A forgotten piece of the spectrum: Transvestism
(This is a text trying to draw back attention to something which has totally dropped into oblivion during all the modern discourse about “gender”, but which once had and still has its legitimation in the spectrum of sex.
It should be also taken as a reminder why slight non-conforming mustn’t be taken as an indicator to being “trans” and having to undergo the way of changing one’s physical appearance in order to get happy again and become able to manage one’s life.)
Addition to this one here: https://matrixmann.livejournal.com/334260.html
Since the adoption of John Money’s definition of “gender”, and by that the misconception of mental sex being something that one gets nurtured into, the science about human sex has very much shifted from recognizing different degrees and motivations for sex non-conforming to focusing on transsexuals - people who can’t live with their nature-given physics because their mental sex is psychically wired opposed to that.
This you can even legitimately call “transgender ideology” or “transgender industry” - because, whenever an individual shows behavior and thinking patterns non-conforming with the established figures for “what a man is like” and “what a woman is like” in its respective culture, it doesn’t show accepting of that in the context frame of the person’s original physical and mental sex; it very quickly gets to telling people “you’re “trans””, even if the person in question never even heard of that word before or never considered itself to be “trans”.
In other words: That’s the more formal and more differentiated wording for the modern phenomenon when people appear to “get pressured” into adopting a trans identity and when they undergo reassignment, they find they don’t get happier with their lives.
What happened there exactly is that: Someone who isn’t actually “trans” got pressured (by whatever entities) to feel so because those entities wouldn’t accept him/her in in his/her sex identity, they’d negate it to that individual out of a similarly narrow-minded view about sex which they hold as a reproach against conservatives.
Like “there can’t be a non-alpha-male or even sissy version of a man; if he is, then he’s actually a female” or “there can’t be a butch version of a woman; if she is one, then she’s actually a man”.
Doesn’t that structure of the world sound a little familiar?
Right, many people with a non-average character may know such things as insults from the school yard.
That’s actually also how primitive this way of thinking is.
“Trans” people rather took these “insults”, if they got to hear it back then, as a compliment, and get insane from a modern society that tolerates and even accepts everything, without ever drawing a line where femininity and masculinity begin, always denying them the recognition “okay, here is where one of the two ends, I get it that you’re positioned on the other side of the spectrum”.
But people who instinctively aren’t “trans” or who are still insecure about themselves, about their own personality, for those this way of talking becomes toxic - because they get influenced, talked into and perhaps even pushed into thinking patterns and patterns to feel which they actually originally don’t have. This sends them on an odyssey which is damned to lead them to no additional happiness.
The core point that could help here is remembering that old term called “transvestism”, which hadn’t been coined just for nothing.
“Transvestism” means all people who like to dress and behave like the opposite sex (fully or in parts), but without wanting to modify their body via drastic measures such as surgeries or hormones or feeling instinctively dysphoric about it.
This also includes all people who adopt “parts” in general from the “world” of the opposite sex - like specific pieces of clothes, specific items that one sex tends to use more often than the other, fields of personal interest - and integrate them into their lives without that causing them to feel unwell in their born sex (physically and mentally).
A specific term that was once introduced here in the scientific field was “cross-dressing”, but that just covers only a small field of the entirety. (Especially the forms of cross-dressing that only apply to females, for the most part, don’t get regarded this way anymore these days due to differing cultures having accepted the view of a woman dressed in something else than a dress or skirt - without negating her sex because of that.)
“Transvestism” covers the big gap here between the two absolute poles of people which either feel okay with everything of their personality, their body and their social role and such which harbor extreme disagreement with the latter two.
It even very much overlaps with the newly-coined terms such as “nonbinary”, “genderfluid” and “gender-nonconforming” in meaning, if looking closer at the materia.
If adopting the roof term “transvestism” and setting “gender” to one of these three terms, while keeping the part of sex identity, physically and mentally, intact, then all of this makes a scientific sense without negating anyone’s stance of feelings that identify with these terms.
How does that brain salad come together? Because “transvestism”, in its various shades and forms how far they reach, is about “gender”, leaving one’s mental and physical sex untouched.
