devida
06-28-2014, 11:23 AM
An Oppressed Minority
Like a number of other members of this forum I have been dismayed by some of the recent posts in which cross dressing men are being criticized for being cross dressers. I have also noticed that the immediate reaction of many members to a statement by a cross dressing man that they have purged their women’s clothes due to an ultimatum from their wives appears to be congratulatory. The cross dresser is praised for valuing his relationship over his wish to cross dress.The message appears to be that cross dressing is, after all, just a choice and confronted with a spouse who disapproves of course they should purge. Yet, over and over again, cross dressers return to cross dressing, hiding it from their wives, in guilt and shame. That doesn’t look like a choice to me. I also read posts from members who are clearly and clinically depressed by not being able to cross dress, some suicidally so. Some posts declare that cross dressing is a compulsion, but a compulsion like alcoholism that can be overcome with sufficient will power, prayer,and the support of others. Some posters even suggest modifying AA’s 12 Steps to deal with cross dressing.
I also notice that a number of members shun the label transgender, asserting that they are just cross dressers. I was curious about this since to me being transgender just means that a person expresses a gender other than that assigned to them at birth, and that this expression is important to them.
Yet some members, despite many repetitions of the generally accepted definition for transgender, continue to think that being transgender necessarily means transitioning from one gender to another. These members often proclaim their heterosexual masculinity. A man who presents himself as a woman will be considered by society in general and, in many areas, legally, as transgender.
Much of this behavior and many of these statements look awfully familiar to me. They look like the actions and words of a minority suffering social oppression. Let me suggest that cross dressing men are not really different than Blacks, Jews, brown people, Native Americans, Dalits in the Indian subcontinent, and until very recently (and still in a majority of the world) male and female homosexuals. Cross dressing men are an oppressed minority that in many cases have absorbed the oppression of the majority and internalized it into self-hatred.
Many cross dressers on this forum have expressed concerns that they are mentally defective and feel guilt and shame for cross dressing in exactly the same way gay men used to be thought of as having a mental disease and being morally defective. They were ashamed of being attracted to the same sex. In the American South before the Civil War runaway slaves were considered to have a mental disease because they sought freedom. In India today Dalit women are routinely raped by higher caste men and do not complain because of their feelings of personal shame. Even in the West a large number of women do not complain about rape and sexual abuse because of internalized self-hatred which manifests as shame and the feeling that it was, after all, their own fault. These are oppressed minorities. A feature of being a member of an oppressed minority is internalized oppression which manifests as guilt, shame, self-hatred and sometimes, the oppression of others exactly like you because you hate that part of yourself.
Before I am accused of appropriating the history of real oppressed minorities let me state that I am not just transgender but also a person of color. I am mixed race and consider myself a brown person. I have two mixed race children, one African American and white, one Native American and white. Like quite a few members of other minorities I can pass in some cultures as a member of the majority race. I am bisexual but assumed to be heterosexual. I understand at a personal level what minority oppression is and the psychological problems this oppression can cause.
So let me make a few assertions and pose a few questions.
I do not believe that for the majority of cross dressing males cross dressing is a choice or a curable compulsion. I believe it is a matter of gender identity, that is to say, a matter of identity in exactly the same way as being gay is a matter of sexual identity; or defining yourself as a black man when you are mixed race, as America’s president has done, is a matter of identity. Or defining yourself as brown when, like me, you are half white. It is who you are. It is who I am.
Of course this is not true in all cases. There are men who dress as women just for fun, as a prank, for a party, for Halloween. Sometimes these same men persecute transgender people for the same behavior. They are hardly any different than the white boys who in my childhood dressed up in black face to make fun of non-whites. But the majority of cross dressing males wear women’s clothes because wearing them asserts, if only to themselves, their real identity as cross dressing men. Perhaps they tell themselves that they only wear women’s clothes for sexual fetishistic purposes. Is this any different than the man who has sex with men but defines himself as being heterosexual because having sex with men doesn’t count and he mostly has sex with women? Of course not; that man is defined as bisexual. So fetishistic cross dressing is transgender activity quite as much as a man taking estrogen to transition to becoming female is transgender activity just as dressing at home by yourself and twirling in front of the mirror is a transgender activity.
Society in general does not understand what being transgender means, but more and more the institutions of society in the Western and developed world are affording legal protections to transgender people as a minority that needs to be protected against oppression. I would assert that even if you do not identify as transgender in those areas of the world where human rights have been extended to transgender people you would be considered transgender if you suffered oppression while you are cross dressing. In other words, you do not have to identify as transgender to be viewed by law and society as transgender. This is actually a good thing. It is, as Martin Luther King promised, the arc of history bending towards justice.
