Crossdressing gender distinctions

[Tizabet]

It's interesting coming here and seeing the different perspective that pure CDers seem to have, when I'm so used to primarily TS dominated communities. On a personal note, while I agree that MtFs are more prevalent on the internet (or at least make themselves more visible), in real life, I only seem to come across FtMs. But either way, it's hard to know real numbers, especially when (at least in the full on TS category) the most successful may never tell anyone about their situation. So all you can really ask is "Why do I see so many more MtFs than FtMs?" And maybe it's just a matter of difficulty. Testosterone is strong, and hiding its effects is quite a feat. Perhaps I'm biased, but I'd guess it's just harder for us MtFs, so we're more prone to seek out each others' help.

EDIT~

Maybe the FTMs just don't feel a need to join 'support' sites like this?

Ack. You beat me to it while I was typing. :P

[rickie121x]

.... hiding its effects is quite a feat. Perhaps I'm biased, but I'd guess it's just harder for us MtFs, so we're more prone to seek out each others' help.
EDIT~

Exactly - GG's simply don't need any-one's help, succor, assistance, friendship or guidance to dress in unisex or male clothing - there are no restrictions, no negative social mores, no one to say no - or even suggest it.

[Fionax]

I am surprised that nobody has mentioned their parent's influence. At a rough guess most of us were brought up in a family where there was probably a father and almost all of us had a mother. The mother's pride in her son is the stuff of legend; he could do no wrong and represented to the world the man that she alone had produced. He would be expected to lead the family should there be no father around, whereas a daughter was there to share the trials and tribulations of being a woman.

The father on the other hand was delighted at a daughter who was a 'tomboy'; it was assumed that a boy would naturaly acheive success in sports but for a daughter to do so was a matter of intense pride. The consequence was that society has no problem with a girl dressing to suit her athleticism, indeed the vogue for tee shirts and trainers is almost universal from China to Argentina. Girls follow fashion men don't. So the FtM can be absorbed into society seamlessly and invisibly whereas those of the opposite persuasion have difficulty in trying to to look feminine when actually their dream appearance no longer exists.

[Satrana]

1. The average MtF CDer (of which I assume I am one if one can classify an "average CDer") wants to dress up like a woman not because it is more convenient or comfortable or practical to do so but because we want to experience what it is like to really BE a woman

Quite untrue. First of all large numbers of CDs do find women's clothes to be convenient and comfortable - it is a false argument to say otherwise just to justify differences in crossdressing. More importantly those CDs who emulate usually focus on a highly idealized, usually sexualised image of a woman which hardly reflects what it is like to BE a woman. What CDs are doing is consuming femininity to enjoy its benefits because we want to. Now some CDs believe they have to act out the role of a woman in order to consume/express femininity. Not true but I understand why this linkage occurs.

The average GG who "crossdresses" does so mostly for convenience or comfort or for practicality.

Actually they dress to follow culture and fashion trends which emphasis that "real" women discard the idealized femininity that many CDs crave except for special occasions where it is still expected.

I came across a support website a while ago established by GGs who want to wear dress and skirts everyday but feel they cant because of social oppression to femininity. They stated other women look down on them as traitors to the cause because they liked femininity. They group together and do activities like trekking in the countryside to specifically challenge the lame excuse that women have stopped wearing dresses and skirts because they are impractical or uncomfortable.

but as a general rule, when we "accuse" GGs of CDing "just like we do," it isn't really true. The goals and motivations are entirely different.

There are many motivations which drive MTF crossdressing. But no matter what the motivation is, when a man wears an article of female clothing he is labeled a crossdresser. But you argue that if a woman has another motivation that this excuses her from being a CD? You a supporting a double standard. Crossdressing describes a behavior, not a motivation. If you wear clothing associated with the opposite gender you are crossdressing.

My wife will sometimes wear my boxers or my college football jersey or my t-shirts or sweats or something, but she isn't trying to pass as male.

I am not passing as a female when I wear a nightie to bed. Ask my wife.

her femininity is even more evident in the course of wearing these clothes.

