Talk:Cross-dressing

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Contents 1 Archives 2 Billy Tipton 3 Cultural examples of cross-dressing - pictures 4 The "T-Girls" picture 5 Why Is wearing a skirt considered cross dressing? 6 "Dressing busses up as trolleys"? 7 General revision and editing 8 Female-bodied cross-dressers 9 Crossdressing vs Transvestism 10 bully for utena 11 Fidelio 12 archives created for old discussion 13 Famous Cross-Dressers 14 Problems with article structure

[edit] Archives

Because of their length, the previous discussions on this page have been archived. If further archiving is needed, see Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page.

Previous discussions:

• /Cross-Dressing Discussion Archive 1
• /Cross-Dressing Discussion Archive 2 - Joan of Arc

[edit] Billy Tipton

Has anyone thought to put Billy Tipton as an example? Jim^{Collaborator «talk»} 16:44, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

He would be an excellent example - go ahead! -- AlexR 00:55, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cultural examples of cross-dressing - pictures

First: I have expanded the section in question with a place to put examples of cross-dressing in theater, and I would welcome a section on literature. I'd add it myself if I weren't so tired at the moment :)

Anyway, to get to the question: Does anyone have acceptably-licensed pictures of performances of M. Butterfly involving Song Liling and Rene Gallimard that could be used for the cultural examples of cross-dressing section? The one picture that currently exists is fine, but I think that it shifts the section too much towards a stereotypical view of cross-dressing. and it would be nice to include pictures of other examples anyway.

I have some pictures in my copy of The Bedford Introduction to Literature, 6th ed., but I don't think reproduction from that book would be legal. -Yipdw 10:18, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The "T-Girls" picture

I have removed this pic a few times now, and several people have restored it. I would ask those people to notice though that not only one can very much argue whether this picture is an appropriate illustration to this article or at this place -- what is far less debatable is that the pic does not show "cross-dressing" people! It can be very clearly seen in the two women on the left that they had undergone medical procedures to feminise their bodies; meaning they are not just cross-dressing. (I'd also say all four have taken hormones, and there was probably facial surgery involved, too.) This is confirmed by the back of the video [1]. (WARNING! Not work-safe, sexually explicit!) In other words, this picture does not belong into this article, because the women shown are not just cross-dressing. Additionally, I seriously doubt that many people would consider, say, illustrating woman with a porn pic, so I see no reason to illustrate this article with one. -- AlexR 30 June 2005 12:16 (UTC)

[edit] Why Is wearing a skirt considered cross dressing?

before medieval times men wore skirt/dress like clothes ex. Roman soldiers yet it is still ok for a Scotsman to wear a kilt people are so ignorant of this Dudtz 8/19/05 6:05 PM EST

Because today a skirt is a female piece of clothing - while those garments you refer to are not female pieces of clothing, but were male pieces of clothing; hence if a man today wears a skirt, it is cross-dressing, while him wearing a kilt is not. What's so difficult to understand about that? -- AlexR 09:09, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

As the article says, "The actual determination of cross-dressing is largely socially constructed". Yes, it doesn't make sense that people view it okay to wear a skirt in some circumstances (such as it being knee-length and tartan), but not others. However, there is no implication in this article that cross-dressing is not okay - but rather that what is cross-dressing is merely dictated by social fashions. I would say this is covered by the "Equal Clothing Rights" section, which points out the viewpoint that people shouldn't have to stick to the traditional clothes for their gender in their society. Mdwh 03:45, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Dressing busses up as trolleys"?

(reference: Cross-dressing#Cross-dressing_that_may_or_may_not_be_related_to_transgender, last bullet item)

How is this cross-dressing? Is this some cultural reference that I'm just not understanding? (And, if so, can someone elaborate on why it belongs in this article?) -Yipdw 02:11, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Removed. Nobody on #wikipedia got the joke, either. Also, buses don't exactly have a gender, be it same or different from those of trolleys. And that's not dressing, either. -- AlexR 06:00, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] General revision and editing

This article seems to have been rather badly overedited. It struck me as being repetitive and confusing, to the point of being almost incomprehensible. I have attempted to simplify and clarify things a bit. I apologize if I have unwittingly removed any important information while editing the article and encourage future revisions that correct any such errors. My only intent is to make this article easier to read.

