Society's response

[ReluctantDebutant]

Hello I've noticed a common theme in the posts lately regarding society. It is giving me the idea to play devil's advocate and to try to take up the voice of society as I see it. I hope by revealing some insight into societal nature cross-dressers can begin to stop feeling victim to it.

We, society, have noticed a great interest from cross-dressers in our attitudes towards them and their behavior. We are here to tell you that we regard you with a vast great indifference. There seems to be some confusion in your group as to our role in the world. This can be best illustrated by looking at your own subgroup. You gathered here under one specific and single commonality that is cross-dressing. This small thread is enough to hold this small group together but we society have a much larger group so the bonds of that group must be larger and more common and universal. Cross-dressing is not held commonly amongst the vast majority of people.

We do not understand cross-dressing. You could place us in a classroom filled with experts on transgendered issues, you could talk all day about differences between the minds gender and the body sex and how they can be different, but because of vast majority of people are born with their mind's sex and their body's sex in alignment they would never truly understand what it's like at the core of their being to make it a value common in our society.

They're going to be parts of us that tolerate cross-dressing parts of us that hate it and a vast majority of us who will not care either way. For us that can't understand why folks would cross-dress the idea of one's sex is supposed be immutable and unchanging yet the existence of cross-dressers and transgendered can rock that foundation to the core. Whether it violates God's laws or Darwin it does not matter it is hard for the average person to wrap their head around.

Do not mistake our lack of understanding for hate. Do not take the actions of the subgroup known as haters and homophobes for the views of society as a whole. We in society have a variety of ways of dealing with things we do not understand. We sometimes laugh, we sometimes shrug our shoulders, and we can sometimes grow to fear and hate for that thing we do not understand. But these are just parts of societal response to odd things and once added up, it totals to a great indifference by a society. With varying degrees of positives and negatives being taken up by much smaller subgroups. But rest assured that our tolerance toward the actions of the negative group are not held with high regards by us. Violent action from one subgroup towards another is not a value held by society at large.

Cross-dressing is a group with oddities, but society is made up of many groups with oddities. It is not the various oddities that hold society together but the commonalities. It is only with those common bonds can various groups talk to one another. People's differences may work well for bonding within the group but in order to reach out to the larger world they must unwrap themselves from what makes them different and reach out using a common bond.

Remember don't hate us or our game. We are just the collective conscience and values of billions of people around the world. Nothing personal.


On further reflection so I'm not misunderstood about the clarify a few points.

What I'm referring to societal values I'm not discussing law rights or anything written down it is more that visceral gut reaction that a large group of people would have when confronted with a question. Is that instinctive response with little dissent that will make up the value.

Society needs these values to be as common and universal as possible in order to operate. Cross-dressing is not one of these values. This is not to say cross-dressing is evil or wrong it is just not valued by society because it does not provide society with anything good. Cross-dressing is considered a good essay good to the individual person.

We often like to blame society for evils but society is too large for that. Think of it this way, society produced a mass killer at a Colorado movie theater recently but that same society created the large population that showed an outpouring of grief and support for the victims of that tragedy. It is hard to blame all of society for the actions of a few individuals who commit anti-transgendered/cross-dresser violence even though they are the people that haunt our plans to go out in public.

Cross-dressing is a concept very difficult for a non-cross-dressing individual to try to relate to. It is possible for non-cross-dresser to tolerate or understand at a philosophical level especially if he or she values liberty and individuality. But this takes time to get to know the cross-dresser personally. Since it is highly unlikely for everyone to strike up a personal relationship with a cross-dresser, it is more likely that people will not understand and have an instinctual neutral response to a cross-dresser.

If one wants to make bridges with other societies with a greater society one needs to take the common path.

[Veronica27]

Well put. It is very ironic that within our supposed little community, (call it tg or whatever) we are urged to be united, to put aside our differences for the greater good, and accept that we fall under the TG umbrella, yet this same community emphasizes its differences from the the overall community which we refer to as society, and does battle with it to force it to change its ways.

To put it another way, I am a man, who sometimes enjoys crossdressing. I am very much a part of normal society, and interact with friends, relatives and neighbours as such. I have my own little idiosyncrasies, just like everyone else, and one of them happens to be my propensity to crossdress. If I were to make myself a transgender activist, pushing for society's acceptance of Tg rights, then there would be a conflict of interest with my responsibilities as a member of society as a whole, as well as a conflict with my own sensibilities, as I suffer no gender confusion. To illustrate, I cannot support the Tg position on the right to use the women's washroom, because I can see it from the viewpoint of the sensitivities of the genetic females who are not expecting to encounter a man in what is traditionally a woman's space. Fight for co-ed washrooms, single seater washrooms, or any other acceptable solution, but I cannot support the right to barge into a female facility by any non TS male.

