transvestites
May. 27th, 2004 01:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timepiececlockYesterday some students in a Human Sexuality class joined my Psych. of Women class to hear a guest speaker. We get a guest speaker practically weekly, though this was the first time that any other class had joined us. Speaker of the day? A male transvestite. In full outfit.
Nice guy, Japanese American (though he looked vaguely more pacific-islander, probably because of the attractive hawaiian-patterned dress), outgoing, cheerful. He brought his fiancee, and she spoke too.
He encouraged questions, and talked about how he became started crossdressing, and how he and his fiancee met. She talked about her own difficulties in dealing with getting her family to accept them, and figuring out her own sexual preferences (that she likes crossdressers didn't mean that she was a lesbian), and how often he dresses up and how they interact when he does or doesn't, etc. When asked if he wishes he was born as a woman he says no--- he feels like a guy, just that he likes dressing as a woman occasionally. It was interesting, and very open.
In listening, I tried to put myself in that place, to identify with the feelings he described in why he likes to crossdress ("it's a kind of therapy for me; I find it relaxing"). I've thought about stuff like that before--- I don't know about other generations but going through adolescence in the late 90s meant that I thought about my sexuality a lot given all the attention the issue got. I could say I "realized I was straight" somewhere along the line but it's more like I "thought about it and decided that I probably wasn't gay," because I'd had crushes on boys since pre-school and I'd never had a crush on a girl... not that it would have even mattered because I was the kind of mysteriously uncool, nonsexual, undateable kid that went until I was 18 before I even had a kiss.
Anyway, back to the transvestitism, I thought about that yesterday and some more today, and I find myself at a total loss as to identifying with the idea. Now, I can imagine what it's like to be gay because that's a sexual feeling and I can just picture my normal attraction and imagine it being redirected. No big whoop. But crossdressing without the homosexuality? Just doing it because you like to? I don't get it. I try to picture it, and my mind goes blank, with a big floating question mark above my head like a halo. Why? To what end? What, ultimately, is the point? And why in god's name would you want to wear women's shoes--- I don't even like women's shoes.
I wonder if it's because I'm female in Western culture that I look at the idea of crossdressing as a big "eh?", since I could crossdress to my heart's content and it wouldn't even be considered real crossdressing 90% of the time. There's very little taboo in this culture about women in men's clothing, at least not much that I've come in contact with in my admittedly short life. So it's not the kind of dramatic shift for me that I guess it would be for a guy.
Overall I enjoyed listening to the speaker, and I took advantage of the opportunity to ask questions. I think they should have speakers like this in middle school or high school though, not just community college. It would probably do more good in the long-term for an 8th grade class than a class of 18-50 year olds.
Nice guy, Japanese American (though he looked vaguely more pacific-islander, probably because of the attractive hawaiian-patterned dress), outgoing, cheerful. He brought his fiancee, and she spoke too.
He encouraged questions, and talked about how he became started crossdressing, and how he and his fiancee met. She talked about her own difficulties in dealing with getting her family to accept them, and figuring out her own sexual preferences (that she likes crossdressers didn't mean that she was a lesbian), and how often he dresses up and how they interact when he does or doesn't, etc. When asked if he wishes he was born as a woman he says no--- he feels like a guy, just that he likes dressing as a woman occasionally. It was interesting, and very open.
In listening, I tried to put myself in that place, to identify with the feelings he described in why he likes to crossdress ("it's a kind of therapy for me; I find it relaxing"). I've thought about stuff like that before--- I don't know about other generations but going through adolescence in the late 90s meant that I thought about my sexuality a lot given all the attention the issue got. I could say I "realized I was straight" somewhere along the line but it's more like I "thought about it and decided that I probably wasn't gay," because I'd had crushes on boys since pre-school and I'd never had a crush on a girl... not that it would have even mattered because I was the kind of mysteriously uncool, nonsexual, undateable kid that went until I was 18 before I even had a kiss.
Anyway, back to the transvestitism, I thought about that yesterday and some more today, and I find myself at a total loss as to identifying with the idea. Now, I can imagine what it's like to be gay because that's a sexual feeling and I can just picture my normal attraction and imagine it being redirected. No big whoop. But crossdressing without the homosexuality? Just doing it because you like to? I don't get it. I try to picture it, and my mind goes blank, with a big floating question mark above my head like a halo. Why? To what end? What, ultimately, is the point? And why in god's name would you want to wear women's shoes--- I don't even like women's shoes.
I wonder if it's because I'm female in Western culture that I look at the idea of crossdressing as a big "eh?", since I could crossdress to my heart's content and it wouldn't even be considered real crossdressing 90% of the time. There's very little taboo in this culture about women in men's clothing, at least not much that I've come in contact with in my admittedly short life. So it's not the kind of dramatic shift for me that I guess it would be for a guy.
Overall I enjoyed listening to the speaker, and I took advantage of the opportunity to ask questions. I think they should have speakers like this in middle school or high school though, not just community college. It would probably do more good in the long-term for an 8th grade class than a class of 18-50 year olds.
