-—my _favorite_—and basically only—masturbation fantasy has always been some variation on me getting magically transformed into a woman. I ... need to write more about the phenomenology of this. In the meantime, just so you know what I'm talking about, the relevant TVTrope is ["Man, I Feel Like a Woman."](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ManIFeelLikeAWoman) (Or search "body swap" on PornHub. Or check out my few, circumspect contributions to [the popular genre of](/2016/Oct/exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin/) captioned-photo female transformation erotica: [1](/ancillary/captions/dr-equality-and-the-great-shift/) [2](/ancillary/captions/the-other-side-of-me/) [3](/ancillary/captions/the-impossible-box/) [4](/ancillary/captions/de-gustibus-non-est/).)
+—my _favorite_—and basically only—masturbation fantasy has always been some variation on me getting magically transformed into a woman. I ... need to write more about the phenomenology of this. In the meantime, just so you know what I'm talking about, the relevant TVTrope is ["Man, I Feel Like a Woman."](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ManIFeelLikeAWoman) Or search "body swap" on PornHub. Or check out my few, circumspect contributions to [the popular genre of](/2016/Oct/exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin/) captioned-photo female transformation erotica (everyone is wearing clothes, so these might be "safe for work" in a narrow technical sense, if not a moral one): [1](/ancillary/captions/dr-equality-and-the-great-shift/) [2](/ancillary/captions/the-other-side-of-me/) [3](/ancillary/captions/the-impossible-box/) [4](/ancillary/captions/de-gustibus-non-est/).
+
+(The first segment of my pen surname is a legacy of middle-school friends letting me borrow some of the [Ranma ½](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranma_%C2%BD) graphic novels, about a young man named Ranma Saotome cursed ("cursed"??) to transform into a woman on exposure to cold water. This was just _before_ puberty kicked in for me, but I have no way of computing the counterfactual to know whether that had a causal influence.)
+
+So, there was that erotic thing, which I was pretty ashamed of at the time, and _of course_ knew that I must never, ever tell a single soul about. (It would have been about three years since the fantasy started that I even worked up the bravery to [tell my Diary about it](/ancillary/diary/53/#first-agp-confession).)
+
+But within a couple years, I also developed this beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing that would persist indefinitely, where I started having a lot of _non_-sexual thoughts about being female. Just—little day-to-day thoughts, little symbolic gestures.
+
+Like when I would [write in my pocket notebook in the persona of my female analogue](/images/crossdreaming_notebook_samples.png).
+
+Or when I would practice swirling the descenders on all the lowercase letters that had descenders [(_g_, _j_, _p_, _y_, _z_)](/images/handwritten_phrase_jazzy_puppy.jpg) because I thought it made my handwriting look more feminine.
+
+Or the time when track and field practice split up into boys and girls, and I ironically muttered under my breath, "Why did I even join this team?—boys, I mean."
+
+Or when it was time to order sheets to fit on the dorm beds at the University in Santa Cruz, and I deliberately picked out the pink-with-flowers design on principle.