“Nonbinary”, “genderfluid” and “gender-nonconforming” are all descriptive terms that deal with one’s social role, with sex in context of one’s surroundings and society at a higher level, not with one’s mental and one’s physical sex.
All those terms are born from disagreement with social roles and cultural norms.
This area once used to appear exactly under those two umbrellas: “Transvestism” and “cross-dressing”.
Depending on how much it actually disturbed the people who practiced it, it wasn’t even a real problem. For the most part, it became a social problem - depending on the person, its occupation and standing in society, sometimes even not that.
Artists, for example, were more forgiven for openly showing their quirks and crazes than people next door. What did you have artists for, if you didn’t want to see a show?
Eccentric characters also received more mercy because at some point it was accepted in their local community that “they’re just different, but they don’t bite”.
To maybe give a few examples of how far - and how small - transvestism actually stretches:
Think of girls and women who always refuse to wear dresses and prefer to just wear their pair of jeans and T-shirt. - Not really worth the look at today because it’s widely accepted, but technically this fits a travesty/cross-dressing context as well as a guy who wears skirts, has a classic handbag or likes optical features like glitter which are typically found on mostly women’s clothes.
Think of famous singers, of some metal bands or people which come from a specific subcultures which frequently use make-up for their appearance. - Make-up in everyday use is an entirely female domain. A few guys use it also to present themselves with an androgynous appearance because they want that.
But - there are also people who use it in a style like it was being used in the classic theater. For the show. Or for specific self-expression. Or for disguise because they can’t openly act in public with their normal faces - some also don’t want that in order to be able to still lead a normal life.
Specific subcultures ride the self-expression train on a very individual level.
The most famous example in this point may be Goths and their famous pale-face that tries to resemble a dead person. “Horror punk” exists too which may have a need and a good use for it.
In general, there is to say: Creativity and one’s own fantasy are the limits.
Think of working clothes. - Not always, but in parts, this is even a forced way of practicing cross-dressing because working clothes are standardized clothes, designed for particular purposes. The designs are driven by functionality and sometimes even by security requirements - for example protective helmets, hair nets, masks, safety glasses, gloves, aprons, coats, specific footwear or fixed uniforms.
Think of changing expectations over the course of time. - What may be considered “for males” and “for females” today, might not have been always so. For example, the color setting “blue for boys, pink for girls” in infant clothing is a thing that was sparked in this way not until the 80s. Before, dressing an infant neutrally was the common culture, and that being mostly a white dress - white because white clothes can be bleached (relevant for little children as they tend to dirty their clothes more often).
So - what may be considered “suitable for X” today, may once have been the exact opposite at some other point in human history. As today, one can only judge history from records made - things which had been passed on from generation to generation verbally are probable to have gotten lost over the course of time, or at least not have remained unaltered. And nobody even knows about the alteration today.
Then think of “drag” - but in both directions. Drag queens and drag kings.
The first has become way more famous - perhaps because there are way more people practicing that and even earning their living through it.
But realistically, not only drag queens exist, but also drag kings - adopting an extreme and overacted image of masculinity as much as drag queens do with femininity.
The latter may be a big decisive point why “transvestism” has very much appeared from the radar of gender subculture and from peoples’ consciousness who wrangle with their public social role (“gender”).
“Transvestism” was indivisibly connected to “drag”, although “drag” is just an extreme of it.
But just a small part of the population which doesn’t agree with their “gender” has a tendency or will to perform “drag”. Not only because it’s extreme, coquetting with cliches, it’s also nothing for an everyday life. If you do “drag”, you’re the center of attention wherever you go.
So, either you become a figure for show publicly - an alter ego with a made-up colorful background story - or once you’ll face the terrible effects on your personality if show and private person merge inseparably.
Whether knowingly or repulsed by putting up such a big show, in the end, only very few people desire to play “drag”. Personally you just “need to be made for it” as a character. It’s gonna demand large mental resources from you.
