Quote from: Zenda on January 15, 2013, 12:50:24 PM
But I do see the grey area when it comes to the trans-male, many of you from a fairly young age get to wear pant of some kind and quite often shirts, perhaps a slightly different style/cut to male pants and shirts-[I guess some actually wear male pants and shirts ] so for the most part, you are in a sense only cross dressing when you have to wear a dress or skirt...
I get the general point(s) being made, but for me "cross-dressing" is a complicated word, open to several contradictory definitions.
There were (presumably) cisgendered guys when I was growing up who would appear crossdressed at public events, particularly at costume parties, where it seemed clear they were doing it for laughs. I remember looking at them, and resenting that if I had done the (supposedly) same thing, it would have probably been obvious I was doing it as an expression of my real self... I'd have been offended if someone tried to interpret it as a joke in fact.
On the FTM side, I know that my son makes a conscious decision now that he is out in public, to shop in the men's department, to try to avoid any questions about his identity, even though, right now, he's not really able to pull that off entirely -- due to an ample chest and facial features, and other lack of testosterone effects.
For both of us, appearing as the gender we were CAAB is not much fun, and the implication of "cross dressing" as a term tends to be that it is done for some kind of secondary gain, to signify to others how one identifies, or because the dressing itself is some sort of turn on.
Personally I went through all sorts of arcane efforts to find some neutral way to dress and present myself, with none of them ever that satisfying in the end.
In the interest of saving typing... does the following count as cross dressing or not?
I remember thinking at the time that I'd have rather been wearing a blouse like the one my partner was wearing there, but the style of mine is still fairly femme, though the colors leave some room for doubt.
Similarly:
This too was a compromise. I would have much rather chosen outfits like the ones in
this article, but I was (realistically) scared of frightening off other parents and getting more isolated. Pretty sure the outfit shown came entirely from women's departments, considering there's so little market for "daddy and me" dresses or even onesies. I'm sure my plaid shorts did. (Ick, this was also before I was shaving my legs... sorry).
I also suspect my trans son (in the pic) is somewhat glad that at least some of the times I was dressing him androgynously, through almost no intent of my own.
