LJ Idol Season 8: Week 8
Travelling Travesty
Throughout history, members of the fairer sex have been disguising themselves as men to go and do traditionally "male" things, such as fighting wars, from which women were barred. There were female "monks" whose real biological sex was only discovered after their deaths.
As a slight gamine (some might say elfin) woman, with a strong preference for male friendships and with an undeniable attraction to men, travelling alone (as I have done for the last ten years or so) has been rather too much fraught with danger for my liking. Somehow, my interest in discussing traditionally "male" pursuits such as football and engineering has been misread by one too many men; perhaps most women pretend to be interested in these topics while their inner eye is glazing over when they find a man attractive? I don't know. If I appear to be interested in something, it is because I actually am interested in it: I have no interest in pretending to like something I don't.
Such misunderstandings led to awkwardness, to broken friendships, and occasionally to, well, worse.
But pretending to be something I'm not, that I seem to have fewer problems with.
At first, I tried the trick that all good guide-books of a certain vintage advise for women who find themselves compelled to travel on their own (and at that time it probably mainly was compulsion, rather than preference). I wore a wedding ring on the third finger of my left hand and had a cover story of how my "husband" had been required to go on an urgent business trip, and I was following behind at a more leisurely pace. I could never quite pull it off, though. I don't know what it was that gave me away, but it didn't appear to be quite the deterrent I had hoped for.
In the end, it was my long and hesitant journey into the heart of discovering my true gender that gave me the answer that has worked much better: to travel everywhere as a man. My passport gives me away as being female, but for the most part it's not been check-in officials or passport control officers with whom I was having such problems anyway. I seem to pass adequately as male in Paris, but less so in Rome; in London, but not so much in Corsica. I still need to fine-tune things, and I still can have problems when people discern my biological sex through the masculine trappings, but on the whole I'm having to spend less time dodging men (whose general idea of British women is far from what we might hope it would be, coloured no doubt by some of the package holiday companies) who won't take "no" for an answer.
In an ideal world, I wouldn't have to cross-dress to escape unwanted attention, but in this world I find it empowering and freeing to do so. And I make quite an attractive dandy!
Throughout history, members of the fairer sex have been disguising themselves as men to go and do traditionally "male" things, such as fighting wars, from which women were barred. There were female "monks" whose real biological sex was only discovered after their deaths.
As a slight gamine (some might say elfin) woman, with a strong preference for male friendships and with an undeniable attraction to men, travelling alone (as I have done for the last ten years or so) has been rather too much fraught with danger for my liking. Somehow, my interest in discussing traditionally "male" pursuits such as football and engineering has been misread by one too many men; perhaps most women pretend to be interested in these topics while their inner eye is glazing over when they find a man attractive? I don't know. If I appear to be interested in something, it is because I actually am interested in it: I have no interest in pretending to like something I don't.
Such misunderstandings led to awkwardness, to broken friendships, and occasionally to, well, worse.
But pretending to be something I'm not, that I seem to have fewer problems with.
At first, I tried the trick that all good guide-books of a certain vintage advise for women who find themselves compelled to travel on their own (and at that time it probably mainly was compulsion, rather than preference). I wore a wedding ring on the third finger of my left hand and had a cover story of how my "husband" had been required to go on an urgent business trip, and I was following behind at a more leisurely pace. I could never quite pull it off, though. I don't know what it was that gave me away, but it didn't appear to be quite the deterrent I had hoped for.
In the end, it was my long and hesitant journey into the heart of discovering my true gender that gave me the answer that has worked much better: to travel everywhere as a man. My passport gives me away as being female, but for the most part it's not been check-in officials or passport control officers with whom I was having such problems anyway. I seem to pass adequately as male in Paris, but less so in Rome; in London, but not so much in Corsica. I still need to fine-tune things, and I still can have problems when people discern my biological sex through the masculine trappings, but on the whole I'm having to spend less time dodging men (whose general idea of British women is far from what we might hope it would be, coloured no doubt by some of the package holiday companies) who won't take "no" for an answer.
In an ideal world, I wouldn't have to cross-dress to escape unwanted attention, but in this world I find it empowering and freeing to do so. And I make quite an attractive dandy!