Crossdresser!

[Krisi]

I was watching TV yesterday, one of the cable networks that show crime stories 24/7. They were showing a story about a young girl who had gone missing several years ago. The police suspected the girl's father but couldn't make a case against him. There was another man they suspected but they kept focusing on the father.

Ten years or so later a young woman was murdered. The person who did it cleaned up the crime scene but the police found a stray hair in the woman's hairbrush. It turned out to be a wig hair which led them somehow to a local crossdresser. He was convicted and sent to prison.

While in prison, he confessed to his cellmate that he was the one who abducted and killed the first girl ten years ago. He denied it but was convicted of the first murder anyway.

He eventually told the police he would lead them to where he buried the first girl but only if they would let him dress as a woman. The police brought him women's clothes and a wig and he took them to the grave site.

The interesting thing to me was that the show kept focusing on the fact that the killer was a cross dresser. At one point they said he was a "crossdresser and mentally ill". Apparently, he claimed to have two personalities and it was the "woman" wo did the killings.

Interesting the way other folks look at us.

[Stephanie47]

Now I'm going to have to check the television listings to see what I missed. It would have been more appropriate to characterize her as "a cross dresser who was mentally ill." Cross dressing does not equal mentally ill. The script writer or whoever was stating that phrase would have flunked "logic 101." Unfortunately, there are too many people who equate transgenderism as a choice, sinful and are determined to deny civil liberties and protection from discrimination. I hear negativity from many people.

[Beverley Sims]

I think they have seen too many Alfred Hitchcock movies.

Well really one only, "Psycho".

[Micki_Finn]

Growing up, any man who wore women’s clothes was OBVIOUSLY mentally ill or some kind of weird sex pervert. It’s pretty amazing how far we’ve come in the last 20 years.

[LilSissyStevie]

I watch those crime shows since they are the last refuge on TV that's not completely infected with political/social propaganda. But even they are not immune. Where older shows would sensationalize that a certain serial killer was CD/TG, newer ones will tend to gloss over the fact even when it is central to the killers motive. In the case you watched, if it's the same one I'm thinking of, the nut job wanted to be the girl he killed and killed her thinking he could somehow take over her life. Although I'm not aware of any studies, there does seem to be a disproportionate number of serial killers that are CD/TG. I'll leave it to others to speculate why that is, if true. Maybe the activist types can worry about that instead of worrying about CDs dressing too tarty.

[NicoleScott]

It's possible that he was a crossdresser and mentally ill.
That's not the same thing as saying he's mentally ill because he crossdresses.

[docrobbysherry]

If I had a nickle for every time I heard someone say, "----it rubs the lotion on it's skin----"!

[Jodie_Lynn]

Sounds to me like the entertainment industry found itself a new (olde) trope. "The Xdressed psycho"

I remember back in the '70's the villain was usually "the crazed Vietnam Vet" on all the cop shows.

And you just know that there are gonna be some mouth-breathing muggles who will point to this and say "See?? They're all sick! "

[audreyinalbany]

afraid that's an old story in Hollywood: demonizing crossdressers...they're almost always killers or psychopathic

[Shelly Preston]

This was similar to the film "dressed to kill" with Michael Caine in the early Eighties

This plot had a crossdressing murderer, so this is nothing new.

[IleneD]

Few things get my goat and aggravate me more than having that label "MENTALLY ILL" thrown into my crossdressing face.
Burns me up. The stereotypes, the bigotry, the lack of understanding from The World.

[Diane Taylor]

So even if this "crossdresser" was mentally ill and killed someone it would be because he was mentally ill....not because he crossdressed. Unfortunately the general public won't see it that way. How about all the murders that are committed by people who DON'T crossdress?

[LilSissyStevie]

I hardly think that Hollywood is a hotbed of transphobia. If anything, the opposite is true. Now if you're talking about clowns (coulrophobia) I believe it!

[Krisi]

I'm surprised they used the term "crossdresser" instead of "transvestite".

