Trans* people crossdressing

[ThePhoenix]

I do not know a lot about crossdressing, so I apologize if this question seems ignorant, but it is meant sincerely.  Crossdressing is an area in which my knowledge of trans* issues is lacking and I have little idea of how to cure it.

If a transgender person transitions and then dresses in clothes associated with their previously lived gender, is that considered crossdressing in the same way as a cisgender person wearing clothing of the opposite sex?

By way of explanation, I spent enough years living as an ostensibly male person to make it feel like disregarding that time is a loss and not a healthy thing to do.  I sometimes think about ways of reclaiming it, owning it, and blending it into my life now, up to and including trying to live it again temporarily. 

[Missy~rmdlm]

Yes dressing as a guy is considered cross dressing post transition for MtFs. Having done it a few times for disposable clothes reasons(painting, chain sawing etc) I look utterly ridiculous in male clothes at this point. It's a bit hilarious.

[suzifrommd]

By way of explanation, I spent enough years living as an ostensibly male person to make it feel like disregarding that time is a loss and not a healthy thing to do.  I sometimes think about ways of reclaiming it, owning it, and blending it into my life now, up to and including trying to live it again temporarily.

I don't know whether it's healthy or unhealthy, but if some part of you wants to present or dress male at some times, IMO there is nothing at all wrong with that.

It CERTAINLY doesn't make you any less a woman.

[Anna++]

Yes, it would technically be considered crossdressing but that's okay!  You're allowed to wear whatever clothes you want

[Alexis]

I had the surgeries done to look female,the ffs,body feminized,tracheal shave and breast augmentation.It made clothes shopping much easier,this was when I was 25 years old.

[GendrKweer]

I'd call it more being in drag than cross dressing... but that's mostly just semantics and my personal vocabulary.

[Emo]

why are you worried? my girlfriends wear guy clothes all the time
id probably wear guy clothes still too. i like baggie and loose stuff anyways.
save the girly for dates and formal or if i just feel like looking good. :p

[Amy The Bookworm]

why are you worried? my girlfriends wear guy clothes all the time

^ This!

A friend of mine who's a lesbian wears neck ties all the time, and manages to make them look darn good. I may even keep one or two around and if I can pull off the look she does, they may get more use after I transition than they do now...

[ThePhoenix]

Well . . . A couple of things.  First more generally:

It seems to me that from society's perspective, there would be a difference in that a transitioned trans* person wearing clothes associated with their assigned at birth gender is wearing clothes associated with what they were whereas a cisgender person is wearing clothes associated with what they never were.  Particularly given the realities of many transwomen who do not pass in the world, even after transition, one wonders if such people would be socially rewarded by society for doing something that most would envision as being gender compliant.  I have no idea if this would work that way.

And I always use trans* rather than transgender or transsexual because it is the broadest! most inclusive term I know of.  In particular it includes nonbinary folks for whom one question would be, what does crossdressing even mean?  If, for example, one cultivates a carefully androgynous presentation, then what presentation would be considered a cross gender presentation?  Would it be any more binary oriented presentation?

Maybe that answers my question about whether it is the same . . . .

As far as me personally:

I think it's very unhealthy to pretend that all the past years did not exist or to try and disown them.  I think they should be claimed.  If nothing else, regardless of what gender I was living in at the time, I have always been a basically good person.  I have thought about actually presenting male. 

And of course it is much safer to be perceived as a woman in men's clothing than to be perceived the other way around.  But that doesn't mean it is safe.  For some reason, hormones (both T and E) work freakishly fast on me.  This particular adventure was so fast that I couldn't keep up with it and it caused me some problems.  Some of those problems involved confrontations on the street that scared the daylights out of me and made me really believe I was about to end up in a hospital or worse.  Frankly I am pretty darn scared by the idea of donning men's clothing and going out in the world.  It might be easier and safer if I were better at presenting in a butchier way.  But I'm pretty much a girly girl, so me with macho clothing or otherwise trying to present in a but by or manly way is kind of laughable really . . . . 'Tis a big part of why I gave up trying to be a guy in the first place.

Plus there is the whole problem that I kind of enjoy life as it is and it's very comfortable, so trying to manage a male presentation is one of those things I just never get around to.  Plus, in my case, crossdressing has always seemed like a silly thing to do because my issues have never had anything to do with clothing.

Were I to wear something, it would probably be something small and symbolic that would not be obvious.  I'm not sure what that would be. 