Veronica

[Kate Simmons]

You win some, you lose some, that's just life. That is the way I look at it, society notwithstanding. If you know yourself and your feelings well enough, you can navigate through it. No one is going to "kiss it and make it better" for the lot of us. By it's very nature, it has to be an individual journey, winning over one heart at a time. We basically stand or fall by our own merit or lack of it.:)

[Sarah Doepner]

Thank you, this is a nice piece putting our corner of the world in perspective. Society is a very large construct and although from a distance seems 'vanilla', it has all sorts of spots with very interesting flavors, colors and textures. Society doesn't homogonize everything it abosorbes, making it all the same, but expands and engulfs them. There are segments in society who either don't care that crossdressers exist or are gently amused by us. There are others who support and love us and some who fear and/or hate our very existence. The same could be said for just about any outlier group. Some have been integrated into society, partially or totally and some strive to remain on the outside. Based on what we read here, crossdressers would love to be integrated into society in a way that would make it "safe" and "normal" to crossdress in the mainstream. The history of groups who have been integrated into the mainstream seem to show that you have to work at it, you have to be visible, you can't hide on the fringes if you want a place in the middle.

[Tina B.]

well said Sarah!
Tina B.

[Laura912]

RD, this is one of the better long OP's. Sarah's addition is well said also.

[Frédérique]

How lovely! I get to "speak" to society...:heehee:


We do not understand cross-dressing.

That makes me laugh… :waiting:

You DON'T CARE, society, and you don’t care to understand, either. Even though crossdressing has been around since the dawn of time, or perhaps since someone thought up the idea of pant legs (a man, I assume), you act like CD’ing is some kind of threatening disease. Thanks for the discomfiture, society – your insistence on gender-specificity creates people like me…

If a man dresses like a woman and expresses his…ahem…individuality, the whole fabric of society could conceivably unravel. A man, a boy, or a male has responsibilities, namely thinking, acting, and dressing like everyone else, if only to keep spurious “values” intact for YOUR benefit. He has to fight for you, so any “playing” he wishes to engage in must reflect that – doing something so hedonistic as crossdressing is beyond comprehension in societal terms, if the male is supposed to live up to (and die for) the standards you have set forth…

I don’t know how you did it, society, but everyone has bought into this grand scheme of yours, actually convincing billions of people that we’re GOING somewhere, as long as we keep the genders apart, keep procreating at a break-neck pace, and keep imagination in check, if not eliminated altogether. You’ve made life on Earth a living hell, society, but you can’t stop ME…


If one wants to make bridges with other societies with a greater society one needs to take the common path.

I neither like nor respect this so-called “common path.” In my view, society is leading us over yonder cliff to our doom, and any intelligent individual won’t join in. It’s against our NATURE…
:straightface:

[ReluctantDebutant]

all quotes from Frédérique.

"You DON'T CARE, society, and you don’t care to understand, either. Even though crossdressing has been around since the dawn of time, or perhaps since someone thought up the idea of pant legs (a man, I assume), you act like CD’ing is some kind of threatening disease. Thanks for the discomfiture, society – your insistence on gender-specificity creates people like me…"

No we do not care. And it is you who do not understand we are incapable of caring. We as society have to deal with many many groups and a vast number of individuals. The only way we can unite them all is through values they can all have in common. It is simply impossible to unite anything or anyone appealing to their differences. You also misunderstand that we do not consider cross-dressing a disease or a threat it is simply a nonfactor to us.

"If a man dresses like a woman and expresses his…ahem…individuality, the whole fabric of society could conceivably unravel. A man, a boy, or a male has responsibilities, namely thinking, acting, and dressing like everyone else, if only to keep spurious “values” intact for YOUR benefit. He has to fight for you, so any “playing” he wishes to engage in must reflect that – doing something so hedonistic as crossdressing is beyond comprehension in societal terms, if the male is supposed to live up to (and die for) the standards you have set forth…"

Again individuality is not a threat to us. We are made up of individuals in the millions or in the billions depending on how great of a size you want us to be but remember the larger our size the more basic and narrow the values we have to unite society. We, society, do not generate values and standards from the top-down but they are generated from the bottom up and only the most common values reached the top. Without going into greater detail the most basic value that unites us all is the values of the protection of life and property.



"I don’t know how you did it, society, but everyone has bought into this grand scheme of yours, actually convincing billions of people that we’re GOING somewhere, as long as we keep the genders apart, keep procreating at a break-neck pace, and keep imagination in check, if not eliminated altogether. You’ve made life on Earth a living hell, society, but you can’t stop ME…"


We did it do anything, all of these people "going somewhere" has simply been men and women following their own natures. Men and women getting together having children and working for a better future is just simply human nature. We do not understand the idea that imagination is kept in check, it is also human nature to be quite imaginative. We note that the opinion on whether or not Earth is heaven or hell is usually an individual's point of view.



"I neither like nor respect this so-called “common path.” In my view, society is leading us over yonder cliff to our doom, and any intelligent individual won’t join in. It’s against our NATURE…"
:straightface:


Here again think you misunderstand it is common paths of communication. Consider it a variation on the old saying you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. If you can get to opposing groups to talk about things that they have in common you are more likely to get a meaningful dialogue going rather than if you continue to let them shout their differences at each other. The question is does a cross-dresser always have to talk about cross-dressing things or always have to be a cross-dresser or can the cross-dresser drop the cross dresser pose for a time to talk about basic things with the larger community thus allowing the greater community to make common bonds with the cross-dresser to allow them to better accept the cross-dresser in their community and either change their views on cross-dressing or at least to moderate their views.

[Marleena]

Boy society you are a tough cookie! I think I'll sit this one out *gets popcorn out*.