[Majella St Gerard]

I read a book by Ed Wood about a transvestite on death row wanting to go to the chair wearing women's clothes.

[ShyLibrarian]

So even if this "crossdresser" was mentally ill and killed someone it would be because he was mentally ill....not because he crossdressed. Unfortunately the general public won't see it that way. How about all the murders that are committed by people who DON'T crossdress?

Very good point, Diane

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Few things get my goat and aggravate me more than having that label "MENTALLY ILL" thrown into my crossdressing face.
Burns me up. The stereotypes, the bigotry, the lack of understanding from The World.

Anything outside the norm attracts similar or at least analogous obloquoy, Ilene - alcoholics, plushies, people with long hair back in the 60s, and on and on and on. It's not specific to transvestism. Recall that 50% of the population have below average IQs and then shiver at the implications of that. I do!

[Pat]

Anything outside the norm attracts similar or at least analogous obloquoy, Ilene - alcoholics, plushies, people with long hair back in the 60s, and on and on and on.

You know, if you hadn't included alcoholics, I'd have signed up for that thought.... I don't think there are many cases of Crossdressing related highway deaths.

[Alisonforme]

If I had a nickle for every time I heard someone say, "----it rubs the lotion on it's skin----"!

YAASSSS!!! . Some may think I’m being overly dramatic, but I recognize how words and video portray us in a derogatory light. I recently saw a psych paper posted here that used demeaning language and cast us as “requiring treatment “. I see that type of language as a tool of oppression. It definitely influences how people see us and why they fear/hate us.

I can’t think of many positve portrayals of CDs or trans I’ve seen or read. The World According to Garp maybe.

[OCCarly]

If he was murdering women and girls he was mentally ill. Mentally healthy people don’t commit murder for sex or thrills. I would suspect sociopathic personality disorder + dissociative identity disorder, with one female personality featured in the dissociation. Or maybe he was a pure sociopath who dressed as a woman in order to lull and lure his victims.

This is not a crossdresser—it is an entirely different diagnostic category in the DSM 5, which does have a diagnostic category for cross dressing.

Either way, we don’t deserve to be tarred with that particular brush. What we do does not harm others.

[Krisi]

The show didn't make a big deal about the crossdressing and in general I think it was fair to us. There are two important points:

1: He was caught because he was crossdressed when he murdered the second girl. He apparently used her hairbrush and left a wig hair in the brush.

2: He claimed that he had a split personality and it was the woman who committed the murders.

[CONSUELO]

This is the same sort of dramatic license used in films such as Silence of the Lambs. Remember the killer in that film would not only dress in female clothing but would use the skin of his victims also. While the film was dramatically compelling it left a bad aftertaste with its extreme license in calling up horror.

When writing a dramatic story authors will conflate all sorts of conditions to spice up the narrative without a care for what the effect might be on those who watch. We are not the only community to suffer from dramatic overkill. Remember it is fiction not reality.

[Taylor186]

[off topic]

Streamed a new Netflix series last night--Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories--and episode one deals with, in a positive accepting way, a TG actor among other things. Totally unexpected find.

[/off topic]

[GretchenM]

It is entirely possible this "crossdresser" was suffering from a dissociative identity disorder which is a mental illness. Multiple personalities can be most anything, but it is a very rare disorder. And far rarer than it used to be thought. It was, at one time, proposed that transgenderism is a dissociative personality disorder, but I haven't seen that explanation used recently anywhere. Looks like they finally decided that deserved to be buried in the cemetery where many other great ideas that turned out to be goofy are buried. But it does frost me quite a bit that they would put crossdresser and mentally ill in the same sentence. When one considers that TV is often more about entertainment rather than truth and that LGBTQ people are, to some extent, back on the black list of a sizable minority I hope the connection was more of an abuse reporter ethics to be sensational than an expression of the whole story. But that hope may be misplaced in some circles. But then Krisi did say they seemed to be fair about representing our group and I do trust her opinion on a lot of things.

[Krisi]

This wasn't a "drama" it was a documentary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadden_Clark