Does anyone else find it amusing that a non-CD male who stays home with the children, does the lion's share of the housework, goes grocery shopping, cries while watching old movies, prefers to let his wife drive when they go places, and doesn't hog the remote is not "crossing gender expression lines;" but another guy who is in every other way a stereotypical male, yet likes to put on a dress now and then to get off, is considered a gender rebel.
I'm not sure that challenging some traditional male role models or being considerate of others necessarily crossing a gender line.Originally Posted by Sophie86
Does anyone else find it amusing that a non-CD male who stays home with the children, does the lion's share of the housework, goes grocery shopping, cries while watching old movies, prefers to let his wife drive when they go places, and doesn't hog the remote is not "crossing gender expression lines;" but another guy who is in every other way a stereotypical male, yet likes to put on a dress now and then to get off, is considered a gender rebel.
Neither am I. That's the nature of norms, though. It's in virtually everyone's experience that participating in some things results in people viewing your masculinity differently and not so when participating in others. I'll say this, though: Just about everyone on the planet is *actutely* aware, to the minutest detail, of behaviors that would trigger the question.
Lea
When it comes to gender, do you consider external presentation more important than internal modes of thinking?
Do we really need to go around in this circle again, Sophie? Is a male who cares for children, lets someone else drive and cries at certain films really expressing feminine charactersitics. Or is he simply a good parent, who hates traffic and has a soft heart? Perhaps they are, if you assume all of those things are inherently feminine. But let me remind you that the OP wasn't whether men who defy stereotypes are TG, it was whether men who CD are necessarily TG. Your premise might make for another interesting thread.
I wasn't going to add any more to this discussion, but the last few contributions have brought to the forefront a thought that I had not mentioned previously. There are men who reflect far more of what society deems to be feminine, in their everyday life, than do most men. However, regardless of this fact, they consider themselves to be male, and nobody would challenge them as being transgendered. Their interests are primarily feminine in nature, they often engage in feminine style occupations, they do not suppress the expression of their emotions, and they often show a disdain for many of the more stereotypical male activities such as sports, home repairs, cars and so on. Some idiots may call them names, or poke fun at them, but they are rarely thought of as being transgendered.
The only form of expression that seems to rate that nomenclature, in the minds of many, is the wearing of clothing and the adoption of a few other aspects of appearance that society considers to be applicable to the female. However, appearance is such a minor part of our overall persona, and external rather than internal, that it is ludicrous to use it as the sole determinant of an individual's entire gender identity. There are a myriad of reasons to crossdress and a myriad of benefits, both psychological and physiological that may result. And yes, some of them may have an impact on identity in one way or another, but there is no hard and fast rule that says that this must be so in every individual case.
Gender identity is defined by WPATH as being "A person’s intrinsic sense of being male,...female...etc." How we may express certain elements of our personality and so on does not necessarily impact upon that basic intrinsic sense, especially if it is a relatively minor aspect. I believe that transgender can be a very useful term to describe and categorize certain types of individual. However, to fit into that category, there has to be something in one's intrinsic sense that they are not solely a man but also a woman or something in between. They have to feel that they become a woman, or are a woman depending upon the impact of their gender role/expression. Intrinsic means "belonging to a thing by its very nature". It is not sufficient to simply appear to others like a woman. You have to be a woman (temporarily, partially or completely), and want to project that to others.
In my case, I have no desire for anyone to think that I am a woman, I am not attempting to fool anyone, and any futile attempts I may make to appear passable are to satisfy my own artistic desires, not to become a woman. Those who insist that all crossdressers must be TG are basing it on external appearances and not the individual's intrinsic sense of who they are, which nobody but that individual really knows.
After reading through this entire thread, I cannot understand why some of those who feel they are transgendered, have convinced themselves that everyone who crossdresses must be as well. Perhaps Asche has hit the nail on the head by the following quote a while back
Veronica"... because the only socially acceptable way to dress in women-only clothing or to take on any other characteristic that society deems "feminine" is to be a woman, men who aren't social refuseniks like me will tend to frame it as in some sense being a woman, and feel they have to become a woman (if only in their imagination) in order to allow themselves to do it.....
