Crossdressing,LGBT, Demographics, and Agriculture. ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[ReluctantDebutant]

So I was reading my favorite book on demographics today. It discusses the possible ramifactions of the upcoming population decline coming mid century. For some odd reason the recent thread on Amish crossdressers came to mind and I started to think on farming communities and history.

Put in to a blender with ice, blend for 15 mins, and pour.

There is a dirth of LGBT and crossdressing history. You get spotty parts here and there, usually Greece and Rome , but alway in the small percent of wealthy classes back then. Many may blame this dirth of history on church repression. Maybe so but I have read much of church writting form the middle ages on and they didn't seem overly concern with alternative lifestyles. I began to think of a more basic reason to explain the lack of history. One that was literally down to earth :D

Farming.

Up until about a century and half ago roughly 90% of the world's population was engaged in farming particularly family farms. Family farms reqire families, big ones, not only just for labor but to take care of elders in the twilight years. To have an alternative lifestyle for much of human history would have been a luxury very few could afford. This is why any history regarding alternative lifestyles involve the wealthy and powerful, or even the few laborers that didn't need to farm.

In the small rural farm communities to not marry the other sex or do something to jepordize attracting the opposite sex, such as a male acting feminine or a female acting masculine, would have been a deadly taboo. And not from some inquisator but it would have meant famine at least for part or all of the family.

Jump to the late 19th and into the 20th century farm production rise dramatically in modern western countries. Farm labor is released to work other jobs, industrial jobs. Fewer childeren are needed in fact they now need education to keep up with the changing world. This education becomes more and more expensive. Childeren who where once an economic asset become an economic burden to many families. Couple that with new ideas like saving for retirement and social security. Birth rates fall.

The idea of having an alternative life style begins to flurish. old Taboos start to die quickly (Quickly in a historic sense) because its chief enforcer, survival, isn't so omnipresent anymore. A generation or two away from the family farm would put history around the 1940's pin ups come out of the closet during ww2 and become more mainstream.1950's Playboy starts various types of porn appear including stag films and fetish stuff. 1st American Christine Jorgensen get a SRS. 1960s sexual revolution 1970's...... Need I say more?

Without the need of Childeren as laborers and as a living human old age pension, more people had the freedom to explore new ways to express themselves sexually. The old taboos are dying and the folks that still hold on to them are ignorent. Not so fast.

A population fall is coming low birth rates are already hitting Europe's economy not enough young workers to pay for their aging population's pensions and entitlements. ther is going to be 100mil less europeans by mid century. The US will have 100mil more, thanks to redstaters, but then will start decline along with worldwide poulation. I am not going to prolong this post anyfurther with laborforce projections and future tax rates to maintain future entitlement spending. But to sum up we need to figure out a way to have childeren again and keep the freedom we have otherwise the taboos might return.

[Persephone]

Wow! That is a very interesting analysis! And a most interesting conclusion!

I certainly can't take you on regarding your population analyses. But I do have a few thoughts regarding your considerations of historical crossdressing.

I would contend that in general the percentage in the population of transsexuals, transgenders, and crossdressers has been reasonably level, across all ages and all cultures.

For one thing, we don't know what really causes crossdressing, and while a portion of it may be socioenvironmental, particularly in the case of trigger processes, there may very well be other reasons -- genetics, en utero environmental situations, and so on that would have been much more likely to remain constant than your proposal appears to suggest.

Second, crossdressing appears to occur in all cultures regardless of their agricultural activity or their social customs or complexity. Again, this suggest that there are many complex variables at work and that factors other than socioenvironment are likely to be at work.

Third, we do have evidence of a long history of crossdressing. You mention Greek and Roman historical information, there is also the citation to the Bible, Deuteronomy 22:5, and the historical and legendary information from other cultures. Legends and early documents record men in China who bound their feet, for example, as long as a thousand years ago. (An aside -- if you want to practice extreme crossdressing, try footbinding!).

Fourth, we know about the historically significant people, the royalty, the rich, etc. precisely because they were the ones that historical records were kept about! They got their pictures painted, their activities recorded in scrolls and books, and their personal momentoes kept. Other than such people, how much do we know about the lives of the other ordinary people throughout most of history and across most cultures? So naturally we would know more about the crossdressing activities of people of note, and little about the other folk.

Finally, I would suggest to you that for large periods of history, and across multiple cultures, there was little sexual distinction in the clothing of most people, particularly agricultural people. We tend to think of wench costumes when we think of the Renaissance, but do you really think that most women in small communities wore such things? Even in terms of the late Nineteenth Century, for example, my father, who came from a poor agricultural community in eastern Europe, told me that most of the time he wore a sort of chemise and nothing else.