I would like to suggest that the subheadings under "Specific types of cross-dressing" be removed. I don't see the benefit of attempting to declare categorically what behavior is related to transgender and what is not, and the category "Cross-dressing that may or may not be related to transgender" is comically vague. If a list of examples is necessary, I think it would be better to simply put them all under "Specific types of cross-dressing" and leave it at that. 128.104.216.12 05:40, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

I have rewritten the "Specific types of cross-dressing" to be in paragraph form. An article like this can never be a definitive guide to all types of cross-dressing, but I think presenting the information in list form makes people think it should be an exhaustive list and encourages them to add examples of more and more specific and less and less common forms of cross-dressing. I have attempted to rewrite this section as a more general look at common forms of cross-dressing. CKarnstein 19:52, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Female-bodied cross-dressers

(The following was moved from the article Cross-dressing

Lets get real! Cross-dressing women are common in modern Western societies. Just look at what we wear: Jeans, t-shirts, 'jogging' shoes. Just pick up a catalog like Lane Bryant and see henley, turtleneck, crewneck tee, flannel bigshirt and other 'manly' wear. Get away from the computer and look at us in society. We dress more like you then you expect. (Posted by User:209.102.127.133)

A modern North American or European woman wearing jeans isn't crossdressing because the clothes she is wearing are in compliance with social norms for women in her culture. Similarly, a Scottish man wearing a kilt is not cross-dressing, even though a kilt looks an awful lot like a garment traditionally worn by women in many parts of the world. There's nothing inherent in pants or skirts that makes them seem masculine or feminine, crossdressing can only exist within a social context. CKarnstein 05:11, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, the question of how many cross-dressers of a particular type there are is rather paradoxical - as soon as there are enough of them, it becomes part of what is considered "normal", and hence no longer cross-dressing. This is partly covered by the sentence "Some people attribute this not to an actually lower number, but to the difficulties involved in identifying cross-dressing behavior when so many women wear traditionally masculine clothing such as trousers." But I can kind of see the point of view of User:209.102.127.133 - the opening sentence "Cross-dressing among women, at least in modern Western societies, seems to be rare." does seem a bit meaningless altogether in my opinion, given how paradoxical the issue is; it is impossible to define how many of a particular gender cross-dress, since what counts as cross-dressing depends on how few of that gender wear such clothes. Mdwh 03:54, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

In the article, we say The behaviour of women in general has historically often received less attention than that of men. I don't know whether this can be defended or not (look at all the fashion magazines) but women in Western society have had a lot more freedom in what they can wear. While men were wearing dark suits and striped ties to work, women could wear a wide array of colors, suits, skirts, dresses, boots, heels, flats, etc. etc. So it's not surprising that when they chose to extend this to pants, there wasn't a huge uproar. Sure, some fancy restaurants and formal businesses prohibited women from wearing pants at first, but that soon passed. Imagine if men had decided to wear skirts to work at the same time. Things are still changing and maybe men will catch up with women in this area. But they're clearly 25 years behind or more. –Shoaler (talk) 18:21, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

There actually was a huge uproar over the introduction of trousers for women ("Bloomers") in the mid-19th century. It took more than a century for them to become generally accepted as women's wear. Through the first half of the 20th century few women dared go out in trousers, although many wore them around the house or when involved in physical labor. Some movie stars like Katherine Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich were known for wearing trousers, but this was part of their strong, assertive (dare I say masculine?) Hollywood images and not a reflection of fashions worn by ordinary women. Not just fancy restaurants and formal businesses but many other establishments, including public schools, prohibited girls and women from wearing trousers until the early 1970s. When things finally changed, it was thanks in part to the efforts of the burgeoning Women's Movement. Acceptance of trousers for women was certainly not something that happened quickly or without struggle, but this struggle is yet another example of a piece of women's history that's largely been forgotten. CKarnstein 06:40, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Crossdressing vs Transvestism

This section is unreferenced and makes some pretty strong claims with a lot of NPOV content.

• "There are some who believe that "crossdressing" really isn't an appropriate term at all." Who are these people?
• "In fact, in many locals in the 1930s, the wear of anything other than skirts and dresses by females was outlawed!" Does this mean governments had formal laws against it? Where?
• "This begs the question - when are men who choose alternative forms of fashion going to be consider men, instead of by some demeaning/derogatory term?" Horribly POV sentence.

--howcheng [ t • c • w • e ] 07:31, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree. I've made a few changes, but the whole section reads like original research. I think it should be deleted with a reference to transvestism. –Shoaler (talk) 16:36, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree that this section is rather bad - especially since it is near the top. Perhaps it's better to skip to "Varieties of cross-dressing", and then put "Crossdressing vs Transvestism" later on?

