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If in your country (USA here) there ceased to be a rigid split about what is acceptable as boy cloths or girl clothes? How would this new found freedom affect your life? If manufacturers made female clothes but they were cut properly to fit on a male body? The result being anyone can go anywhere dressed as they wished.
would you switch to an all female style wardrobe?
Would it be enough for you with or without hormones?
Would surgery still be an imperative to finish making mind and body match?
I guess what I'm getting at is that if the stigma of cross dressing went away, how freeing would it be for you, and would you be just as driven to get the surgery and hormones?
{{Hugs}}
Comments
If the 'stigma' ...
If the stigma truly went away ... so much so that my better half was not bothered by it, I'd end up living as a woman full time but keeping my penis though getting rid of the two malignant little devils in my scrotum. Each to their own I suppose. I'm going for the orchidectomy bit anyway, no matter how I dress.
Bevs.
Clothing question
Truthfully, the clothes do not matter to me all that much. I just want the body. For the chance to have the body I should have had, to finally feel whole, I'd spend my life wearing a burlap sack.
Jessica Marie
It's not about the clothes
it's about personal identity, I'm female so I wear female designated clothing because of things like having breasts.
Angharad
No Difference
Unless all butch dyke styles change, which doesn't seem likely.
Actually, being poor, I make do with what I have, buy a few panties, socks, etc. and spend real money on bike clothes at clearance prices....maybe every few years.
Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee
No.
There's a large difference between being a crossdresser and being a woman. Being a woman is about more than just the clothes. I'd find it hard to believe that most t-women wouldn't go after hormone therapy just because there was no stigma for crossdressing. If anything, I imagine more people would go on to transition. They could stop living in fear about who they are.
T-women look down at their chests, see hair, and get depressed. They watch their bodies change through puberty and contemplate suicide. They watch their jaws widen and hair cover their faces and despair. It's nothing to do with clothes.
If I never wore a dress again...
...I might survive. But looking in the mirror brings more and more tears each day; both for what could have been and for what might never be!
Love, Andrea Lena
What Andrea said, it's the
What Andrea said, it's the body that brings the tears and pain. The clothes just hide it a bit. It isn't society tellingme not to wear some things but the body limiting what options are available :(
You couldn't be more right......
Or have said this better. Christ - now I'm crying. Thanks for putting that into words.
Dallas
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
Yes
Yes, if that stigma went away, I would be satisfied. But I don't think you truly realise what you question truly asks. Even phrased as politely as this, what it is truly asking is; are you Transgendered or are you truly "just" a cross-dresser? Because, as others have mentioned, transitioning is not about what you appear as, but what your spirit/soul/feelings tell what you are.
No I understood what i was asking...
I got the general responses I expected. The reason I asked was that so many stores emphasize the clothes. For instance a teenager or older tries on ladies clothes for the first time, his world is changed. Quite often it leads to hormones and even surgery. It just doesn't ring true unless he already had underlying TG traits.
A recent commenter on another blog said it well. The clothes are just strips of cloth it doesn't define who you are inside or out (something to that effect).
{{Hugs}}
Been Someone Else...
...since I was born. Clothes are nice and I wish I could afford more. Being able to dress as I feel would help, but it goes much deeper than that for me. Interesting question though.;)
Love And Hugs,
Jonelle ;)
[email protected]
In my case...
In my case - had the clothing issue gone away 30+ years ago, I'd likely have gone a lot longer before I came to understand that I wasn't crazy.
See - I was brought up KNOWING there were guys and girls, and if you were a guy (plumbing tells you this) you were a guy, etc. Dr. Renee Richards was ridiculed (HE only got the operation because HE couldn't compete with the men. was actually something I heard.)
I wore a dress to a Halloween party in '84 (with the help of my wife and a friend... Her boy friend was supposed to as well, but he chickened out). Folks complemented me on how well I did. One said "you're having way to much fun". (I was.) Thought nothing of it really. The next year was typical. I decided to do wear a dress again the next year (but, my wife wouldn't help). I enjoyed it, but my wife was disturbed. After a week or two of thought, I went and found a shrink. The rest, as they say, is history...
