First it is important to recognize my own issues. I’m not terribly comfortable with crossdressers. I don’t discriminate against them. I’m polite, even cordial. But it’s important t6 recognize my inherent prejudice. I’ll also say that I’m very much not alone in this for transwomen. However, I do try to be fair and accurate in what I wrote here.
I sit here wearing my beautiful skirt. It has flowers of reddish and blue. It sits well on my hips and goes down to midcalf length. I’m wearing that with a plain white knit shirt. It has some fancy lace like fabric about the collar. I picked out the outfit as something cool to wear on a beastly day, and I think it’s appropriate for a woman to wear on a day without some reason for more formality.
Women wear a variety of basic clothing. For example, pant like clothing which includes slacks, pantaloons, shorty shorts, Bermuda shorts, cut off shorts, and jumpsuits.. These are just the ones I could remember after four or five minutes, the same exercise can be repeated for skirts and dresses, and for women we usually distinguish between airy blouses that can come in a variety of sizes and shirts.
The title of this entry is cross-dressing and talks about men who wear women’s closing. Understand first that cross dressing men are not transwomen. They identify as men, and, in my experience, heterosexual. It would be interesting to hear what I’m saying about straight cross dressers applied to gay cross dressers.
Cross dressing is usually categorized as a fetish. A sexually inspired activity that sexually arouses the man. Drag queens, who are usually gay men, are dressing in an extreme form of female fashion for theater or other performance art, such as stories told by drag queens, which has stirred up the pot quite a lot over the past couple of years.
It’s interesting to see that a nearly singular form of a man dressing in women’s clothing can have such different sources.
This is not to say that the difference is always totally clear, but this division of identifying as male (cross dresser), female (transwoman) and gay male have stayed pretty distinct. But there’s a saying in the trans community that the difference between a cross dresser and a transwoman is two years. a joke with a large element of reality to it. strictly true in that not all cross dressers “progress” to be transwomen, some do. I’d love to see a study that compares the two and seeks to determine why this is true.
I would also venture a guess that quite a few cross dressers are essentially gay men. How many? Enough that there are devices worn by cross dressers to let then feel like they’re engaging in sexual intercourse with other men. One could definitely argue that they are really gay. Perhaps this makes them feel more “normal” from some mental viewpoint or allows them to feel like they are really straight despite engaging in unarguable gay male sexual acts. But it is not my desire to judge, just to describe. After all there are plenty more paraphilias (look it up 🙂 which are a whole lot more disturbing c.f. pedophilia and necrophilia, just to name two. My intro to psych class covered about ten of them.
I think one of the biggest distinctions between cross dressers and trans women is the sort of like we lead. Transwoman live a life which approximates having been born female. There are lots of people who debate what the extent of this is, but as a transwomen I’d say my life is female oriented. Some accept us as women, and some don’t, but while there are arguments about it, but I think most people have a basic understanding that trans people mostly aim to live as the sex that their brains dictate.
I think it fair to say that few non-trans people
Cross dressers, at least the majority who I’ve seen at the various events I’ve attended, come across as a caractature of women. Let me please explain what I mean by this.
You do need to understand that most cross dressers do their dressing either in private or at an event. Events like “First event: in Boston or “Keystone” have traditionally been historically more oriented toward cross dressers. This has, I must say, changed a lot since I transitioned. Where typical talks and workshops used to be focused on things like walking like a woman, Understanding the need to use female typical expressions , dining decorum or how to walk in a feminine gait, now they are much more trans targeted with talks given by surgeons about their practice for reassignment surgery, plastic surgery, makeup and other topics that will also interest the cross dressers.
This is not to say that the typical male to female trans person doesn’t need to relearn using male phrases and gestures, the truth is that you learn an awful lot of this just by living as a female. Since you generally are now living as a woman (for M->F trans people), you are never living as a man one you’ve transitioned you are entirely centered in being female. You get out of bed in the morning, put on your outfit for the day, and change out of it to go to bed. I think I’m like most transwomen in that if I change clothing at all in the evening it is j just to put on something cozier. Like virtually every female I take off my bra and if I’m in for the evening I’d sometimes change to my night clothes. There’s never an instant during the day where my next action is to put on some male piece of clothing. It should be understood that aside from tailoring and adornment that there is often not any significant difference between make and female clothing. But I don’t think my hips would fit my old clothing very well.
The typical clothing for a cross dresser has a very different purpose. Every bit of it is chosen to be as feminine as possible. Also, much of the time they are wearing rather old-fashioned clothing. The person is playing make believe rather than living a female life. The result of this is that they wear, for the most part, fairly anachronistic clothing.
Outside of a formal ball, wedding ceremony most women do not go around with ornate clothing. A cross dresser can be reasonably thought of as wearing a costume. For clothing it is almost always some sort of dress. But a dress you would wear for your daughter’s wedding or one you’d wear to an award event at the capitol. Instead of wearing pantyhose or tights with the dress they’ll wear a garter belt and individual stockings. For underwear they’ll usually just wear fairly normal things as far as I’m aware, but you”ll often see things like corsets being worn, which are not terribly appropriate outside of theater pieces.
Perhaps the most glaring issue is the degree to where far too much skin is displayed, ironic given the tendency to wear those formal gowns.
To me what is the saddest element of dressing as a cross dresser is that without the hormones that go along with a medical transition, they are unlikely to be able to pass. facial feminization surgery can go a long way to make up for the lack of reshaping under the influence of estrogen. It’s very useful for transwomen as well. But no amount of surgery will make you skin look feminine.
But be kind to them. They too carry a burden.
My Gifted Life 