The "Bimbo's Progress" articles began as assignments from Dom de Luxury. She thought they would help me figure out who I was, where I came from, and where I was going, and she was right. The biggest surprise was how many of you also found them interesting and useful. Like many of the other "seeds" Dom de Luxury planted in my brain and carefully nurtured, writing these pieces is now part of me, so I'm doing this on my own. I'm much less confused now about who I am and where I am going. I'll summarize my history, and this essay will replace my earlier efforts.
My Story
I started dressing as a girl very young. At first, the adults in my life thought it was a cute, passing phase. When the phase didn't pass, and I was still doing it at 5, they got alarmed and took action. Suddenly, I was getting a spanking for my dressing habits, and all the clothes I had collected (and in some cases made myself) disappeared. My father, a practicing clinical psychologist, asked me darkly if "I wanted to end up as a transvestite?" I had no idea what a transvestite was, but it sounded awful. So I stopped or tried to. And as far as the adults were concerned, I was "fixed."
But of course, that didn't "fix" me; that sort of thing doesn't "fix" anyone. I continued experimenting when no one was around, borrowing my sister's clothes and makeup. Because it was now forbidden, something originally a natural expression of who I was suddenly became an exciting activity, like stealing cookies from the jar. Later on, when I experienced my sexual awakening during early adolescence, the excitement turned sexual when I would dress as a woman. I have amazingly clear memories of all those early experiences.
This was years before our current awareness of the transgender spectrum. Having been diagnosed in passing as transvestite by my father, that became a permanent part of my identity. Of course, I did not want most people to know about it! Who wants mockery? I had heard of Christine Jorgensen but, like most people, thought that her story was about the strangest thing I had ever heard and never thought it could apply to me! Even as I learned about and supported transgender individuals, I never considered that I might be one myself. Such are the dangers of applying a label, of any kind, to a young person. To get a bit ahead of my story here: It wasn't until I met Dom de Luxury, after what seemed like a hundred lifetimes away from my childhood experiences, that I was able to reconsider that early diagnosis. Thanks to her, I don't believe I was ever a "transvestite," and I don't consider myself one today. I think the sexual excitement that I felt from dressing up came from "doing something forbidden" and not from wearing women's clothing. Not that there's anything wrong with doing anything to yourself that brings you sexual pleasure. If you are reading this and you are a transvestite, good for you!
Adolesence brought further developments. As I got older and my face and body became more masculine, I developed an intense loathing for my appearance. Women found me attractive, but this didn't change my opinion. Today I would have been diagnosed with body dysphoria, and my life would have developed quite a bit differently, but that was unheard of back then. I became self-destructive, not taking care of myself, and became deeply involved in academic, artistic, and intellectual pursuits. These were all things I could be good at without thinking about my appearance.
Above all, I loved women. Coming from what I could describe as a sexually unenlightened background, I had no idea what to do with women other than admiring them from a distance. My "transvestite" activities were becoming more of a challenge. Starting life as a 'pretty' child, my features were becoming more masculine, and I started looking ridiculous when I dressed as a girl. I remember this as a huge disappointment, discouraging me from continuing more than any spanking could. I started satisfying my 'transvestite' cravings in fantasy activities, such as writing short stories featuring a woman as the heroine (in my mind, that was me, of course) or selecting the female role in video games.
In my efforts to figure out what to do with women (my wonderful but prudish home had no one available to explain the "birds and the bees" to me) and being a nerd, I sought such information from books. I knew you needed to do sex with women but didn't know how to do that. Fortunately, America had just started experimenting with being more open about sensuality and sex, so books on the subject were readily available. "The Joy of Sex" was one of the best. I managed to obtain a copy and read it from beginning to end. The book solved the mysteries of performing a sexual act and taught me the importance of pleasuring your partner. The book also had a chapter on BDSM. I had never heard of such a thing! But to this day, I remember how sexually excited I got reading about it for the first time. Permanently hooked, BDSM and submission became the second important thread of my life, and I have spent a lifetime searching for the ultimate Alpha Female.
