OK, I will grant you are an exceptionally tolerant and forgiving person. After all you're a crossdresser (or at least involved positively with one if you're reading this) and you can probably stand and deliver a fifteen to twenty minute lecture on how crossdressers should be respected, and how it doesn't really matter what you're wearing, you should be treated with respect. Maybe you're one of the activists, willing standing up before God and all Her children in a dress to prove your point. I applaud you for your positive mental attitude and congratulate you for your "broad-minded" sensibility. So now I'm going to mess with your mind.
Let's act out a little scene. The setting is your local crossdresser's club. There are diverse persons of both apparent genders seated around the room chatting and schmoozing. Enter, stage left, yours truly, looking foreword to an evening of fun and games among my crossdressed peers. Suddenly the conversation stops. Tableaux: shocked faces, disapproving stares and icy silence. I quickly take inventory: shoes match the clothes, slip not showing, blouse buttoned tightly, (grab head) wig in place. Everything checks OK. So why the dropped jaws?
(Portentous drumming, then a voice offstage with lots of echo.) "Check your face, stupid!"
Quick, a mirror! There's got to be a mirror around, crossdressers simply can't exist without a reflection to ponder. There, lots of eye shadow, long, thick lashes, ruby red lips, high neckline covering the Adam's apple. Still no clue what's wrong.
(Voice offstage, downright exasperated.) It's not the makeup, dummy, it's the hair.
Oh, now I get it. If you guys in dresses are so gol darned tolerant, so ready to demand acceptance of your crossdressing, why do you get so nervous at seeing me in a dress if I haven't shaved my beard?
Relax, it's a rhetorical question, I don't expect you to answer it. In fact, I will admit that I am as unwilling to show up at a meeting in dress and beard as anyone. To be frank, I was more than a little embarrassed to dress up at home and have my wife see me, even though she actually encouraged it. Why is it unacceptable to express your femininity with hair on your face?
My wife the social worker explained it to me as she was reading over my shoulder while I typed this. It's called, in a typical social work phrase with far too many words, Internalizing the Mind of the Oppressor. (Why do social workers always need so many words. If you're going to use jargon at least invent one simple word and save me some typing.) It's the old story of the kidnap victim joining the kidnappers, the battered woman announcing "It's really my fault." If we're so ready to demand uncritical acceptance of gender expression, why is the presence or absence of facial hair so important?
I'll freely admit I have internalized the view that I mustn't want to go out in a dress with an unshaven face. So go ahead and admit it, you think so too. Then take a minute to ask yourself why. Reach down to the liberated woman in you and tackle this hairy problem, then go forth with a new vision of tolerance and acceptance. Who knows, maybe I'll catch up to you after I've shaved the beard so I can go out in public.
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Comments
FWIW I would more think
FWIW I would more think AWESOME!!!
I am old school NB and don't fit the narrative though.
Also see sailor bubba. He rocked it.
Hmm.
After your rhetorical question, you go on to ask:
I suppose it depends a lot on what you mean by unacceptable. For me, facial hair makes a person ... un-feminine. Facial hair and a dress does not make you un-human or un-person, at least not in my opinion. I would not reject you as a person. Sharing conversation and a drink would be fine. You would be acceptable in that sense.
But I would reject you as date-worthy. You would be unacceptable in that sense.
I would also reject as date-worthy a person with bulging muscles. In particular I'm visualizing those female body builders that some others seem to admire. This is, in my opinion, also un-feminine. But I would also reject a boy with bulging muscles.
Really big boobs are not particularly feminine, either.
***
But your mileage may vary. It seems to boil down to personal taste.
Regards,
T
my 1.25 cents worth
Speaking as a TG woman I think the issue is how most people see the feminine mystique as being free from facial hair.
Even GG women that have excessive "moustache" hair are generally shunned or pitied by others.
