A friend of mine recently gave me an issue of Transformations Magazine, a porn mag focusing on..... well that's what unsettles me. I can't figure out if it's supposed to be a magazine for Transgendered people, porn shemales, or a showcase for really ugly crossdressers.
The "woman" who publishes it is a lifelong crossdresser in his sixties. He seems hellbent and determined on blurring the line between men in women's clothing and women born male. This is a very big red flag for me given my recent and ever growing frustration with Crossdressers.
Now I'll play nice enough to use their word, and not refer to them as transvestites. Being an intersexed woman who loathes the words "hermaphrodite" and "shemale", I can fully understand a Crossdresser not wanting to be called a word that brings to mind an image of an ugly man in lipstick selling his ass for money, as I'm told by many CD's.
And I try, oh my fucking god how I try, to be non-judgmental and accepting of differences, and to a point I succeed. I accept a crossdresser's right to wear whatever the hell he likes, and do as ever he wants while dolled up, so long as no one is harmed in the process.
(For the record, my definition of "harmed" involves serious bodily injury resulting in irreversible damage or scarring or death, not offended sensibilities disgusted by a man in panties and having a puritan hissy fit.)
But in thelast few years, Crossdressers have been slowly trying to wedge themselves under the transgender umbrella and that's where I draw the line. I even hear Crossdressers claiming dressing is no more a choice for them than being gay is to a gay man or being a woman is for girls like me.
Bullshit.
Crossdressing is a fetish. It is a taboo engaged in by horny men with emasculation fantasies who get off on the sauciness of breaking a taboo of society.
Crossdressers almost universally dress only at home or at special parties. And very few of them can be bothered to do their damnedest to pass as a normal female. Most crossdressers dress slutty for the extra thrill. The feel of women's clothing on their skin gets them off.
And those clothes area goddamn choice. It's their choice, more power to them if it makes them happy, but it's still a goddamn choice. They choose to dress up. They still go to work dressed like any other man, and their biggest fear is their wife and co-workers finding out and calling them a pervert.
Crossdressers are not in any way transgendered. They still identify as men. They don't dress full-time 24/7. And dressing makes them horny.
Anyone who does dress full time and wants to be called a she isn't a Crossdresser. And therein lies the problem.
Non-Op Transsexuals are being used to blur the line between men in dresses and women with penii. Transsexuals who go the full route to surgery have a bad habit of thinking any woman who decides she doesn't need surgery to be happy isn't a real transsexual, let alone a woman.
This attitude is no better than the pseudo-feminist hate mongering against transwomen under the "women born women" dogma we fight so much of late, like in the current local (Vancouver BC Canada) case of Lu's Pharmacy. Google it.
Wannabe feminists who really don't have the first clue what real feminism means, tell trans women we don't count and never will because we weren't born women.
And then those same transwomen turn around and tell non-op transsexuals "You're not getting the operation? Well sorry but you're not really a transwoman then."
And THIS is what has given Crossdressers the foot in the door to do more damage to our fight for simple acknowledgment than any cissexual woman privilege does.
Non-op transsexuals get told they don't count by a group already being told they don't count. We tell them they're just Crossdressers. The ACTUAL crossdressers in turn then latch onto them. You're just like us they say. And we're just like you.
And that's how Crossdressers have gotten themselves underneath the transgender umbrella, making it that much harder for us women to get our equal acknowledgment. A hateful place like Lu's Pharmacy, when arguing their exclusion of transwomen for example, can just point at the men in lingerie and say "See? That's a man in a dress, now you have to prove YOU aren't just a man in a dress too. If we let YOU in, we have to let HIM in."
And this horrid repulsive magazine Transformations is the very definition of this destructive line-blurring bullshit. They have a section on "Transgender news", but fill it with articles about drag queens and men having their cocks nearly cut off in freak accidents.
The young lady who was the centrefold is very clearly a transgirl, having breasts, and very visibly undergone electrolysis, hormone replacement therapy.
But the centrefold spread was called "Boy Girl of the Month".
For every advertisement for products to help feminize skin,aid breast growth, and retard beard growth to help transwomen, there were twice as many ads for sissy slut mags, forced feminization websites and bad tranny porn. The 4 or 5 actual transwomen in the mag looked like women. The 80 or so crossdressers looked like Rocky Horror extras. Half the articles focused on crossdresser fetish clubs, and what few mentions directly there were of transgender or transsexuality were always worded to denigrate us as women and make us sound like effeminate men in drag who just went that extra step and got a boob job.
I'm a blunt and honest woman. And I respect the right of any man or woman of any configuration to do or be as they wish so long as no one is harmed.
