Is this a reasonable question?

[sometimes_miss]

I have this question and I haven''t found a reasonable answer. Why is it thought that we might be considered "Gay" if we dress in women's styles?

Because despite all the talk that women really dress for other women, the vast majority of female clothing is made to accentuate the feminine female body in order to be sexually attractive to men. So it begs the question, who are you dressing sexy for? I will always stand by my belief that even when women dress to impress other women, the basic design of the clothes really means that they are comparing her attractiveness as far as how would males respond to her.

In my understanding of homosexuality, it is the desire to have a sexual relationship with a person of the same sex. If this is so, Why would a homosexual man want to present as a woman and why would a lesbian want to present as a man?

Because there are underlying feelings of being a 'bottom' or a 'top'; dominants are tops, submissives are bottoms, and in each relationship one or the other is just a bit more on one side of the roles than the other.
We are on a dual bell curve, really; there are some of us all along the line of sexuality, from pure straight, completely bisexual, to pure gay. Few are at the very ends, but the majority are very close to it. The rest of us stragglers have all kinds of mixed feelings going on, some, who's feelings change from day to day or even minute to minute.

[ophelia]

It helps me understand the women I love and have loved even better. Society is not all that smart so women like men, therefore someone appearing more womanly must like men as well. Schmart? Yah?

[silkycdresser]

Your question is totally reasonable. My wife knows I dress as a woman but doesn't know to what extent, that I've walked around cities en femme. She says she is open-minded and she has many gay friends, but still sometimes teases me that I must be gay if I like dressing in women's clothes.

[leannejacobs]

I have been on a swingers site, purely looking for CDing friendship (im straight) and I have to say I'm amazed that there are so many gay or bi CDers out there, it made me wonder about the percentages of gay and straight CDers which has always lead us to believe that most are heterosexual, I have arranged a meeting with one who is transitioning, she is bi but happy for friendship meets, can't wait

[Missy_am_I]

Asking if I was gay were that first words out of my wifes lips when I told her. I told her maybe I could be a little bi but I could never imagine spending my life with someone other than her. I feel that my dressing has very little to do with what my sexual preferences are.

[Marcie]

I have cross dressed for many years finding out the only people that understand why I cross dress, are others with the same desire. The only people I correspond with about this subject are other CD,ers. They are the most understanding.

[AnotherCuteTGirl]

So being attracted to females as a male and open to all as a girl would make me a straight male, bi girl? Does it work like that or is it just one whole thing overall? I can't picture myself with a man it's gross but can picture Genesis with a man since she is of course a girl but not even as Genesis am I attracted to them just feels right being with them but lately been thinking how much fun I would have with woman and being a lesbian has took over a lot more than being a "normal" girl

[Danitgirl1]

Labels are really very unhelpful. More so when applied to trans* people.

For me, I am a sexual being.
I can find all sorts of people sexually attractive for different reasons.

I am married, we are monogamous so I only have sex with my wife.
Does this make me straight? Hardly, I wear dresses, make up and high heels. Not sure you can say that this 'straight' behaviour.
Does this make me gay? I wouldn't say so.
Does it make my wife a lesbian? No.
Does it make her bisexual? No
Is she straight? Well, no, not exactly.

Is any of this helpful? Probably not.

Which brings me back to my original point.
We are ALL sexual beings. We can all find all sorts of people sexually attractive, some are on different points on a continuum, but none of us are exclusively 'this' or 'that'.
We are however not slaves to our sexuality. Some are monogamous, some are polygamous, some are celibate (and not only for religious reasons).
At the end we are all people. We all love and want to be loved. We all deserve love, some of us attract love and some of us repel love.

Some like doing certain things with certain people, others prefer doing other things with other people.
Who does what with whom is less relevant than that we love and accept each other for who we are and who they are.

Labels simply serve to divide us from each other.

[Marcelle]

Hi Rhanda,

Yes, it is a reasonable question. I get asked this question all the time when someone I know meets me "en femme" for the first time . . . "Um, so are you gay?" In 99 percent of the time it is not asked out of rudeness but a lack of understanding about what it means to be TG. People who are not educated in the community or part of the tribe, do not quite know how to differentiate "sexual orientation", "sex" and "gender". So when presented with say a man who dresses with as a woman, they lump it all together . . . You are a genetic male (sex) who likes to dress and act (gender) like a woman (sex) ergo you must also be attracted to men (sexual orientation). It might not be that simple in their understanding but the logic chain tends to go in that direction. I find if I take time to explain the difference . . . they walk away with a somewhat different understanding.

