So I was driving home from work today thinking about dressing and what I was going to wear when I got back...and I was pondering why crossdressing isn't excepted in society...you know aside from the obvious reasons that we all talk about. The thought occurred to me that other activities which might have a stigma attached to them have either become acceptable or are sometimes acceptable and sometimes are not acceptable but are ultimately are an accepted part of our society. For instance gambling or the idea of society shaming women while at the same time celebrating the same behavior on television and so on. When I realized what many of these activities have in common which crossdressing doesn't seem to have.
These activities which were either once unacceptable and now are or vacillate between acceptability and unacceptability can be monetized in some fashion or another. Someone profits from them. With gambling for example it's obvious where profit comes in, the house always wins and all that. The media profits from displaying, either in TV shows or in print, the activities of the rich and famous, sexual and otherwise.
When it comes to crossdressing however it would seem to me that no one truly profits in a monetary way. Yes, we might buy clothes and make up and shoes and other feminine items but if all male to female crossdressing were to stop tomorrow and not ever crossdress again (God forbid)...the amount of money that we put in to the companies would be negligible in the grand scheme of the profits of the companies whose products we buy.
It seems to me that society at large has no reason, to embrace the concept of men wearing women's clothing.
However there is another side to that which I can see...the lack of influence of money from the outside means that crossdressing is a pure form of expression. While the outside world might not accept crossdressing fully at this point in time there is at least a tacit understanding that crossdressing is something that is out there but to the large majority of people it is a bit of an unknown since most people only have what they see in the media to have a connection to it. For example portrayals of crossdressing played for comedy purposes like the TV shows M*A*S*H and Bosom Buddies just as two examples while there are numerous others those two are what popped in my head while writing this. Usually crossdressing is shown to be something that is other and that "regular" or "manly" men can't possibly get caught up in "that kind of thing"...like the bar room scene in Crocodile Dundee where the titular Croc is shown grabbing the testicles of a man in women's clothing. The whole scene is played for laughs but it's really dark and disturbing when you look at the reality of such things. The point is that crossdressing (and being transgender...I'm not even going to go down the rabbit hole that is the utter lack of Female to Male transgender characters in media played for comedy or otherwise. The closest that media seems to be able to come is butch lesbians but they aren't the same thing at all even if media conflates them just like it conflates crossdressing men with gay men and male to female transgendered people. All of this is another discussion entirely but part of the reason I bring it up is that I find these things insulting not just as a fellow human being but as a writer as well...to ignore these kinds of people, use them as cheap jokes, or just pretend they don't exist, is to me beyond ignorant. These groups all deserve to have stories told about them in a serious manner.) is something that is so foreign to "normal" males and "normal" society that it could only be used for humor. The only way that many people understand crossdressing is as a joke rather than just a small part of a whole person.
Back to my point about purity of expression. The crossdressing community doesn't have the same kinds of issues that other groups do. We have a kind of freedom that other groups lack. Yes, there is shame and stigma but since we are basically seen as unprofitable we are left alone to do what we please for the most part (yes I know it is very difficult in many parts of the country for crossdressers but I'm speaking in general and maybe, it must be admitted, overly optimistic terms). There's no agenda and since there's no agenda there's no message that can be used by outside forces for their profit. This is what I mean when I talk about purity of expression. The only limits to crossdressing are imagination (and budget I suppose). The only ones to profit from crossdressing are the crossdressers who like doing it. So if crossdressing crossed (pun intended) into the mainstream in a larger way, that purity of expression could be lost in the crossing.
What do you all think?
Originally Posted by Micki_Finn
