Is feminism helping advance the cause of transgendered people like us?

[Leslie Langford]

The thought occurs that with all the strides that women have made in recent years with respect to gender equality, they are far more confident and self-assured these days. They are also less concerned about the outward trappings of femininity and less protective of their "turf" as well as some of the side benefits this once bestowed upon them (being considered the "weaker sex", "marrying well", and being able to rely on the men in their lives to look after them).

Before going out in public en femme on a regular basis as I am now doing, I always expected that women would either be hostile - or at the very least, cool - towards a man who sought to emulate them the way crossdressers do.

To my great surprise, I have found the exact opposite to be true. Granted, my wife still isn't comfortable with this whole crossdressing thing, but that is more of a generational issue. It also comes down to the way she was brought up, and of course, the dynamics between a husband and a wife are far different from the way that a friend or stranger might regard us.

Still, almost without exception, all of the women I have encountered while out and about as "Leslie" - SA's, make up artists, nail techs, photographers, consignment store owners, restaurant servers etc. - all have been universally accepting and have treated me with the utmost courtesy and respect. Not just that - they have even gone the extra distance to help me in achieving the looks that I was seeking, given me tips on what looks good on me and what doesn't, and generally working enthusiastically with me to be the best "Leslie" that I can.

Women have also randomly engaged me in conversations in stores and other public venues, complimented me on what I was wearing, and some cases even solicited my input on what they were selecting when we happened to be shopping side-by-side in clothing or shoe stores. Women are far more engaged with each other in such settings, and I consider it an honor and a privilege to be invited into their world this way.

Throughout all of this, I have never felt a sense of competition or jealousy - just acceptance into the "sisterhood". Somehow, I cannot help but think that because they now feel so empowered, these women also feel their femininity less threatened and are willing to let others into their world as well.


This is one of the reasons why I so enjoy going out in public as "Leslie", and I wonder if others here share the same feeling?

[Foxglove]

Throughout all of this, I have never felt a sense of competition or jealousy - just acceptance into the "sisterhood". Somehow, I cannot help but think that because they now feel so empowered, these women also feel their femininity less threatened and are willing to let others into their world as well.



It's always hard to say what people's motives are. How do you get inside their heads? To be honest, I'd have a hard time believing that GG's would feel a sense of competition with us T-girls or any jealousy towards us. I can't imagine a GG would feel her femininity threatened by a T-girl--not today, and even less so in earlier generartions. Are T-girls going to take their husbands from them? Not in very many cases, I wouldn't imagine.

I've been out on my town a lot lately and haven't had any negative reactions from women. But I haven't had any negative reactions from any men, either. Perhaps what we're talking about here is simply a general opening up of society. Since T-girls are much less of a shock to people than we used to be, women will talk about clothes, etc., with us since that's what they like to talk about anyway. I've had a couple of conversations with women on that subject.

If you want to know what people's motives are, I think what you need to do is ask them. You might not always get a good answer, though, because people don't always know what their motives are.

Annabelle

[Rogina B]

I agree with you on the acceptance of women of us trying to be one of them..lol Sounds odd,but true. I have a thread going here mentioning the engaging conversations that women tend to have and most freely have them with us while out.

[kimdl93]

I have had similar experiences in 99.99% of my encounters with women. I've mentioned and other members have commented that sometimes they seem so welcoming that it feels like we're being invited to join their team. I do think we are generally accepted by women, both younger and more mature, in my experience, and this may reflect a different attitude among women towards us than towards typical males, but it may also reflect a general improvement in attitudes towards gender variance.

[Kate Simmons]

Women, in general, love it when they can find a sensitive man to talk with. The fact that the man is wearing clothes designed for women makes little difference. Women are more accepting, forgiving and understanding. They have to be if they are family oriented and run a household. Women have always been this way for the most part but men are only just starting to really listen and pay attention. The feminist movement drew attention to this but women are intrinically loving people with strong family values. If the TG community wants to earn it's own "rights", it has to motivate the members to get off their duffs and voice their concerns. Said motivation is problematic at best, so it remains an individual quest for the most part.:)

[mikiSJ]

Feminism and TG have not always been in harmony:

The url takes you to very scholarly work and describes the continuum of the feminist movement and the 'intergration' of the transgendered. It is long, but does a really great job of answering Leslie question:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-trans/

[Nocturnal Kaylee]

A lot of these replies seem to be about crossdressing or about how women react to Transpeople in general. There is a large rift between many feminists and transpeople. Many feminists don't consider transwomen as equals but more as intruders or imposters. While I feel feminism is a good thing and very needed even in today's society I do not feel welcomed by them.