But I fucking hate Crossdressers right now, and I want them out from under the Transgender Umbrella. And I want my sister transwomen to stop belittling non-op transwomen, and just accept your non-op sisters so that the CD's can't co-opt them to try and pass their harmless fetish off as an involuntary state of being like transsexuality.
They have a choice. We don't. Stop rejecting our non-op sisters and giving the ones who can choose free reign to make us look like men in dresses. It's hard enough getting accepted by society without being rejected by your own kind and bastardized by the wannabes.
I would argue that fetishes aren't a choice but clearly they go into an entirely separate set of ingrained need than our bodily dissonance, gender dysphoria and whatnot. My enjoyment of bondage and rope art is loads different from my transition but I didn't choose to like being consensually tied up (and tying others up) for sex.
ReplyDeleteAnd I have met a few folks for whom there's no fetish to crossdressing, it's just a hobby or an iconoclastic technique. Of course, they're just as incomparable to trans women as fetish CD's too, but I figured I ought to raise that minor quibble too.
But beyond that you are entirely and completely right, a fetish isn't gonna do intense psychological damage like the feelings of my body being foreign, or the feel of being completely at odds with one's assigned gender. Playing around in iconclastic ways or fucking with people is not the same as dysphoria and dissonance, will never be the same as them and simply are not of even similar categories.
It is utterly mindblowing and ridiculous that hobby, iconoclast or fetish crossdressers would feel that they are comparable to non op trans women. Do they identify as women? Do they possess gender dysphoria? Do they have bodily dissonance? Of course not. They don't see themselves as anything but guys who wear certain kinds of clothing for various reasons.
Why they would think they're the same as people who identify fully as a gender different from their birth assignment and/or those possessing bodily dissonance for their sex specific structures is completely beyond me. Their motivations and self conceptualization are completely different.
I don't know if that's reason to boot them from the umbrella TG term as the term is expansive enough to cover those who transcend gender boundaries just clothing wise. But I do know that just because they fit a certain zone in TG doesn't mean they are in any way comparable to those of us who are literally hurt by gender expectations, gender assignment, our expected gender role, and/or our bodies.
I believe the difference between cisgendered and cissexual was devised to go over this. Unless I have the definitions wrong, cisgendered are merely those that don't enter the realm of trans. They're content with their expression, their assignment, their gender is not in conflict. Whereas cissexual specifically references a lack of bodily dissonance or gender dysphoria (not really issues with clothing, expression, social shit).
So while crossdressers are likely not cisgendered, they are certainly cissexual.
Of course, it's iffy, because there's a lot of crossdressers who simply do not see why them just wearing certain clothing would make them trans.
So I guess it's a really tough call.
Let me know if I put any of that awkwardly. I'm running on very little sleep.
It's fine luv, I understand you fine.
ReplyDeleteI get what you're saying. it makes me wonder where I fit in, though.
ReplyDeleteOh my.
ReplyDeleteI've spent an hour or so reading/skimming your blog, and figured this would be a good place for my second comment.
There is a *lot* of gray area out there among part-time crossdressers. While there are some who one might fairly classify as male-identified individuals who have a "thing" for shoes, underthings or other clothing, and who get off on dressing in the clothing themselves, there are a number of other sub-groups there:
a. those who are gay men in denial. These are a subset of men on the downlow. They do seem to have at least a degree of inner feminine identity - they're not "dressing up" because the clothes are the attraction. But when they are expressing their inner woman, they have sex with men. They are often otherwise straight, married men with families. And if they are in boy mode, they get the gag reflex over the idea of kissing a man. But when they are in girl mode, they not only have no qualms about kissing, they manage to cover as many bases as they can - all without feeling as if they are cheating on their wives.
Then there are the trans women who would be full time if they could, but are married and have children. The "secondary emergence" trans woman may have felt that inner self as young as around 4 years old, but spends the early part of her life trying to cope with societal expectations. Some will try to compensate by getting into hyper-masculine pursuits. Many will get married and father children. Then some time in their mid-40's the suppression breaks down, and living the lie becomes painful.
I went through a period like that - where I figured if I let the real me "out" once a week or so, I could cope. I tried to keep my family together. It was not until my ex decided to get a divorce that I felt free to transition.
There are others out there, limping along in a struggle to keep their families together, with spouses who are trying to do the same. They may be part-time, but they are not fetishists. Sometimes they can't take it any more and self-destruct or commit suicide. I have friends who have committed suicide, and others who have attempted but managed to get help, because they felt trapped in this kind of situation.
There are other subgroups among the CDs - so much so that I think that the "fetishist" types are outnumbered.
For the largest subgroup, most of the part time crossdressers that I know, it isn't the clothing that makes them feel real, they have a bigendered inner identity. This group is as misunderstood as bisexually oriented people.