Interesting idea. Does not work for me though. But by your logic my masculinity is enhanced when I wear a nightie to bed. Think you might have a losing argument there.

The statistics on TGism (as I have seen them historically), seem to indicate that TGism is MUCH more prevalent among men than it is among women.

You are joking of course. Have you seen the statistics on tomboyish behavior in women?

[Senban]

Lorileah said - "I offer the question, if it was allowed for guys to wear skirts tomorrow, how many of the "girls" here would start wearing skirts or dresses in public? Quite a few I would venture. The ones who would scream the loudest are the fetishists who either want the thrill or want something to rail about that society does not understand poor little me."

Oddly enough, it already *is* allowed for guys to wear skirts and dresses and so forth in public. Is there anywhere in the world where it's strictly forbidden or illegal? Well I'm sure there may be a couple of examples of some form of official restriction but for many of us, there are no restrictions on wearing whatever the hell we damn well feel like, right? The only restrictions are those we place upon ourselves though fear and insecurity. We're scared of peer ridicule so we decide not to express our feminine side publicly for example. But the general truth is that most people either don't notice or don't care and will quickly allow you to fade into the background of their perceptions (there will always be exceptions of course). Of course those closer to you will have to deal with things rather than allowing you to fade into the background and that's not always easy of course and a whole different subject that's covered many times elsewhere.

RachelTVG said - "Society dictates what men can and can't do, say or wear"

I used to believe this too and while it does have some validity, the truth is that WE dictate what we can and can't do, no one else. It's true that women are able to move more acceptably through the spectrum but only because they've worked damn hard over the years to attain that fluidity! And I mean they worked at it! They fought and bled for it and sometimes died for that societal freedom! Who are we to demand such equality without making an equivalent effort? It's far easier to simply sit back and grumble about inequality than to stand up in public and do something about it.

EDIT - Although this satirical video clip is about women, it could just as easily been turned around and used against men in this case!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjxY9rZwNGU

Tina B said - "Well I am no doctor, I don't even play one on TV"

Haha, this cracked me up dear!

Personally I crossdress as an act of self-expression. It's a way of releasing who I am inside, at least to a degree. I'm not a guy trying to emulate a GG - I'm me, expressing myself without restriction and restraint. As the person inside is predominantly female in nature, that means that my self-expression is predominantly female, even though I have a predominantly male physical form (for now at least). Sometimes I have to restrain myself and wear dull clothing that for want of a better term I'll call "male". Most of the time I wear casual "female" clothing, tee shirts, jeans, skirts, hoodies, boots, shoulder bag, a few touches of jewellery; every day girl-next-door stuff. Sometimes I'll be more feminine and wear a dress. It depends on where I am, where I'm going, what I'm doing and how I feel. I won't lie, sometimes it's difficult to express myself the way I want to and I'll bow to (usually imaginary) peer pressure but that's something I work on a little more each day. Of course, while I'm predominantly female, I still have male aspects and so I need to allow them expression too.

Sissystephanie said - "Rarely, if ever, do I experience ridicule! Maybe it is because my atitude is that I belong in those clothes! As far as I am concerned, I do! It is nobodys business what I wear except my own."

Exactly! That's the best attitude! Damn girl, I want to buy you a drink for that

[Kate Simmons]

Men and women both CD esentially for the same reasons. The intensity of the objective is the fundamental difference.

[Stephanie Scott]

Quote:
My wife will sometimes wear my boxers or my college football jersey or my t-shirts or sweats or something, but she isn't trying to pass as male.

I am not passing as a female when I wear a nightie to bed. Ask my wife.


Quote:
her femininity is even more evident in the course of wearing these clothes.

Interesting idea. Does not work for me though. But by your logic my masculinity is enhanced when I wear a nightie to bed. Think you might have a losing argument there.

Well, it is evident that you have misunderstood much of what I am saying. Comparing a woman who wears my t-shirts and sweats to a man who wears a nightie to bed is again a straw man. "Most" women don't wear male clothes in order to "feel" masculine. I suspect most CDers DO wear female clothes in order to "feel" and "express" femininity. I just believe there is a fundamental difference there. Now of course, there are ALWAYS exceptions, and I suppose I could be wrong about this generalization, but I don't think I am.