[ReineD]

They are also less concerned about the outward trappings of femininity and less protective of their "turf" as well as some of the side benefits this once bestowed upon them (being considered the "weaker sex", "marrying well", and being able to rely on the men in their lives to look after them).


Throughout all of this, I have never felt a sense of competition or jealousy - just acceptance into the "sisterhood". Somehow, I cannot help but think that because they now feel so empowered, these women also feel their femininity less threatened and are willing to let others into their world as well.

I've always been puzzled by the assertion that women were protective of their turf, or enjoyed being the weaker sex. My mother was a young housewife during the 1950s and she did not look at it that way. I was born during the 1950s and I most definitely have never looked at it that way. If women had enjoyed being in that rather limiting gender role, they would not have made great strides to climb out of it. :)

I don't believe that feminism helped to make women more accepting of trans people. I think that since the cultural revolution of the 1960s people in general are losing their fear of cross-gender expression for several reasons: there have been great inroads in academic studies that are helping to remove prior myths about transpeople and are causing the medical profession to adopt the Standards of Care for transitioners, the inroads made in the gay rights movement which reinforces the notion that not everyone is hetero-normative, the advent of the internet which makes more information available, and as the result of all of this more and more transpersons are coming out publicly which is also helping matters.

Up until the last generation or so, the reason that both men and women were not accepting of cross-gender expression had to do with a lack of exposure and understanding of non binary gender. They felt it was a sickness and morally wrong, even earlier feminists whose source of information were early versions of the DSM and who felt that transwomen were men who were appropriating women's roles in order to infiltrate and be predatory. Nobody "got it" back then.

I do not believe that women have been proprietary of a gender role that limited their options by keeping them supportive of men at the expense of their full self-actualization. Honestly, if anyone protected their turf, it has rather been men, some of whom did not take kindly to sharing male privilege.

[Asche]

Well, even though I'm male, I've done a certain amount of reading about feminism over my lifetime, and I hang out in feminist on-line spaces, so I'll add my $0.02 .

Basically, it's complicated.

For one thing, people here seem to use the word "transgendered" to apply to pretty much anyone who transgresses social gender norms, but that isn't how it seems to be used in other places. In virtually any other context, when people talk about "trans" people, they are talking about what I would call "transsexual" -- a man born in a woman's body or vice-versa. CDing doesn't come up, at least not CDing as people here talk about it.

For another, there are as many feminisms as there are women who call themselves feminists, and different flavors of feminism may have different attitudes towards the sort of things people here do.

The main thing I've seen in feminist discussions that would apply to CDing is the idea that "gender policing" -- society's practice of pressuring and compelling women and men (and girls and boys) to fit into society's prescribed gender roles -- is a Bad Thing(tm). In that sense, the feminists I am familiar with would be in favor of letting men dress and present however they wish.

(On the other hand, there's a fair amount of gender policing here. A lot of people here expect CDs -- and women -- to fit into society's stereotypes of "how women are," and I don't know how well that would go down with the feminists I know.)

As for transsexuals: while most of the feminists I know of support trans rights, there is a small but significant minority -- mainly radical feminists -- who are hostile to the idea of saying that trans women (i.e., M2F) are in any sense women. Some insist that the very concept of trans women is yet another way in which men oppress women. An awful lot of virtual ink gets spilled over this.

Finally, people who call themselves (or: will admit to being) feminists are not that huge a group, and IMHO haven't by themselves had as much influence as their detractors claim. However, there are a lot of people who have adopted feminist values and ideas even while insisting "I am not a feminist," and they are making a difference.

[Beverley Sims]

I have also found that women outside of my circle of friends are all embracing of "Beverley".
Once they know what I am whether in drab or dressed I usually have a wonderful interaction with them.
I do look ok and I think the fact that I am a man emulating a woman successfully intrigues them.
In small boutiques I have a wonderful time trying on the unpopular zany fashions that most girls don't try on.
These are offered so as the SA's can see what they would look like if someone wore them.
I wish I could share these relationships with my friends and family.
My wife get's a little perplexed but does take part in shopping when we are away.

