About me

This above all: to thine own self be true. - Shakespeare

Call me Vivienne.

I'm getting on for fifty (how did that even happen?!). I'm a heterosexual male crossdresser, partly out of the closet. I'm also a practising doctor (but I read widely in all sorts of things), and I work in a large hospital. I live with my female partner and our kids in the suburbs, where our lives are pretty ordinary.


Anima: Vivienne

The urge to crossdress has been with me my whole life, and it's been very difficult for me to come to terms with it. But it's also been difficult to find people who are willing to have a sensible conversation about it.

So foremost, this blog is about me making some sense of crossdressing. It's about resolving the dichotomy between the intellectual part of me, which still thinks that crossdressing is a bit weird, and the emotional part of me, which loves the sensual pleasures of soft fabrics, perfumes and cosmetics.

Secondly, it's a way for me to explore the issues around crossdressing in a scholarly way. I've read a lot about crossdressing as a form of expression, and I am not sure I wholly agree with all of it. I include some points for discussion in this blog. The third purpose of this blog is to enable a conversation: for me the most painful thing about being a closeted crossdresser is not being unable to do it, it's being unable to talk about it.

The third reason for the blog is to put out there an image of crossdressing which is somewhat at odds with the traditional view (which is that it's farcical, grotesque, or perverse). It is possible to be a crossdresser and be educated, compassionate, moral and contribute to society in a positive way.

You won't find fantasy or erotica on this blog. Equally, you won't find criticism or opprobrium, whatever your perspective. Each of us is doing what we need to get by. What you will find is my own opinions and insights, and I hope these will be delivered with honesty and openness. I hope you will feel welcome to add your own! This blog is a work in progress; Vivienne's journey continues, which means that some of the things I have previously written about are no longer quite applicable. Rather than edit the past, I think it's reasonable to leave those articles untouched, as a record of where I have come from.

I chose the word "Bluestocking" to refer to an intellectual or academic woman. See this post for more about Bluestockings in general and this title in particular.

2012 was a watershed year of discovery for me. I put down all of my findings and discoveries about crossdressing in a single blog post. I suppose it's my personal FAQs. If you want to know where I am with respect to crossdressing, and its place in my life, start here, (though it's already somewhat out of date) and for my top 10 posts by their hit count, go here.

2015 was the year I started to tell my close friends and family about Vivienne, and so far their reaction has been amazingly positive and supportive. To everyone: I cannot express how much your acceptance means to me, and I love you all.

2016 was the year I made it out, in public, in daylight, for the first time as Vivienne, and there have been plenty of times since. I don't know exactly what the future will hold, but I am reasonably certain that when I am an old woman, I shall wear purple. I might even end up looking like one of my heroines, the incomparable Dr. Evadne Hinge. But 2016 was also the year my marriage finally ended, after years of agony, and you can find my discussion of that here. Then there was a bit of a lull, before a bit of a renaissance. I have a partner who is very supportive, which is wonderful. And I've been spending a lot more time out in public lately, and I will be publishing that in due course.

If you want to send me email, you can do so at vivienne_marcus@yahoo.co.uk , or you can find me on Facebook. There is also an awful lot of my material on Quora, including over 4700 answers which have been viewed over 21 million times.

The material in this blog is my own work (except where attributed). You are not free to copy or circulate my work, unless you explicitly attribute the work to me and include a link to this website.