With that misunderstanding established, the situation becomes as it is in the present - incorrect images in circulation, “gender” dysphorias outsourced to sex and people who feel they don’t fit into social expectations assuming something is wrong with their biological determination, maybe even deny “sex” as a factor that exists completely, acting and thinking against every proven knowledge, transfiguring reality and material circumstances.
All that because they get taught wrong categorizations to give structure to their personal worlds.
All that because categories were merged and forgotten about which existed for a reason - to give space to people who were a bit extraordinary or who always fought social conventions and not push them into anything.
“Transvestism”, in the understanding described above, has its legitimation because it is a degree of non-conformativity in terms of sex and gender how a person still remains capable to manage its life without the physical alterations that a transsexual person seeks.
So to say, this is a person which doesn’t comply with all standards that society throws at it, especially in terms of “gender”, but “transvestism” is its compensation method.
For a lot of people, this may include just very small basic things, without seeking the big stage. Like clothing, hairstyle, job, degrees in formal education, personality traits.
For some, it may mean larger means of expression, exploring the depths and edges of masculinity and femininity. And they may even be fine with that!
Those might largely be the figures that enter the show business - sharing their exploration and experiences with an audience. Singers, actors or, specifically, drag artists.
It would do the debates about “gender” (actually meaning: sex) good if “transvestism” came back on the table because it might give people a better impulse how to deal with differing dysphorias in their lives - first, by recognizing if those dysphorias are located in “gender” (social role) or truly in “sex”, and second, by teaching them “it’s okay to have traits and features of the opposite sex without wanting to hack off one’s dick or get one tacked to the crotch”.
If you’re one active in the spectrum and get to read this, please know: Everyone has male and female personality traits combined together. As everyone is the child of male and female germ cells.
People who tell you that males are exclusively male and females are exclusively female, they lie. Or they are stupid and know nothing about the topic area at all.
And character traits, personal preferences as well as interests can, but don’t necessarily have to do with an individual’s physical sex or its mental sex identity.
If you feel insecure and undecided, isolate yourself from outside influences and sound out how things feel to you - exclusively to you! -, as you’re the one who must get happy with it all. Not an internet community, not your followers, not the people who you exchange messages and comments with. (Who knows who they truly are anyway...)
It should be also taken as a reminder why slight non-conforming mustn’t be taken as an indicator to being “trans” and having to undergo the way of changing one’s physical appearance in order to get happy again and become able to manage one’s life.)
Addition to this one here: https://matrixmann.livejournal.com/334260.html
Since the adoption of John Money’s definition of “gender”, and by that the misconception of mental sex being something that one gets nurtured into, the science about human sex has very much shifted from recognizing different degrees and motivations for sex non-conforming to focusing on transsexuals - people who can’t live with their nature-given physics because their mental sex is psychically wired opposed to that.
This you can even legitimately call “transgender ideology” or “transgender industry” - because, whenever an individual shows behavior and thinking patterns non-conforming with the established figures for “what a man is like” and “what a woman is like” in its respective culture, it doesn’t show accepting of that in the context frame of the person’s original physical and mental sex; it very quickly gets to telling people “you’re “trans””, even if the person in question never even heard of that word before or never considered itself to be “trans”.
In other words: That’s the more formal and more differentiated wording for the modern phenomenon when people appear to “get pressured” into adopting a trans identity and when they undergo reassignment, they find they don’t get happier with their lives.
What happened there exactly is that: Someone who isn’t actually “trans” got pressured (by whatever entities) to feel so because those entities wouldn’t accept him/her in in his/her sex identity, they’d negate it to that individual out of a similarly narrow-minded view about sex which they hold as a reproach against conservatives.
Like “there can’t be a non-alpha-male or even sissy version of a man; if he is, then he’s actually a female” or “there can’t be a butch version of a woman; if she is one, then she’s actually a man”.
Doesn’t that structure of the world sound a little familiar?
Right, many people with a non-average character may know such things as insults from the school yard.
That’s actually also how primitive this way of thinking is.
“Trans” people rather took these “insults”, if they got to hear it back then, as a compliment, and get insane from a modern society that tolerates and even accepts everything, without ever drawing a line where femininity and masculinity begin, always denying them the recognition “okay, here is where one of the two ends, I get it that you’re positioned on the other side of the spectrum”.