My relationships with women are generally intense and long-term, so there have not been many. I am not a Lothario with hundreds of conquests, nor is it my style. I also don't enjoy one-night stands. I've had both vanilla and BDSM long-term relationships. You might be surprised how many women enjoy dressing their men up as girls. Surprisingly, even some of the otherwise 'vanilla' women got a kick out of this. My early BDSM partners successfully humiliated me by dressing me as a girl. I kept my joy at being female to myself. That joy lasted until I looked at myself in the mirror. I was not very happy with what I saw. Men who dress as women are comedic characters for a good reason: they look ridiculous. So rather than tap into my desire to appear as a girl, it discouraged me from pursuing it (which was terrible) but had the result of humiliating me (which was good because at least I enjoyed that).
A particularly painful break-up led me to explore the online world of sex via cam. Over the years, I've made many friends in that world, and that's how I eventually came to meet Dom de Luxury. My search for the ultimate Alpha Female ended at that happy moment. It was love at first sight. We had fantastic chemistry, and I spent a few happy years worshipping her unmatched beauty and being thrilled by her fertile and fabulous imagination without revealing that I was a "transvestite." One night, perhaps after way too much to drink, I unveiled my small stash of "feminization tools": a few bits of makeup, a dress, some cheap fake boobs. She loved this side of me, and her exploration of it had some surprising twists for us.
A Brief Detour: LABELS
Skip this part if you wish, but people love attaching labels. Here are some common ones applied (for right or ill) to people like me:
- Crossdresser
- This is a popular term. Sometimes used pejoratively to refer to people who do not take the time to be very convincing. But it's also used by some beautiful crossdressers to describe themselves.
- Crossplayer
- This comes from cosplayer. A group of people dress as the opposite sex and usually do it well. They go to cosplayer conventions and sometimes serve as maids (considered an honor). It's quite the subculture.
- Crossdreamer
- These are crossdressers who don't crossdress but fantasize about it. Of course, you can crossdream and also crossdress. You might be too busy to crossdress, so you enjoy thinking about it.
- Drag Queen
- Drag queens are entertainers, mostly gay, but not all of them are. The most famous drag queen is probably Ru Paul. They sing, dance, do comedy and dress up as women. Some of them look very cartoony, and some of them look great. Drag has tremendously influenced female fashion and crossdressers, but if you don't 'entertain', you aren't a drag queen. Drag queens also don't want to sleep, have sex, or live in drag. It's a job, not a life. Incidentally, there are now women who "do drag" and do it very well. They are usually called "bio-queens" for obvious reasons. There are also "drag kings," who are women entertainers who dress as men. For whatever reason, this has not proven as popular.
- Gender fluid
- People whose gender changes. Sometimes, this can be a step toward accepting that you are transgender. Still, many people experience full internal transformations, sometimes feeling male and sometimes feeling female. In this sense, genderfluid is a "third gender."
- Sissy
- This is a commonly used term in the online BDSM community and one of its most significant segments. If you meet an online domme while dressed as a woman, she will instantly assume you are a sissy of a specific type: Someone aroused by feminization (often forced), has homo-erotic tendencies (also forced), and is also a masochist, enjoying the humiliating aspects of these activities. Not all sissies are like this - many are very proud and openly homosexual and not the least bit masochistic. Not all crossdressers are sissies, and many do not care for the term.
- Transgender (also TG/trans).
- This is a controversial term; not everyone likes it. It describes gender-diverse people whose gender identity doesn't match their assigned gender. In this sense, it's a broad term that covers everyone from people who have sexual reassignment surgery and take hormones to crossdressers.
- Third Gender
- This is controversial and often politicized. Some people don't feel female or male (the so-called "binary genders"), or they feel, in some way, 'non-binary.' It can also refer to a third legal gender status that both transgender and non-binary people can use.
