Why are Crossdressers so shy?

[Lydia]

Hi all,

I had a thought and a question that I'd like to share with my friends on this forum. Why is it that we, i.e, crossdressers, are so inhibited from coming "out?" How is it that our acceptance, even by our loved ones, is so difficult to obtain?

Not too many years ago, there was no acceptance of homosexuality, indeed hostility was the norm. But now being a gay male is generally open, and even proudly admitted by some celebrities, e.g., Senator Barney Frank, Elton John, The Fabulous Five, and others. This is certainly not true of the crossdresser.

I do not include here the professional transvestite, like Ru Paul. Nor do I include the performer who puts on women's clothes as a joke, see: Milton Berle, Bennie Hill, or the Monty Python people. Nor the gay prostitute who dresses up to attract his special clientele. Does anyone know of a celebrity crossdresser who is "out?"

I refer to the majority of the contributors and members of this forum. Most of us rarely go above level 3 in Merinda's scale. Some of the hesitation to come out is based on appearance. We want more than mere acceptance - we want to pass. When I look at myself in the mirror or through a camera, and I observe dispassionately, I see a guy in a dress.

I don't think that we are as homogeneous a group as the gays. Our needs and compulsions range all over the map. Merinda's recent posting of levels of crossdressing certainly shows that. Perhaps this is the key to our dilemma. "Society" cannot accept us because they don't have a nice neat category to put us all into. We defy definition, from the guy who just likes to wear panties to a full-time, really feminine-looking crossdresser. My theory, unhampered by any experimental evidence, that if there were a crossdresser stereotype, we'd be much more likely to be accepted.

What do you think?

Even more important: what could we do about it?

Hugs around,

Willy

[DonnaT]

A celebrity TV that is out? Eddie Izzard

I've been out in an obviuosly fem top while in male mode. Been out with nails painted. In fact they are painted pink right now, and I am at work.

How do we get acceptance by the mainstream? Hard to say.

Rallies possibly. (note the term CD is going to be used for all TG/TV/TS hereafter)

Large gatherings of CDs across the nation meeting to peruse the shops along the streets such as Washington DC, and other large cities. Safety in numbers. No parade, so no permit needed.

Large groups of CDs joining charity events. Changing the way others see us if we are doing good. Instead of some of the negative publicity some CDs give us in the papers by doing bad.

I think CDs would be more prone to being out at such events if they are away from their homebase.

Plus we need our SOs to support our being out at such events also.

Additionally, newspapers and news teams need to be willing to report such events. For example, the group of transgendered veterans that are going to visit the Wall in DC. They've done it before, but I've not seen it in the papers or on the news. Kind of hard to make a statement when we are preaching to the choir.

[Alexandra]

What do you think?

Even more important: what could we do about it?

Why are we shy? -- I'm glad you asked. Its becausee we would be subject to public ridicule by many members of the party in power, that's why. CD's already have a tough task dealing with their SOs -- so to take on the conservative right? forget about it.

What can we do you asked? We had a GOLDEN opportunity in November 2004 to do something about it and bring in leaders favorable to our plight.

BUT GUESS WHAT???!!! Many of us (yes, that's right, this includes members of this very forum) had "other priorites" and voted in the party that includes leaders who think we're sexual deviants!

So who is to blame? We are!

Sadly, to even discuss this kind of warped thinking among ourselves invites threads like this one to drop into the dreaded Mordor section.

So its better to keep these thoughts to yourself and just pretend everything is just fine and dandy in the world as seen from the CD-F point of view!

[Lorna]

Hi Willy! Stage 6er here...

I've been dressing in public for over 6 years, and go out at leat once a week. When I do miss a weekend out it's usually due to previous engagements (bithdays, weddings, family holidays, etc)

But aside from that I am out almost every weekend, mixing it up amongst the mainstream crowd! Mainstream bars & clubs are my favorite places to go.

And on top of that, for a few months last year I was even performing standup, dressed, to a MAINSTREAM comedy crowd, Eddie Izzard style!!

Some of us out there are not so shy - and those of us who are less shy don't do it to "show off". We do it to show everyone that we CAN in fact exist in society without fear and without rejection.

[Cindy Michelle]

Willy

I think we are a very diverse group with different goals and needs. However, for those that go out en-femme, many do not want the public to accept them as men in drag, but as women. Unlike the gays, many of us do not want the attention necessary for 'acceptance'. We actually want the opposite--to blend in so no one notices.

Are we shy? Maybe. But I think our lack effort to acquire 'acceptance' goes deeper than that.

My 2-cents.
Hugs

Cindy Michelle

[Beauty]

Hi Willy,

I think it's different for groups or pockets of people and I'm sure each of the groups share reasons.

For me the bottom line is safety. When I go out men like to approach me and well, that's just not good. If I dress with a higher skirt, they stay away more than if I dress down. I don't like going out like that however because I don't want to emulate women that way. I've read about the violence and anger men have when they find out someone they are attracted to is not a guy. So that keeps me at home. There was even a post from someone the other day about how when they went ou a man followed her on to a train and she had to rush to get out.