[I Am Paula]

I've found that women accept me almost unconditionally. The ones I deal with on a business level (SA's etc.) seem to want to help me more than the GG next to me. They fawn over me and show me off to the other SA's. My social group (all GG's between 40 and 55, married, upper 10% income) accept me to the point of forgeting I'm not quite one of them, and share things that they would never share with a man (vaginal dryness, menopause). I love it when a girlfriend says 'don't you just hate men?' or 'why can't men be more like us?'. I don't know many younger GG's, so I'm not sure if they feel threatened by us, but they certainly shouldn't be by me. All in all, my daily interaction with the 'real' fairer sex is only positive, accepting, and friendly.-Celeste

[Leslie Langford]

This is great feedback, ladies, and it is nice to see that so many of you have had similar positive experiences with GG's as I have.

Reine, as usual, your insight is very valuable and provides a somewhat different perspective on this matter. It also proves yet again that to generalize is to be blind to alternative truths and that there are often many shades of gray to a particular issue. And given what you chose to highlight in your response to my original post, please don't get the impression that I pine for the "good old days" when society seemed to feel that a woman's place was to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, or whose destiny was - as Janis Ian put it in her iconic song "At Seventeen":

"I leaned the truth at seventeen
That love was meant for beauty queens
And high school girls with clear-skinned smiles
Who married young and then retired..."

I'm all for empowered women, and I think that the world is a better place for having more of them in positions of power, as they provide a moderating influence and "reality check" to the alpha males among us who sometimes let their over-abundance of testosterone wreak havoc on themselves and the world around them. Still, the pressures of feminism haven't been good to all women - especially to those who try to "have it all" and run themselves ragged in the process. Some have even been known to feel just a pang of jealousy for the lifestyle of the upper society "ladies who lunch" or the simpler, more orderly "Leave It To Beaver" or "Father Knows Best" world of the 1950's.

And yes, men need to do more to step up and take on more of the domestic duties when their wives are also working outside of the home and/or are pursuing a career in order to provide them with more balance in their lives, and the younger generation is getting much better at this. Even my own wife has commented at times that what working women really need these days is a wife of their own. Given our DADT relationship, I can only smile to myself when she says things like this and think of the ancient Chinese proverb "Be careful what you wish for..." - but I digress... ;)

And yes, mikiarata, Kaylee, and Asche, I recognize that the dynamic between GG's (and especially among those of the feminist persuasion) and transsexual women can be a far more complex issue than that existing between themselves and that group of transgendered individuals who define themselves primarily as crossdressers and nothing more, and for whom this is an expression of their gender identity as opposed to actually wanting to be women. This is where the rubber really hits the road, and where the definition of what truly is a woman is subject to many interpretations.

And for some GG's, no matter how the transsexual woman looks, acts, feels, or defines herself, the mere fact that she still carries XY chromosomes as part of her DNA trumps all of that, and in their eyes she will always fundamentally remain a man.

[sonna]

feminism HELPS FEMALES ONLY....LADIES WOMEN AND GIRL'S ARE JUST MORE EXCEPTING MAYBE BY UPBRINGING
OR JUST NATURE.

[sometimes_miss]

Is feminism helping advance the cause of transgendered people like us?
You'd think so, wouldn't you. But one of the things that I convinced my self about my wife was, she enjoyed embracing plenty of male type behaviors, being a tomboy, I thought she would understand the reverse. Not a chance; women reserve the right for freedom of expression for themselves. They still want the strong, silent type, male to be able to rely on, no weaknesses shown to them. It's something that makes them feel insecure, seeing her guy as less than she wants him to be. Less being what she wants, less masculine, and potentially less protective of her should the situation arise. Women's liberation is just that; freedom for women to be whatever they want to be. Not for men to be what they want to be. That will be a long time coming. Sure, you can make the case that men have always had the freedom to be whatever we want to be; but of course, that has to be a protector of society's status quo, protector of women and children in the society, and the provider for a wife and her children to do as they please in life. That's the 'freedom' we have; as long as we continue to be all those things, we can do whatever else we want, but of course there's no guarantee any of those women that rely on us will thank us or support us when we need it.

[Leslie Langford]

At the risk of sounding politically incorrect here, sometimes_miss, I have to say that on some level, I agree with you. It has always been my contention that women intrinsically have a sense of entitlement and a set of expectations as to what society owes them that men simply don't.