But people who instinctively aren’t “trans” or who are still insecure about themselves, about their own personality, for those this way of talking becomes toxic - because they get influenced, talked into and perhaps even pushed into thinking patterns and patterns to feel which they actually originally don’t have. This sends them on an odyssey which is damned to lead them to no additional happiness.
The core point that could help here is remembering that old term called “transvestism”, which hadn’t been coined just for nothing.
“Transvestism” means all people who like to dress and behave like the opposite sex (fully or in parts), but without wanting to modify their body via drastic measures such as surgeries or hormones or feeling instinctively dysphoric about it.
This also includes all people who adopt “parts” in general from the “world” of the opposite sex - like specific pieces of clothes, specific items that one sex tends to use more often than the other, fields of personal interest - and integrate them into their lives without that causing them to feel unwell in their born sex (physically and mentally).
A specific term that was once introduced here in the scientific field was “cross-dressing”, but that just covers only a small field of the entirety. (Especially the forms of cross-dressing that only apply to females, for the most part, don’t get regarded this way anymore these days due to differing cultures having accepted the view of a woman dressed in something else than a dress or skirt - without negating her sex because of that.)
“Transvestism” covers the big gap here between the two absolute poles of people which either feel okay with everything of their personality, their body and their social role and such which harbor extreme disagreement with the latter two.
It even very much overlaps with the newly-coined terms such as “nonbinary”, “genderfluid” and “gender-nonconforming” in meaning, if looking closer at the materia.
If adopting the roof term “transvestism” and setting “gender” to one of these three terms, while keeping the part of sex identity, physically and mentally, intact, then all of this makes a scientific sense without negating anyone’s stance of feelings that identify with these terms.
How does that brain salad come together? Because “transvestism”, in its various shades and forms how far they reach, is about “gender”, leaving one’s mental and physical sex untouched.
“Nonbinary”, “genderfluid” and “gender-nonconforming” are all descriptive terms that deal with one’s social role, with sex in context of one’s surroundings and society at a higher level, not with one’s mental and one’s physical sex.
All those terms are born from disagreement with social roles and cultural norms.
This area once used to appear exactly under those two umbrellas: “Transvestism” and “cross-dressing”.
Depending on how much it actually disturbed the people who practiced it, it wasn’t even a real problem. For the most part, it became a social problem - depending on the person, its occupation and standing in society, sometimes even not that.
Artists, for example, were more forgiven for openly showing their quirks and crazes than people next door. What did you have artists for, if you didn’t want to see a show?
Eccentric characters also received more mercy because at some point it was accepted in their local community that “they’re just different, but they don’t bite”.
To maybe give a few examples of how far - and how small - transvestism actually stretches:
Think of girls and women who always refuse to wear dresses and prefer to just wear their pair of jeans and T-shirt. - Not really worth the look at today because it’s widely accepted, but technically this fits a travesty/cross-dressing context as well as a guy who wears skirts, has a classic handbag or likes optical features like glitter which are typically found on mostly women’s clothes.
Think of famous singers, of some metal bands or people which come from a specific subcultures which frequently use make-up for their appearance. - Make-up in everyday use is an entirely female domain. A few guys use it also to present themselves with an androgynous appearance because they want that.
But - there are also people who use it in a style like it was being used in the classic theater. For the show. Or for specific self-expression. Or for disguise because they can’t openly act in public with their normal faces - some also don’t want that in order to be able to still lead a normal life.
Specific subcultures ride the self-expression train on a very individual level.
The most famous example in this point may be Goths and their famous pale-face that tries to resemble a dead person. “Horror punk” exists too which may have a need and a good use for it.
In general, there is to say: Creativity and one’s own fantasy are the limits.
Think of working clothes. - Not always, but in parts, this is even a forced way of practicing cross-dressing because working clothes are standardized clothes, designed for particular purposes. The designs are driven by functionality and sometimes even by security requirements - for example protective helmets, hair nets, masks, safety glasses, gloves, aprons, coats, specific footwear or fixed uniforms.