So I'm shy about going out because of safety reasons. When I can blend in, I will go out a lot more. Maybe things will change and I'll get out more one day.

Beauty

[Lydia]

Hi Beauty,

Your comment is right on the mark. Some of us (I consider fortunate ones) can go out and are skilled and constructed in a way that allows them to pass easily. Most of us are not, so we still look like the "guy in a dress." Will it ever come to the condition where the "guy in a dress" will be accepted and not ridiculed?

Love,

Willy

[Cathy L. Anderson]

You ask a good question. I have thought about it and have what might be a surprising reply.

Clearly there must be many famous people who have issues with crossdressing.

But perhaps their example is precisely that they choose to keep it private.

Maybe that is the message. These people--who are successful, which means they are doing *something* right--might have found that it is better to work out whatever psychological issues crossdressing involves privately.

[Beauty]

Hi Willy,

I can't say I consider myself fortunate for passing actually. It's the fact that I can pass that's the problem.

I'm not sure how soon a man in a dress will be accepted, but I imagine we're one loved celebrity or one story that captures the world's heart and changes the minds of people from it. I think that's because it's just not normal, so people will need a story to lock on to accept it.

Kids however are a different story. They'll make fun of anything that doesn't look like they think it should. For them there's no cure for making fun at anything. It's just being a kid. I only brought that up for levity sake.

I hope one day there will be acceptance of the guy in the dress. Those who ridicule will still be there, but it will be looked upon as a negative as it is now for those who are gay. It's not cool anymore or "ok" to say these things in more and more places.

Beauty

[CJ]

Hi all,

Willy,

You asked, will it ever come to the condition where the "guy in a dress" will be accepted and not ridiculed? I really don't know. Part of me wants to answer, "Sure! just give it time." But the realist in me resists.

Look at it this way: we gender-variant folks represent an ambiguous set of human beings. Gays, for example, love people of their own sex, hets love people of the opposite sex, bi's love people of either sex. There's not much about this that is unclear. People are very Aristotelian at heart when it comes to gender presentation, though. They don't like ambiguity; they don't know "where to sit" when faced with a person such as we are; they want us to be either this or that (like a gay person, say, is this, and a straight person is that). People in the gay community (and, of course, people in the straight community as well) live within well-defined sets of what you could call an "identity matrix." Not so for the transgendered; often, we fall through the cracks of an accepted "either-or" gamut of social presentations of self. This, by the way, was Marjorie Garber's thesis in her book, Vested Interests--she pointed out that what makes society uneasy about crossdressers is that we represent an ambiguous "third term" that most people who've grown up in a world where gender roles are binary, not fluid, have trouble grasping (just look at how much more accepted it is for a man to dress as a woman when he actually passes as a woman than it is for the proverbial "guy in a dress" to walk down the street, hairy legs and beard and all). I think it's this inability of people to conceive of gender as anything but either male or female that makes it difficult for them to recognize the validity of the identity of a person who's both male and female simultaneously.

In a sense, we crossdressers (and I don't include transsexuals here--transsexuals have opted for the "either-or" view of gender) are a little bit like the famous quantum physics "thought experiment" called Schrödinger's Cat, where the physicist sought to illustrate the nature of quantum indeterminacy and the role of the observer. In that experiment, a cat hidden from us in a sealed box becomes, through technical circumstances, both dead and alive at the very same time. It both is and isn't living and breathing. That is, until we open the box and peek, of course. Well, we crossdressers are an illustration of "gender indeterminacy." We may be male (which is why most people think of us in masculine terms, regardless of how hard we try to present ourselves otherwise, socially) but our souls also span the masculine-feminine gender divide in a way that doesn't sit well with most people. Not only that but, unlike Schrödinger's hapless feline, we're in a sealed box that cannot even be opened--the social assignation of gender is just too rigid. Think of it: barring unfortunate accidents, the very first words that are used to describe us are "It's a boy!" or "It's a girl!" When a doctor utters these words and, especially, when a parent hears them, it's not just genitals they're referring to but to everything that is appropriate or inappropriate social behaviour for a human being born with such genitals (these days, many parents find out the sex of their babies before birth... it allows them to paint the room either pink or blue well before the arrival of this new person in their life).

Anyway, Willy, I say all this with your question in mind. The "binary" way in which we understand the world (black/white, male/female, rich/poor, good/evil, wrong/right, pain/pleasure, ad nauseam) makes it unlikely that those of us who live "in the slash" ('/') rather than in the terms on either side of it will find it easy to gain acceptance in wider social circles. That's not to say, though, that there's no value in letting others know that there are those who, sometimes through choice but usually through their nature, "live in the slash." In this sense, any man that walks down the street in a dress and heels is also engaging in a bit of "conceptual restructuring" of society at large. And, no, people don't like to have their concepts restructured. They resist it. Why are crossdressers so shy? Because we still question whether or not this kind of confrontation with mainstream society is something we have not only the right, as human beings living amongst other human beings, to engage in but also whether or not we even have the emotional integrity an psychological strength to carry out. Maybe, with the help of a community such as this one, we can develop that integrity and strength.