So, if you will accept my argument that cross dressers are an oppressed minority, how can anyone justify an ultimatum given by a spouse to her cross dressing husband that he cease cross dressing? Why, if cross dressing is his identity, should he give up an intrinsic part of himself? Isn’t the spouse just acting as an agent of oppression? Is the spouse any different than a racist policeman beating a Black man trying to vote; than a Ugandan judge sentencing a male homosexual to prison for his same sex attraction? Or any number of authority figures requiring oppressed minorities to submit to the status quo? Certainly you may accuse me of over dramatizing the victimhood of cross dressing men but isn’t this more a matter of degree than kind? Are not both the gang of tranny bashing boys and the wife demanding her husband stop dressing under threat of divorce differing only in the degree of their oppression?
Do spouses understand that when they demand compliance to an unjust social standard within the confines of a person’s home they are committing a human rights violation? When they blackmail their cross dressing husbands with the threat of expulsion from the family, with divorce, they are committing a deliberate injury against another human being?
I am certainly not saying that spouses can’t divorce their husbands or wives for any reason they choose. I am arguing that the threat of divorce is oppressive and that, worse, spouses are acting in the place of larger institutions of social oppression. In fact I think that a wife who cannot bear her husband’s cross dressing should leave him in exactly the same way that a wife whose husband declares he is gay and no longer finds her sexually attractive should leave (unless she is content with a companionate marriage). Or, to take another example, a race proud wife who discovers her husband is in fact mixed race when he had always presented himself as pure blooded should leave if this revelation makes her feel grossly uncomfortable. People change, have revelations about themselves, and become different from the people their spouses married. This is certainly cause for dissolution of the relationship. Demanding that someone reject their own identity as a prerequisite for continuing your relationship with them is, however, oppressive. That is true even if the recognition of identity is new in the relationship.
Am I wrong? If I am please do explain to me how cross dressing males are not an oppressed minority that, like other oppressed minorities, deserves protection and why that protection does not first and foremost start in their own families?
Thank you to all of you who read through this long and controversial post. To those of you who are offended by my assertions I hope you will consider them and argue with me about them. To me this topic is the elephant in the room. I really do believe this is something we need to discuss. I believe in the power of education and of reason. I believe that many spouses simply do not understand what a cross dressing man is, often because the man himself does not understand. Perhaps it is time we all start having this conversation, with ourselves, our loved ones, and society in general. What do you think?
Like a number of other members of this forum I have been dismayed by some of the recent posts in which cross dressing men are being criticized for being cross dressers. I have also noticed that the immediate reaction of many members to a statement by a cross dressing man that they have purged their women’s clothes due to an ultimatum from their wives appears to be congratulatory. The cross dresser is praised for valuing his relationship over his wish to cross dress.The message appears to be that cross dressing is, after all, just a choice and confronted with a spouse who disapproves of course they should purge. Yet, over and over again, cross dressers return to cross dressing, hiding it from their wives, in guilt and shame. That doesn’t look like a choice to me. I also read posts from members who are clearly and clinically depressed by not being able to cross dress, some suicidally so. Some posts declare that cross dressing is a compulsion, but a compulsion like alcoholism that can be overcome with sufficient will power, prayer,and the support of others. Some posters even suggest modifying AA’s 12 Steps to deal with cross dressing.
I also notice that a number of members shun the label transgender, asserting that they are just cross dressers. I was curious about this since to me being transgender just means that a person expresses a gender other than that assigned to them at birth, and that this expression is important to them.
Yet some members, despite many repetitions of the generally accepted definition for transgender, continue to think that being transgender necessarily means transitioning from one gender to another. These members often proclaim their heterosexual masculinity. A man who presents himself as a woman will be considered by society in general and, in many areas, legally, as transgender.
Much of this behavior and many of these statements look awfully familiar to me. They look like the actions and words of a minority suffering social oppression. Let me suggest that cross dressing men are not really different than Blacks, Jews, brown people, Native Americans, Dalits in the Indian subcontinent, and until very recently (and still in a majority of the world) male and female homosexuals. Cross dressing men are an oppressed minority that in many cases have absorbed the oppression of the majority and internalized it into self-hatred.
Many cross dressers on this forum have expressed concerns that they are mentally defective and feel guilt and shame for cross dressing in exactly the same way gay men used to be thought of as having a mental disease and being morally defective. They were ashamed of being attracted to the same sex. In the American South before the Civil War runaway slaves were considered to have a mental disease because they sought freedom. In India today Dalit women are routinely raped by higher caste men and do not complain because of their feelings of personal shame. Even in the West a large number of women do not complain about rape and sexual abuse because of internalized self-hatred which manifests as shame and the feeling that it was, after all, their own fault. These are oppressed minorities. A feature of being a member of an oppressed minority is internalized oppression which manifests as guilt, shame, self-hatred and sometimes, the oppression of others exactly like you because you hate that part of yourself.
