What makes a woman + first time out

[Michal82]

Hi
So a few weeks ago it was Purim here in Israel, which basically the equivalent of Halloween but minus the "trick or treat" thing. So everybody go to costumes parties and dress up so it is a safe time to venture out en-femme.
My wife and I decided to go out in a couple's costume where I was en-femme: we decided to go as a playboy bunny and Hugh Hefner. I wore tight black shorts with a tight black top, and fishnet stocking and high heels. I did my makeup as best as I know, added a red long wig and topped it with bunny ears. My wife wore a short white hair wig and a red satin robe and held a smoking pipe. We went to the movies and judging by the reactions we got, the costumes were hilarious. I don't have the build of a playboy bunny so I looked like a man in a dress. It was loads of fun and I really enjoyed going out! I was not nervous as I kept thinking to myself I don't care what other people think of it. It was my first time going out en-femme!

As I think about the experience, only one thing bothered me (two if you count the sore feet): I was still treated as a man, while I wanted to be treated like a woman. I know the costume is sort of a joke, and I wasn't intend to pass as a woman, but it is not how I imagined going out would be.
So I talked to my wife, telling her that I think maybe my CDing is something bigger, and she told me she doesn't think I am a woman, and I don't think like a woman (I value her opinion – she is a great judge of character and reads people very well). So we started talking about what it is to be a woman, and it struck me, that I perceive woman only by the physical differences. Lately I have been thinking a lot about what does it mean to be a woman, putting a side all the physical aspects. I can't seem to put my finger on it..

So, I Ask you: what makes a woman?

[Dana44]

Oh golly, No male can ever be a women. We don't have the stuff to do it and on this site nobody knows what a woman feels like. I am gender fluid and my brain switches from masculine to feminine. But My feminine is only what my male brain perceives. But yes I can be feminine. But not a woman. But I do the best I can to reflect my our appearance to be one. However, we know we are males no matter how girly we can get. A woman is a woman to herself and can have kids and PMS and all that fun stuff. We will never be able to do that. Yet you can be feminine and enjoy the experience.

[sweetdreams]

Wife and I were talking about this yesterday. We don't see eye-to-eye on what femininity means. Her opinion is we CDers take the feminine thing farther than most GGs do (i.e. dressing up, makeup, etc.). I offered an opinion that masculine has certain characteristics like gruff, to the point, pushy, unemotional whereas feminine is soft, caring, emotional, sensitive. The wife didn't quite agree.

[ginapoodle]

What makes a woman?

Perhaps a different question: why do we have to be dualistic?

Blend and hybrid works for me. Mostly in my brain, personality and spirit. Results of that are very high creativity, sensitivity, communication skills, teamwork skills and a true joy in parenting. I let my emotional and sensitive side live fully. Yet, I also express my masculine attributes. A balance.

[Tracii G]

I let both sides of me live in harmony so I never argue with myself.
You need to realize you really weren't crossdressing you were in a Purim costume. So essentially a man in a dress for the shock factor or humor.
Dressing as a joke is not what most would consider being enfemme.

[Pat]

I love Purim (mostly for the little triangular cookies -- "Haman's Hats" is what we called them in my neighborhood when I was a kid.) but you have to admit you weren't taking dressing as a woman seriously and so you can't really be offended that nobody else was taking it seriously either.

What makes a woman? Ignoring the mating tackle, I can't think of a definition that includes all the women I've known nor that excludes the men I've known. So I think at best, it's a fuzzy concept. With fuzzy concepts we can apply fuzzy logic and decide that it's not a collection of binary check-off items but is a sense we get built off a bunch of weighted factors that may or may not be present in any individual. Man-ness and woman-ness values can offset but eventually the gestalt result is "man" or "woman" to an observer (even if that observer is you.)

[mykell]

the best statement i have ever heard was that being a women is a lived state of events while living as a women.....it was something that i was happy to have learned to understand, just recently a women friend i have just befriended called me a lesbian, she asked me twenty questions and concluded i was a girl, im just in the wrong body, it was a pivotal thought and lesson to my being, and once i live my life living as a women and start experiencing those events i will become a women....until that point i will remain being a girl.

that is what made sense to me....

[Helen_Highwater]

I think what you're looking for is how do I present as a woman and that is something entirely different. Time and time again the advice here is observe what the GG's do in terms of walk, hand gestures, hair flicks, facial expressions, the list is endless.

In some way it's fair to say we become actors engrossed in a part. You have to be comfortable doing what you're doing and look and feel like you belong in that space.

Edit:
You wrote;
I was still treated as a man, while I wanted to be treated like a woman. I know the costume is sort of a joke, and I wasn't intend to pass as a woman, but it is not how I imagined going out would be.

Go out enfemme, dressed not for laughs but to try to blend into the scenery, to act like a GG would and then your experience will be totally different. This will be in part due to you having have a different mindset. You will be treated differently. Most you encounter will be respectful, a small minority less so. That goes with the turf. Personally I would discount this as your first time out dressed. It's a step towards that day but when that time comes it will be a wholly different experience.

[Lorileah]

Oh golly, No male can ever be a women. We don't have the stuff to do it and on this site nobody knows what a woman feels like. Respectfully disagree. I assume you mean no crossdresser can ever be a woman and that no crossdresser knows what a woman feels like

[irene9999]

The closest I've felt to being a woman as a cd is being at a cd friendly bar and being hit on and being oogled by men. I don't think I could feel like a woman unless I was living like one 24/7 though, at best I'm a male with a strong feminine side

[Michal82]

So some of you say that it is enough to live as a woman, act like a woman, talk like a woman etc'. that takes care of the social side of gender - being precived as woman by society.
But as transgender people well know, it's not enough. Presenting as a man/woman is sometimes in contradiction to your inner feeling.

but in our case (well maybe just mine), the inner feeling of man/woman isn't as unequivocal as with most people.
(that's why i posted my question in the CD forum, i think transgender people has a very strong inner feeling when it comes to their gender. With CDers i think it's a little more fluid).

I can't seem to reconcile my desire to be a woman with how well i live all these years as a man...:confused2:

[Amelie]

Respectfully disagree. I assume you mean no crossdresser can ever be a woman and that no crossdresser knows what a woman feels like

I agree with what you said Lorileah.

Now onto the OP. I think you picked a bad day to go out. While it might be easy for a man to go out dressed as a woman on costume night, while nobody cares too much, but most people out there are looking at a costume, not a woman. As a goth I hate going out on Halloween.

I also don't believe in that women think differently than men. I think that sometimes we have perceptions of women and look for them as viewing through a microscope. Finding the slightest detail that makes a woman different. OK, I don't hang around office types or professional people. I mostly hang with rougher people, trashy, biker, punk, dregs of society, you get what I mean. These types of woman are very similar to the men, I don't see any qualities that separate them from the men except for the way they dress. And in some cases not even that. I think mtf people look too much into what a woman does, too much analyzing when there aren't much differences. I say just live your life the way you want, if someone thinks you're a man, so what. You know who you are, you don't need someone to validate who you are. Just live and have fun.