Yesterday in one of my graduate level classes we had a guest speaker who shared with us some of his experiences and thoughts about being a crossdresser.  He reported that he spent 95% of his time as a man and didn’t have a “chip on [his] shoulder” about the questions we asked him or the pronouns we used to refer to him, so despite his being dressed as a woman yesterday I’ll be referring to this individual as “him.”  Although he gave us the disclaimer that we could ask anything, I still wasn’t comfortable asking everything I wanted to or voicing some things I was struggling to understand, but I figured this was as good a place as any to work through my thoughts.

I was born female and identify as female, and I view that as a privilege.  I don’t know what it’s like to be born in the wrong body, but I believe it can and does happen, and I believe it can and does make life harder for many people.  I also understand that there are individuals who are drawn to crossdressing who have no feelings of wanting to be the other gender, but simply like the way it feels or the way they look when they experiment with gender atypical attire.  But something wasn’t sitting right with me today.

Our guest speaker kept repeating, as he showed us pictures of 50s housewives doing chores in dresses and heels, “doesn’t that look like fun!?”  Maybe.  But not to me.  And the idea that this was once an expectation for women but is now seen as kitchy, cute, and “fun” rubs me the wrong way.  Women have worked long and hard to have the option to get out of that role, and “fun” kind of belittles that struggle.  I was also getting bogged down in privilege-tied guilt that its acceptable for me as a woman to dress in “male” clothing and the reverse isn’t true for men. I firmly believe that rigid gender roles cut both ways and hurt both women and men, too.  It sucks that men can’t dress how they want, and our speaker was right in stating that it’s not fair.  But it’s a little more complicated than that. More thoughts after the jump.