Before I am accused of appropriating the history of real oppressed minorities let me state that I am not just transgender but also a person of color. I am mixed race and consider myself a brown person. I have two mixed race children, one African American and white, one Native American and white. Like quite a few members of other minorities I can pass in some cultures as a member of the majority race. I am bisexual but assumed to be heterosexual. I understand at a personal level what minority oppression is and the psychological problems this oppression can cause.
So let me make a few assertions and pose a few questions.
I do not believe that for the majority of cross dressing males cross dressing is a choice or a curable compulsion. I believe it is a matter of gender identity, that is to say, a matter of identity in exactly the same way as being gay is a matter of sexual identity; or defining yourself as a black man when you are mixed race, as America’s president has done, is a matter of identity. Or defining yourself as brown when, like me, you are half white. It is who you are. It is who I am.
Of course this is not true in all cases. There are men who dress as women just for fun, as a prank, for a party, for Halloween. Sometimes these same men persecute transgender people for the same behavior. They are hardly any different than the white boys who in my childhood dressed up in black face to make fun of non-whites. But the majority of cross dressing males wear women’s clothes because wearing them asserts, if only to themselves, their real identity as cross dressing men. Perhaps they tell themselves that they only wear women’s clothes for sexual fetishistic purposes. Is this any different than the man who has sex with men but defines himself as being heterosexual because having sex with men doesn’t count and he mostly has sex with women? Of course not; that man is defined as bisexual. So fetishistic cross dressing is transgender activity quite as much as a man taking estrogen to transition to becoming female is transgender activity just as dressing at home by yourself and twirling in front of the mirror is a transgender activity.
Society in general does not understand what being transgender means, but more and more the institutions of society in the Western and developed world are affording legal protections to transgender people as a minority that needs to be protected against oppression. I would assert that even if you do not identify as transgender in those areas of the world where human rights have been extended to transgender people you would be considered transgender if you suffered oppression while you are cross dressing. In other words, you do not have to identify as transgender to be viewed by law and society as transgender. This is actually a good thing. It is, as Martin Luther King promised, the arc of history bending towards justice.
So, if you will accept my argument that cross dressers are an oppressed minority, how can anyone justify an ultimatum given by a spouse to her cross dressing husband that he cease cross dressing? Why, if cross dressing is his identity, should he give up an intrinsic part of himself? Isn’t the spouse just acting as an agent of oppression? Is the spouse any different than a racist policeman beating a Black man trying to vote; than a Ugandan judge sentencing a male homosexual to prison for his same sex attraction? Or any number of authority figures requiring oppressed minorities to submit to the status quo? Certainly you may accuse me of over dramatizing the victimhood of cross dressing men but isn’t this more a matter of degree than kind? Are not both the gang of tranny bashing boys and the wife demanding her husband stop dressing under threat of divorce differing only in the degree of their oppression?
Do spouses understand that when they demand compliance to an unjust social standard within the confines of a person’s home they are committing a human rights violation? When they blackmail their cross dressing husbands with the threat of expulsion from the family, with divorce, they are committing a deliberate injury against another human being?
I am certainly not saying that spouses can’t divorce their husbands or wives for any reason they choose. I am arguing that the threat of divorce is oppressive and that, worse, spouses are acting in the place of larger institutions of social oppression. In fact I think that a wife who cannot bear her husband’s cross dressing should leave him in exactly the same way that a wife whose husband declares he is gay and no longer finds her sexually attractive should leave (unless she is content with a companionate marriage). Or, to take another example, a race proud wife who discovers her husband is in fact mixed race when he had always presented himself as pure blooded should leave if this revelation makes her feel grossly uncomfortable. People change, have revelations about themselves, and become different from the people their spouses married. This is certainly cause for dissolution of the relationship. Demanding that someone reject their own identity as a prerequisite for continuing your relationship with them is, however, oppressive. That is true even if the recognition of identity is new in the relationship.
Am I wrong? If I am please do explain to me how cross dressing males are not an oppressed minority that, like other oppressed minorities, deserves protection and why that protection does not first and foremost start in their own families?
Thank you to all of you who read through this long and controversial post. To those of you who are offended by my assertions I hope you will consider them and argue with me about them. To me this topic is the elephant in the room. I really do believe this is something we need to discuss. I believe in the power of education and of reason. I believe that many spouses simply do not understand what a cross dressing man is, often because the man himself does not understand. Perhaps it is time we all start having this conversation, with ourselves, our loved ones, and society in general. What do you think?