Think of changing expectations over the course of time. - What may be considered “for males” and “for females” today, might not have been always so. For example, the color setting “blue for boys, pink for girls” in infant clothing is a thing that was sparked in this way not until the 80s. Before, dressing an infant neutrally was the common culture, and that being mostly a white dress - white because white clothes can be bleached (relevant for little children as they tend to dirty their clothes more often).
So - what may be considered “suitable for X” today, may once have been the exact opposite at some other point in human history. As today, one can only judge history from records made - things which had been passed on from generation to generation verbally are probable to have gotten lost over the course of time, or at least not have remained unaltered. And nobody even knows about the alteration today.
Then think of “drag” - but in both directions. Drag queens and drag kings.
The first has become way more famous - perhaps because there are way more people practicing that and even earning their living through it.
But realistically, not only drag queens exist, but also drag kings - adopting an extreme and overacted image of masculinity as much as drag queens do with femininity.
The latter may be a big decisive point why “transvestism” has very much appeared from the radar of gender subculture and from peoples’ consciousness who wrangle with their public social role (“gender”).
“Transvestism” was indivisibly connected to “drag”, although “drag” is just an extreme of it.
But just a small part of the population which doesn’t agree with their “gender” has a tendency or will to perform “drag”. Not only because it’s extreme, coquetting with cliches, it’s also nothing for an everyday life. If you do “drag”, you’re the center of attention wherever you go.
So, either you become a figure for show publicly - an alter ego with a made-up colorful background story - or once you’ll face the terrible effects on your personality if show and private person merge inseparably.
Whether knowingly or repulsed by putting up such a big show, in the end, only very few people desire to play “drag”. Personally you just “need to be made for it” as a character. It’s gonna demand large mental resources from you.
With that misunderstanding established, the situation becomes as it is in the present - incorrect images in circulation, “gender” dysphorias outsourced to sex and people who feel they don’t fit into social expectations assuming something is wrong with their biological determination, maybe even deny “sex” as a factor that exists completely, acting and thinking against every proven knowledge, transfiguring reality and material circumstances.
All that because they get taught wrong categorizations to give structure to their personal worlds.
All that because categories were merged and forgotten about which existed for a reason - to give space to people who were a bit extraordinary or who always fought social conventions and not push them into anything.
“Transvestism”, in the understanding described above, has its legitimation because it is a degree of non-conformativity in terms of sex and gender how a person still remains capable to manage its life without the physical alterations that a transsexual person seeks.
So to say, this is a person which doesn’t comply with all standards that society throws at it, especially in terms of “gender”, but “transvestism” is its compensation method.
For a lot of people, this may include just very small basic things, without seeking the big stage. Like clothing, hairstyle, job, degrees in formal education, personality traits.
For some, it may mean larger means of expression, exploring the depths and edges of masculinity and femininity. And they may even be fine with that!
Those might largely be the figures that enter the show business - sharing their exploration and experiences with an audience. Singers, actors or, specifically, drag artists.
It would do the debates about “gender” (actually meaning: sex) good if “transvestism” came back on the table because it might give people a better impulse how to deal with differing dysphorias in their lives - first, by recognizing if those dysphorias are located in “gender” (social role) or truly in “sex”, and second, by teaching them “it’s okay to have traits and features of the opposite sex without wanting to hack off one’s dick or get one tacked to the crotch”.
If you’re one active in the spectrum and get to read this, please know: Everyone has male and female personality traits combined together. As everyone is the child of male and female germ cells.
People who tell you that males are exclusively male and females are exclusively female, they lie. Or they are stupid and know nothing about the topic area at all.
And character traits, personal preferences as well as interests can, but don’t necessarily have to do with an individual’s physical sex or its mental sex identity.
If you feel insecure and undecided, isolate yourself from outside influences and sound out how things feel to you - exclusively to you! -, as you’re the one who must get happy with it all. Not an internet community, not your followers, not the people who you exchange messages and comments with. (Who knows who they truly are anyway...)