So, you want to Pass as a Woman!

[busker]

First of all let’s change “Pass” to “Accepted as a Woman”
“Why do we want to be accepted as a woman?”

Barbara-Jean, I would only quibble with the use of the word WOMAN. Any person here is not going to be accepted as a woman, pure and simple. Because they are not and any woman that would be fooled would likely need very thick glasses (maybe with one or two exceptions).

I think it would be better (IMHO) to say that a person was accepted if they were dressed in the manner of a woman who was dressed as you are at that time.
It is a bit of theater and if the illusion is good enough even in bright light that a passer by would not hesitate to "see" you as a female, then you have pulled it off.
Whatever feminine sensibilities that CDs have are there whether they pass or not, dress or not. Frankly, I think that the CD cause is likely to go nowhere due to the difference in simply crossdressing and trying to emulate a woman with all the attendant gear. Societal wise, I think just blending some women's clothing as a male is going to go father that any theatrical notions.

This is a little snippet from a conversation between David Brooks and Gail from the NYT which I think could easily have meaning for crossdressers.

David: This leads to a general rule. If you want to win respect for your formerly excluded group, try to be more culturally conservative than anybody else. This is something the great and underappreciated A. Philip Randolph understood. You can be politically radical if you are culturally conservative and still get a hearing. The radicals of the 1960s got this one wrong.
Gail: That may be part of a larger rule, which is that people have to be able to identify with the excluded folks. The greatest warriors for gay marriage have been the average gay people who came out to their families and friends and communities. I grew up in one of the most socially conservative neighborhoods in Ohio, and my parents were traditional Catholics. But in her old age, my mother got her home health care from a guy who was gay, who was wonderful to her. Before she died, she rode a float in the Cincinnati Gay Pride Parade.