The average man generally seems to go with the flow, whereas women are continuously complaining about one thing or another. It's like the old joke that says that men get married to a woman in the hope that she will never change, while women see a potential mate as a work in progress who needs her guiding hand to mold him in the "right" (i.e. her) image.

Much of this is likely due to the fact that throughout history, women were perceived to be the secondary (and weaker) sex, and it fell to the men to look after and protect them. Ladies first in entering a room or going through a door, men walking on the curb side of a sidewalk, women and children first in the case of escaping a disaster, giving up your seat to a woman in a bus or subway, men asking the women out on a date and paying for the meal and movie etc, etc. - all of these things are part and parcel of how gender roles have traditionally been defined.

Granted, some of these chivalrous habits are considered quaint by many people these days, and the more rabid feminists would even be offended if a male deferred to them in this way. And yet, many women - no matter how empowered, successful, confident and financially secure they may be still enjoy (and expect) some of these niceties as one of the perks of being a woman.

Many women complain about the alleged "glass ceiling" in the business world these days, which in many careers or companies is seen as a barrier to their entry into the higher echelons of management. But the dirty little secret here is that many women don't want to make the sacrifices - both in their personal lives or the hours they put in - that are required to advance one's career that way. This is actually becoming quite a problem in certain high-powered professions such as law, medicine, and politics, where women are making up more and more of the membership, but are reluctant to work the same long days that most men simply take for granted as the price of admission into those fields.

By the time they hit their mid-fifties, many women - even those in senior executive positions - are ready to pack it in in favor of kinder, gentler pursuits, whereas many career-oriented men in that age bracket are just reaching their stride. These women seek more balance in their lives, and they also have a greater need to nurture both their families and their own souls than many men typically do. They are also far more apt to look after their own well-being, lead healthy lifestyles, and avoid the kind of driven and self-destructive behaviors that often give men heart attacks and strokes.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not knocking this attitude on the part of women, and many men would do well to emulate them. It would make for a far kinder, gentler world. In fact, that ability to achieve balance in thier lives, nurture their souls, and not let some corporation dictate how they must behave is one of the things that I most admire about women. That - along with my love for crossdressing (chicken or the egg scenario here? :)) - is what inexorably draws me into their world. But women do tend to have more of a sense of entitlement than we males do for whatever historical, cultural, societal, or gender-related reasons might exist, and sometimes the infamous "double standard" cuts both ways.

[ReineD]

Women's liberation is just that; freedom for women to be whatever they want to be. Not for men to be what they want to be. That will be a long time coming. Sure, you can make the case that men have always had the freedom to be whatever we want to be; but of course, that has to be a protector of society's status quo, protector of women and children in the society, and the provider for a wife and her children to do as they please in life. That's the 'freedom' we have; as long as we continue to be all those things, we can do whatever else we want, but of course there's no guarantee any of those women that rely on us will thank us or support us when we need it.

Honestly, I don't think that things are quite the way that you portray them. Men's roles have changed too, not just women's. Men are no longer the sole bread winners. Most families are dual income. In modern families men help with the kids, change the diapers, bring the kids to boy scouts or girl scouts and their sports practices, they help with the cooking, dishes, laundry, at least all the working couples that I know do this. Maybe she'll cook more and he'll do more yardwork, but they're both working equally for the benefit of the family. And lots of men are single fathers, as are women who are single mothers, and they each do it all.

Among married couples today, husband and wife both have college degrees (or not) and a job, they both have an equal say in their finances, their investments, their retirement funds. The gendered labor separation of day-to-day life tasks and work has narrowed considerably out of economic need, although men who are not CDers still see their wives as being feminine, and women still see their husbands as being masculine. The day-to-day roles may have narrowed, but each partner's fundamental gender identity is just as congruent with their birth sex as ever and this is especially evident in their bedrooms. Sexually I agree, many women who are hetero get turned off with men who wish to appear as women since they are not attracted to women. But, most men don't have these desires. The other big sticking point is a fear of being ostracized by community members should they find out, which is also quite a large sticking point for many CDers.


At the risk of sounding politically incorrect here, sometimes_miss, I have to say that on some level, I agree with you. It has always been my contention that women intrinsically have a sense of entitlement and a set of expectations as to what society owes them that men simply don't.

I don't see it that way at all. There are lots of happy couples, and there are lots of couples who get divorced with both men and women who are unhappy with their relationships for a wide variety of reasons. I don't think this has anything to do with a sense of entitlement. Gender and gender roles simply are not issues for most people.