Cross Dressers and their Supportive Wives throughout History

Has anyone read any research that suggests there are a higher percentage of men interested in crossdressing now than in previous decades and centuries ?

I realize its way easier to get clothes now but lets face it when we were young when we wanted to dressup we always found a way !

My point is if the percentages are about the same how did guys cross dress in the 1700s, 1800s, and early 1900s, without the help and support of women ? The wives were always at home and with all the crazy layers women wore back then there is no way a guy could get dolled up quickly in corsets and petticoats.

So do we think women made dresses for their men and let them dressup since they were the bosses in the family ?
Or
Do we think the women were too embarassed to expose their husbands that they just went along with it and supported it ?
Or
Do we think the women were just really sweet back then and found humor and fun in seeing their husband in dresses and petticoats.
?
In the frontier or Wild West were there men wearing dresses and bonnets their wives made for them or were they sneaking into the saloons and trying on the show girl dresses ?

I am just really curious how the men that came before us were able to prance about in women's things with so many obstacles ? I doubt there mothers ever warned them that there were men who liked to wear their clothes !

Has anyone ever told their stories ?

Any thoughts or comments would be great !

Thanks as always to the women who have supported us throughout history !

I doubt there is any way to really know for sure but I assume there were men that dressed.

I would love to hear about that subject. It would be very interesting for sure.

I get bored with guessing games unless the actual answers r printed on a sheet so I can check them against mine!:heehee:

1) Actual figures are impossible to determine. Even modern assessments are suspect because they rely on self-reporting.
2) ?Interest? is far different than active participation, so questions about ?how? are tangential to your original point.
3) the next line of questioning assumes similar levels of ACTIVITY, not interest. It?s logical to assume with dire political, social, economic, spiritual, and legal repercussions, there was a far greater incidence of repressed desires.
4) The data we DO have tells us that most wives would have reported their husbands as insane, and they would have been institutionalized for probably the rest of their lives. In some areas of the world they would have been executed.
5) these assume Eurocentric questioning. There are a handful of cultures that have been more or less accepting of ?third gender? individuals

So yeah, it was grim. Don?t was too nostalgic about it.

Why does the "prancing" aspect always arise?

Do not forget that before the internet and sites like this most of us thought we were alone with this desire to crossdress. I did not go around telling people so the many generations before us had crossdressers we just have no idea how many. My guess is that we may be surprised at who some of them were.

Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past by Peter Boag is A well researched and interesting book on this topic. It is worth checking out.

April, thanks for the reference. I will read it. Well researched material is hard to find. I hope I find this material as solid as you suggest.

Vale

Without getting into the exact reference in order to avoid the religious discussion men wearing women's clothing goes back to biblical times. Given the portrayals in movies it seems to me there would be some manner of attire or accessories which would be ascribed to a woman. Was there a feminine fig leaf? The most notable man who wore women's clothing in early American history was Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, who was governor of New York and New Jersey from 1702-1708. He was known to freely walk the streets and conduct business attired as a woman. There is a portrait which is said to be of him attired in women's clothing. He was married and had three children. There is no evidence he wanted to be a woman. Plain vanilla cross dresser? Given the vestments of the aristocracy of the time I cannot imagine he did not have assistance. You can 'Google' him and read more.

Thanks April.

Can you possibly do a quick summary for us !

Attachment 311640

I don't keep files on this but apart fro Edward Hyde we also had the Chevalier d'Eon who was so well known in his (her) day that cross-dressing became known as Eonism.

The book on the frontier is possibly the source of my recollection that someone once claimed that cowboys spent a great deal of time dressed as women.

In the 19th century certain publications had lots of letters from correspondents about petticoat punishment and putting men in corsets.

I first heard of an actual crossdresser in real life (not television or the press) in our small community around the mid 1970s. Despite it being quite a religious community it had always been tolerant of gay men, but some guys gave this crossdresser a hard time. The first person to impersonate the Queen was the comedian Stanley Baxter. The retired Colonel brigade thought he should be shot - impersonating Her Maj was too much whoever did it, but a man?!!! One of Hitler's team (I forget which one) was said to have worn designer dresses in Paris.