What I mainly wish for is that people would simply keep an open mind. Just because it looks to you like a man wants to be a woman (or be taken for one), or like a boy wants to be a girl, doesn't necessarily mean that that is what is going on. Sometimes a pretty dress is just a pretty dress."
yeah I'd be concerned if I was his wife. 'is my husband gay?'Does anyone else find it amusing that a non-CD male who stays home with the children, does the lion's share of the housework, goes grocery shopping, cries while watching old movies, prefers to let his wife drive when they go places, and doesn't hog the remote is not "crossing gender expression lines;" but another guy who is in every other way a stereotypical male, yet likes to put on a dress now and then to get off, is considered a gender rebel.
I preferred to let my wife drive, see what happened!
That was an 'and' in my list, not an 'or'.
You're young though. You probably don't remember the days when chores had gender.
You mean like when a batman ironed a general's uniform, prepared his breakfast and so on?
Or were you thinking of when menservants dressed their "master", tidied his room and so on?
Both of these things happened commonly during my lietime and no-one would have accused those people of doing "women's chores"
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Galileo said "You cannot teach a man anything" and they accuse ME of being sexist
Never ascribe to malice that which can be easily explained by sheer stupidity
sophie you are right...chores used to have gender...not all chores as rianna points out, but many were stereotypically feminine...
but today chores really don't have gender...its not a cross gender thing for a guy to be mr mom anymore..its just not..
you are mixing up gender roles and expression of gender... churning the butter may have been women's work, but she didn't do it to express her womanhood...that was done the same way as today..often by dressing in a typical way that other women did..
[SIZE="2"]The quoted text describes me very well. I am living proof that you can be a crossdresser, but not be transgendered. I would not insult TG’s by saying I’m transgendered – I’m just an ordinary CD (or TV, to be more accurate), since it is more about dressing and less about gender. Perhaps the term “trans-dressing” would be better, since “cross-gender” also does not describe what I do, or how I feel. I am compelled to dress, but I identify as a male. For me, there is no confusion about it – I’m not female, I’m never going to be female, and, if there was “a pill,” or a “genie with three wishes,” or a way to go back and start all over again, I would still wish to be a male, albeit an effeminate male who dresses in female clothing. It’s all about the DRESSING, so please refer to me as a crossdresser, OK? Better still, just call me Freddy…
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I'm talking about the house where I grew up. We didn't have menservants. We had Mom, and she had my four sisters to help her with chores when she needed help, but I was not expected to wash dishes, clean house, or even make my own bed. I had my chores--feeding the dogs and taking out the garbage--and when I was 12, I started going to work with my dad, learning a trade in construction. My dad never changed a diaper, never made the bed, never washed dishes, nor did anything that looked like "woman's work."
^ Sophie, my father didn't either. He didn't have to because my mom was home. But my husband did, and my sons do. They have to because they are single .. they really do their own cooking, laundry, clean their own bathrooms, in fact one of my sons is well on his way to becoming an excellent cook! And I can't see them become couch potatoes when they get married to women who also have jobs. Times have changed.
Reine
thats cause men cant handle REAL work! : P
That may have been the case in your household, but I would no more make a universal case out of what happened in my household when I was growing up than you should from yours. For contrast - all the children in my family regardless of natal sex were expected to do the housework and cook meals when appropriate. The school I went to in the 60s and early 70s was regarded across Europe as being a model of excellence, but there the girls did metalwork alongside the boys and the boys did cookery and sewing alongside the girls.
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This above all: To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any
Galileo said "You cannot teach a man anything" and they accuse ME of being sexist
Never ascribe to malice that which can be easily explained by sheer stupidity
There are always exceptions to any generality. The fact, which any history book will reveal, is that for most of the twentieth century, (up until close to 1970), in western society, mom stayed home and dad was the income earner. Exceptions existed, of course, such as war time, death of a spouse, illness and so on, but in my childhood, the 1940's through to late 1950's, it was not expected that I would do any housework. I was taught how to do all the household repairs, painting, gardening and so on, and the burden of much of that fell on me when my father became ill and my older siblings had left home. At school, boys were given shop classes, while girls were given home economics classes. There was no exception to this.
The gender roles may not exist today, to the same extent as they did back then, but they still exist. Much of it has to do with the social graces, but attempts are being made to break down those as well. I am referring here to the man paying the expenses of the date, holding doors for the lady, proposing, walking on the outside, pulling out the chair at the table etc. etc. All of this blurring of the gender lines has in fact led to the separation of gender lines in other more subtle ways. Women's clothing has become much more provocative than it was in years gone by which can be interpreted as a way of emphasizing their womanhood as much as the changing of moral values. Men in prior times did not have to concern themselves as much with their manhood as we find today, because it was defined by their role in life. We now find more men trying to prove their machismo by their attitudes and leisure activities than ever before. Six pack abs and sexual prowess were matters that nobody cared about sixty years ago, but tune into any sitcom today, and they define the male role model. Jim Anderson has gone the way of the dodo.