Hugs,
Persephone.

[donnalee]

"In the small rural farm communities to not marry the other sex or do something to jepordize attracting the opposite sex, such as a male acting feminine or a female acting masculine, would have been a deadly taboo. And not from some inquisator but it would have meant famine at least for part or all of the family. "

It is important to understand that marriage has historically been a primarilly economic institution for most of the world until WWI, less than 100 years ago (still true for a lot of areas at present). It was to ally 2 families economically and provide heirs for both The participants had little choice as to their mates; the parents decided who they were to marry, normally with the assistance of matchmakers. The only thing incumbent upon the newlyweds was to produce 1 or more male children to act as heirs (also the major reason that rape is punished as equal to murder; as it casts doubt on the parentage of any heirs and was refered to as "a fate worse than death"). If that was accomplished, the husband was pretty free to enjoy anything he pleased as he had total control of the household and the wife had no economic or social power.

[sometimes_miss]

I'll second the ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz. The U.S. will continue to see growth until there is no economic advantage of coming here, at which point, they will probably start going to China or whatever other country has industrial growth. Our population growth has pretty much always been immigration based, not reproduction from those who are already here. Until there was social welfare, our economy grew rapidly, because you had to produce in order to survive. Now, that's not the case; lots of workers produce nothing, and there are millions who consume but contribute nothing to the economy as well. The current immigration statistics show that in less than 100 years, we will be a spanish speaking country due to the huge number of people coming her from central and south America.
As far as farming, it's been mechanized to such an extent that you no longer need such a huge number of people to 'work the land', and the U.S. generates such a huge surplus of food that it's been our major export for a long time.

[ReluctantDebutant]

Persephone.

I read your post this morning and he got me to thinking in a new direction. I may have been too general or too specific. The difference I'm starting to see in history is between rural culture and urban culture. Greek city states, Rome, and those two famously doomed cities from a Bible, are all cities with a happening nightlife. The countryside has always been conservative in nature even during ancient Rome the paganus or rustic village or stayed true to the traditions of the family and the paterfamilias which was the hallmark of Rome's founding. They stayed so true to the old ways and the old gods that by the time the Christians came round they would not convert giving us the phrase pagan.

City versus country seems to come up over and over again in history. Whether it be the urban industrial cities of the northern US versus the rural agriculture culture of the Confederate South or China's coastal port cities versus the vast peasant population of its interior. I believe this conflict is just starting in the Middle East with new cities like Dubai trying to become more cosmopolitan but under pressure from Muslim traditionalists from the hinterlands. We don't need to look any further than this board, how often has it been said here by a member that they are unwilling to come out of the closet due to the place they live in. They do not complain of large conservative cities but rather small rural towns.

The agricultural revolution gave us a massive population shift from country to city in the early 20th century. I believe it was either in the 1920s or 1930s that cities in America first held more than 50% of the country's population. And this to the growing availability of automobiles and you have more and more people within a couple hours drive of a major metropolitan area. It believe this was the beginning of the new sexual and social constructs we see today.


somtimes_miss

I know I know I should have brougth coffee and donuts for everyone.:sad:

[Karren H]

glad I took ag in high school and was in FFA .... saw a Farmall M at the county fair for $2,700 last night.... told my wife I really wanted to buy it..... paint it a pretty pink.....

[Frédérique]

There is a dirth of LGBT and crossdressing history. You get spotty parts here and there, usually Greece and Rome , but alway in the small percent of wealthy classes back then. Many may blame this dirth of history on church repression. Maybe so but I have read much of church writing form the middle ages on and they didn't seem overly concern with alternative lifestyles. I began to think of a more basic reason to explain the lack of history. One that was literally down to earth: Farming.

Where I live, agriculture is alive and well, there’s no time or money for nonsense, boys will be boys, girls will be girls, and girls will often be boys if there aren’t enough boys around. I’m smack-dab in the middle of the so-called “Red States,” and, I’ll tell you, statements of intent are all over the place. In this heady climate of non-tolerance for people like you and me, it’s a lot of fun to be different, but I don’t perceive any threats to the status quo anytime in the near (or even distant) future. Family values are firmly in place, thank you, and that means no “alternative” individuals allowed. The simple fact that EVERY child born in my little neck of the woods has two sets of living great-grandparents (I never knew my paternal grandparents, for crying out loud), lets you know that heterosexuality, as well as a traditional turning-away from sexual experimentation is encouraged and “cultivated” for all concerned…