To the admins who had to move this thread:  I'm so sorry about putting it in the wrong place!  I have been trying to figure out why I couldn't find the thread.  I guess this shows that I'm still struggling with the forum interface a bit.  Thanks for moving it to a more sensible spot.

[JoanneB]

Doing an oil change or a brake job is far easier in pants than a skirt and long hair.

If cross-dressing worked to keep your sanity years ago, no reason not to use the right tool for the job just because the job changed.

[suzifrommd]

I think it's very unhealthy to pretend that all the past years did not exist or to try and disown them.  I think they should be claimed.

Whenever someone uses the word "should" in a sentence I always think "who says". Is this something you think you should do (like flossing or cleaning the toilets) or is this something you want to do because it feels natural?

If it's the latter, than whether it is something you "should" do is a moot point. If it's the former, can you ask yourself whether adding male elements to your presentation truly affects your well being? What's the worst consequence if you don't do it?

Some of those problems involved confrontations on the street that scared the daylights out of me and made me really believe I was about to end up in a hospital or worse.

Sounds like a harrowing experience. I'm lucky that even in the days when I was totally non-passing, the worst I ever had is a nasty stare.

However, I'd caution against letting street thugs dictate your presentation. There are going to be people who don't like you no matter what, and cis women are the victims of violence as well.

[Lesley_Roberta]

We use TG for THEIR sake not ours. An important distinction.

Transgender females are women. Women in women's clothing is NOT cross dressing EVER.

When I put on pants, THAT is cross dressing. Not that it matters as like has been said, plenty of cis females wear whatever they feel like.

Crossdresser is a term meant for crossdressers crossdressing. They are not their apparels gender, it is just a attire preference they like. When they wear their routine clothing matched to their gender, they are simply not presently crossdressing.

Butt naked a transwoman is still a transwoman. There is no off switch for us.

[ThePhoenix]

Doing an oil change or a brake job is far easier in pants than a skirt and long hair.

If cross-dressing worked to keep your sanity years ago, no reason not to use the right tool for the job just because the job changed.

I am hopeless with cars, but I would imagine that it is easier in pants!  I hope that cross-dressing is helpful to you and others.  Like I said, for me it's a silly thing to do.

[ThePhoenix]

Crossdresser is a term meant for crossdressers crossdressing. They are not their apparels gender, it is just a attire preference they like. When they wear their routine clothing matched to their gender, they are simply not presently crossdressing.

Butt naked a transwoman is still a transwoman. There is no off switch for us.

This.  Although I disagree with the statement that wearing pants is crossdressing when one is a woman.  I (and most women) wear pants most of the time.

I get the impression that my question is generating some radical misunderstanding.  Although I appreciate the attempts at being helpful to my personal pondering, they really are not addressing the issue.  The question I posed came up as a result of my thinking about reclaiming my past life.  But it's really more of a social question about how society would view a trans* person who transitioned and decided to dress in the attire of their pretransition sex.

Now let me don my trans* community advocate hat for a moment:
When I go and advocate for trans* inclusive policies and legislation, one of the most common responses from skeptics and adversaries is "what?  Some guy puts on a dress and thinks he's a woman?"  I then have to try and untangle that idea from the mind of someone who can't wrap their mind around the idea that trans* could be anything else.  I use myself, my presentation, and my story as tools to do that.  I am frequently used by myself and others to rebut the "man in a dress meme"  because I am kind of its antithesis, but I am a very good example of what can happen to someone when a hostile world learns they are trans*.  So people see me, they see I am pretty normal. Unthreatening, and downright boring.  And yet they see what has happened to me.  And that's how I get people from "what?  Men in dresses?" to a point at which they are eager to vote for a bill or a point where they are willing to sign a postcard supporting the bill or whatever else I may be asking them to do.

But the interesting thing here is that this whole dialogue, from the persons prejudice to its rebuttal is all about the idea that a persons gender is about more than their clothing.  I believe that to be true, but what is that?  I've never found a very good way of answering that or explaining it.

I spent most of my adult life pretending to be a guy.  I never mastered male body language.  I never learned how to fully pass as male.  I heard very frequently that "hey, you know, there's something very female about you."  I even got physically assaulted for it more times than I can count.  I never managed to fit in and find a comfortable space for myself.  And ultimately I gave up so I could relax.  The feeling for me is like returning home from a very long trip.  I very quickly stopped looking like a guy, and I could just relax and employ body language and such that I learned from my earliest childhood.  But are mannerisms and body language all there is to being a woman or a man?  I doubt it.  But yet if you ask me why I would say I was "pretending" to be a guy instead of just being one, I'd be hard pressed to point at anything else.  At the end of the day, I'd probably throw up my hands and say that I just never managed to make living as male fit or make any sense to me so I finally quit trying.   But it sure never had anything to do with clothing.