- Transvestite
- This is an old label, but some still use it. It's similar to "crossdresser" but implies sexual arousal caused by wearing the clothing of the opposite sex.
The New Phase
At the start, Dom de Luxury assumed I was a sissy. You can see this in the first training lists she gave me. There were lots of assignments related to cocks and sucking them. And there were makeup lessons! She was the first person to teach me makeup basics and was also the first woman who tried to make me look female. Those early efforts were pretty sad compared to what I can do today. But what a revelation! It was the first time since I was 11 or 12 that I could look at myself and feel good about it. For those who have never had this feeling, it's impossible to describe how liberating it was for me. Makeup became my passion, and I surprised not only myself but Dom de Luxury when we discovered I had a talent for it. More than anything else, makeup was the gateway drug that unleashed a lifetime of suppressed gender-changing desires.
Dom de Luxury realized what was going on way before I did. I still thought of myself as a "transvestite" and was working hard on her sissification program when she suddenly announced: "I don't think you are a sissy. There's a woman in there!" I still remember the surprise in her voice; truthfully, I wasn't sure what she was talking about. After all, I was a "transvestite."
The character of our sessions changed, and I learned that not only was Dom de Luxury an incredible Dom, but a fantastic mentor. I had been able to make significant progress with makeup on my own (via books, lessons, and other resources), but there are some things that you can't learn without a life coach. She spent hours coaching me in incredible detail about how to move my hands, sit, and manners; it was endless. I had a lifetime of masculine conditioning, and unlearning it wasn't easy. Then I needed to develop a fashion sense. She gave me lists of instructions that helped me develop an underlying sense of fashion. It was (and still is) like going through a second adolescence. If you have a suppressed woman inside of you, when you let her out, she will not just emerge, knowing what to do and who she is. Having a powerful figure like Dom de Luxury shape and guide me has been a beautiful and stimulating experience. People accept me as a woman in many social situations thanks to her instruction.
Stages of Acceptance
Not that this was all that easy for me. It might sound peculiar, but it was emotionally more comfortable to accept myself as a sissy than to uncover what I was. The sissy role fit in with the BDSM scene, which I knew well and loved and at which Dom de Luxury excels. It fits in with things I have done all my life. Considering that I might be a different gender was a horse of a different color.
This didn't happen all at once. Almost without my notice, dressing as a woman stopped being "sexually exciting" and just felt satisfying and right. Like many people who go through this, I started thinking of myself as gender-fluid: Someone who could change their gender based on circumstances or desire. This period was like riding an emotional roller-coaster for me, where I would go from the heaven of being a girl to the absolute and depressing hell of masculinity. I am not prone to depression, and experiencing this was awful. The better at transforming into a woman I became, the worse this all got. As I've met more trans people, this cycle of happiness to depression is pretty common. And it's natural to assume that you are getting depressed because you are moving from your true, inner gender to your false, outer one.
Thanks to my friend Sandra, who has sadly become inactive, but whose website remains an excellent resource for all things transgender, I heard about fusion therapy. Fusion therapy asks you to consider that other things are going on besides a change of gender that could be causing these emotional swings. Consider your real life, which, as enjoyable as it might be, is still filled with stress and responsibilities. You have to pay bills, deal with your friends and family, and perform at a high level at your job. As much as you enjoy all of this, it comes at a cost. Then consider that, for a brief moment, you are someone completely different, with none of those responsibilities.
Moreover, in my case, someone I had yearned to be for most of my life: an attractive, sexy woman. You overflow with happiness, and everyone around you is encouraging and accepting. I had someone I loved and admired, Dom de Luxury, telling me how great I was doing and encouraging me. It was a dream come true. Then I woke up with a hangover and bills to pay. Fusion therapy aims to introduce some of these daily stresses into your female life and to help "fuse" the two identities.
