MiniRock, to get into the parts I didn't address in my earlier post, what is the real reason behind the CD taboo? Here's a hint: Why are some people so vehemently opposed to "bathroom bills" that would permit transgender people born genetically male to use women's restrooms? It's granting them a privilege they didn't have before, that some people don't want them to have.
I don't entirely dismiss what you said about the possible sexual connotations of crossdressing in public. Mind you, as Micki_Finn implied, most of us who do go out crossdressed are not necessarily "masturbating in public" (to use my own words), and I don't suppose most people think of it that way either. I can only agree that anything "out of the ordinary" in the field of sex and gender can be disturbing to some people in a vague and general way they can't put their finger on, including those who are homophobic or have similar prejudices. There can be other reasons too, such as when women object to men competing with them on their own territory of "beauty." Women can be just as territorial as men are when they perceive the opposite sex as "invading their territory."
However, the real reason for the taboo should be obvious. Men who crossdress have been "looked down on" and ridiculed by many because being "feminine" in perceived as being physically weak or pretending to physical weakness, and thus abandoning their male duty to be tough, strong, and brave: to do the physically hard things in life without complaining, and to be protective of others--especially women and children--when necessary.
Paradoxically, this obvious fact is often obscured by people irrationally claiming the opposite: that men who crossdress are despised for allegedly abandoning some supposed "male privilege," a piece of ideological duckspeak that a number of sheeple today have been brainwashed into believing. And I think that's worth taking the time to dismiss.
That notion makes no sense to begin with. By and large, nobody despises anyone for "giving up a privilege" to which they would otherwise be entitled. If a CEO chose to give up his annual bonus and use the money instead to prevent layoffs at his company, he would be respected, not jeered at, for doing so. Sometimes people may be laughed at for being "silly" enough to pass up an opportunity, but they are not "hated" for doing so.
Ironically, that notion is the reverse of the truth. It is at least more accurate to say that men who crossdress have historically been condemned for daring to be "uppity," for having the effrontery to assume female privilege to which they are not entitled by reason of their sex.
Of course it's true that both sexes have always had their assigned "gender roles," in which some things were demanded of women, and conversely prohibited to women, while the reverse was true for men. But in physical terms women have always been the "protected sex." By and large women have enjoyed the privilege of protection and exemption, from fighting in wars to doing the vast majority of the toughest and most dangerous jobs, as men still do today. For women these are merely an "option." Countless examples could be cited to prove this point. Boys are taught "not to hit a girl." Girls are not taught "not to hit a boy." It's men's job to protect women, not the other way round--even if not all men do it. And when the Titanic went down, it certainly wasn't "men and children first." Men, more than women, are treated as the "disposable sex." Women are excused other things too, such as the "emotional freedom" phili mentioned, that men don't have so much.
As far as this is relevant to clothing, if memory serves me it was that great rebel feminist Camille Paglia who wrote an inspired essay about "male" versus "female" clothing. She pointed out that the clothes women tend to wear, compared with men's, are those of a privileged class. They could be compared with clothes worn by rich merchants and other aristocrats centuries ago, silks and satins and colorful garments, when there were actually "sumptuary laws" dictating that only the wealthy were permitted to wear such clothes--partly to prevent the "lower classes" from pretending to be "above themselves." They were delicate clothes advertising the fact that their privileged wearers never had to soil their hands with rough work or risk tearing their clothing, since they were a "protected" class. And these were fabrics that needed caring for--but rich people naturally had servants to do all that for them.
It all reminds me of Allan Sherman's celebrated song "You Went the Wrong Way, Old King Louie," about Louis XVI, who famously "lost his head" in the French Revolution:
To you, King Louie, we say "Phooey"!
You disappointed all of France.
But then what else could we expect from a king
In silk stockings and pink satin pants?
Louis XVI was a far cry from the kings of old. clanking around in armor and leading their armies on horseback to battle and victory for their nation. One classic biographer of Napoleon wrote, with his "apologies to feminists" (back in 1958!), that one factor precipitating the French Revolution was people's perception that the nation had become "too feminized" and needed stiffening up. Silk stockings need protecting from damage. Just like nylons and lace.
Meanwhile it was the peasant class who did all the hard physical labor in service to their "betters"--the "sans-culottes" and their peers in other countries--and wore rough, hard-wearing, homespun "utility" garments, designed chiefly to protect the wearer. They were "drab" as well. None of those bright colors the rich could afford from expensive dyes, or the fine lace work that cost money for the intricate labor to produce it. Peasant attire could be compared to the utilitarianism of men's work clothing today, compared with women's.
