The Admirable Transvestite
By JT Brien
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The two worlds are complementary, but they are not simply mirror-images of each other. Men and women may live in different worlds but they are born in the same one, the world of their mothers. Sooner of later a boy will leave his mother to enter the world of men, but he retains fond memories of what that world of his infancy was like. His view of womanhood is tinged with memories of his infancy. A girl, on the other hand, sees manhood as freedom; boys are the ones who do not do as they are told. When she first asserts her own independance, she does so by acting the tom-boy, a phase that usually ends when she becomes interested in boys.
A woman who acts like a man therefore is trying to make her own mark on the world. She may be feared, hated or resented for that, but not despised. Of course there were those, especially in times when independant women were less common, who simply enjoyed the shock that the sight of a woman in trousers gave to male egos, and never actually did anything but dress up. There may even have been a few so insecure about asserting themselves that they only dressed in private, but generally, once the gesture was made, it inspired them to prove that they were "as good as men".
"Jane's aunt became an aviator first because of getting to wear overalls and getting dirty. Had young girls been able to do this at home, as now, she is sure she would not have seen the midnight sun or the Nile."
For male transvestites there are no such opportunities (for what can a man do in a dress that he cannot do better in trousers?) so, unless they enjoy shocking people or look good enough to pass, they dress in private.
Everyone, when faced with a new situation, reaches into the past for an appropriate response. When we first fall in love, for example, we use the sort of expressions we heard when we were hugged and kissed as babies, which is why Valentine messages come from floppy bunnies and the like.
Joan of Arc and her sisters responded to the challenges of men with what they learned in their tom boy days and built upon it. For a man there is no similar period, no time in which he felt approved of when acting like a girl. On the contrary, growing up for a boy meant not acting like a girl, not being a "cissie".
A man who puts on a dress is not recalling some proud moment of youthful independance. He is seeking warmth, security, love, the things he had when, as an infant, he last lived in the world of women. I know this is not a complete explanation, indeed it is not exactly how I regard my own dressing, but it is un- deniable, and the reason why some men enjoy dressing, or rather being dressed, as babies or schoolgirls.
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