They feel that they have an inner "male" identity and an inner "female" identity. The clothing and makeup doesn;t "make them trans" - what it does is allow them to express outwardly how they sometimes feel on the inside.
The way I look at it, there is definitely a spectrum out there. I'd speculate that if we were to get a large enough and varied enough sample of prepared slides from the hypothalamuses of a wide range of people at various identity "levels" one might find variations in the density of the neuronal structures of the central strata of the basal stria terminalis of the hypothalamus. The existing studies used a sample that is too small to establish if there is a physiological explanation for the variations in identity - but the possibility is one that might be worth looking into.
When I construct my "transgender" umbrella, I leave the pure fetishists out as cisgendered and cissexual. But most part time crossdressers are not pure fetishists.
Of course, the Bailey/Blanchard/Lawrence axis would consider all crossdressers and secondary-emergence transsexual people to be fetishists - so I guess it depends a lot on how one defines a fetish in the first place.
I'm going by the spefic group of crossdressers displayed in the magazine, who all happily identify as men proud of their fetish and who maker it clear they're in it for the thrill. I identify anyone else as a non-op of varying degrees if they fit in the categories you described, even those unable to be full-time.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that needs to be addressed here, that is totally devastating to so many transitioners is the inclusion of DQ, CD, DK, etc. to bloody ad naseum, under the "transgendered umbrella". This afflicts many TS with the horrors of being deemed "can't ops" under the societal and medical establishments criteria for surgical intervention. The AMA, with Resolution 122, 2008, made the statement of "medical necessity" for all aspects of transitional medicine, which is neither elective, overly invasive nor experimental, as those in the conservative modes of pathological thought are so likely to claim. To the transsexual, striving toward SRS is in the same vein as one with cancer opting for chemotherapy, radiation and surgical intervention. If one were faced with the need for coronary bypass surgery, one's having diabetes, or other medical conditions, would not contraindicate the need for the surgery. It is because of the very tendency to lump the TS in with other gender variant groups that this occurs as the paradigms are so poorly understood by the vast bulk of our societies and adversely affects the access to much needed care by those who provide the needed services. the taxonomy flaws the paradigms or empiricism to mere tautology and leaves it open to hubris, with respect to whop can, and can not obtain these services as medically required
ReplyDeleteThis, with respect to the term, "transgenderism", which so many bleat out as a form of sheep-like political correctness and has the net effect of lumping the transsexual into the same grouping with those who carry a sexual identity congruent with their physical presence of genitalia, diluting the needs of, and inflicting the same stereotypes upon them as those who cross dress to satisfy a sexual fetish. If gender were the primary motivation for a transsexual, then we could have forgone the years of HRT and surgeries that we have had to undergo to make our bodies congruent with what we know to be our essential innate natures. It would have been been sufficient to merely cross dress to gain relief from our afflictions.
This also serves to do something that is lethal to many TS folk. The denial of their ability to gain access to SRS which is curative if one is truly gender dysphoric. As we are lumped in with the CD's, and other groups with congruent sexual identity, who can change their clothes after the orgasm. This can be a denial of life those who are "nonop" (unable to gain access to SRS by medical mandate). This will ultimately kill their hope over ever being thought of as a transwoman/transman, even within the bulk of the TS community. I have been around the TS community long enough to know that so many of us make it through on hope alone. When one's hope is shattered by denial of their needs, the prospects of not being able to gain the relief granted by the fulfillment of their need for sexual completeness will all to often become a terminal condition, with death by stress related illness or suicide.
Let's face it, transsexuals are a very small demographic, even within the "transgender" community, and are totally misunderstood by the bulk of those living under the TG banner, as much as they are by the mainstream of religionists and secular cisgendered/cis-sexual individuals as well. One need only look at people like Franks (Barney the Dinosaur) and Ron Gold to see what esteem the TS is held in within most of the LBGT society, as well as the cisgendered.
Some additional thoughts here. While the United States, and Canada for that matter, operate under the pretense of extending religious freedom, the determination of what is pathological behavior is all too frequently at the discretion of those who provide psychological and psychiatric services. As these things are indeed discretionary in nature, it is all too often the individual ethics of those providing these types of services that define and standardize what is and what is not pathological in nature. Herein lies the greatest challenge to individual freedom and the expression thereof. All too frequently, it is a feeling of "rightness" or "religious values" that are used in making the determination of what is, and what is not, pathology and/or individual prerogative. Thus religious tenet all too frequently becomes imposed upon a culture on the sole basis of ethical belief and tenets of faith, where absolute empirical criteria are required.
