The Medical Profession is Female

A man and his son are terribly injured in an accident. They are taken to hospital requiring surgery. A surgeon is called, but looks at the boy and says "I can't operate on this boy: he's my son!" How is this possible?

Does this riddle perplex you? If so, you may be demonstrating your innate gender bias, that surgeons ought to be male, and therefore you expect the surgeon to be the boy's father. Of course, the common answer is that the surgeon is the boy's mother (though it's becoming increasingly possible that the boy is the child of a gay couple).

My media feed this week sparked my interest with its announcement that the "Medical Profession is Female", and I followed the link.

Professor Elizabeth Loder is a professor of neurology at Harvard, and the head of research at the British Medical Journal. She writes (my italics):

Loder: Soon, most doctors in the US, the UK, and Europe will be women; this is already the case in many countries (...) The stereotype that doctors are men persists at a time when almost half of physicians are female—and it has been internalised by women physicians like me—so it’s a problem that needs to be fixed. How to do this? It would help to retire “he,” “him,” and “his” as the default pronouns for doctors and make a deliberate switch to “she,” “her,” and “hers.” Pronouns are in flux, and it’s possible that “they,” “them,” and “theirs” will become standard. Until that happens, I have a proposal: when in doubt, and the gender of the doctor is unknown, let’s use female pronouns to send a message and open minds.

Professor Elizabeth Loder

There is no doubt that she is right. Women outnumber men at admission to medical school already, and my own belief is that more than half of all doctors are already women.

Loder's piece was prompted by a paper recently published in the BMJ which shows that female scientists are less likely to use positive terms to describe their research findings compared to male scientists. The men tend to use positive-sounding words like novel, unique, or unprecedented, and papers with this more positive language get cited more often.

Academic papers are usually cited in a way which masks the first name of the authors. They are usually given by their initials only: (Lennon J, McCartney P, Harrison G, Starr R), which makes it pretty hard to infer anyone's gender. I had always considered that this made academic publishing encouragingly gender-neutral, but the BMJ paper shows that there is a measurable male-female difference.

As an amusing aside, those of you who are familiar with British English will know the expression "old Uncle Tom Cobley and all", meaning "everyone imaginable". I was delighted to discover that there are several listings in academic journals where Cobley UT has been listed as a co-author!

Loder: Using female pronouns for doctors would force everyone, on a regular basis, to remember that women can be doctors. Soon the default use of female pronouns will make sense for the same reason we’ve defaulted to male pronouns: it will be the best reflection of reality and the new gender makeup of the physician workforce. Furthermore, in situations where most doctors are male (surgical subspecialties, for example), it’s then even more desirable to use a default pronoun of “she” to expand people’s ideas of who can be a doctor.

I'm already doing this very deliberately in my Quora answers, and at work I am careful to deliberately avoid assuming male pronouns for doctors (instead I tend to use they). The very first post I ever wrote on this blog, back in 2011 (!) was about pronouns, although I must say that the invented, gender-neutral pronouns still grate with me wherever I see them.

What I saw, twenty or more years ago, is that to succeed in medicine, women had to outperform the men. That meant that the few female consultants and professors, that I knew then, tended toward the ferocious spinster archetype. I got the impression these were women who had sacrificed a lot (personal life, family life) to get their positions. Many seemed to me to be bitter and battle-hardened: sick of proving themselves right in front of mansplaining men who were not as good as they were.

Before she was that doctor, she was this doctor.

It was considered acceptable for women to do the “touchy-feely” specialties, such as general practice or psychiatry. But women found it very difficult to succeed in the “tougher, harder” specialties such as surgery (especially orthopaedics). The following quote comes from my favourite dark medical drama, the wonderful Cardiac Arrest:

Just because surgery involves a bit of sewing doesn’t mean it’s any job for a housewife!

I personally witnessed the deliberate, ritualised bullying of a highly capable surgical trainee who had committed two grave sins: being a woman, and having brown skin.

But things have changed, and are still changing. Those battle-hardened spinsters have blazed the trail, and women are streaming into specialties which have previously been off limits. And they no longer need to do battle with the boys, which means they are more relaxed and able to express themselves. Some female surgeons operate with little feminine touches: fabulous pink surgical boots (instead of boring white) or operating spectacles with little sparkly bits glued onto the legs and rims. These sound like little things, almost trivial, but they represent ground which was hard-fought for, inch by inch.

The men are, in general, much more respectful and better-behaved. Some of the older ones have ascended to higher echelons, which means that Medical College councils and presidents still tend to be mostly men. But even here I am hearing new dialogue. The president of my Medical College (a man) announced that, considering all the Annual Scientific Meetings our College has ever held, over 100 keynote speakers have presented, and only six were women. Imagine, he said with genuine sincerity, all the talented speakers we have missed out on. (This year nearly all the keynote speakers were women).

That talented surgical trainee I knew back in the day has made it; she was far too talented not to. But she lost something along the way: her compassion is far less now than it was when I knew her. She too has been battle-hardened.

I remain hopeful that these trends continue, and I remain certain that medicine (and hence patients) will benefit from improved gender balance.