There are those that consider CDs with facial hair (full beard or just a moustache or mere sideburns) a farce and an insult to other crossdressers and some TGs even consider it endangerment of TGs. So-called "normal" society is easily upset by the strange and unusual and tend to see such CDs with facial hair as being the very same thing as TGs. So we, (TGs) take the brunt of their confusion. And some do not survive this social confusion.
Now you and I both know that CDs and TGs are worlds apart but the reality is that you won't be able to convince such closed minded people that there is any difference. To many a TG woman is little more than a guy with implants despite the reality of who and what we are.
The social eye is often a very evil and judgemental one.
"To thine own self be true" - Hamlet - by William Shakespeare
CDs and TGs are worlds apart???
Twenty or thirty years ago, I'd have agreed with that statement. At that time there was a poor joke which asked: "What's the difference between a CD and TS?" Answer: "About two years." It was also a time when the term "transgender" was first being bandied about. There was some friction between CD and TS factions about what the term really meant.
At that time I could be heard to say, "I'm just a CD." It was like being a second class citizen in the trans world. The real trans people were transsexuals. The rest of us were transvestites. A kind of pejorative suggesting that we were in it for the thrill of cross-dressing... being purposely naughty... getting mild sexual buzz from the activity... a bit perverted.
I, among others, lobbied that transgender included anyone who didn't fit into the binary mold. That was me... I, by my preference for feminine clothes, certainly didn't fit. While transsexual is still a ways off, up the trans spectrum from where I am, I really am transgender. The older I get the less tolerant I am of suppressing my feminine nature.
Will I ever truly, completely transition? I don't think so, though I can easily see how others would and more fully understand what would drive them to do so. But worlds apart? Nah... I think anyone who thinks so, is simply ignorant of the journey necessary to recognize the extent of their feminine nature. I'm still on the journey... nearer to the end than I was when I first accepted I didn't fit into the binary world.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
it's simple
How are TGs and CDs worlds apart?
Simple. One is a costume the other is an entire change of life.
When I take off my bra, my breasts do not fall to the floor or require some sort of solvent to remove the glue.
Given your response regarding the "slang" adoption of the term transgender, you should be able to see just WHY it is that society is constantly confused with actual TGs.
As very few of us ever change sexualities, it is illogical to use the term transsexual. We transverse the gender line, hence the term transgender.
As a CD or TV you are only approximating the appearance and for a few hours you live in the fantasy whereas we live it 24/7, and often our very mortality is at risk. You can hide merely by donning your normal day to day clothes. There is no hiding for transgenders.
Take for instance, you dress up as a pirate for awhile. Does this make you a real pirate? Or maybe a cowboy's costume; does this make you a real cowboy?
No. It's merely an escape from a normally humdrum existence. Argue it or not, the facts are facts.
And embracing a slang term as such will never make it part of the universal reality any more than saying "sick" could ever be a good thing.
Besides you are going WAY OFF the point. He was asking why he got such a negative response. I answered honestly. If you don't like the someone telling the truth well... you have the freedom to not to listen.
Remember "freedom of speech" is a universal reality in almost all of the 60 (plus) free nations worldwide, and in all of those it is always a two way street.
A costume
My post under yours is a response to your post. The post at the end is a response to the question at hand. And this post is a response your response to mine. And I agree, we are off topic, however, the tangent is one that needs to be addressed.
In my response to your first post, I mentioned the the difference of opinion regarding the term "transgender" and I see by your response that the subject has not been laid to rest. It would seem that you deny membership in the transgender club to anyone who's not had some surgery (at least top surgery) or perhaps you allow those who've had enough time in HRT to have grown breasts... I don't know.
I've had enough transgender friends, that is people I know personally and interacted with in the real world, to know that one doesn't jump from cisgender to transgender in a single day. There is a time of cross-dressing as we explore our feminine feelings, our urge to express ourselves in a feminine roll. Many of us, particularly in my generation - baby boomers, spent considerable time in denial. We told ourselves that it was an apparition that really didn't mean anything. It was something that we could walk away from at anytime. Hence the purge cycle most of us go through in the early years. It takes time for us to come to the realization that this is a part of our core person.