I have found this to be a big help. In my case, I didn't find it necessary to "pay bills" and other vanilla chores while dressed as Pammy to "fuse". The fusion started to happen naturally as my standards for being Pammy got higher. It takes so much effort for me to transform that I stress about it. Don't misunderstand: It is incredible, and I love it. There's tremendous satisfaction and an indescribable feeling of self-expression as I decide on a look, put on the makeup, prosthetics, corsets, and everything that makes Pammy Pammy. However, with each successful look, the standard keeps going up, and the effort it takes is enormous. It's very much like being a real woman must be, and weirdly, that has helped me to fuse the two halves of my life. I no longer experience these black, post-Pammy depressions.
Give this a try if you have post-dressed mood swings. Fusion therapists tell you that you can't do fusion alone, but I don't believe them. Maybe what I did wasn't "fusion," but it worked great for me.
So Who Am I Today?
I have gone from considering myself a "transvestite" to "crossdressing sissy" to "genderfluid," and finally realize I am transgender. I feel like a woman, and I don't need to be dressed like one to feel that way. It would be more technically correct to say I am bi-gender because I sometimes act like a man. Possibly if I had been born a bit later, I would be 100% girl today, but after a lifetime of living as a man, I can be both for the moment. This mood s likely to change, so stay tuned.
Meanwhile, I'm happier for accepting this; it has changed my life, attitude, emotional experience of the world, and professional existence. I'm happier in my skin, and I could never have arrived at this point in my life without Dom de Luxury. I don't have the words to express my gratitude for all she has done for me.
Being transgender comes with its own set of unique issues. My general approach to life is to maximize how much fun I have at all times. I love everything I do, but nothing is without its unpleasant bits. That's the case with being transgender. It's not all peaches and cream. Most people will be (at minimum) uncomfortable with you, and many will outright not like you. Even among the LGBTQ community, it is not all peace and harmony.
The Backlash
I wrote this in 2019. Now it's August of 2022, and things have changed. There's a lot of awareness of trans people and a lot of trans activism. Governments have become involved. Children can now have life-altering drugs and surgeries, sometimes without parental consent, and trans-women can compete in woman's sports. In my view, neither of these are excellent ideas. Down the road, much further down the road, it might be possible to identify children who will lead successful lives after gender-altering surgeries. This would be a wonderful development, but it's not the reality today. But if it happens and trans-women can avoid years of testosterone-driven muscle development, it might be reasonable to allow them to compete with cis women. But it certainly doesn't seem fair now.
So now we have a backlash developing, and of course, the transphobes and bigots are very happy about this. I've heard many discussions on these topics, and I rarely hear anyone say that there are a lot of trans people who don't agree with these policies.
What is typical about this is that the government is adopting extreme positions (on both sides), neither of which are very helpful to trans people. Instead of advancing radical ideas about surgery for children, why not encourage education? And, at the same time, do something for adult trans. They could require insurance companies to pay for facial feminization surgeries and breast implants, or if they can't manage that, they could make these surgeries tax-deductible. With all the pro-trans preening and prancing some of our politicians do, they have done very little to help improve the lives of adult transgender people.
And there's also increased backlash from the trans community. Some feminists are upset because more women are becoming trans-men and not becoming lesbians. And they refuse to consider trans-women as women, so they regard all of us as "erasing women." Some of these women want to through us out of the LGBT club by removing the "T." It's all pretty stupid and not very much fun.
The Science of Transgender
I wrote this part in 2019, and now that it's August 2022, it requires an update. The question of "Why is a trans-person trans?" still doesn't have an answer, but there are some tantalizing clues.
It's possible to view being trans as a mental disorder, the only known cure being a transition to the opposite gender. I would be fine if this turned out to be the case. But a lot of people, maybe most people, on both sides of the issue don't feel that way. It seems easier for everyone to accept things, like homosexuality, for example, if it turns out you are born that way. If not, you must have been "deformed" by some childhood trauma, and you better get that treated so you can lead a "normal" life.