But there is one thing still missing: where are the trans doctors? If, as I suspect, there are just as many transgender doctors as there are in the general population, where are they all? This is a subject I intend to explore more fully in a later post, because I've been doing a lot of looking. Meanwhile, if you have a story or viewpoint to share, please leave a comment.

Caitlyn Jenner

No doubt anyone in the world with access to a television has become aware of Caitlyn Jenner (whether they like it or not).

Born William Bruce Jenner in 1949, and known as Bruce Jenner for many years, Jenner (now 65) is probably the most famous openly transsexual person in the world. Jenner was an Olympic athlete, winning the gold medal at the Men's Decathlon in Montreal. Earlier this year, Jenner publicly came out as a transwoman, changed her name to Caitlyn and underwent a highly publicised transition (although there had been some signs for a long time). I dare say she will figure prominently in the reality TV schedules for some years to come. (And, no doubt, the wearisome jokes and mockery will continue for a while longer).

Trying to be Bruce

But you already know all this. Why am I troubling to write about it?

Lately I've spent quite a lot of time reading and writing on Quora. It's a wonderful website for people like me, who are curious about all sorts of things, and have an opinion (and occasionally some pertinent knowledge) about all sorts of things. (You can find my Quora content here). Although I have added links to Quora content throughout this article, I am not sure if you will be able to access them all without registering to the website.

Someone posted this question:

What is the appropriate name and pronoun to use when talking about things that Caitlyn Jenner did in the past, while she was known as Bruce and thought to be a man? 

That really got me thinking. Who won that gold medal?

From one point of view, it's pragmatic to say that the winner of the medal was Bruce Jenner. The competition was the Men's Decathlon. Therefore the correct pronoun to use is "he"; he won the medal. On the other hand, Jenner herself says she struggled with gender dysphoria her whole life, even when competing and winning that medal. And now the person who won the medal is Caitlyn Jenner, and takes female pronouns. Therefore she won the medal.

Call me Caitlyn

There was a reasonable amount of discussion in the responses to the question. As one might expect, some people felt quite strongly about the matter.

Tessa Norris writes:

The correct way to refer to a transitioned trans woman is to refer to her with her current name and pronouns, and to abandon her old name and pronouns.

Tamara Wiens writes:

Referring to a trans person by their "dead name" is usually taken to be very offensive. Personally, it's bothersome in an ill-defined way - when anyone says it, it makes my skin crawl, and I want to be ill, so it's fortunate that it is happening less and less all the time.

Katie Anne Holton writes:

My preference is that no one use my former name, ever.

Whatever I did under another name, I did it. Katie was born in 1963. Katie married in 1990 and divorced in 2006. Katie fathered two beautiful children.

In the same sense, Caitlin Jenner was an Olympic athlete. She won a gold medal in the decathlon. She got married. She fathered children.

I disagree with Tessa Norris. There isn't, as yet, a "correct way". There is only a society struggling to agree on a way to get a linguistic handle on what is, for many people, a comparatively new phenomenon. I accept there are ways that some people would prefer over other ways, but that isn't the same thing as a "correct way".

I must say I had never heard of the term dead name or deadname before this discussion, and it struck me as a term laden with powerful connotations. It reminded me of the notion that in mediaeval times, a "funeral" service would be held for novice nuns and monks on entering their religious community, to symbolise their "death" to society; that the person who had previously lived was now gone. I don't really know how often this actually happened, but it seems terribly barbaric.

More from Vanity Fair

I can understand Katie Anne Holton's perspective. Nonetheless, it makes me a bit uncomfortable. When Bruce Jenner competed in the Olympics, everyone thought he was a man. He presented externally as a man (regardless of his inner feelings). All the documentation at the time used male pronouns. (In fact, even in the recent Bruce Jenner Interview With Diane Sawyer, Bruce agreed to be called Bruce and asked for masculine pronouns to be used even though transition was already underway).

Then there came a change, which was initiated by Bruce himself. He has asserted a new identity and changed his name. I think that we should now respect Caitlyn's new name and identity, but for me this doesn't apply retrospectively.

One's innate preferences and choices do not, in my opinion, compel the rest of society to rewrite the past. (And by preferences, I don't mean that gender is a preference, but I do consider that how people act and present is a preference and a choice. I think that Bruce was choosing at that time to try to be Bruce, even though that was difficult and painful).

I tried to take the discussion further, but the fact that I somewhat disagreed was met with some hostility at first:

Tessa Norris: You have the "right" to refer to my past against my express wishes in any way you choose. But only in the sense that you have the free speech right to call me a "tranny faggot" if you want.

Then came an answer by Elliott Mason, which I think was extremely pertinent:

How would you refer to the sports accomplishments of Muhammad Ali before he changed his name? It's an interesting parallel case to think about, because at the time his change was just as shocking and just as much of a media circus as Ms. Jenner's name change is now.

Also, very many female Olympians have married and changed their last names after their athletic careers are over. I don't think I've ever seen anyone make a big deal about using their maiden name to refer to their accomplishments in their former athletic career. One mention near the top, at most, and the rest of the article in their current name.

It certainly seems right to compare Muhammad Ali and Caitlyn Jenner, although Ali's name change came before much of his sporting success. I am not aware of any situation where Ali would be referred to by the name Cassius Clay, except in articles which say something like "Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay)".

