Hi all,
Again, very interesting posts.
It's odd how I find myself leaning towards agreement with everyone on this, even with those who hold views contrary to (or, at the very least, different than) mine.
Yes, our own experience is often a guide in the shaping of our views. Can it ever be otherwise? Well, yes, it
can be otherwise. The experience of others has much to teach us, as well (a good example of this is the influence all of you--Curly, Violet, Beauty, Jassmine, Sally, Terri, etc., etc.--are having on me just by sharing your views with me, with all of us).
Beauty is right; I
am a bit of a feminist. As such, I guess I
do have an agenda (the revaluation and social "reinscription" of women's experiences along with the "reading" of cultural practices in light of that experience). Still, I consider myself more a humanist than a feminist. My being a crossdresser or a transgendered person has had more of an effect on what it means to me to be human than it has on what it means to be a man or a woman.
Granted, no single human life--male
or female--is ever generalizable. But we must try anyway, musn't we? Philosophy and science, for example, are just such attempts at generalization, at finding ways to glean general principles from particular circumstances. No social program, no cultural orientation, no scientific endeavour, no "society-building project" (as we call it, here) has ever been formulated and put into practice on the basis of a single person's experience. This is even less doable than it is to have our being in society on the basis of generalities (while still attending to individuality, of course).
While it may be possible, as Beauty suggests, that my own interest in the experiences of women stems from my being a CD (and, if I dig deep enough, I'm forced to admit there's a kernel of truth to that), I don't think my feminist tendencies are the result of my being a man who likes to pretend he's a woman so much as they are the result of my listening to the experience of the women I know in my life (and of my trying to see that experience through their own eyes). I put nobody on a pedestal--man
or woman. Doing so only dehumanizes a person. We do this, for example, when we're madly in love. Anecdote: twenty years ago, Marian, a good friend--and the only woman I've ever been in love with--once told me: "It's not
me that you love, it's some ideal, some fiction, some fantasy, that you have in your own mind. You don't
know me." Of course, she was right. Of course, being madly in love, I didn't care. And, of course, many a crossdresser (and many a man, I'll add) look at women, generally, in this very manner. I don't. Not anymore. In the end, women are human beings; men are human beings. The "Venus and Mars" stuff isn't very appealing to me; it's a cheap enhancement of the putative differences between the sexes, rather than a vision of what possibly unites us.
Still, having said all this, I've moved often and long enough in the circle of women to believe that there are, indeed, differences between the sexes. These differences find their source in biology but reach their full expression in cultural matters. That Terri's daughters, for example, found dolls, and that her son found zooming cars, very much on their own without any prompting from her is but a sliver of evidence that points to this (and it doesn't mean that they cannot also enjoy more gender-neutral play or exhibit non-gender-stereotypical behaviour). Most of my friends are, and were, women. Yes, many of them are, and were, feminists. All have been role models for me. They all, without exception, possess a quiet, caring, patient strength that I don't often see in most men that are part of my life. Okay, so that would be my bad; maybe I need to develop friendships with men who exhibit these qualities as well. Point them out to me and I will.
Marian's mother, a 75-year old great-grandmother, a published writer, an environmental activist, a radical feminist, was recently released from jail. She spent many months, on different occasions, in detention for having repeatedly stood in the path of logging trucks bearing away trees cut down from a clear-cut old-growth forests. I've heard what she has to say. She's a role model to me.
My own mother, whose beauty prevented men from seeing her as just the person she was (and is), left the world of men behind. From Playboy bunny (way back when) to home tutor for the elderly and the disabled and to arts and crafts pioneer--a true teaching soul, she is--her life is an example to me. It was her own stint at the Playboy club that first got me interested in reading Gloria Steinem's "I Was A Playboy Bunny." From there, it was but a short step to delve into the works of Susan Brownmiller, Germaine Greer, Simone de Beauvoir, Shulamith Firestone, Andrea Dworkin, and other first-generation feminists. What I heard women say about their own lives in these books profoundly changed me. Their plea for the humane treatment of
all human beings, regardless of sex, remains a true inspiration to me.
My friend Marie, who works as a mental health social worker (a field, incidentally, where women outnumber men 10 to 1--something to ponder), is the most amazing "affective" multi-tasker--something I believe women are much better at than men--I've ever had the privilege of encountering. Her tremendous efforts in fixing what's so desperately gone wrong in her own family doesn't prevent her from attending to the oh! so human difficulties her clients are encountering in their own lives. I can only fantasize that I'll ever get for myself even half her strength, a strength wrapped in a grace that's anything but "unfeminine." She's a role model to me.
And so on, and so on.
In the end, although I'm very much a person-identified person, I remain a woman-identified man. Of course, it colours the way I look at the world, both generally and in my views and opinions regarding the relationship between the sexes. There's nothing wrong with that. On the one hand, males (starting with my own father) have largely been emotionally absent from my life and, on the other hand, I've simply come to prefer the ways women tend to relate to others in the world around them. Yes, I'm willing to allow that there are exceptions on either side of the gender divide as to what those ways represent. I'm not a "black and white" kind of person. Even my "ideal" type of woman (as a life partner) is somewhat peculiar: I keep an eye out for women who are somewhat androgynous in their personality, in that they don't cleave to traditional notions of femininity and they're not afraid to express character traits usually associated with masculinity. I want to partner myself with a whole person, not an image, not a fiction, not a fantasy.
Anyway, all, sorry I got so personal. I'll admit, though, that it was fully my intention to do so.
I've come to cherish the whole lot of you. Your quirks, your idiosyncrasies, your own ways of being in the world, have changed me far more than you'll ever realize. I'm deeply humbled and deeply grateful. Thanks.
Love,
CJ
I agree with you about some CD'rs putting women on a pedestal. I think sometimes CD'rs do put women on a pedastal. Some even refer to their dressing as a form of idol worship of women. I will admit that's the extreme though. I also wonder if by making women stronger it also justifies dressing to some. (The reason I bolded some is to make sure everyone knows I don't throw us all in the same bucket)
I hope I wasn't talking about you CJ like you weren't here. We've just really hashed this out before over the year or so we've been here and I feel I know where you've been coming from and I now love and respect you for who you are because of this understanding. I prefaced the last sentence with "where you've been coming from" because I only know what I've learned and not what's to come or what has changed. It may have been over sensitive, but I'd rather you know I'm doing everything in my power not to say anything that would hurt your feelings rather than just say something and not qualify it.
I'll calm down. Promise. 
I do not think that a woman has to give up or bury her feminine identity to be powerful. 