But the basic argument here is that gender roles do exist, and gender identification is much more than simply what we happen to wear. In fact the blurring of the gender line has happened to a greater extent in appearance than in other areas. Dressing in women's clothing is not in itself any indication of being transgendered.
Veronica
This comment sounds to me to be saying that it is possible to be transgender without any particular intent to "cross a gender boundary." One's actual intent doesn't matter, only what other people infer from one's behavior.
As I see it, the terms "transgender" and "crossdressing" seem to make sense when you're only thinking about crossdressers as society is used to thinking about them -- men who spend some of their free time dressing up "as women", using female names, calling each other "girls," and generally acting out their idea of what being female means.
They make less sense and are less useful when dealing with men/boys who don't fit that picture of "crossdressing," but may do some things or act in some ways that we think of as exclusive to women/girls.
But I see a lot of people at CD.com and elsewhere insisting on shoving people into one box or another -- if you're not "cisgender" enough, then it's into the "transgender" box with you. They're like the little boy I ran into on a train about 40 years ago who looked at my (relatively!) long hair and asked "are you a hippy?" And then announced, heedless of anything I'd said, "you're a hippy!" and walked off, happy that he'd found a box to put me in.
It reminds me of the reports that crop up every now and then in the press of little boys who like to wear dresses or play with dolls. Even when they announce to the adults "I'm a boy!", as if they must be stupid not to have figured it out without asking, people still assume that they want to be a girl, or are at least confused as to the difference between boys and girls.
hhhmm? i probably would have said the same thing. It seemed rather obvious to me for a very long time that I was a boy (ie. male) girls don't have the dangler and there it was! Perhaps the better question from the adults would be "if you could choose to be a boy or a girl, which would it be?" I'm not even sure what i would have answered to this question looking back I can say with some confidence that I was not dysphoric as a child. Yeah, I liked to get in to my moms and sisters clothes and I loved it when my sisters dressed me up but its not like being a boy was horrible for me. Being a "man" was awful though.
Gawd i hope your joking!thats cause men cant handle REAL work!
Actually it is simplistic and this discussion is complicated by case by case situations.But I see a lot of people at CD.com and elsewhere insisting on shoving people into one box or another -- if you're not "cisgender" enough, then it's into the "transgender" box with you.
Society has said as a whole "We dont really understand why you are different, we just know that you are different"Transgender (pronounced /trænzˈdʒɛndər/) is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles.
Transgender is the state of one's "gender identity" (self-identification as woman, man, neither or both) not matching one's "assigned sex" (identification by others as male, female or intersex based on physical/genetic sex).[1] "Transgender" does not imply any specific form of sexual orientation; transgender people may identify as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, or asexual; some may consider conventional sexual orientation labels inadequate or inapplicable to them. The precise definition for transgender remains in flux, but includes:
- "Of, relating to, or designating a person whose identity does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male or female gender roles, but combines or moves between these."[2]
- "People who were assigned a sex, usually at birth and based on their genitals, but who feel that this is a false or incomplete description of themselves."[3]
- "Non-identification with, or non-presentation as, the sex (and assumed gender) one was assigned at birth."[4]
A transgender individual may have characteristics that are normally associated with a particular gender, identify elsewhere on the traditional gender continuum, or exist outside of it as "other", "agender", "Genderqueer", or "third gender". Transgender people may also identify as bigender, or along several places on either the traditional transgender continuum, or the more encompassing continuums which have been developed in response to the significantly more detailed studies done in recent years.
In order to help describe those of us who are different, the term Transgender was adopted to help understand the gender fluctuation.
So by definition: if you cross any gender role or expectancy in any degree you are considered to be Transgender by those who wish to understand their peers better.
Dont confuse them by taking away a word that gives them further insight to your individuality
-Donni-
^ Ah, but Donni, the CDs in this thread who say they are not transgender will say they feel no ambiguity with their gender identity as it relates to their birth sex. Hence the issue.
We all can only experience things from our own perspective. For example, since I do not live in my best friend's skin, how can I know without a doubt how she feels about some things? I can only imagine how she might feel by comparing how I feel when faced with the same situation.