Two bits of research strongly suggest a hereditary component to being trans. There's a very unfortunate birth defect called cloacal exstrophy. It begins early in embryonic development. The abdomen doesn't close, and the gastrointestinal tract and bladder are exposed. The anus might also not be open. In males, the penis is short and flat, split in two, or it might be completely absent. Why am I sharing this awful bit of medicine with you? Surgery can correct this, and the usual way is by turning the male baby into a female. Pretty amazing. The usual way of correcting this defect in male babies is to change a he into a she. That is easier than reconstructing the penis. The baby grows up as a female, is given female hormones orally at puberty, and is told their complete medical history at 18. Sometimes the parents are given a choice in the gender decision, but not always.
In 2004, two doctors published an article in the NEJM that followed up on 16 subjects. Fourteen had been reassigned female at birth. Between the ages of 5-12, 8 started identifying as boys. All genetically female patients with cloacal exstrophy remain female, with no gender uncertainty. This suggests that the brain may contain hardwired gender identity and gender role, and the authors speculate on this effect.
The other interesting research comes from identical twin studies. These are always the gold standard. It turns out that 40% of the time if one of the twins is transgender, the other twin will also be transgender. This may not seem like strong evidence to you, but consider that the evidence for juvenile diabetes is quite similar: 50% of the time, if one twin has diabetes, the other twin will also have it.
This happens because our DNA doesn't lay down a hard-and-fast blueprint to follow. It's more like a guide. It specifies what to build and, in a general way, how to hook all this stuff together. The specifics depend on the circumstances; sometimes, the developing organism will end up with juvenile diabetes or become trans. Sometimes it won't.
Of course, the presence of XY or XX chromosomes is the final answer for many people with an axe to grind against trans people. The presence of an XX or XY chromosome pair is merely the start of a cascade of events that ends up forming a person with various sex characteristics. As this cascade unfolds, anything can and will happen. Some people are born with XY chromosomes but have both a vagina and testicles. There is no end to nature's variation or human stupidity. Here's a video with an Intersex person who talks about what her life is like and how she got there:
So that's where we are today. I'm leaning towards the hardwired gender identity being caused by a developmental cascade theory myself. Meanwhile, arguments that reduce the discussion to "men are XY," and women are " XX" sounds increasingly stupid to me. We've always included non-genetic elements in gender differentiation. People used to argue that "homosexual men" are not men because real men only have sex with women and vice-versa. There are probably still people who feel this way, but it's thankfully much less common. It does make me laugh to recall that conservatives also used to say that men who dressed as women weren't really men. Today they are insisting that a dress can hide a person's chromosomes. Pretty funny.
Words of Advice
So here's some advice for you. It's worth what you are paying, or perhaps a bit less.
Lists and Pictures
Two of the most useful exercises I got from Dom de Luxury were to make a daily list of things I was happy about because I was Pammy. The other was to put a picture of myself as Pammy in a place where I could always see it. Both of these helped me to form a more positive and clearer image of who I was.
Dom de Luxury was also keen on having me establish an online presence with my feminine persona. I was very reluctant and nervous about doing this, but she pushed me. As usual, her advice was worth following! Most social media sites allow you to have multiple accounts with different names, so it's no problem to set up a second account. Do be aware that you can encounter hostile, transphobic individuals who will complain about you. In today's environment, places like Facebook or Twitter will just shut down your account, and often no appeal is possible. I haven't had this experience, but I do know people who have.
Get an email account under your girl's name before establishing an online presence. I use GMAIL. I have never had a problem with Google, which is great about letting you have multiple accounts. You need an email address to sign up for most social media services and interact with the bigger world as a girl, so do this first!
I was incredibly nervous about starting an online presence on Facebook. It was a great day for me - Facebook only allows 5,000 friends, and I had that in about a week. My time on Facebook as Pammy has been invaluable. I've made many good friends as Pammy on Facebook, and these friends have helped me develop as a woman with a real personality.
While most people accept me as female, a few realize I'm trans, but they've been nice to me. A lot of them are interested in relationships with transgender people. I have mostly had excellent experiences with people on Facebook. There have been occasional ugly ones, but fortunately, Facebook makes it easy to block people. I've had to block very few.