What could they make me look like?

Elliott goes on:

Would you apply the same rule in the same way for people who changed their name for any other reason? When referring to childhood accomplishments of, for example, movie stars who use a screen name (Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Queen Latifah, and Judy Garland come to mind), do you insist on always pointing out their old name and saying that they changed it?

If you do not, then the only reason for a difference in how you treat them and Ms. Jenner is that you have some issue about her name change that you don't have about theirs, and you should think about that.

My response to this is much easier. All those names are stage names. A stage name is deliberately chosen for its attractive or unique qualities. A stage name is something one adopts for a stage persona, not a personal identity.

Do Olympic stars have their names engraved on their gold medals? I don't know. But suppose they do. Will Caitlyn Jenner have hers changed? I think probably not. To me it would seem as ridiculous as Laurence Tureau having his junior school Bronze Swimming Certificate changed to the name of Mr. T.

But I guess my final point is this. I can only comment from my own perspective. I don't consider myself to be a woman. I prefer to be treated as one when I am presenting as fem, but I regard this as a privilege which I need to merit, not a right.

Right now, I am not sure about what the future holds. Maybe I will transition at some point (say Jenner's age) and maybe not. Suppose I do, I would be quite happy to acknowledge my former identity; in fact, I quite like it (my current identity), which might be one reason why I don't feel I need to transition.

I don't see, if you could compare me to Jenner at an equivalent age, that there would be much difference between us. I have tried to suppress my feminine side; I have struggled (and still am) to find some balance.

And yet, I don't consider myself to be a woman, though I certainly don't consider myself to be an "ordinary" man either. I can understand how trans people might feel uncomfortable about their previous lives, but nonetheless those lives existed, objectively, sometimes for decades.

I would argue that one should respect an individual's choice of name and gender presentation. To me this is a facet of basic human understanding, tolerance and compassion. On the other hand, I don't think it's OK for an individual to insist that the past be rewritten just because its existence makes them uncomfortable.

As always, this is an ongoing discussion, to which your contributions would be welcomed.

Gender Variants on Facebook

Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate. -William of Ockham, 14th C. 

As I write, the news is less than 24 hours that Facebook now permits its users to specify a range of genders, instead of the usual boring two.

I welcome this development. Some websites allow you to specify Male, Female, or Other, or sometimes I'd rather not say, which seems to be a catch-all option for those who don't quite fall neatly into the two boxes.

Eenie, meenie, miny, mo...

Facebook, according to its press release, had "consulted with gay and transgender advocacy groups" before adding its new categories. To me, it's an acceptance that gender isn't as binary as some people like to think, and an acceptance that transgendered people are just as entitled to their identity as everyone else. In addition to being able to specify your gender identity, you can also specify which pronouns you want used about you.

The news was announced by Facebook software engineer Brielle Harrison, herself transitioning from male to female.

Harrison: All too often transgender people like myself and other gender nonconforming people are given this binary option, do you want to be male or female? What is your gender? And it's kind of disheartening because none of those let us tell others who we really are. This really changes that, and for the first time I get to go to the site and specify to all the people I know what my gender is.

Predictably, the naysayers of the world have been roused to indignant fury, and some of them have posted their objections in response to the original Facebook announcement.

Nori Herras-Castaneda (TG spokesperson): Any time the transgender community makes advances, there is backlash, and this is a very big advance, so yes, we'll face some problems, no doubt.

Brielle Harrison making her mind up

On the other hand, the news has been welcomed by some transgender groups, such as here. And according to the article I read, the senior Facebook figures, from Mark Zuckerberg down, were comfortable with the change. The change has been offered originally in the US, but there are plans to roll out the change worldwide.

So how many new options are there? Two or three? Half a dozen? Surely not more than a dozen? In fact there are over 50 new options!

I am not sure that this is a step forward! Is it really necessary to provide so many subtle distinctions? Are we really saying that there are not two genders, but instead over 50? And what happens when someone (and there will be someone) whose particular gender variant isn't included, protests that they feel excluded? And what happens to other family relationships? If I identify as a transwoman, am I still someone's son?

I haven't yet found a full list of the categories, but it will be interesting to try to pick one which describes me. Meanwhile, why not try to suggest categories of your own?

No doubt this article will evolve as the news spreads. Comments welcome. What about one from you, Brother William?

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Addendum: 15th February 2014

Thanks to Helen Boyd, I have found a website which lists all the possible options, and here they are:

Agender

Androgyne

Androgynous

Bigender

Cis

Cisgender

Cis Female

Cis Male

Cis Man

Cis Woman

Cisgender Female

Cisgender Male

Cisgender Man

Cisgender Woman

Female to Male

FTM

Gender Fluid

Gender Nonconforming

Gender Questioning

Gender Variant

Genderqueer

Intersex

Male to Female

MTF

Neither

Neutrois

Non-binary

Other

Pangender

Trans

Trans*

Trans Female

Trans* Female

Trans Male

Trans* Male

Trans Man

Trans* Man

Trans Person

Trans* Person

Trans Woman

Trans* Woman

Transfeminine

Transgender

Transgender Female

Transgender Male

Transgender Man

Transgender Person

Transgender Woman

Transmasculine

Transsexual

Transsexual Female

Transsexual Male

Transsexual Man

Transsexual Person

Transsexual Woman

Two-Spirit

And once again I've learned some new words. What does neutrois mean? Or transfeminine? And how does Trans* Female differ from Trans Female? And what is the difference between Transgender Man and Transgender Male? Do we really need all these terms?