I propose that a man who CDs knows no other way of being a male, and therefore he imagines that he feels the same way about his gender identity as any male who does not CD. But, if he were to temporarily inhabit the non-CD's mind and body, he might discover a total revulsion for wearing anything that is feminine. Do both these men have the same male-identity?
Just food for thought.
Last edited by ReineD; 11-10-2011 at 11:51 PM. Reason: ambiguity, not disambiguation :p
Reine
Well, assuming you consider me to be CDing (some would say yes, some would say no), I would say that it's not true for me.
My "gender identity," to the extent that I can make any sense of the term, consists in (a) realizing that I have a male body and (b) having gone through the usual training program in "being a man." (The trainers can't be blamed for how poorly it took
However, I can see that "being a man" means a lot more to most men, and I know that they feel that there's this thing called "masculinity" which they're always trying to find or worry about losing, which I assume this is somehow connected with gender identity. And based on their reaction to being contaminated with anything "feminine," I think they'd rather die than become female. So I figure, yes, they have a different sense of "gender identity" from me.
Last edited by Asche; 11-10-2011 at 06:00 PM.
Interesting thread....not chiming in because I don't think there is much I can add. Very enlightening reading though...
I guess for me, the gender expression is an important part of the equation and has been that way for as long as I can recall, way before puberty ever set in for sure. I guess that would put me in the transgendered camp.
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There is more than one way to be a man, but only one categorical way to be a cisman. Men who dress like Strawberry Shortcake for a hobby are too sweet to be cismen. They have no manly peers who don't crossdress and who self-identify with them. Their only potential peers are other men who crossdress. So, will the real cismen please stand up? If you have to smooth out your skirt when you leave your chair then you should definitely sit back down.
Transgender people come in different stripes but they all have stripes. They range from multiple types of transmen to multiple types of transwomen. Being transgender is about being something and not being something else. The something else that transgender people are not is cismasculine cismales or cisfeminine cisfemales. All other grades of sex and gender combination that don't involve these four attributes are possible. Some transmen were born with female genitals. Some transmen were born with male genitals, like to wear prom dresses, and give long boring speeches about how trivial their dresses are compared to the significant dresses worn by real women. It's still possible to be a transman in this sense (using the last word loosely).
Last edited by Pink Person; 11-11-2011 at 01:30 AM.
This framework allows the crossdressing transmen who were born with certain male parts to keep their transmanhood that is a close approximation of cismanhood, but is not equivalent to it. It also allows the transsexual transmen who were born with certain female parts to keep their special category that is also a close approximation of cismanhood, but isn't equivalent to it. The fact that the (relatively) opposite sexes can occupy similar (but not the same) positions in the transgender range gives another dimension of meaning to the word transgender that isn't but should be more widely acknowledged.
Last edited by ReineD; 11-11-2011 at 10:52 AM. Reason: I removed the drug reference post you mention, so am editing out your reference to it.
And out of the mouth of madness spews forth the truth.The fact that the opposite sexes can occupy similar positions in the transgender range gives another dimension of meaning to the word transgender that isn't but should be more widely acknowledged.
One does not have to feel Transgender to be Transgender. Transgender is a descriptive of both who we feel we are but also can be a descriptive based on what we do. Wearing clothes of the opposite sex is crossing a gender role.^ Ah, but Donni, the CDs in this thread who say they are not transgender will say they feel no ambiguity with their gender identity as it relates to their birth sex. Hence the issue.
We all can only experience things from our own perspective. For example, since I do not live in my best friend's skin, how can I know without a doubt how she feels about some things? I can only imagine how she might feel by comparing how I feel when faced with the same situation.
I propose that a man who CDs knows no other way of being a male, and therefore he imagines that he feels the same way about his gender identity as any male who does not CD. But, if he were to temporarily inhabit the non-CD's mind and body, he might discover a total revulsion for wearing anything that is feminine. Do both these men have the same male-identity?
If that said CD who does not think he is TG was wearing a dress that was manufactured and sold in the stores exclusively as a mans dress (im not talking about kilts) then i could see where they would argue the fact. But actively knowing that you are wearing a article of clothing that was designed for women IS crossing a gender variance. By exercising that personal style they are considered to be Transgender by definition. No matter how they feel about it
Good morning,
-Donni-
Last edited by ReineD; 11-11-2011 at 10:54 AM. Reason: I removed the drug reference post you quoted, so am editing out your comments addressing it.
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