Crossdressing — Does this nail gun make my hands look fat?
Just the other day I was helping my friend Sylvester do some alterations in a friend’s apartment. I’d just got out of the nail salon, and as I looked at the claret polish on my nails I couldn’t help feeling it clashed with the De Walt yellow of the nail gun.
This put me in mind of something I’d been meaning to write for a while. Those of us who love to crossdress often don’t feel quite at home with our designated gender. Just because we’re walking around with nine inches (give me a break: ed) of male genitalia between our legs, doesn’t mean we have to like the color blue, chewing tobacco and driving a truck which has been ‘lifted’. More likely we feel confused by these ideas and find them uncomfortable, realizing we’re not quite the same as our brother, the jock.
I get a lot of email from my members, many of whom have grown up with a brother and sister, and found they wanted to join their sister playing house and dressing their dolls. I can’t help but wonder how many crossdressers started out by dressing Ken in Barbie’s clothes and sticking him in that pink jeep, that always seems to be parked on the stairs when you have young children of your own. Not every crossdresser experiences these early childhood moments, but there’s certainly a significant number that have had such experiences.
In middle age many of us veer back into these thoughts and begin to find them attractive. We know ourselves so much better, we’re more experienced. We feel a little more confident in knowing ourselves. What may have been dismissed as teenage experimenting starts to look like something rather different. Many of us allow these desires to take root and indulge them, and it feels good. It also feels pretty confusing, and can be accompanied by feelings of shame. As sexual creatures one way in which these feelings emerge is likely to be sexual. Of course one is forced to ask, ‘who am I?’
As we begin to accept ourselves as being whatever strange manner of creature this is we gradually release some gender roles. Others emerge. Most crossdressers probably don’t want to go out hunting with the boys, comparing the size of their guns, skinning a moose and drinking beer talking about the game all night. Sure, some do, but generally the appeal does begin to fade. As we understand ourselves better we realise not only do we not want to participate in these games, but we never really did.
As we adopt a few more feminine traits a surprising thing starts to emerge. I think most of us realise we’ve been acting out these roles throughout our male development. Society expected us to, so we did. These things never really felt quite right, but we thought there was something wrong with us, rather than society. And so we conformed and felt we were the freaks. It’s no surprise that many people who go through non-conforming gender experiences have experienced depression. We were set up for that from the first time mummy put us in a blue onesie, and said “He’s going to grow up to be so handsome!”
To satisfy what society expected we forced ourselves into shape that was vaguely acceptable, and we conformed. We also became good at acting the part.
There is a risk, however. For those of us who became such good actors, delivering what society expects, there’s a temptation to become overly femme, becoming a parody of femininity. I see this in quite a few crossdressers. It doesn’t look very comfortable, and I am pretty sure doesn’t feel very comfortable either.
We’ve all got our own way of dealing with things, but I suspect it would serve us all to have a good understanding of gender binary ideas. If we can learn to recognise when society is manipulating us toward an end we can avoid it. The advertising that pushes men toward a muscle car, and a woman toward something else entirely is a case in point. Do we really have to play that game?
Perhaps it’s better to step back and ask, “What do I really want?”
As we start to be more aware of ourselves we’re likely allowing the emergence of someone rather different to what society planned. Rather than a boy with a muscle car, or a girl with pink dresses, we allow the emergence of a person.
That person may love to wear skirts, building boats and going to ballet. They may also enjoy hockey.
We really don’t need to throw ourselves from one end of the gender spectrum to the other. There’s a place in the middle that’s very comfortable. It’s called ‘home’.
Fiona Dobson.