Ahead of the times: CK one

Interestingly, the term I use to define myself, crossdresser, or male-to-female crossdresser, isn't even listed! Nor is transvestite, or crossdreamer. One can, however, identify as pangender (which I assume means "all gender") or neither (which I assume means "neither male nor female").

I can completely relate to the idea that this is supposed to be a wholly inclusive list, catering to every infinitesimal point on the gender spectrum, including those who identify with all points of it, and none, and leaving nobody left out. And yet, by creating this list, I can't help thinking that Facebook has simply added to the confusion, to the morass of terminology which makes it nearly impossible for people like me, looking at gender, to find any sort of clarity.

So which one are you?

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Addendum: 21st February 2014

My thanks to Tasi for drawing my attention to Stephen Colbert's satirical (and hilarious) sketch which sends up transphobia in the media. You can watch the whole segment here. He lets loose with both barrels on the Facebook gender spectrum too, including the curious "asterisk" options.

Colbert: I believe that's when you were born an asterisk, but deep inside you believe you're an ampersand!

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Addendum: 15th March 2014

Helen Boyd drew my attention to this article in the Boston Globe, which attempts to explain some of the new gender language for outsiders, novices and the generally perplexed (in which I include myself).

The article explains the mysterious asterisk, whose existence before had puzzled me. I can see that people are reaching out for new forms of language to describe gender variants, both as a means for people to express their identity with clarity and precision, and as a means to avoid giving offence to people who find themselves inadvertently improperly referred to.

I already infer that the notion of cis as meaning "the opposite of trans" is borrowed from organic chemistry. It originally referred to the arrangement of groups around a carbon-carbon double bond. However, the article says that the asterisk is meant to be taken as a wildcard, which can therefore stand for anything, so trans* means that you can insert your own word instead of the *, a practice which is borrowed from computer search syntax (where it is at least 30 years old).

This article also talks about gender-neutral pronouns, a phenomenon which I am opposed to, despite my sympathies, for reasons I describe here.

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Addendum: 3rd May 2014

Australia's High Court has just voted unanimously that some people (backed by medical advice) can have their gender legally recognised as "non-specific". On birth certificates, passports and the like, the letter X is used in place of M or F. This is not considered the same as Intersex. This has been partly driven by an individual called Norrie. You can read the news report here, or there is a discussion from the New York Times here.

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Addendum: 8th October 2014

I came across a wonderful and well-thought out discussion of this same topic by Lal Zimman on the OUP Blog.

Homosexuality and Crossdressing

During the Second World War, Benito Mussolini's fascist government rounded up "degenerate" people, particularly homosexuals, and confined them in a series of camps around the country. One of the largest was on the island of San Domino, in the Tremiti chain, in the Mediterranean Sea northeast of Italy.

Mussolini was attempting to weed out these undesirable people, to keep the society pure and virile. And conditions for the prisoners were intentionally harsh. However, Mussolini unwittingly created a homosexual paradise, doing the prisoners the favour of confining a large group of them to a beautiful island together for the duration of the war.

Hello, sailor!

This episode is not widely known. I had never heard of it until I read about it on the BBC, and you can read the article here written by Alan Johnson. In turn, the article comes from a book, The Island and the City, by Gianfranco Goretti and Tomasso Giartosi. I have searched for the book and it doesn't seem to exist in English. I assume this is a translation of the Italian title. In any case, what follows is all quoted from Johnson's BBC article:

"We were curious because they were called 'the girls'," says Carmela Santoro, an islander who was just a child when the gay exiles began to arrive. "We would go and watch them get off the boat... all dressed up in the summer with white pants - with hats. And we would watch in awe - 'Look at that one, how she moves!' But we had no contact with them."

What this meant to the exiles was explained in a rare interview with a San Domino veteran, named only as Giuseppe B - published many years ago in the gay magazine, Babilonia - who said that in a way the men were better off on the island.

"In those days if you were a femminella [a slang Italian word for a gay man] you couldn't even leave your home, or make yourself noticed - the police would arrest you," he said of his home town near Naples. "On the island, on the other hand, we would celebrate our Saint's days or the arrival of someone new... We did theatre, and we could dress as women there and no-one would say anything."

And he said that of course, there was romance, and even fights over lovers. Some prisoners wept, Giuseppe said, when the outbreak of World War II in 1939 led to the end of the internal exile regime on San Domino, and the men were returned to a kind of house arrest in the places where they came from.

What struck me about this article is how miserable and difficult it must have been for anyone, during the War, who found themselves considered "degenerate" by society. The Brits were no better or more enlightened in their treatment of gay people. As long as he was cracking the Enigma cypher (and keeping his mouth shut), Alan Turing (one of my heroes) was allowed to work for the British intelligence services, and a blind eye was turned. However, after the War, Turing was persecuted for his homosexuality, forced to take huge doses of female hormones (as if that would cure him!) and eventually he took his own life, depriving us of his gargantuan intellect.