Good thread, Willy. Thanks.

Love,
CJ

[Anita]

Thanks, Willy, this is a good post, and it brought out good answers.

I think you're right when you say that if there were more of a crossdresser stereotype, it would help. As little as many of us like labels, they help other people to understand better. The gender uneasiness that we evoke in other people is not easily put aside. People need little boxes that they can put experiences into, and we CDs present so many different "little boxes" that people throw up their hands, if they take the trouble to study the issue at all.

I understand why you don't include the RuPauls of the world, because as far as I can see, what she did was fun, but didn't change things one bit for the closet CD. I perform in a band as a girl guitarist, and what I do is just entertainment at this point. It won't help the bearded guy walk down the street in a dress.

However, there is one difference. When I have interviews, (and there has been at least one), I speak of crossdressing as a political and/or social issue. Mind you, it's only about 5% of the total at this point, because my main job is still to entertain. If more and more transgender bands start showing up, that will be one "stereotype" that people will listen to.

But something else has to happen for CDing to be even remotely OK, and I'm not sure what that can be. I've thought about it many times. I came out as a drag queen performer because I could see that family and friends would accept that, however reluctantly. They didn't like it, but it was a clearly defined role. And as we all know, that's hard to find in the CD community.

We may be surprised in the next ten years. With the Internet as a link, there could be a lot more transgender entertainers of all types--actors, musicians, and comics. It may take decades for it to become a daily norm, but at least there will be more outlets for CDs to be visible.

[Lydia]

Hi Anita,

Most interesting to hear about crossdressing from the viewpoint of a professional. However, there too is a range of presentation that is as broad as that of crossdressing. We start with the Milton Berle type. Here the woman is caricatured, exaggerated, and, indeed derided. The Monty Pythons when in drag are truly extreme females, but of course this has been a tradition in English theatre perhaps since Shakespeare. Dame Edna is a good example of a caricature.

At the other end of the spectrum would be men who are so well-disguised as women that they might just as well BE women. Ru Paul comes close to that level. And those legs!

But this is for public entertainment, and in private life, such actors may not have any compulsion to crossdress at all. A circus clown takes off his rubber nose at home, while a crossdresser puts on his boobs and his lipstick.

Putting on a dress, and over-acting as a female at a party is usually OK - adding the lampshade on the head. But an unassuming man with a barely visible 5-o'clock shadow, in a dress and heels will very likely be shunned and ridiculed (at the least).

I wonder how it was back in Louis XIV days, when men's clothes were at their most showy and elaborate. There were crossdressers then I think, but who would notice?

BTW, I made a video of myself the other day, all dressed, madeup and be-wigged. I decided I might pass - at a distance - in the gloom. I must admit I am one ugly old woman.

I had fun, however. So should you all.

Hugs,

Willy

[Loretta Ann]

Hi all,

In the past I have been a strong opponent of attempting to get society to accept us, and when I first read this thread I thought I will just stay out of it and let them dream. Because IMO it is something that will never happen at least in my life time.

However this thread has brought out many thoughts from different ways of looking at it that has been enlightening. There is IMO more to it than the simple black and white focus some of us seem to have on this issue. In Canada where there are laws that some of you would like to see in your country. (that some of you seem to believe would solve all your problems.) Gays and Lesbians are not accepted by every one and never will be. The belief that they are is nothing more than a fantasy.

Having said that the responses in this thread have helped to open up another issue for me that was instrumental in my journey. I had to deal with issues that were independent of society concerning my cross dressing desires. I had to deal with some of the same questions and struggles that our SOs struggle with. Am I gay? How far and where will this take me? What really is wrong with me? Why do I feel like I want to be a girl when I have the body and parts of a man? These questions signaled a message that something was not as it should be.

Do we really think that in order to get society to accept us that they will have it any easier than we did? How many years did it take us to work through these issues? And we had something pushing us from with in that forced us to deal with them, which society does not have?

Hmmm???? More food for thought.

Love Darlene.

[Alexandra]

Do we really think that in order to get society to accept us that they will have it any easier than we did?

I'm thinking a bit different these days, I think we need to FORCE society to accept us. Like when men were FORCED to accept women as their equal and allowed them to vote, like when the white men were FORCED to accept African Americans as their equal, and banish segregation, and so on . . .,

This came about because the U.S. Consituation says we're ALL equal, not just fat old white men. So lets force their hand. Make them decide this question: (the U.S. Supreme court ultimately), are we equal or not. If not, then FORCE U.S. citizens to compile a list based on a popular vote state by state:

non-equal status humans likely to be added via popular vote:

Crossdressers
Transgendered people
gays
lesbians
bisexuals
witches
muslims
arabs
mixed race married couples
mexican immigrants
and so on . . .


Once the list gets long enough, we'll have a messy civil unrest on our hands because people will finally understand old white men believe in FREEDOM, but ONLY FOR THEM, not for everybody else.


(am I in a foul mood? you betcha!)

[Beauty]

You?? Foul mood? Nooooo