I suspect that what you refer to as "genderbender" is perhaps the term I know alternatively as "genderqueer" or (in its more militant form) "genderf*ck". A couple of my acquaintances (met a few times, good friends of several of the club members) do "tough drag" -- really crazy clothes, drag shows in beards (even if it requires pasting on glitter to imitate beards if they don't happen to have one at the time.) Our fellow forum member Buffalo Bill deliberately goes out in skirt and big beard and has no interest in getting rid of the beard: now that's a real challenge to traditional culture. I don't think he does it to shock, though, and I admire that he is "being himself".... so perhaps that technically places him as "genderqueer" but not as "genderf*ck" (which implies more using gender to make a scene.)Originally Posted by pruella
You don't sound like a genderbender, but then again maybe you are, in which case get out there and bend! At least the next TS to follow you will have an easier time[...]
Genderbenders are *rolls eyes* Crossdressers with attitude
Kinda like Punk or Goth is to normal people. It's all clothes at the end of the day
I do "gender-bend", at least in the meaning that would be used around where I live -- that is, I do go out in mixed gender mode, such as with my male face and hair (probably with little or no makeup), but wearing a skirt, or wearing a dress... and quite likely wearing forms (C or DD or even G -- while still facially a guy.) Lots of people have seen me that way -- e.g., less than a week ago, I went like that to the "premiere" shopping mall in the city towards late afternoon (fair number of people), and didn't care who noticed that the person wearing the long gray wool skirt was {apparently} male.
A year ago, I took a couple of flights between some of Canada's busiest airports -- and I traveled in long skirts, forms and blouses... on the way back, the blouse was one with "pockets" at the bust, so it was obvious that I (a male) had a "bust". The airlines and safety authority had no trouble with me being like that, and most of the people in the airports didn't pay attention, not even when I was in the male washroom. I got some smiles, and I didn't get any frowns, and some people did small courtesies for me that wouldn't normally be done for males. I wasn't attempting to "fool" anyone, and I got treated with kindness.
I often get treated with kindness when I go out as a guy with something obviously feminine, even when the most obvious "tell" is just my bra showing through my shirt (yeah, including sometimes deliberately on my part, like wearing a white bra under a thin near-white blouse so that the shape will be obvious.)
So in the sense of "genderbender" as someone who deliberately mixes male and female signals, especially female clothes without disguising my head as female, then Yup, I do that. Wearing a simple skirt to the grocery store or off on errand or to the farmer's market feels natural to me. I have an easier time with more or less solid colours: Fancier skirts, more ornate, more flowery, or puffy or multi-layered, or more eye-catching... those are a lot harder for me to wear as a guy (but I would wear my plain black pencil skirt as a guy.) There is a mental filter somewhere in me, that something like a jeans skirt is just a skirt, that a guy like me can wear one and not mean anything by it (other than that he is willing to challenge convention a little), but that some skirt designs are decidedly "female" skirt designs, things that I could wear if I am completely Dressed, but not when I am "a guy". Sometimes I challenge myself by wearing something a bit outside my comfort range (a tactic that worked wonderfully for me for tights under my work or public clothes, that got me well past the idea that all I could wear was plain black or plain brown "which could be mistaken for socks")
If I am not wearing a tight sweater, wearing my DD
forms "as a guy" doesn't make me feel out of place... if anyone notices them, that's fine with me because it feels like the augmented shape is pretty much the shape that I should have, and that what people see there is more the "real me" than if I don't have the forms. When I'm out in public (not at work), even apparently dressed as a guy, a DD to G bust on me is somehow a truth rather than a lie or a fakery... that shape is part of me -- maybe not something I "flaunt" as a guy, but something like, "Heck, let 'em notice, it's just me and they might as well get used to it."
Thus, I differ from a lot of cross-dressers in that I do not train to seem to be as much of a woman as can be acted: having someone know that I am (more or less) a male is not a problem to me, at least not when I am in that mood -- though I'm sure not about to lose sleep over the possibility that I might have somehow convinced someone that the person they saw was female. I don't mind being thought to be female-- but at the same time, I am not ashamed that someone might know full well that I am (apparently) male and see me in female clothes with an (apparent) bust. Darn right that "he" wears womens' clothes.
And I've met so many people that think I look good in women's clothes, and whom look forward to seeing what I'll wear next. How could I disappoint my fans?