Vaudeville drag

But this article throws up some other interesting points. First, the Italians used the word femminella ("little girl") to describe gay men. Carmela Santoro uses female pronouns when describing the men ("How she moves!"). That's all very well. Our society uses the word sissy (a diminutive of "sister") and also uses feminine pronouns in a scornful, offensive manner when a man's masculinity seemingly fails to measure up. So we can tell little about the San Domino internees from what other people thought or said about them.

So what did they say about themselves? None of the San Domino internees are believed to still be alive, and the interview with Giuseppe B is very old. Giuseppe B says "We did theatre, and we could dress as women there and no-one would say anything". Gay men loving the theatre? What are the chances? (And Italians fighting over love? Who would have thought?)

The reason for this post is that I have been puzzling over the relationship between homosexuality and crossdressing for a few weeks now. I have lurked for some years on an academic LGBT forum. What I find surprising is how few T people there are. When I post comments about crossdressing (as I did this week, attempting to stimulate a debate on this subject) I am treated with polite tolerance, but no real engagement. On most of the topics (relationships, coming out at work, discrimination) I seem to have very little in common with the things which trouble or preoccupy them. On the other hand, I feel sure if I sat down among them with a glass of wine we would soon all be laughing and finding all sorts of common ground.

My question to them (and also to you) is this: what is the relationship between homosexuality and crossdressing? Is there one? Are they completely separate, or is there some sort of correlation?

Sister Act

I believe that, in past times, gay and lesbian people might have crossdressed as a means of making it more "acceptable" to have a same-sex partner. I could see how a gay man, brought up to believe that homosexuality was an abomination, might not be comfortable being affectionate towards another man, but might find it a lot easier if that man were fabulously dressed as a woman. In other words, for some of those people (as was the case for Billy Tipton and others), the crossdressing may have been the means to an end, rather than an end in itself.

As just one example,  Molly houses were establishments in 18th-century Britain where gay and crossdressing men would meet up for sex. Wikipedia writes:

Patrons of Molly houses formed a distinct subculture in Georgian England. They would take on a female persona, have a female name, and affect feminine mannerisms and speech. Marriage ceremonies between a Molly and his male lover were enacted to symbolise their partnership and commitment.

As a second example, let's return to Giuseppe B. In his words, the internees of San Domino sometimes expressed themselves by "dressing as women". Is that because some of them were not "ordinary" gays, but what we might recognise as transvestites, who were all lumped in together by the authorities? Or is it because the connection between gay men and crossdressing is closer than we think?


John Leguizamo as Chi Chi Rodriguez

It certainly seems to be true that the popular media lump crossdressing and homosexuality together. To take some examples, the Sean Bean drama Tracie's Story features a gay crossdresser who falls in love with a man; the romantic film Sweet November features two gay transvestites living together, who are the supportive best friends of the quirky female lead, Charlize Theron; the iconic road movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, features gay men in drag virtually all the way through, as does its remarkably similar counterpart To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar. All these works feature gay men who are portrayed as powerful, subtle, interesting characters (not simply shrieking and pouting and prancing about), but crossdressing, or drag, is a central theme in each.

In modern Western society, surrounded as we are by openly homosexual politicians and clerics and academics and entertainers (even sportspeople), surely it is no longer necessary to crossdress to attract a same-sex partner? Therefore if gay and lesbian people want to crossdress, surely now they are doing it because they like it? This may be for the performance (as in gay drag), or it may be because they enjoy it for other reasons; perhaps the same reasons that I enjoy it.

In his documentary, Grayson Perry insists in front of the schoolboys that most transvestites are straight men. In this interview on the Huffington Post, journalist and academic Marcie Bianco states the same thing:

Bianco: The largest population of crossdressers that we see in the United States is that of the heterosexual male. Drag is almost a protic performance. They are very different, and to then map on lesbian and gay onto drag, that takes it elsewhere entirely. I don't view crossdressing as a kind of protic performance. I view it as a personal aesthetic that people do to please themselves, to please the person that they are with, I mean it could be a fetish, right? Those are different concepts, different ways of being, that I think need to be distinct.

Gay comedian Julian Clary

So what, if anything, has changed in the last couple of centuries? What does everyone else think? Here are a few perspectives from people who have been kind enough to put up with my pestering questions on the subject. Let's start with Helen Boyd, taken from my interview with her:

Boyd: There have always been gay men who have crossdressed, and it’s not always drag when they do. I assume it’s for similar reasons crossdressers do – some combination of scratching an itch, connecting to a feminine self, fabulousness, and sexuality.

Another one of my correspondents, a gay doctor, writes:

Having thought about it I think the question why do men (or men and women rather) cross-dress is almost as useful as asking why are some people gay? I'm sure there are multiple reasons, different reasons for different people, and it's all a spectrum anyway.