In my generation, we didn't have the internet that put resources at our fingertips, nor were there any Caitlyn Jenner's around. I did hear the name Christine Jorgensen and that she had been to Sweden for an operation. But information was sketchy, certainly not the national news blast that Ms Jenner received. As far as I was concerned I was the only male in the world who'd donned feminine garments.
Regarding the costume comment... for years, I've not owned any men's clothing. Now I'm willing to admit that I'm blessed by living in liberal Oregon. A state that has a town which elected an openly transgender mayor (Stu Rasmussen Mayor of Silverton, Oregon.) As such, I don't feel much risk for my mortality. Since my retirement in April of this year, I've expressed myself as the me I am inside daily. Mind you, I do put on a costume once a week, not because I need to other than for my wife's (50 years) sake. While I'm not concerned with what other people think, she is. She would like me to be in the closet and only dress in the privacy of our bedroom. If I were a only a cross-dresser, that would be enough. For decades, I made that be enough. However, no more. The costume I put on is simply some butch women's attire. The kind of thing I see many women at church wearing. Pants and oxford shirts. The pants I choose have no fly nor hip pockets and an elastic waist. The oxford shirt buttons on the distaff side (buttons on the left side). My shoes are no where near masculine. My hair is over my collar, pulled into a high ponytail. I wear a bra with breast forms, under that "costume."
My desire is for breasts that don't come off when I take off my bra. And indeed, I do have an A cup induced by taking 1200 milligrams cimetidine for six months. Just before I retired, I began seeing a doctor in Kaiser's "Gender Pathways" clinic. We are working on an HRT regimen, in the effort to finish that job. It's only in the beginning stages. It seems my testosterone production is quite high for septuagenarian. I was on Spironolactone and when the dosage got up to 300 milligrams with only marginal reduction in testosterone my kidneys had an adverse reaction. I'm now on finasteride. I'm also using a Climara transdermal patch (Estradiol).
So, I ask you... am I wearing a costume? Or am I on a transgender journey? I doubt that I'll ever go for bottom surgery, but I still desire to socially transition so that as you so succinctly put it, my breasts don't go away when I take off my bra. Perhaps that's rhetorical question, because in my mind, I am transgender.
My pastor knows I w
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
There are a number of things we tend to classify as feminine
There are a number of things we consider feminine and masculine. Over the years as my perception of my gender matured, I adopted feminine and rejected masculine in my life. First it was an attempt to homogenize what I began to see as two diametrically opposed portions of my personality in to one. When I began to speak of myself in third person, "Patricia prefers dresses," as opposed to "I prefer dresses." It was like I was suffering MPD.
Once I began under-dressing full time I began to see myself in a new light... a feminine male. I gave myself permission to be feminine and give up the overtly masculine facade I had developed to insulate myself from the stings and arrows I'd perceived society throwing at me. First I began sitting to pee... it's a feminine thing to do; shaving my legs as a part of my bathing routine; wear perfume daily; wearing only women's clothes (albeit some of them are masculine enough that others don't see them as women's); and most recently lipstick when ever I go out regardless of my masculine appearance, when I deem that necessary. Oh, yes, facial hair is indeed not feminine. Those of us who see (or in my case, have come to accept) ourselves as feminine to spite what the doctor said when he filled out our birth certificates want to be seen as feminine and find it quite odd when someone expresses themselves as a mix.
Perhaps, we are buying into the binary sex roles, but as the Brits say, "In for a penny, in for a pound."
Yes, I know that due to the testosterone overload during puberty, I'll never truly look feminine. However, with a smooth shaven face, I feel it's easier to gain acceptance for my feminine expression.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
Wow!
These comments are what makes it worthwhile to keep writing. I wrote this piece to be humorous, and I think I succeeded, but it sure stirred up some serious comments and discussion. You never can tell what happens when your words find their way out in the world.