Earlier this week while I was at work, “Edmund” (not his real name) stopped by to visit my wife. I know Edmund fairly well. We didn’t always get along, but as he grew up and matured, things lightened up between us. He’s really not a bad guy, but he offered a little reminder and rather cold dose of reality before his visit was through.
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What exactly is normal? Being a crossdresser, most of society would consider me to be anything but normal. Sadly, that assessment is entirely based on my preferred choice of outward appearance. Compared to the Cleaver family of 1950′s sitcom “everyday normal family” fame, do I really look so terrible?
We live in a society that preaches “don’t judge a book by its cover” and tells us diversity is a good thing, but there are widely accepted limits to both. I’m not sure exactly where the line is drawn, but it falls well short of accepting someone like me as “normal”.
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The cable guy made a house call at the Hermosa household recently. When he spoke to greet me, I realized immediately that the gable guy was really the cable gal. My wife and I both mistook her for a him. Honestly, she really did look more like a him than a her. Just to be clear, I’m not picking on her appearance in any way, shape, or form – only indicating that she looked male based on her physical appearance alone. The point I’m getting to is how society is very accepting of women who dress and look masculine in appearance. Society is not accepting of men who dress and look feminine in appearance. Why does this only work one way and not the other?
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This an old argument among male to female crossdressers. Why can women dress in clothes that are considered feminine or masculine, whereas men can only dress in clothes deemed masculine? There are no laws about this kind of thing, but the socially acceptable factor has a lot of weight on how we can live our lives in the public arena.
Extending well beyond just clothes, it encompasses total physical appearance, behavior and mannerisms. I’ve put together a very basic chart to illustrate the socially accepted gender expression norms:
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It seems like a million years ago and just yesterday at the same time. I was 12 years old and it was undoubtedly the single most traumatic event of my youth. The devastating emotional impact lasted for many years after.
I first realized my desire to dress in women’s clothes at about the age of 3 or 4. I didn’t know what it all meant, but I knew enough to keep it a secret. It’s interesting that even at such a young age, the social taboo of crossdressing was already heavily cemented in my mind. It seems like from the time I was born, I was taught of the need to fit in to the socially accepted norm of the “male gender role” because of my sex. How else would a 4 year old know to guard this little secret as if his life depended on it?
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I had very troubled teen years. Sure, most teens have their struggles, but I was an emotional wreck who couldn’t fit in socially to save my life and suffered from chronic depression. As a result, my parents sent me to a psychiatrist. It did me good and I leaned a lot about myself. I eventually chose to discontinue therapy after realizing that I was just going to him to complain about my life rather than work through my problems. In more than a decade of therapy, I never told him I was a crossdresser. The whole time, I was in fact in denial about it myself. After all, society frowns heavily on such things.
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