There are serious cross-dressers and occasional or faddy "passing phase" cross-dressers. There are gay cross-dressers and straight cross-dressers. There are those certain of their sexuality and those thrown into doubt by a passing experience of it. I'm not convinced by the autogynephilia theory. It may explain some guys I've no doubt, but it doesn't explain why a gay house music club in London I went to a couple of years ago had some sensational looking cross-dressed dancers gyrating on a podium in the middle of the dance floor full of sweaty gay men. I don't think many of those men were there to get turned on by someone in women's underwear, but they were there to be entertained and have fun.

I think the answer lies in a sense of otherness - of the exotic, outre and titillating. It's different - the opposite of straight and conservative and an expression of the ultra different and liberal. I'm reminded of Cabaret and inter-war Berlin. And it's fabric on the skin that to a man is unusual, strange and soft feeling. And a bit of a laugh. It's naughty. And not to be over-analysed.

I'm sorry if I sound like I'm belittling the topic. I'm not meaning to, but all I'm trying to say is that I don't think it's easily analysable. I think it's often just done for a bit of fun, to prove you're not mainstream, to mess around. But I'm sure different people do it for different reasons, and I'm sure there's a transsexual overlap. But it seems a bit like trying to analyse why gay people are gay!!

Molly, a transgendered woman, writes:

I don't know any gay men who used cross dressing as an entry path to being gay.  I do know a few gay men who have cross dressed from time to time, usually on Hallowe'en or a special event, more for a lark, usually more drag than realistically, and in any event not as part of the social life or their primary relationships.  Doesn't rule it out, just not something I have heard of. It just isn't what it means to be gay.  Gay is about sexual attraction and most gay men are very secure in their gender.  I do know at least one gay man who discovered over time he was trans but it was a very slow, evolutionary process and he was ostracized by his gay friends for a time because of it.  Gay men can be as gender binary as female spouses.

And Janice, another transgendered woman, writes:

About a year ago I was testing the waters, so to speak, and was talking to a gay friend of mine at work about cross-dressing. He got very angry and told me he just couldn't understand why any man would want to put on a dress. I thought, mistakenly, that since he was gay that he would be more understanding and since we are good friends that he would be someone I could come out to.  I was wrong and I dropped it right there.

I must say that I am not really much further forward. I have asked a lot of people what they think, and they seem to think it's not really important. Perhaps it isn't! Perhaps I am just over-thinking it. Comments and perspectives are welcome!

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My thanks to Tasi Zuriack of Sister House for drawing my attention to the Huffington Post interview.
My further thanks to Janice for reminding me about The Birdcage, another wonderful movie which reinforces the stereotype of the crossdressing gay man.

Why Men Wear Frocks - Part Three

In case you are wondering, I am carving up Grayson Perry's documentary, Why Men Wear Frocks, into arbitrary, bite-sized chunks. In this next segment, Perry meets transsexual Charlotte, and later considers the history of crossdressing.

Perry: Although I've been dressing up as a woman all my life, it's never made me feel any less a man. But some men feel so alienated from the whole business that they don't see themselves as men any more. I was on my way to meet Charlotte, who is a transsexual, or TS. He's been taking female hormones which he buys over the internet, and is contemplating gender reassignment surgery-- the chop. Transvestites and transsexuals don't always see eye to eye.

Charlotte

Throughout this documentary, Perry has met with all sorts of people, and been comfortable and relaxed in their presence. In this interview, there is a noticeable tension hanging in the air; it's hard to know whether that comes from Charlotte, or from Perry himself. Rather than laughing about shared viewpoints, they slightly bicker. And notice his somewhat impolite use of pronouns in the intro above. Charlotte is a young slim person with long hair, earrings, breasts and minimal makeup. She is wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Watching Charlotte is like watching one of those optical illusions where the image looks first one way, then the other.

Applying the autogynephilia template, I consider that Charlotte is an autogynephilic. That means that Perry is right in all of the conversation which follows, and I can understand Charlotte's irritation with his line of reasoning. (If you speak American, read "hood" where Perry says "bonnet").

Charlotte: I wouldn't feel that aggrieved not to have a penis.
Perry: Really? I would be horrified.
Charlotte: It's not the be-all and end-all of things though.
Perry: (pauses) No.
Charlotte: It's a case of having the balls, or lack of them, to go further.
Perry: So you think it's quite a macho thing to do then, to have a sex change?
Charlotte: No, I said "or lack of them". It's a very brave decision. You're assimilating being brave with being a man.
Perry: (pauses) Often I feel with the whole transsexual phenomenon, that it's a problem principally with men, that most transsexuals I think are men (pauses)... and it seems that they're dealing with their problems in a very male way.
Charlotte: (hesitates). Erm... Explain a male way for me.
Perry: Quite a mechanical way, quite a rational way. It's like, lift up the bonnet, change the wiring, slam down the bonnet, off you go.
Charlotte: What if it's not the bonnet end of things, what if it's the black box that controls everything else?
Perry: You do strike me as quite a typical male in many ways. The way you talk is quite forthrightly...
Charlotte: (interrupts) I'm just being assertive. Don't attach that to being a man.
Perry: So would you say that transsexuals then are, instead of putting on the clothes, they're using the surgery in the same ways that a transvestite uses the clothes?
Charlotte: I'd have said it was an interesting split between the two, but sort of, yeah. It's not the be-all and end-all of things, but generally it makes them happy. Me being sort of down that road, it would make me happy as well.

