crossdressing

[ewx]

Apropos of conversation on irc:

[Poll #474756]

(Oh, I suppose those should have been radio buttons, being mutually exclusive. Never mind.)

Comments

[megamole.livejournal.com]

Unless a cassock counts.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I routinely wear trousers and shirts. What counts as cross-dressing for women?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I don't think so...

[emperor]

[though it was on-stage]

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

My default answer to that is "men's suits".

[ewx.livejournal.com]

There's certainly a gray area (at least in my mind, and not just because it's late in the afternoon), which trousers and shirt falls into; perhaps when you're in the gray area it's intent that matters?

[j4.livejournal.com]

Define "men's suits"...

[senji.livejournal.com]

Slightly confuse answer, because whilst I have never cross-dressed I've stated that I would under certain circumstances.

[imc.livejournal.com]

Since mine was on-stage and before the age of 13 (not to mention I didn't volunteer for the part) I didn't count it. It happened twice, but that's still not enough to claim "occasionally".

[j4.livejournal.com]

perhaps when you're in the gray area it's intent that matters?

No no no no, come on, you're not playing the game; we want prescriptive definitions that allow us to put our wardrobes and our lives into neatly-pigeonholed boxes!

And what does the intent have to be? To look male? To look like a cross-dressing woman? Or is it a more recursive "intent to wear men's clothes"? If the latter, am I cross-dressing if I choose jeans and a t-shirt because they're what boys wear? I would be deluding myself if I dressed with intent to pass as a man because I'm five foot one with big tits and there's only so much that clothes can do to fix that!

Is it Friday yet?

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what it means for a woman to cross dress these days, so my answer is either "Almost all the time" or "Not at all". I wear whatever fits and is comfortable and appropriate for the occasion. Lots of my clothes are from the men's section of shops, lots from the women's. I rarely wear skirts, dresses, blouses or the like; when I do, that feels like cross dressing to me, particularly since most people's reaction is "Gosh, you're wearing a skirt".

put our wardrobes and our lives into neatly-pigeonholed boxes

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I'm not tidying your wardrobe for you!

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Suits sold in the menswear section of M&S?

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

Matched (usually, but not necessarily, identically coloured; consider the white dinner jacket, which is worn with standard black dinner suit trousers) combinations of jacket, trousers, and possibly waistcoat, as typified by the product lines of Moss Bros; typically worn with a long-sleeved button-down shirt and some form of tie.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Presumably a dinner jacket would count? It's not unnaceptable, but it's clearly non-usual.

Or swimming trunks, but I guess that's out :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I'd expect most people to check 'a few times' :)

Actually, I don't think I have. I *would* for parties and such like, modulo borrowing really big female clothes :)

[kjaneway.livejournal.com]

Women wearing "male identified" clothing, is, these days, much less of an issue than the other way around.

So, while I routinely wear men's trousers and often men's shirts, day to day, it's less often that I go any further.

I do, however, own a black dinner suit, a very nice white dinner jacket, and a set of USAF formal mess dress (don't ask).

There's defintiely an air of gender bending, that I'd associate with cross dressing, on the occasions that I wear those.

I'm not above admiting that I find the Drag King (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_king) scene interesting.

Both my gender and identity are female, but there's still a certain thrill to be had in pretending otherwise.

[j4.livejournal.com]

See, this is where I have the problem: I buy all my clothes from charity shops, and they don't really have "menswear" and "womenswear" sections. I can't remember the last time I bought a new-from-high-street-shop item of clothing!

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

So, what about other clothes from the men's section? I have "male" combat trousers, shirts, socks, jumpers, Tshirts etc: they're marketed to men, have all the fastenings on the "male" side and so on. Given that the purpose of a suit is to look smart, and that a badly fitting suit looks scruffy, it's very hard to get a men's suit in my size, does that mean that my rather butch trouser suits from the "women's" section don't count?

Re: put our wardrobes and our lives into neatly-pigeonholed boxes

[j4.livejournal.com]

Aw, go on.

[kjaneway.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, and another thing... I routinely wore a bow tie to school for my entire sixth form.

[sparrowsion]

I'm going to take advantage of them not being radio buttons—while "routinely" would be an appropriate answer, I think there should be space at that end of the scale beyond me.

An Y-Front to public morals

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Cross-Dressing in Wimmin would probably be defined as wearing clothes tailored for men (ie: trousers too tight at the hips and still huge at the waist, and shirts or jackets with no boob-space) or *horror* mens underwear: string vests with curry-stains, sticky socks, crispy boxer shorts etc.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Well, I *would*, but I just don't fit into men's tailored clothes! It's excessively expensive to get one custom made.

Black tie is one of the few occasions that I do wear "girly" clothes, and I feel like I look like a drag queen*!

*Not that there's anything wrong with that, I think it's great and that there should be more of it, it's just that, well, it feels odd.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

My new brown belt has a previous owner, the (very) female senior student at Bethnal Green Aikido club (http://www.livejournal.com/users/hairyears/38108.html).