Meanwhile, swirling elaborate dresses are the clothes of a privileged class. Even today, notice that men who wear "robes" (note that "robe" is the French word for a "dress") are "dignitaries" we're expected to look up to: judges, high church officials, the mayors of some English towns.
However, it's still clearer to see the issue in terms of responsibilities and duties placed on each sex, rather than "privileges" granted to them. Rightly or wrongly, men who crossdress have been seen as "feminine," therefore "weak," therefore "shirking men's duties," "not pulling their weight," as if they were "cowards." They could be compared to the men in Britain during World War I who, if seen out of military uniform in public, were presented with a "white feather" by women as a sign of supposed "cowardice" for not enlisting. In the end those invalided out of the forces due to honorable wounds were awarded badges to escape this kind of harassment.
I have a point in posting this, because things have causes.. They can't just be put down to "prejudice," as if "prejudice" is purely arbitrary and has no cause. It invariably does. Why is there "homophobia"? Despite never bothering to study "gay literature" to see what they believed, I once came up with about eight different reasons, some probable, some at least possible. Near the top of the list was precisely the same issue: that those gay men who are "effeminate" are the "visible" ones, the so-called "limp-wristed" type (a telling expression!) who have been ridiculed or hated for precisely the same reason as male crossdressers are: for "abandoning the masculine duty of toughness." The fact that plenty of gay men are downright macho escaped public notice, so "gayness" became "weakness" in the public mind.
In more primitive times, exclusively gay men must have had the double whammy of not mating with women to produce children, and not being as motivated to help the tribe by working as hard to support their own wives and children as a husband and father would. They weren't "doing their duty" in pronatalist times when it was important to keep the tribe's population up in the face of disease and starvation and territorial competition from other tribes. Whether these and other imperatives are embedded in our DNA or simply preserved in "cultural memory," they're still with us today.
I'll be brutally blunt. We're only "different" and "more tolerant" today, in our advanced industrial and postindustrial society that many of us are proud to call "Western" (despite the civilized contributions of the Japanese and others) because the work chiefly of men, by far the larger contributors to advances in science and technology, has brought us a physical and societal environment far safer and more secure--for women in particular--than has ever been known before in human history. Yes, we all know that has brought new risks in itself: pollution, claims of global warming--and especially of overpopulation, threatening to exhaust our planet's resources. But in the meantime, conditions have changed. We don't need to breed like rabbits any more. On the contrary, in the safe, healthy environment of our advanced society, nearly all children survive, and we don't need too many of them. So who cares if gay people don't breed? We should be grateful because they're actually helping with our problem of overpopulation.
Far more relevant, in a more secure society with more food and other necessities to go around, there is less competition, and the threat of major war--among civilized nations at least--is far more remote than it was even a lifetime ago. Threats and disasters of all kinds are taken care of with the help of mechanical and technological power, which is men's gift of strength to women, empowering women to do everything from driving a car or using a computer just as well as a man could. As far as women have been given some ability to protect themselves, a modern weapon like a can of Mace is a male invention, while even in medieval times a dagger such as a woman might carry would be forged by a (male) blacksmith. More to the point, we live today in a society which, though hardly free of crime, is mostly safe for women, and men as well, to go out in public unarmed, protected by a police force staffed in America by 86 percent men, and only 14 percent women. This is a far cry from times only a couple of centuries ago--less in parts of some countries we call "civilized" today--when it was not safe for women to travel without a (male) escort, and even men preferred traveling in groups for their own protection.
What's more, the beneficial and less stressful conditions we live in today permit us to be "kinder and gentler" to one another than most humans were in history.
One result of all this is that our own ("Western") society today does not perceive the same need for men to be as "tough" as it once did. Masculine strength and protection still operates, transformed yet more powerful than ever, but it's concealed from public view where too many people don't observe it--and don't always see the need for it. That is not a good thing, since men are not as appreciated today as they deserve to be, but it does operate in favor of men who are "more feminine" and not denigrated so much on that account.
The reason I'm pointing this out is that we live in a little "bubble" today that is nothing like the way our ancestors lived for the greater part of history and prehistory. Some people imagine we're different because of some magical property called "cultural change" that somehow made us arbitrarily "more tolerant" of things like crossdressing, among others. As if a "culture" could be whatever some people wanted it to be, simply by waving a magic wand. Conversely, "prejudices" of the past are seen by some as equally arbitrary, as if they had no cause and were therefore "unjustified." We forget what conditions humans lived in in the past, and can't imagine them because we never experienced them ourselves. There are reasons why these things happen--and why they change--and they're rooted in our biological, physical and ecological environment.