Just a couple of comments. First, taking hormones which you buy from the Internet is madness. You don't know whether you're getting pure drugs or stuff cut with talcum powder; real hormones, or worming tablets for camels. The endocrine system is like an orchestra: if you start messing with one part of the orchestra, soon you will ruin the whole symphony. If you want hormones, see a doctor! Second, I have no idea what happened to Charlotte, and it would be interesting to find out if she ever completed her transition, or what she is up to now.

Perry: Oh dear! Here come all the difficult questions. Does a bloke really have to chop off his penis to truly feel like a woman? And is it all a bit old-fashioned and sexist to make such a big deal of the differences between men and women in any case? Is the transgender community a glimpse of the future? Or a bit of a blast from the past?

Perry: To know whether transvestism has a future, you need to know a bit about its past. Until the later part of the 19th century, crossdressing in ordinary life was an overwhelmingly female to male activity. Typically it tended to be a woman just trying to get on in a man's world. But in the Victorian age, the traffic started to switch direction. Since then transvestism has become an overwhelmingly male to female behaviour. So what was it about the Victorian age which led to the flowering of transvestism? Peter [Farrer, historian] had talked about the intoxicating rustle of silks and taffetas, but it had to be about something more. It had to be about the emotions the clothes gave you access to. Dr. Oriole Cullen showed me round the Victorian costume collection at the Museum of London. For her, it's a vital scholarly resource; for me it was an erotic treasure trove.

Fanny and Stella, Victorian entertainers

Throughout this segment, we are shown dozens of photographs of Victorian transvestites. All of them have taken great care with their appearance, their hair, their clothing, their posture. And then they have their picture taken, professionally. And some of them are dazzling; their pictures made all the more extraordinary by being over a century old. These people are just like me! Someone must have found those photos and collected them all together.

And it's interesting that, once again, Perry links clothes with the emotional impact they create.

Perry: The growing gender distinctions of the clothes reflected what was going on in society generally. As the Victorians increasingly corralled all the softer emotions, vulnerability, innocence, gentleness, beauty into an exclusively feminine realm, men were cast as stoical, butch, practical providers, and dressed accordingly. Is it any wonder that some men started to want to cross over? For me, what the Victorians wore is the most striking example of how clothes can come to symbolise complex emotions. But from a transvestite point of view, it's been downhill all the way since then. Walk down any high street in Britain, and you'll be hard pushed to find visions of femininity to latch onto. Perhaps transvestites are the last Victorians, the last people to believe in the symbolic dimension of women's clothes.

I find it interesting that Perry should link transvestism to Victoriana in this way. One day I found myself listening to this BBC podcast, created by comedian Phil Jupitus, who explores the theme of Steampunk. If you haven't heard of Steampunk, where have you been for the last 200 years? It's a combination of the Victorian aesthetic with modern technology; imagine your computer as a thinking engine powered by steam, and you get the idea. Steampunks hark back to the Victorian era, in terms of engineering, civilisation, scientific inquiry... and clothing.



Kaeldra-1. Do ya feel steamy, Punk?

I have always loved Steampunk, even before it had a name. As a student, I spent hours in an old corner of the University library poring through real Victorian science and medicine texts. In those days, a scientist could reasonably hope to master more than one discipline, and many did, making contributions to several fields. (These days, it is sometimes said, scientific expertise is divided finer and finer. We will all go on knowing more and more about less and less, until we all eventually know everything about nothing at all). I used to imagine myself sitting in on meetings of the Royal Society, puzzling over some ancient fossil bone, or peering down a microscope at some fascinating beetle.

In Victorian times, science and engineering and mathematics were expanding enormously, and they built great cathedrals of science: museums and universities and observatories, in all the major cities of the Empire. Scientific instruments were not merely purposeful, they were beautiful: craftsman-made of brass and mahogany. For the first time ever, science was exciting, and sexy. I suspect for many scientists, like me, it has never been quite the same, and I suspect I am not the only one who would love to trade in his laptop for a slide-rule; his biro for a quill pen and a bottle of iron-gall ink; and his car for a coach and four-- at least for a short time.

Of course, this is all a rose-tinted illusion. The Victorian era was riddled with disease, squalor, poverty, misery, slavery and enormous human suffering, on a scale never before seen. But still it grips us.

The Steampunk movement encompasses people of all ages and stripes; it is not confined to the young, or the alienated. Jupitus finds one Steampunk who talks about drugs: "Do we have drugs in Steampunk? I don't think so. Tea, perhaps. Or snuff!" For many Steampunks, it is about the costume play; for others, it's about the history; for others (like me), the science. If you browse through the forum at Brass Goggles here, you find many examples of Steampunks crossdressing. Interestingly, as Perry remarks above, many of the girls seem to enjoy dressing up in male attire, though not unexpectedly, there seem to be a fair few boys who want to dress up in female attire too. Phil Jupitus interviewed one in his documentary; though since it was radio, we couldn't see the costume!