You completely missed my point from my comment about my wife's enhanced femininity when she wears some articles of male clothing. I was trying to CONTRAST, not COMPARE the examples of men wearing women's clothes and women wearing men's clothes, which you went on to do apparently more effectively than I did! Obviously, a man's masculinity is not enhanced by wearing a nightie. That was the point!

Your comment about tomboys was interesting. We typically don't classify them as TG. I wonder why? Does this explain the apparent discrepancy in numbers? And why is it acceptable in society to be a tomboy?

[VeronicaMoonlit]

No one's brought up the fact that most FTM's start out being part of the lesbian community, where being butch is praised and butches have high status as the proctectors and defenders of the community, but becoming an FTM.....welll....let's just say that the lesbian community has only just recently started to come to terms with their trans issues.

Veronica
Rondelle (Ron) Rogers Jr.

[Ralph]

I guess I am not "average" in that I do wear women's garments basically for convenience and mostly comfort, and make no effort to present myself as anything but male.

And thank you for saying so! I was starting to feel left out of most of these conversations as I have no interest in being, or looking like, a woman. Glad to know there's another "brother" here.

ralph

[Samantha Gunning]

Personally for me as my "cd"ing is concerned I think its a mixture of circumstances that brought me to where I am now.

1) Being raised by my mother alone and not having a male role model around so in essence wanting to be as feminine as I could be.

2) Discovering how much I Enjoy Women's clothing more-so than Men's.

3) Then over the years making the progression from one article of clothing to adding more and more to the wardrobe.

4) Wanting to look as much like a Woman in those clothes as possible it just didn't look right to me to have a hairy face or legs ect... while wearing those soft and sensual items.

5) I have to agree that GG's get to wear guys clothing whenever they want and in that being as socially accepted as it is by both sex's it's not a big issue.

[Sarasometimes]

Well I am no doctor, I don't even play one on TV, but some think it's a hormonal thing that happens during pregnancy, and it only happens to the male child. if that is true, then most FTM's would most likely have a much different reason than we do. And the difference in reasons, might just be the reason for the difference in the numbers.
If you look on the net I am sure you can find someone that can explain it much better than I could.
Tina

You may be on to something since we all start out female and then during pregnancy if the hormones are right we develope into males. If we get almost barely enough of those male hormones does that cause in part the TG/CD thing. Sounds possible.

[Intertwined]

I think part of the difference with cders (males and females) is that for males we sort of need to present ourselves to look like women in order to not look very strange.

Makes me think of Marketing, when an auto maker is trying to flash up a commercial using a scantily clad woman, do they use a woman that is a size 8 or 10, NO, they use someone that is a size 0 or 2, why? because thats what we are used to, its been pounded into our heads, thats what looks sexy, do you see the point im making, the average Joe wearing a skirt, or heels, and nothing else feme only seems strange because we dont see it all the time.

I think that just wearing opposite sex clothes does not make a crossdresser.

Again, it's just my opinion, but for being called a crossdresser you are supposed to enjoy it, and to mean it.

Very good point, just because you put on a set of scrubs and a stethoscope, that does not make you a doctor. A person can crossdress without being a crossdresser.

I said we want to temporarily experience something as closely akin to being a woman that we can get. We want to "pass" because we want to be acknowledged, recognized, and treated as a female temporarily.

Or, it can be we are trying to escape from the expectations of being Masculine, ie. your not supposed to cry when the pet dies, you pick up the carcass, take it out back, dig a hole, bury it and forget about it.

While I acknowledge the tremendous comfort of skirts, I would venture to say that the accompanying high heels, waist cinchers, bras, etc etc do not qualify as being physically comfortable, even though they might be psychologically comfortable for us. The "skirt comfort" argument is a straw man.