So I never understand the mystique that clothing has in and outside the trans* community.  When I wear women's clothing, I am not donning my pretty things, as one poster suggested.  I'm just getting dressed for the day.  I'm not wearing anything special.  I'm just wearing clothes.  Namely clothes that happen to fit my shape and size.

[suzifrommd]

So I never understand the mystique that clothing has in and outside the trans* community. 

Outside the trans community, I don't think clothing HAS much of a mystique. Genderbending, on the other hand, is imbued with all sorts of symbolism and brings about strong emotions. Especially when the gender is bent by a male-bodied person doing female-ish things. Gender is powerful. Every trans* person knows that.

When we wear clothes that upset someone's view of gender appropriateness, it isn't the clothing that triggers their stability gyros, it's the daring to cross the gender barrier.

When I go and advocate for trans* inclusive policies and legislation, one of the most common responses from skeptics and adversaries is "what?  Some guy puts on a dress and thinks he's a woman?" 

This is a far more complex question than trans* people give it credit. IMO, gender is a combination of how we present, how we are treated, our body sex, our attitudes, our experiences, our brain structure, and our hormonal balances. Yes, I'm transgender. Yes I have a brain structure that wants me to be female despite my male body.

Does that make me a woman?

My experience is that I'm becoming a woman through my transition, not that I was one originally.

That's a different question than the way society should treat me.

As a simple matter of respect and human decency, when I declare that my pronouns and presentation are female, I expect others to treat me as such. Anything less is disrespectful and callous.

[Lesley_Roberta]

When you consider the history of various articles of apparel and accessories, it does tend to make a person wonder.

Men used to wear 'dresses' and 'skirts' and even what today is called a 'night gown'.

I'm of Scottish origins, and it was called a kilt not a skirt. In Greece, some of the national attire looks amazingly like a dress, and in Japan, a kimono sure looks like a dress.

But society likes to forget, and that is mainly the problem, they forget. History is rarely sold as 'cool', so it is no surprise when no one seems any good at it.

Men used to wear a 'purse' only it was mainly for carrying money. It wasn't a catch all device to hold anything and everything that a woman finds essential.

A lot of must have female articles have not always been around. At one time, it was considered proper for a woman to have her reproductive parts visible to the ground. Bras were not invented till recent times.

Pants were mainly an article designed to allow someone to work in. Work was generally male dominated in certain field, and a woman wearing a dress was not a problem if the work permitted to her could be done in one. Keep in mind, in some regions of the world, climate and conditions are such that almost no clothing at all was the routine. Clothing is mostly a defense against weather, and when it isn't needed, we humans didn't wear it.

The industrial revolution, and the effects it had on war, and the two world wars killing off so many men in the field and making it so we needed females to take up the roles of factory worker did a lot more to allow women to ditch the dress in favour of pants and cover alls a lot more so than thoughts of liberation ever did.

The notion today that pants are equally female articles is merely a reflection of how far back WW2 and earlier really is to a lot of minds now.
Society has gotten used to women wearing shorts, and gotten used to swim wear that is increasingly only good to cover a pair of nipples and a vagina for the women in the swim suit. It is actually comical that the anime industry gets so many laughs over exposed panties, when the average pair of women's underwear is actually a great deal more covering than the same girls swim suit would ever be in most cases. All of the appeal is entirely based on 'you are not supposed to see her panties'.

Most of the attitudes connected to clothing are invented by society to reflect biases.

The ONLY reason I have for NOT walking down the street totally naked in the summer on a hot day is I prefer some things to not get sun burned. But society has invented a lot of reasons based on guilt obsession connected to sex, and phobias connected to sex, and religious obsessions connected to sex such, that viewing a person's reproductive organs is considered a major problem. And we even extend the silliness to which specific articles we are allowed to wear.

