Hi all,
Vicki's point (by the way, girl, hello and pleased to meet you!

) is that, as feminine males, we have an empathic edge on other boys as far as our understanding of the feminine condition goes.
Hmmm, I'm not entirely sure that's necessarily true. I know this is previously covered ground but, as someone who's spent a lot of time with feminist friends, there's a pretty big consensus out there among women (especially feminists) that our being men presenting as women doesn't, in fact, give us any edge at all when it comes to knowing what it means to be a woman. As Celia noted, we "
can never really expect to have a direct experience of what it's like to be female." Even MtF transsexuals won't gain access to that experience--they'll experience rather what it means to be a transsexual person.
Of course, that doesn't mean I don't think we CDs may not have an edge when it comes to understanding the impact those social roles traditionally assigned to women may have on our lives. Whether or not I'm a woman "in the genes," I can most surely also know (as does Lorna) what it's like to be made to feel like a piece of meat merely because of the fact that I chose to, say, wear a certain item of clothing rather than another. Even as a CD, I must constantly remind myself that, should I ever choose one day to live as a woman (with all the social freedoms and restrictions that presupposes), I will have to fight, for example, for equal pay with my male colleagues, all else being equal (well, as things now stand, anyway).
Ultimately, I do think we have an edge as crossdressers, but it's one that allows us to understand what it means, in our own society, to be feminine, not necessarily to be a woman.
Love,
CJ