ReplyDeleteThe DSM, which governs so much of behaviors that are the mandated by religious or superstitious beliefs are pathological become implemented and enforced upon individuals based solely upon the belief of things unseen and unprovable. This is the big catch-22 with the psychological and psychiatric disciplines. They are catering too much to orthodox beliefs rather than empirically defined and demonstrable scientific fact.
In an ideal world, behaviors would be controlled upon the tangible demonstration that a deviant behavior is somehow harmful to another individual or group. The concept of "sins against God" would have absolutely no validity as these types of standards can in no way be demonstrated to hold universal validity, even within the scope of an organized belief system.
The very fact that things like transvestic fetishism, and other deviant preferences and behaviors are included in the DSM, and other documents, shows how much religion, and its untenable premises, have been used to circumvent individual freedom of choice and serving to create a de facto theocratic environment.
To my way of thinking, these things should not be included into a document that standardizes mental pathology any more than the Lord's Prayer belongs in a text on quantum mechanics. One is non-empirical, being entirely faith-based, and the other is scientific - even if theoretical in nature. At least the theoretical carries the notation as being such Mankind has a long and bloody history of trying to force individuals into normative modes of behavior. The only thing that is demonstrably true in all of this is that these things serve to only disenfranchise and punish individuality.
If there are no net, tangible adverse affects in any behavior, to any non-subscribers by the practices in question, then one can only ask how imagined harm can ever be used as a point of denial of the freedom of others of the age of reason to subscribe to what they deem to be appropriate behavior? This then becomes what is clearly the artificial limitations being placed upon individuals by their collective societies. Freedom is an abstract that can be all too easily usurped by legal and medical definition - without any basis in rational ideology or truth.
I was going to say something, but pretty much everything I wanted to say has already been said. Except this one thing that I just thought of: There is a difference between "transgendered behaviour" and actually being transgendered. Just as one can act like an idiot when one is clearly not an idiot, people that are not transgendered can sometimes exhibit transgendered behaviour.
ReplyDeleteTransgendered behaviour is ANYTHING that falls beyond the norm of what one's gender is expected to be like by society. Of course, different societies have different gender norms, so what is transgendered behaviour changes with times. For example, right now, I would conservatively estimate that a woman with short hair and a man with long hair are still exhibiting transgendered behaviour, but I bet that soon these things will be considered "normal" for those respective gender, and will not be transgendered behaviour anymore.
A fetishtic crossdresser who clearly is not transgendered and dresses to get off, is still, like it or not (no matter how much I understand and share the incredible annoyance they often make you feel), exhibiting transgendered behaviour.
Now of course that doesn't mean they should be included under the transgendered umbrella, but I thought I'd just make that clear.
That only leaves the little nitpicking point that the plural of "penis" is "penises" (or "penes"), not "penii". Otherwise, this piece is very well written, though maybe a little strong in places (quite understandably so).
Furthermore, Penny, I must praise your readers for their alertness and intelligence, because they worded my thoughts exactly. (That's useful because it saved me typing a comment three times as long as this one. ^_^)
There's a thought. Noted.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree that it is annoying and frustrating, I look at this and wonder, is this really the fault of CDs (meaning the ones you regularly find on the front covers of magazines)? Or is it the fault of the medium, itself? Magazines are, almost to the last, if not all, highly sensationalized. They usually narrowly focus on the smallest segment of a population and interpret it as entirely representative of a larger segment of the population. Such as thin women on the front covers of celeb and other magazines. They also never seem to fail to misrepresent, to some extent, a large portion of what even that smallest extant microcosm (which, in this case, would be pure fetishist CDs) of the larger group (which, again, in this case, for the sake of argument, would be this TG umbrella that you and your readers are referring to) might really be speaking to.
ReplyDeleteIt's a serious question, guys and just a thought I had! ^^; So, please, please, don't infer that I am trying to shift the blame from where it should really lie. I am really just asking if it SHOULD lie with pure fetishist crossdressers...? Thaaaannnnkkkksss! Runs away....
Hi, I identify as Bi-Gender and as Genderqueer and a Crossdresser and as Transgender. My partner is opposite-anatomied to myself but also identifies similarly.
ReplyDeleteNeither of us do so as a fetish.
Of those I have known who have said they are in it purely for the 'fetish' well i've known people who told that to themselves as an excuse to evade accepting their own true self and when their battles with self acceptance ended they admitted it was always more than a fetish to them. The very distinct possibility could be that the 'fetishism' is a result of a poorly functioning coping mechanism for dealing with their gender struggles rather than being a cause of anything.
The neurology even backs up the possibility of bi-gender identity and expression, as Zoe Brains blogpost shows http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/06/bigender-and-brain.html and what would we expect a milder and much more common form of transsexual neurology to be like?