Is it all just Cultural Semantics?

[Patrice]

Hmm, confusing title but simple question. Had a thought recently and just throwing it out for you all. How, exactly, is what we do substantially different from any other cultural subgroup that imitates/covets/copies the style/clothing/behavior of another subgroup?

Examples:

Urban big-city folk who dress in new jeans and starched cowboy shirts and hang out in country-western bars and have likely never met live hamburger in person?

The endless streams of middle-class white children and their obsession with black (and lately Hispanic) gang culture? (hip-hop clothes, rap music, 'bling-bling') etc, etc

All those who roam around in military-style fatigues and boots with the obligatory crew-cuts who would of course never darken a recruiters door?

The examples could be endless, I know I missed a few. But the question still stands, how do we differ from they?

[trannie T]

It is because we dress because we have to, not because we want to. There is a difference between playing dressup because in your peer group it may be fashionable and dressing up because of a powerful internal need.

[Sally147]

I think the problem as I have always percieved it is that though dressing as a member of the opposite physical sex could otherwise be comfortably accomodated within the context of an accepted cultural sub group, the preconceptions about this particular sub group(tg's) are by definition sexual, and anything which contains that word (sexual) is, due to the preconceptions mentioned, subject to additional psychological filters on he part of anyone checking sub groups out.

Folk don't really understand in the main, but on the bright side, the existence of sites such as this proves empirically that such groups as our own, are NOT being rejected out of hand. It looks like trannies are a lot more accepted now than they used to be. Think of Quentin Crisp (the naked civil servant) standing dressed in a skirt in court in the thirties, when being gay was a criminal offence, saying, "M'lud, I am a transvestite homosexual......". Nowadays, you might get short shrift on the weakest link, but Judge Judy would be compelled, and I'm sure very pleased, to set Mr Crisp free. I met Quentin Crisp quite a few times by the way, he was a model at Camberwell Art School when I was a student there in the late seventies. How 'bout that for name dropping! Sorry, couldn't resist.

I think, in the end, that I'm lucky to be alive in this day and age. I'm only starting to come out, but I don't believe I'll ever need, or possess, the kind of courage it must have taken to be a cross dresser in some days gone by. We seem to be living in a world which is wacky, weird, and wonderful, despite the politics and the injustice and the wars around the globe.

I saw a man on television. He had spent some years in a Japanese prison camp. He said that if he ever made it out alive, he would never, ever consider that he truly had any rights whatsoever, such were the depredations of survival on the railway building gangs. So I don't really consider cross dressing a right. Just cos it's personal doesn't make it important! I consider cross dressing, and transexualism especially, to be a great privilege, impossible in a society less industrialised and educated than our own. (Puts on crash hat and crouches behind wall!)

X
Sally147

[Satrana]

The underlying rationale is the same - you mimic and dress in the uniform of a group so that you can associate yourself with them which then provides you with social acceptance that you can behave differently than you normally would. So in these examples listed it is acting aggressively or anti-socially.

CDs dress like women because behaving in a feminine manner as a male is not socially condoned and could lead to great hardship and isolation.

[VirginiaX23]

I saw a man on television. He had spent some years in a Japanese prison camp. He said that if he ever made it out alive, he would never, ever consider that he truly had any rights whatsoever, such were the depredations of survival on the railway building gangs. So I don't really consider cross dressing a right. Just cos it's personal doesn't make it important! I consider cross dressing, and transexualism especially, to be a great privilege, impossible in a society less industrialised and educated than our own. (Puts on crash hat and crouches behind wall!)


Sally, I think you have an excellent perspective on this. We aren't the women's suffragist movement (although we would have walked a mile in their bloomers for their cause). However, I would say that this is not necessarily a privilege. Yes, we are lucky not to be stoned for setting foot outside in "disguise" but that does not make this desire that, for many, haunts us something akin to driving. For many of us, this is enjoyable and pleasurable and we are happy to be able to do what we do, but we do not feel privileged for being able to do so. There is a volunteerism in privilege that is absent in all of this. I did not volunteer to be TG/CD. I was born this way. I am privileges to have a loving spouse who accepts me for who I am and who loves me and wants to be with me without condition, but this is truly a personal thing.

And, to be honest, everything personal is important to the individual. Perspective begins at the tree's level, not the forest's.

[boy2girl31]

Although times are changing there are too many people who still believe that men are men. Religous groups are also to blame the bible (I know I didn't cap. bible) says that crossdressing is wrong. Yet those same people argue the loudest for our troops to come home. If they only knew that more people have been killed for religion than by all wars, natural disasters, and accidents combined. I believe the religous are the ones holding us back and they should learn what progress means. Sorry to rant.

[docrobbysherry]

Because many of us, like me, do to our dressing in private. As opposed to the other groups u mentioned. To them, it's all about going out and showing off their outfits!

By the way, I just posted some new pics in the picture section! Everyone check 'em out! Uh, what was I saying before? About dressing in private?

Never mind! I guess maybe we're not so different after all.

[amber 07]

Big city folks who mimic western cowboys would be rediculed by the latter, as would middle class white kids be ridiculed by gang members as would the skin-head style be rediculed by Marines. I guess we are no different. Anyone who mimics another group sets themselves up for ridicule by that group for many reasons. I guess it is the price anyone pays for trying to be something they aren't. You can say anything you want about being born this way, or your right to do what you want, but its a hard, cold fact that anyone who strays outside the rigid structure from whence you were born will have to put up with people who simply don't understand. Hugs, Amber