So - had clothing not been strongly typed there's a decent chance my wife wouldn't have been disturbed and I'd not have sought the help I needed when I needed it.
Annette
Who cares about the clothes?
Clothes are often used in TG literature to help define the experience not because of the clothes themselves, but what they represent. By having a character don female attire it is announcing that they are female in a way that society sees as a defining characteristic.
Take that defining characteristic away, and the clothes would have no meaning to most of our community.
Me? Even when I transition, tees and jeans are gonna be my uniform of choice, because that's part of who I am -- a computer geek slacker, and proud of it!
Melanie E.
I care, and I don't.....
I agree completely with everything you said Melanie, but I still care about the clothes. OK - sue me, I'm definitely going to be a girly-girl, but then I have always been the one who dressed nicer than everyone else throughout my entire life.
Yes, I was that preppy kid who always dressed nice, and who never really seemed to dress down - even my "play clothes" we're nice.
I took to the military like a duck to water - well, even back then I was having issues with a repressed desire to wear the women's uniform, but I took to dress uniforms like I was born in one.
So, having said that - I totally agree with you that gender and clothing are not related. I normally only wear panties under my regular men's clothes most of the time, and then just because they feel better and help me to reaffirm that I am who I am. It's funny, but since I finally faced up to who I am, admitted it to myself and to my therapist, and began androgen blockers and hormones, the temptation to stay up all night dressed in my nicest women's clothing has mellowed out. Yes, I still like dressing up - but I have realized that it's not about the clothes.
There was never a sexual element involved in it - we'll, OK, I admit that I have always been bi-sexual and as such I have had fantasies about certain male friends, and yes, those were more pronounced when I was dressed - but more because I stopped repressing them than because of a sexual element involved in cross-dressing. I have them even when I am dressed in men's clothing. If I see an attractive man, I am just as liable to have thoughts about him as I am about an attractive woman. To me, it's more about the person as an individual.
Anyway, my point in this rambling diatribe is that yes, gender identity and clothing are not the same. Yes, I love getting dressed up (like I said, I'm that girl), but I am just as much transgendered sitting here this morning in men's shorts and a polo, or this afternoon traveling on a plane in men's dress pants, shirt , and tie. Presentation isn't who we are. Yes, I want to be able to present as a woman 24/7, and my goal in life is to be able to do that because that is who I am - not because the clothes define me, but because I define the clothes.
Dallas
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
Frankly, it's probably more a local cultural thing anyway
I live in north-central Arkansas, in an area where you're more likely to find a full set of turkey camo in any given woman's closet than an LBD, and it would certainly get an airing more often. While there is the occasional girl who wears a skirt or dress, even the more "girly girl" types tend to stick to jeans on all but the rarest occasions, unless they wear skirts for religious regions (we have a rather large Mennonite community roundabouts.) Church clothes tend to be the biggest exception to this, and, well, I'm no Christian, so...
All that combined probably has as much of an impact on my view on clothes as anything, so I'm probably not the most reliable source for what to wear :P
Melanie E.
Frank's question
I would still switch to an all female wardrobe. My whole crossdressing life started when I under age 4. I remember my mother bringing in the clothes, in 1943-early 1944 from the solar powered clothes dryer and tossing them on the bed prior to sprinkling them to be ironed. I recall climbing up on the bed, finding a pair of nylon stockings, and putting them on, and wearing them around the house. (OK, so they weren't nylon, as nylon was still a new product and all that was made was used by the military -therefore those 'nylons' were either cotton, or silk. I suspect they were mostly cotton, although my mother may have had a pair of two of silk for dress wear). My parents and older sister never said anything to me about wearing women's stockings. Perhaps they thought I would grow out of it. I didn't.