Hugs

Isha

[Suzann3]

Why should we have to explain why we dress like women? Why does society have to label everything? Why do people get labelled because individuals have no understanding or are afraid of the way a person is? Everyone has their own reasons for doing what they do, being what they are. We should all accept each other as individuals and stop labeling people; be confident in ourselves and not in fear of the way others lead their lives. I have been enjoying dressing up in female clothes for several decades now and have always enjoyed sex with women. My ex-wife used to wear male clothing, even some of mine. But when I told her I like wearing female clothes she labeled me as 'Gay', yet prior to that point we had a very active sex life. She wore my dressing gown all the time, so one day I wore hers, she flipped!

We all develop our own view point on life as we get older, however a lot of it is misguided by our parents attitude, or societies banishment of certain individuals. There is a reluctance of individuals to be individual. Instead they have to be part of a group, become a 'label', follow a political persuasion or religion; political and religious views that say they have everyone at heart, who then tell us that certain 'types' of people are wrong and bad.

We are all individuals and we should accept each other for what we are.

CD is a label, but it covers such a diverse subject. Every individual wears what they want for their own reasons. Just because I am sitting here in my little black dress, wearing super soft black hold up stockings doesn't mean I am attracted to men. I am also watching Fraiser and having some lovely thoughts about Jane Leeves.

Suzanne x

[Teresa]

Rhanda,
I have just come out to my son and the first thing I feel I need to say is I'm not gay or want a sex change !
Sometimes I feel it's unfair to the gay community that we have to explain it like that as if being gay was something dreadful , we are all as we are !!
My wife said recently that she couldn't accept me dressed, one reason being that she wasn't a lesbian ! I realise now that my answer should have been neither am I, despite wanting to share my dressing with her underneath I'm still a fully functioning male !
I do feel as others have said that the media is very bad at portraying the majority of CDers ! I will accept to most of society it does pose the obvious questions founded on a lack of knowledge or understanding and we tend to be tarred with the same brush as none conforming weirdos !
There have been many threads airing the subject of educating society !

[Lily Catherine]

Labels, labels everywhere. But I agree that the question's reasonable. I blame heteronormativity and the enforcement of gender dynamics (weaker sex and all that nonsense) for the notion that a man who presents as female wants to attract men. I'm also noting the commonness of guy-and-CD relationships in cross-dressing fiction (overlapping very frequently with the Japanese Boys' Love genre) which arguably reinforce the notion.

My parents had this conversation after I admitted my CDing couple years ago. Translated and obviously paraphrased:
Mum: (name), why did you try on my clothes? Are you gay?
Dad: If my boy were gay, I think he'd be much more macho than he is. So effeminate. I think he'd have a 6-pack, even.

[meganmartin]

This maybe a little off topic or not really answering your question.
But my wife asked me the same question at some point and asked me are all your cross-dressing and trans-gender friends straight. I told her I assume however just like with other friends I have or other people whom I known over my life, never asked them that question because to me it was not my business and it was not relevant for me to be friends with them.

[Katey888]

It's only reasonable because most people are stoopid...

Actually that's probably not fair and I take it back before it gets edited out...

What I really mean is: most people don't think about these things to the level of complexity that many of us do... We do because we try to make sense of what this thing is and helping understand it may help us either control it or at least get to some level of self-acceptance. 95% of muggles don't care about gender or sexuality because they're gender normative and straight as an arrow... 95% of that 95% then don't have the capacity to think outside of any sort of box anyway, so the vast majority of folk will think we're just gender and sexually weird and therefore probably gay too...

Personally I blame Lily Savage...

Katey x

[laurenp245]

Because people use simple-minded classifications to identify other people. For example:

"Person wearing a dress" ==> must be a woman.

"Person is a woman" ==> likes men as sexual partners.

NOTE that neither implication is always true! However, both implications are a safe bet in most cases. Then people falsely assume transitivity and come up with:

"Person wearing a dress" ==> likes men as sexual partners.

Dianne is spot on. Society needs to put things in the simplest possible terms so they can understand them. It has only been recently that there has been a small shift in society to understand that there are an endless combination of colors between the antiquated understanding of everything being either white or black. I think the awareness, understanding, and tolerance of peoples differences is growing in our society, and it's about time!

<3 Lauren

[Krisi]

"Why is it thought that we might be considered "Gay" if we dress in women's styles?"

You're not going to find your answer on a crossdressing forum. Lots of opinions but not your answer.

You will have to go out and ask the general public. People who are not involved in crossdressing and people who are not themselves "gay".