I was at the local bank one day, and I overheard a conversation between a bank teller and a customer. As it turns out, the client was a farmer, and he had 100,000 acres of crops to keep an eye on! Like I say, there’s no time for any nonsense, and crossdressing is highly nonsensical when there’s work to be done. Still, I grew up on a farm, doing all of the chores 24/7, and I managed to find time to slip into a pretty frock now and then, but I grew up in a liberal political climate (Massachusetts), I didn’t have any "normal" siblings to emulate, and I wasn’t being pressured to procreate…
:straightface:

[LilSissyStevie]

I think you're right about the rural/urban thing. I live waaaay out in the boonies and it is easy to imagine that before the automobile, radio/television, and internet the pressure to conform would have been enormous. People depended upon each other for survival and anyone that was "weird" would have been unreliable and a threat. It's not like that now. I don't know my neighbors very well just like when I lived in the city. But the difference is that when we wave to each other there's no weapon involved. Rather than pressure to conform, the attitude is mostly "mind your own business" and "live and let live." There are the full range non-conformist here. But take away the cheap transportation and easy communication with the outside world and I think the "live and let live" attitude that prevails would quickly disappear.

As for the future, we in the West have been living in a bubble of cheap energy and social welfare pyramid schemes. The pyramid schemes can only continue as long as the population keeps growing exponentially. When you think of it, it is just like the old agricultural system in that an increasing number of children are supposed to take care of the old and sick. The difference is that the obligation is now social rather than familial. But in the familial system, at least the old and sick stood a good chance of being loved and respected by the supporting family members even as they became a burden. In the socialized system, the old and sick are just a burden and a drain on resources. The young and healthy are better off if they are eliminated. The only thing that stops it is traditional morality. Think about that as you grow old and dependent on the state.

Modern agriculture is totally dependent on cheap energy. When/if that goes away, the modern agricultural system collapses and we will have to adopt more sustainable practices. That means the worlds population will have to be reduced to a sustainable level. And it will probably be reduced rather quickly. How long does it take to starve to death?

Little Miss Sunshine

[ReluctantDebutant]

Lilsissystevie.

Family takes care of people much better then a government no doubt about that.

You have given me food for thought. You started the formulation of another post in me.

Frédérique

insightful and poetic as always thank you.

Karen

The way food prices are going that Farmall M might come in handy.... Its like a tractor thing right???? :)

[Persephone]

Dear Reluctant,

Yes, there has always been town vs. country throughout the history of civilization, and I did think of that when I composed my first reply, although I may not have expressed that consideration in what I wrote.

It is a valid point, but I find it difficult to actually determine the extent to which there may have been actual differences based upon the distinction.

I think there actually is another, more generic, possibility. That in many past eras, even including the eras of predominantly rural America, crossdressing was simply not a particularly big deal. In many cases it may have been regarded as little more than an eccentricity of sorts, only accruing generalized social stigma in recent decades.

Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn was first published in 1884. In Huckleberry Finn Chapter 10 Huck poses as a girl in order to secretly gain information. He finds a woman living in a rural cabin and attempts to pass. She quickly figures out that he is a boy. What does she do? Does she jump up screaming "Crossdresser!" and hit him with the chunk of lead that she has handy? Nope, she simply tells him he has outed himself and gives him some pointers on how to pass better!

Granted, it is fiction, but it was written by a man born in a rural town in 1835.

Back in my late adolescence I worked hard to learn everything I could about the never discussed topic of crossdressing. I haunted every library I could possibly visit, spending hours and hours poring through Reader's Guide's to Periodic Literature and many a musty tome. (My favorite libraries included Vanderbuilt University in Nashville and Arkham University, but I digress).

I cannot cite it now, but I remember digging up an old general circulatiion magazine article from the 1800's (can't really remember if it was early 1800's or later in the century) that was about a man who routinely dressed as a woman. The matter was merely treated as a "human interest" story, not as some dirty little secret.

Maybe there are fewer reports of crossdressing in much of previous history because there simply was not the stigma that has been seen in some cultures in recent times? Maybe it was just "no big deal"?

Hugs,
Persephone.

[flatlander_48]

glad I took ag in high school and was in FFA .... saw a Farmall M at the county fair for $2,700 last night.... told my wife I really wanted to buy it..... paint it a pretty pink.....


I've been workin' in the fields
With a skirt, bra an' heels
Only because I'm a pro
I have never owned a backhoe
Wearing my blouse over my forms so it conceals...