.6%, said yes to the question "Were you ever caught crossdressing unexpectedly?" I didn't ask for details.
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