[Judith96a]

Randa,
Diane and others have hit the nail on the head. It's another example of the old "never let the truth get in the way of a good story".
The vast majority of folks out there are totally ignorant as regards crossdressing (which makes them easy prey for those who seek to stir up fear and dis-information). Not only are they uninformed, they don't really want yo be informed - that's too much like hard work (and let's face it even we can't agree exactly why we cross dress). So they fall back on stereotypes. Also, we live in a society that is obsessed by sex. Put these two together and it's not difficult to see how any man who wears anything that is remotely "feminine" is immediately labelled as 'gay'. After all, why else WOULD a man wear a dress (and get made up to look as passably female as possible). It's obvious, isn't it? Or at least that's what those who can't be bothered to think for themselves automatically assume.
They're wrong of course, but hey, never let the truth get in the way of a convenient stereotype!

[Alice Torn]

Being one of the very rare old singles on here, my next door neighbor has seen me dressed, and thinks i am gay. Maybe the other neighbor saw me years ago, and her sons, and they won't say hi, maybe think i am gay too. Small town, too. I think that the vast majority, do not think deep, and give pat answers, and pat opinions, like, "he must be gay, dressing like that." We all tend to label people , too much, sometimes right, but sometimes wrong.

[Rhanda]

It seems that those who are gay on this forum have not read this question or are just like the rest of us. When asked why we dress, just really don' know the answer completely. They may not know who they are trying to impress, just like most.

I maintain that I just want to be my most attractive and that well dressed women have always been the most attractive for me.
I have always been attracted to women who wear makeup that really enhance their appearance. It seems that I am a normal man until I decide that I want to be that attractive. Then I am told by an elder of my church that I can't do this because it sends the wrong message. Just what is the message?

Rhanda

[NicoleScott]

Yes, it's reasonable. A reasonable question is one asked because someone sincerely wants to know something. We want to think everybody knows the differences between sexual identity, sexual preference, gender identity, gender presentation, etc. but it just ain't so. Many people have one catch-all word for all kinds of behaviors that fall outside of or between the either/or man/woman, male/female, masculine/feminine binary.
If the question isn't reasonable, then most all of our wives/SO's ask unreasonable questions. That seems to be the first one asked.

[ReineD]

Why is it thought that we might be considered "Gay" if we dress in women's styles?

It's because of branding.

Crossdressers and certainly transsexuals are becoming a bit more visible now, but up until recently the general public saw men dressed as women mostly in Gay Pride parades and in drag shows performed at gay bars or bars that attract a large gay clientele.

If the general public saw mostly crossdressers and/or transsexuals as their neighbors and in relationships with women, if this was the main context rather than gay clubs or gay pride parades, then I think the assumption they must be gay would diminish.

Transitioning or transitioned TSs are more public than CDers, but I don't know what percentage are single, in relationships with men, or with women. If not many are in relationships with women, this might perpetuate the idea that M2Fs are mostly male-attracted. I can't think of many high-profile transitioned TSs right now but if they are single or keep their relationships private, then in the absence of knowing, the public might default to believing they are attracted to men. There's Bruce Jenner of course, but she is now divorced and so the public perception might be that they divorced because Bruce is attracted to men ... I don't know.

Why would a homosexual man want to present as a woman

They're being campy. This refers to intentionally exaggerating women (big hair, overdone makeup, stereotypical costumes). You'll notice that gay men who dress as women take on more of the Drag Queen flair. They don't look like a CDer who goes out to blend in among GGs. A friend who is gay and not a CDer explained it is a way to emphasize the differences between themselves and straight men. It is taken for granted by the other members of the gay community that the person underneath the costume is a man who identifies as a man, albeit definitely not a straight man.

why would a lesbian want to present as a man?

Not all lesbians do, although some definitely downplay their feminine attributes. My SO and I used to go to an alternative club in town (gay, lesbian, drag, and some open-minded straight crowd). There were definitely two camps of lesbians, those who looked straight and those who looked butch. Maybe this is only true in my neck of the world, but I noticed among the butch-looking lesbians that they had stockier bodies, they kept their hair short in masculine styles, they wore shirts and shoes that a guy would wear. They rejected the trappings of femininity. Maybe some of them are FtM. I did become friends with one such lesbian who had adopted a male name but who retained the pronoun "she". She told me that when younger she thought that she wanted to transition, but then she felt that if she did, she would have had to give up many of her connections to the lesbian community, which she considered was her family. So she decided instead to keep her male name, male haircut, wear clothes purchased strictly in men's stores, but not do anything to her body and identify as a lesbian instead. She was not crossdressing because she presented like this all the time: socially, at work, at school. This is who she was, there was no switching back and forth. I asked her if she was genderqueer and she said she didn't know because she didn't think about labels.

[Beverley Sims]

More than likely as it seems an effeminate trait associated with homosexuality.

The appreciation of soft fabrics, pastel colours, neatness.....

So it goes on.... Most real "Guys" don't go for this sorta sh*t....