I only have one account on Twitter. It was private for a while but now is public. It's been a useful source of trans-related news and a place to interact openly as trans with people.
Amazon
I recently started an Amazon account for Pammy. So far, Amazon has been great about it; they allow multiple buyer accounts with different names, and you do need a different email address for each one (see my first advice to you above!). You can even share your Amazon Prime benefits across the accounts.
Nice things about having a Pammy Amazon Account: I can have a wishlist and review purchases for other people. I buy a lot of stuff from Amazon, mostly clothes, and I always wanted to review them but was prevented from doing that by having to use my male name. Not anymore. Interacting like this with the bigger world is very helpful.
Makeup and Fashion Advice
A lot of you are impressed with how I have managed to improve. and enjoy my looks. I'm so grateful for your many positive comments, and thanks again for them. Many of you ask me for transformation advice, and I want to keep it real here: If you want to transform yourself completely, it takes a lot of time and effort. I spend the better part of a day doing makeup and putting on the various things that help me look like a woman. Doing hair often takes several days (but only an hour or so each day, of course). Learning to do all this takes a lot of time and work. You have to want it and love it because otherwise, it is too much trouble.
I love my owner so much and always want to make her happy but to be 100% honest, that would not have been enough. If I had not had this incredible internal desire to be a woman, I am sure I would not have pursued this with such passion and desire. Moreover, there were a lot of failures and disappointments along the way, be sure of that! If you mess up a look, it's depressing, and you need to be motivated to try again.
In addition to your desire to please and obey Dom de Luxury, to become a convincing female, I think you need something from inside yourself constantly pushing you to grow and improve. It could come from the same place as mine, a lifelong desire to be a woman. Alternatively, it could come from somewhere else. You could be a sissy with an overpowering desire to attract men or even a transvestite who wants an ever-increasing sexual high from how you look. These are all great motivators. But if you are someone who finds that your desire to transform disappears the second you orgasm, you probably aren't going to make it all the way, and you should content yourself with less.
Sex, Gender, and My Owner
One thing that's hard for many people to understand is the difference between sex and gender. They have little to do with each other. Just because I now tend to view myself as female doesn't mean my tastes have changed. Why should they? Changing your clothes doesn't change who you want to have sex with.
They have broadened a bit. I enjoy flirting with men on Facebook, and some are persistent. Even if I'm not interested in men, their desire is quite a turn-on. That's a surprise. Aside from that, I remain a devotee of female beauty and, in particular, the most beautiful woman I know, who is Dom de Luxury.
What role does Dom de Luxury play in all this? I've said that the raw passion, fuel, and drive to change and become a woman must come from inside you, and that's true. But Dom de Luxury is the artist who will shape the raw material into the form she envisions. It may be different for you, but for me, becoming Pammy has been an experience of rebirth. I've had to learn to dress, put on my makeup, behave, think, and act. Dom de Luxury has been the one who controlled the result of all of this effort from start to finish. Her passion for Bimbofication has forced my tastes in makeup in clothes in definite directions. I'm sure that, left to my own devices, I would not be the slutty Bimbo I am today. But I'm happy about it, and the Bimbofication experience has been a huge turn-on and source of sexual excitement and gratification.
Her latest interest is in the Dollification Fetish. If you had asked me a few years ago if I would be fantasizing about being stored in a box and taken out at someone else's whim to be used as a toy, I would have laughed in your face. But such is Dom de Luxury's skill at manipulation that I am now positively drooling at the thought of becoming her ultimate and (hopefully favorite) toy Doll. When we first started on the journey of Pammy and Bimbofication, she would tell me, "You will lose your free will, and you will be happy about it!" Truthfully, I have to admit I doubted her, but I am right where she said I would be today. That's her genius and her magic.
What does the future hold? Who knows? But meanwhile, thanks for reading this, and thanks for your continued interest. Please feel free to share your stories, questions, or comments with me.