I am sure there are more of us now as it is not quite as big a deal as it used to be and more of the men who think about it will actually do it. For those who want to go further, it is now medically possible. So yes, very much easier than it used to be all round. More opportunities, more tolerance, and more devices available like good wigs that are actually affordable, and breast prostheses, as well as shoes for large feet. And you don't need a dressmaker any more - you can just go into a shop where (at least in the UK) it is now perfectly acceptable to try things on that only started to get going in the 1990s.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tracii G

Why does the "prancing" aspect always arise?

---

I've wondered about that, too, Tracii. I just assumed it's something underwear fetishists do? The 2 seem to appear in threads together here.:battingeyelashes:

hello Robbiegirl,
Interesting thoughts.
There is probably more information available about Female Impersonators and Drag. Even today most crossdressers either try to blend or hide, so why would it be different in the past? Most here, in what I think of as being a safe place, do not reveal their true identity.
I would like to think that things will easier for future generation of crossdressers.
Luv J (not my real name)
p.s. - try searching the web for the history of Molly Houses.

Maybe they didn't need to crossdress seeing as how men wore heels, lace, fancy clothing and wore wigs especially in the 1700s.

Of course men have been crossdressing for century's. In Shakespeare time it was unthinkable that a woman should appear on stage, but many of his strongest characters are female.

We actually do know, to a limited extent. Crossdressing as a fetish was written about back in Victorian times, and like today was popular fetish, as far as fetishes go. There is crossdressing erotica that survives from that era. From the 1950s on there were journals like "Transvestia". Here is a complete non-surprise, the issues dressers have with their wives today are the same issues they had back then. Like today, women who are dependent on their dressing husbands generally held their nose and put up with it.

When you look at what is available from the past, really not much has changed, other than the fashions.

J. Edgar Hoover is rumored to have been a cross dresser. Google it.

Ed Wood of Glen/Glenda was definitely! Google him.

hello Robbiegirl,
your post on this forum interested me so much that I started to do some searching on the web.
there are websites and academic papers about historic crossdressing, but most of them are about actors and famous people such as FtM Joan of Arc.
thinking further - most (if not all) history is written by and about successful people. It is not written about ordinary people. So we are unlikely for find any examples or statistics about MtF crossdressing in the 18th century.
It is fun to research it though and speculate!
luv J

Philippe I, Duke of Orleans 1600s.

I think crossdressing in historic times was limited to wealthy people who could enjoy leisure time and privacy. We take for granted that up until the 20th century, unless you were rich you worked and worked and worked, and then worked some more and then you died. There was no "me" time, no getaways, no relaxing. You slept, worked, ate and did it all over again tomorrow. Wealthy people had free time and they had big homes with rooms that offered privacy. Most people had zero privacy. The only accounts of non wealthy crossdressing in historic times I have seen describe instances of male prostitution inside contained environments (saloons, brothels) both in the US and in Europe.

I find this post interesting, in every aspect of life people like to know about the people who paved the way. I also think it clearly shows that we have been inside to long lol. I think no matter what year or century a person who wants to cross dress will always find a way.
"crazy layers women wore back" Women back then dressed themselves why couldn't we? (ever try tiring a corset? lol)
"embarassed to expose their husbands " I know one of my wife's biggest fear is my being exposed. So that still goes on today.
"women were just really sweet back then" You read everyday how a wife or SO is being so sweet and in some cases having fun with it.
" sneaking into the saloons and trying on the show girl dresses"I bet a big %, sneaked some where at somepoint to dress and even borrowed some thing to wear lol
Great post

Well since women sewed there own dresses for 100s of years I can only imagine that men like us happily put on the dresses and related petticoats and corsets to help with final alterations ! LOL
Attachment 311657

Robbie, the central premise of the book, Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past, is that as a wide open place, not subject to the strictures of conventional society the Frontier was attractive to all kinds of people who sought to remake themselves. Crossdressing women and men fit well into that profile . The author, Peter Boag, did a quite exhaustive search of old newspapers and police reports to back up his premise. It might obvious why a woman would cross dress; for safety and economic reasons, but there were a surprising number of MTF's as well.

Native Americans who dressed and acted as women were accepted. They lived as women and did chores with women.

The movie little big man had an actor who portrayed one.

My father said their town had a crossdresser in it back in the 1920s.