I am 6 foot 2 inches tall with a 30 inch inseam, short legs and a long body, and I find high heels help my posture, and relieve back pain, same with back braces and corsets, although corsets are a pain in the butt to get into without help. quoting Pirates movie " you like pain? try wearing a corset "

I am surprised that nobody has mentioned their parent's influence. At a rough guess most of us were brought up in a family where there was probably a father and almost all of us had a mother.

My parents seperated before I was 2 years old, raised by my mom, grandmothers, aunts, and there women friends, as a child I swam in the estrogen ocean. The only male firgures in my life were drunks, women beaters, and one murderer.

[JoAnne Wheeler]

Because there is a DOUBLE STANDARD when it comes to us !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

JoAnne Wheeler

[Nicki B]

A person can crossdress without being a crossdresser.

If that is to be the case, I suggest you need a more descriptive term than 'crossdresser', which, of itself, only describes an action?

What would you call someone who crossdresses but isn't a crossdresser?

[Satrana]

Well, it is evident that you have misunderstood much of what I am saying.

I understood completely. It was you who introduced the strawman argument. I have never read comments where anyone suggested that the average woman wearing masculine clothes was trying to emulate a man. It is blatantly obvious they are not so why argue the case?

You then argued that since their motivation was different from some CDs, they were not crossdressers. Not true, they are still crossdressing but have different motivations.

There are many, many motivations behind MTF crossdressing not just the one you personally identify with. Are we now to shift through these many reasons to categorize who are CDs and who are not?

Women wearing masculine clothes feel more masculine. Women wearing feminine clothes feel more feminine.
The effect of clothing on gender identification exists for everyone, it is simply the degree that differs from person to person as Arianna already pointed out.

Emulation is a sub-category of crossdressing. Crossdressers are not defined by whether they emulate or not. It would be like defining who is a car driver by whether they overspeed or not.

The second problem is that you are comparing apples to oranges. Today's women are not subject to the taboo status of MTF crossdressing, they don't go into the closet, they don't ponder if they are gay or transsexual, they don't suffer from overwhelming guilt and shame, they don't stand out from other women who also habitually use masculine clothing etc. Naturally women will have a different outlook from on using clothing since their environmental framework and life experiences are very different from the typical MTF CD.

[Satrana]

What would you call someone who crossdresses but isn't a crossdresser?

A normal person?

It would be better for our community to use a different label such as tomgirl to avoid the confusion from using the behavior of crossdressing to define motivations and feelings.

[sarahNZ]

I wonder Stephanie if it has something to do with the fact that the dominent sex in the world is in fact female. the rate that males are declining it is little wonder to me that more of us are showing a feminin side.

I heard a few years back that if things go as they are now, males will go extinct, don't know how much truth there is in that but it makes you think.

[MissConstrued]

I heard a few years back that if things go as they are now, males will go extinct, don't know how much truth there is in that but it makes you think.

It makes me think, all right. Makes me wonder what kind of lunatic thinks females won't follow right after.

[battybattybats]

It makes me think, all right. Makes me wonder what kind of lunatic thinks females won't follow right after.

Oh thats easy to prevent. Firstly there's cloning, that is getting better and better, secondly there is sperm-free fertilisation where genetic material is injected into an egg and the egg triggered to combine the dna and produce an embryo.. that too is getting pretty effective and thirdly there is parthenogenesis where a mother produces their own clone daughter (as found in a number of animals including Komodo Dragons).. all of these are being researched heavilly to desperatly limit slow and eventually prevent the increasing current human-caused Mass Extinction of great swathes of species as well as for use in farm animal production and human fertility treatments.

All of those can mean male-free reproduction.

A normal person?

It would be better for our community to use a different label such as tomgirl to avoid the confusion from using the behavior of crossdressing to define motivations and feelings.

There are far too many varieties of CD (and plenty who pass from group to group over time) to do that and start tossing broad swathes of people out of the CD label. Maybe instead we should have sub-groupings?

So we'd have Tomgirl-CD's (I don't like the use of Tom in that, can't we find a common girls name?), Bi-Gender-Identity-CDs, Sexual-CDs etc

[Satrana]

There are far too many varieties of CD (and plenty who pass from group to group over time) to do that and start tossing broad swathes of people out of the CD label. Maybe instead we should have sub-groupings?