As I grew older I found other items of women's clothing that felt good (mostly my mothers, which did not fit very well) such as panties. It was several years and a move out of state before I really found the enjoyment of bras, full slips, several petticoats on underneath a poodle skirt, and on and on. I had a friend whose two sisters were about my size, and he was tolerant of my fetish, so on Friday and Saturday nights while his parents and the two sisters were at the roller rink, I was at my friends house (he seldom went skating with them) trying on and wearing the sisters clothing around his house.
That was as far as it went, although later I was guilty of numerous purchases and purges of all types of lingerie and various styles of clothing, until about 10 years ago, I discovered Tri-Ess, and Katrina (me - Stormy is a nickname) was unleashed on the world. I have never looked back once I discovered there were loads of others just like me out in the world, and many of them were much more comfortable being out in public than I was. They taught me a lot.
I know I have used the word 'fetish' in this reply, but it has never been a fetish to me, but rather something my body was telling me to do, as often as I could.
But back to the clothing issue - Female clothing, designed, cut, and manufactured for a female body has been what I enjoy most about crossdressing. Redesign of clothing so female clothing was cut to fit a man just does not interest me.
Don't let someone else talk you out of your dreams. How can we have dreams come true, if we have no dreams?
Katrina Gayle "Stormy" Storm
I wouldn't know
where to begin! = )
My crossdressing is mostly for fun though, it has little to do with my gender identity and self image. Nothing is ever going to eliminate my need to fix my body.
NO DIFFERENCE
I like "girly" things because I happen to be a girly girl. Has nothing to do with the being a girl part of that. Just the girly part.
I would have been happy enough continuing to wear male attire for things it was practical for had it actually BEEN practical still. But it wasn't. My body shape changed radically and rapidly and there was absolutely no way I could wear male garb appropriately.
As casual clothing though? Much happier in skirts and girly tops unless I'm doing an activity in which my modesty would be impaired without shorts/pants.
The other changes are necessary and would still be necessary even if I were to be "permitted" "girly" attire while remaining a "boy". I'm not a boy.
Abigail Drew.
Me, I wear women's
polo and t-shirts as well as women's sweats
May Your Light Forever Shine
You Might Find This Helpful
There is a difference between being transgender and crossdressing. Gender, aesthetics, social presentation, sexuality and orientation are (wait for it...) totally unrelated!
A couple of us put together this overview of The Seven Scales of Sexuality [click here] a few years ago. Your question indicates you may benefit from reading that document.
Now, in theoretically "pure vanilla" people, we expect women to be genetic XX, heterosexual, feminine in dress and behavior, demure, etc. And, we expect men to be genetic XY, heterosexual, masculine in dress and behavior, assertive, etc.
The truth is that there's a lot of natural variation in people, and that all these factors are independent variables. Some women are assertive, some men are quiet. Sexual orientation has certain stereotypes, but a significant number of people don't fit those stereotypes, either.
So, what I'm getting at, is that there are people who are very unhappy with their birth gender, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with how they feel they have to dress. And, there are people who are very happy with their birth gender, but don't see why they can't dress in the opposite gender, and prefer to do so some portion of the time. One is a matter of gender identity, and the other is a matter of personal aesthetics.
Well, since I'm not transsexual...
I would simply do away with what few male clothing pieces I have. That would be about 5 or 6 shirts and two pair of trousers. The remainder of my clothes would remain the same, however I'd be more inclined to wear the more feminine more often.
As it is now, the only time I really wear men's clothing is at work and only then because the company issues us truck drivers uniforms. They don't, however, make any distinction between what they issue to men and women. The women get men's polo shirts and we can wear our own black jeans or pants if we want. I prefer to wear the old uniform pants from the original issue because they are acid resistant and some of the equipment I need to use to load my truck is electric and can leak acid. The underwear and shoes I wear are women's.
The rest of the time I wear exclusively women's clothes. When I go places where my wife would be embarrassed by my being feminine, I stick to the masculine cut women's clothes. But I go grocery shopping at our local store, to do my banking and shopping at the mall and even to a local restaurant wearing decidedly feminine cut women's clothes and even a little make-up. (I don't pass.)
So, yeah, I'd be satisfied with the stigma being removed from cross-dressing.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt