Okay, I'll weigh in with a GG opinion:

Logically, there should be nothing wrong with a man wearing women's clothing or cosmetics, yet it is still a taboo and shocking to many people. Perhaps much of it has to do with the fact that in our society, boys are told from birth onwards that they are not to act like girls in any way--nothing is more insulting to a boy than to be labeled a sissy (the message being that girls are weak and inferior). He is told not to cry, not to play with dolls, and that bullying is just "boys being boys", and to fight back. Okay, I'm generalizing and not everybody raises their boys this way, but it is pretty pervasive in our culture, especially in the past decades. This attitude is known to everybody--girls see boys being told to act a certain way, so they have expectations, and it becomes ingrained to expect the male to present as a male, and if he presents as a female or emulates a female, it goes against everything she's every been taught.

Maybe because men have traditionally held the power in society, they have viewed the idea that a man who would want to emulate the inferior half of the species is crazy, and implies that he is weak. I think Reine's idea that women may be programmed (subconsciously) to look for hunters and providers, not just reproductive mates, is an interesting notion. There is probably a lot going on in our attitudes that are hard-wired into our brains, and were relevant thousands of years ago, but not relevant now. Yet they still linger.

Also remember that in some societies, a woman absolutely would not be allowed to dress as a man, and it has only been in the last century that women in our country could dress in pants. My mother, who is in her 80s, told me how much she longed to wear pants as a child, and was only allowed to on certain occasions, and it was quite a point of contention growing up. So perhaps as a society we are simply evolving, and people will look back on us and wonder how it was that people were beaten up or divorced for simply wanting to wear a dress.

Mimi
Eryn's GG