I would say that "There are some who believe that "crossdressing" really isn't an appropriate term at all." refers to those who are later described as simply having "a personal preference for clothing traditionally associated with the opposite sex": crossdressing arguably could imply that the person is intending to wear clothes of specifically the opposite gender, as opposed to simply liking those clothes. However I agree that this phrase is on its own unsupported, and doesn't really add anything that isn't covered by the later sections.

I've now tried to clean it up a bit more:

• I've changed it to "Transvestism" and "crossdressing" rather than "Transvestite" and "cross-dresser" - if distinctions are made between the two words, labelling *people* may imply that people can only fit into one or the other category, when in fact there may be several reasons someone may crossdress (eg, someone who simply prefers the clothing, but also may sometimes wear them in a sexual roleplaying context - the former does not imply the latter cannot be true). Not to mention that I feel it's usually better to refer to behaviours rather than labelling people.

• I've tried to water down some of the claims made - I don't think it can be said that these things are always true, just often or sometimes (eg, I disagree that crossdressing is always limited to significantly fewer items of clothing), and again it implies that people can only fall into one category or the other, but not both.

• I agree with comments made about transvestic fetishism, but I think it's still good to mention it with a link to the article, in order to explain the distinctions (which I think that article does well).

• Whilst transvestism may include those who identify as the opposite gender, it is important to mention that this doesn't necessarily imply sexual overtones as well. This is simply a case of the same word having several meanings (as described in the transvestism article). Mdwh 17:54, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

I appreciate that people have tried to revise the questionable new additions, but I thought it best to remove them altogether. This was clearly the work of someone with an axe to grind. All the real factual information seems to have been covered by other parts of the article already. Otherwise it seemed like a lot of subjective opinions and tedious nitpicking. CKarnstein 05:57, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] bully for utena

I'm going to change the utena thing to reference the movie. Utena does not really cross-dress in the show, she wears the boys' uniform, and not even the pants. So basically she wears a mans jacket and red streach pants, which are not mens clothing. A man wearing a baby-doll shirt may get some comments, but isn't really cross dressing.

In the movie, she actually looks like a boy because she actually wants to look like a boy. She also apparently binds her breasts in the movie.

[edit] Fidelio

The previous version of this article claimed that women did not perform in the theater in Beethoven's time, and that the role of Lenore/Fidelio was played by a man. Both claims are false. The role of Lenore/Fidelio was originated by soprano Anna Milder (see http://opera.stanford.edu/Beethoven/Fidelio/history.html). CKarnstein 05:24, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Moved the Fidelio section from "Theater" to "Opera" and cleaned up the opera section. CKarnstein 05:25, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] archives created for old discussion

As the cross-dressing discussion page was over five times the suggested maximum size, I have created two archives for older discussion topics. The lengthy Joan of Arc debate, which even when isolated is far longer than the suggested maximum, is preserved in the second archive. CKarnstein 05:32, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Famous Cross-Dressers

Does anyone have a reputable reference for the list of famous cross-dressers? I found the inclusion of Pope Paul II curious, and started researching him. The Pope Paul II article on wikipedia doesn't say anything about him being a cross dresser; it states that his nickname is derived from his "propensity to enjoy dressing up in sumptuous ecclesiastical finery". None of the other encyclopedia's I've checked corroborate this either. I propose deleting his name, unless someone finds a good source. Rob 15:37, 26 April 2006

At least slap in a {{fact}} for the moment, and I propose deleting it when nobody answers here or gives a reference in 2 or 3 days. Unfortunately, these lists often gain entries which are less than good-faith. -- AlexR 17:31, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with article structure

This article contains a lot of good information, but it is poorly structured. The text is incoherent: there are too many overshort paragraphs, bulleted lists, and the like. The article begins with an explanation of details of usage of the terms cross-dressing and cross-dresser, instead of going to the point. A good encyclopedia article should present general information first and specific information after that. Because of this, I'll put this on the cleanup list.--212.50.147.101 13:51, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

The article is now 36k bytes, which exceeds the recommended limit of 32k bytes. (See Wikipedia:Article size.) As such, I believe that we should consider splitting some of this article off into one or more new sub-articles.

Personally, I'm just starting on putting together a series of articles on cross-dressing technique (eg Hip and buttock padding) that will all really need to be referenced from a parent article fairly close to this one, probably as a sub-article to this one.

Do we want to create pages such as Cross-dressing history, Cross-dressing technique, etc, or would some other form of naming be more appropriate? --AliceJMarkham 05:21, 5 November 2006 (UTC)