I don't mind saying, that on a HOT as hell day in the summer, in my home, butt naked with a wet towel around my neck is the preferred solution inside my home. But thanks to owning decent A/C devices, I have escaped the need to go naked the last few years. I'd be plenty happy to leave the house in a nice sun dress on a blistering hot day with not a damned thing under it. Because bloody hot is simply no fun, and anything that traps the heat serves no value to me. Most ladies that would entertain no pantie days, are really just exploiting an option that a no wind day permits if they are daring enough. Ladies just don't enjoy the option that men do for the most part in being able to strip from the waist up and wear their shirt tucked into a back pocket while out in the heat. No one thinks ill of the men doing it.

On a cold freezing day in the winter, I am not worried about fashion. Baggy pants rule, big mukluks and a serious parka with hood is what I wear. Inside that, my gender is all but invisible. So what, frostbite is not my friend.

But I am enjoying the fact that my life is mainly forced to be indoors and at home. I have two articles I am planning to order today from my fav online site. Likely over priced articles, likely I could find cheaper in a thrift store, and likely they might even barely fit. But I am not into pot luck and convincing myself I don't mind the pattern of a stray item. I want something that is pretty, that is the colour I like, and is pattern free it I don't want trendy logos or images on it. My current first night gown, it is plain white, has nice little roses sewn into the design, it is smocked in the front, has a nice red ribbon draw on the neckline and has a frill on the bottom edge. It is night shirt length not night gown length. In other word, if I bend over fully I expose my backside in the process It's something a girl could wear to bed, and be sexily 'available' in bed to her partner I suppose.
So today I am likely going to order a couple of items. One is a pink version of the one I have and in full gown length, and the other is a blue one which appears to be similar in design. They both also have longer sleeves. A girl needs to be able to do her laundry after all, so I need at least the 3 items. And at 50 bucks + shipping and taxes, no they are not cheap. It is a lucky month though when I have no real model purchases to make, so I am giving my allowance to my clothing needs.

Sure I'd rather get a dress. Plenty of really nice ones on sale at the same source too. But until I am on HRT and effectively developing breasts, I have decided most female articles of clothing, likely will look silly on me and do me no real favours. Just because I am a woman, and confident, doesn't mean I get a free pass on the matter of looking good in female clothing. They design it on the assumption you at least have something in your bra. And fate has not made me an over weight male with man boobs (I suppose I can be thankful). My shape simply emphasizes my not having breasts too much. Too much waist and too little chest just makes their absence too in your face noticeable.

I don't consider pants female clothing. It's my age (read my thread on life stages). I predate too much of the world where pants were increasingly ordinary for females. I come from a time when wearing a dress was the norm and women that wore pants were less lady like.
I am not saying it is good or bad, I am saying that is the world I came into. It's sad that dresses lose their sparkle so early for little girls too.

[anjaq]

I am not sure what you mean by reclaiming your previous life? It is not gone, it is part of you anyways? No matter what you dressed like. I think for a woman it is totally more aceptable to crossdress in male clothing, it gets a bit iffy if she were to glue on a beard or something that is more like doig drag king stuff or actually trying to pass as male. This is still ok, I guess, but of course it is downright totally queer - I dont get the dressing thing that much - when I transitioned, I did leave out some clothes that I just disliked and some that I regarded as too male (mostly big pullovers that just looked awkward), but other than that not too much changed in the long run. I had a phase of doing more girly things, but overall clothing was not really that important to me and looking at my wardrobe now, I guess a really good portion of it is unisex and some are just downright male (work clothes for gardening, functional winter jackets etc). But I dont consider this crossdressing really as it is not that I am using these clothes with the intention of being seen as male, which is probably the goal in most crossdressing, right? So to actually try and be seen as a male would be tough for me - I think I am not confident for that yet - feel not safe enough to have my home that I can return to after such an adventure. You know - taking off the clothes and everyone knows it was all a fake  no doubt left. If I had that privilege, I guess I might do such a thing one day

[aleon515]

Since it's socially acceptable for a woman to dress in men's clothes (and not apparently the other way), it is probably not considered anything if a trans woman dresses in male clothes. But if a trans guy does it is. Does this make any sense? No, I didn't think so, but it is kind of what society says about this.

--Jay

[lisarenee]

I hated in Middle School hearing cisgirls talk about shopping in the Boys section for [baggy] Jeans, yet I had to hide that I loved shopping in the Girls section. There is a genuine double standard - ciswomen can wear mens clothes, but cismen aren't permitted the same freedom. Homophobia is responsible for this.

[Oriah]

every once in a while I bind and muster up a deeper voice and wear my more neutral clothing......just for fun....