Yes we should. Proper distinctions are well overdue and would result in far better understanding. So long as we resist the temptation of produce too many distinctions which would be counterproductive as there is too much overlap and gray areas .

So we'd have Tomgirl-CD's (I don't like the use of Tom in that, can't we find a common girls name?), Bi-Gender--CDs, Sexual-CDs etc

I would keep the term tomgirl because that is a generic term that laypeople can relate to. They have a much better understanding about tomboys than they do about CDs so we should take advantage of that. They know tomboys are girls who enjoy male activities and male company but are not transsexuals and usually grow up to be heterosexual women. Within the community we can use more specific terms that laypeople will never learn about.

[valenstein]

I've always liked "Janegirl".

I think a lot of it is repression. Most guys grow up being taught to suppress emotions and to deny anything that might make them seem weak. I think if we raised boys and girls equally, there might still be as much crossdressing, but it wouldn't be the crossdressing we think of today. The human embyro is female by default and males are much more likely to have some sort of physical complication at birth; it stands to reason that the mixing of hormones and brain development might be equally as complicated.

[Nicki B]

A normal person?

It would be better for our community to use a different label such as tomgirl to avoid the confusion from using the behavior of crossdressing to define motivations and feelings.

I was replying using the language Intertwined used.. If you notice, I don't use the term CD myself, I think it has very little merit as it simply describes a behaviour, it says nothing about the person?

And I'm quite happy being called a tomboy - but that's just me...

[Intertwined]

Errr.... run that past me again.

A person can crossdress without being a crossdresser

So, your telling me (which you may be right) every little boy that dresses up in a tutu for holloween, or every little girl that dresses up like a hobo and paints whiskers on they're face is a crossdresser?

In my own little vocabularial world ( like that word?), the intent makes or breaks the definition of crossdresser, crossdressing just because its one of many possible choices for a costume party does not make you a crossdresser. Wearing clothing of the opposite gender for purely nothing but shock value does not make you a crossdresser, and actually, I think Wikipedia calls that " Gender F _ _ _ ". Now wearing clothing of the opposite gender because you enjoy it, or it feels right, or IS right, then I would say you are probably a crossdresser.

[sherib]

What a tough question to answer. Most GG's look good in male or female clothes. They can put on any type of clothes and wear it well and look good. If they want to act like a guy they can. If they or someone think they are acting silly or stupid, they can laugh it off as acting silly. A guy, standing there in women's clothes, with a wig and make up, in 4" heels, is caught. Most of us, have to find some way to contour our bodies to make womens clothes look good on us. The heels are huge, the dresses are from plus sizes Lane Bryant and if you got some kind of shape. You have a corset on. Have you every notice that Female transsexuals usually grow breads, get tattoos, bulk up by lifting weights to gain more of a male appearance. If they didn't, they would look like women in males clothes. Basically what we do in reverse. I think there are more women that like to dress a men then that do not express it. They can swap back and forth a hide when necessary.

[rickie121x]

.... Have you seen the statistics on tomboyish behavior in women?

No, but it would be interesting. What are these stats???

.... I suggest you need a more descriptive term than 'crossdresser', which, of itself, only describes an action? ....

Right on! ...that crossdressing only describes an action. Somehow that makes me feel better - about myself. Thank you for that thought.

Now that action is taken because it makes me more satisfied, and or feel better. That's pretty simple. But why those feelings happen, that is one can of worms we keep trying to see into - with a set of continually increasing complexities of notions, reasons, excuses, with mixed approaches due to sexual perspectives - oh my there is no end to all of this. And because it involves ME, it nevertheless continues to be interesting and involving.

I am not enough well informed to comment on psychological aspects of gender distinctions re crossdressing, just only the obvious stuff - and as I have read here and agree: Women can and will - with little or no negative reactions. Males can and will - with mixed reaction which reaches into our minds often producing fear and pain. Sad and true for most of us, but that's the world in which we live.

Nevertheless, we wouldn't keep doing it if it our benefits did not balance the fear and pain.