Though I adore Victoriana, I am not really a Steampunk. I've never been to a gathering; never worn a pair of goggles. Though I have once driven a mainline steam locomotive, and I did once strip down a magnificent brass Victorian microscope, clean it, polish the lenses, and reassemble it. So I suppose I do have some credentials. If being a crossdresser makes me one of the last of the Victorians, put me down for that! God save the Queen!

For the final in this series, click here.

Children and Gender

I was out one day in a sunny park with my children. As young kids often do, they formed instant but evanescent friendships with some of the other children. My youngest daughter was playing with another little girl with dark hair tied in bunches.

I always try to keep some sort of eye on my kids when they are in public places, and I notice other parents naturally doing the same. I caught the eye of the mother of this little girl, as she and my daughter came over to show and share their toys. It's OK, I was trying to mentally say, I'm a parent too. You don't need to worry.

When it came time to leave, I asked my daughter to say goodbye to her little friend. "What's your friend's name?" I asked my daughter. "I don't know, daddy," she said (How can they play all day without knowing each other's names? But they can!). The mother had come over, and was standing a little way off, smiling. "What's your little girl's name?" I asked the mother. But then she frowned, offended. "He's not a little girl," she replied. "He's a little boy."

I boggled. The child was wearing a sparkly top and corduroy jeans, and gym shoes. He had dark hair tied in bunches in the manner of little girls. Nothing in his behaviour had given me any clue that he wasn't a girl, and clearly my daughter had taken him for a girl.

Speechless, I didn't know how to react. Why are you dressing your little boy like a girl? I wanted to ask. And assuming you know what you are doing, how can you possibly be angry when I don't recognise he is a boy? I am sure I am not the first person to make that mistake! I decided this might be one of the circumstances in which the Prime Directive applies. So we said a polite goodbye and left.

Later I mentioned these events to a colleague at work. "Was the mother Samoan?" he asked. I didn't know, but she did appear to be a Pacific Islander. "The child will be a Fa'afafine," he said. (Say it FAH-Fa-Fee-Nay, or at least he did). It turns out that it's culturally normal in Samoa to raise boys as if they were girls. But this wasn't in Samoa, but New Zealand.

I don't pretent to understand the cultural background or purpose to this behaviour. If she were really raising her boy as a girl, surely she should have accepted my reading of him as a girl and not protested? Unless in NZ it's illegal to overtly raise fa'afafine? It might well be, although I don't know. It might even be that the child isn't a fa'afafine, but just a boy whose mother likes sparkly tops and bunches.

According to Wikipedia, some fa'afafine resume the role of normal males in adolescence; some attempt to live as women in adulthood (and pursue sexual relationships with heterosexual men), while some seem caught in the middle, as a culturally-accepted third gender.

In May 2011, the Toronto Star reported the case of parents Kathy Witterick and David Stocker, who refused to reveal the gender of their third child, Storm. By the time I write this now, Storm will be about a year and a half old.

"If you really want to get to know someone, you don't ask what's between their legs," says Stocker. "What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. It's obnoxious."

Stocker and Witterick are trying to allow Storm to make his or her own way in the world, unencumbered by the expectation that a chosen, binary gender imposes on him or her. (I know lots of people really well, and I must say I have never felt it necessary to ask what's between their legs!)

"Please can you just let Storm discover for him/herself what (s)he wants to be?!" writes Witterick.

The Toronto Star article provoked a storm of protest. If you've read my other blog posts, you will know that it looks like one of the biggest hurdles they will face raising Storm in this way will be their constant agony over which pronouns to use! Imagine how hard they must be trying not to give the game away with a careless use of a specific pronoun.

Both these parents and the woman I met in the park are taking an active decision to raise their children outwith normal gender roles. Though I respect their rights to raise their children as they see fit (the Prime Directive again!), I disagree with both points of view.

Third gender: Fa'afafine

In the case of the woman in the park, she is dressing her boy in such a way that he appears to be a girl. I don't know if she otherwise treats him like a boy, or whether he is expected to behave like a girl at home and is only given girly toys. I can't help feeling this is an extremely harmful thing to do. Kids have enough uncertainty in life, without wondering: why does my mum dress me like this instead of like the other boys in my kindergarten class?

For the parents of Storm, I understand the point they are making, and their need to make it forcefully by refusing to reveal Storm's gender to the world. On the other hand, children need some sort of structure: they can't simply choose the way the world works for them. As one mild example, my kids don't want to eat their vegetables, brush their teeth, learn their times-tables or even say please and thank-you. I regard these activities as more or less essential, but if I gave my children the choice, they would not do them. It doesn't trouble me one whit that Stocker thinks that's obnoxious! Likewise, I think I owe it to my kids to give them some sort of moral framework with which to interpret the world. As they get older they will (as I did) learn which parts of that framework to keep, and which parts to discard.

For what it's worth, we have always provided a mix of toys for our kids: they can play with the Lego and the trucks, or the toy kitchen and the dolls, whenever they want. In addition, we try to make sure that all our kids can come for a cuddle (or otherwise express vulnerability) whenever they want: they are never told to be "big brave soldiers" (as I was!).

Two things, I think, will confound both sets of parents. First, the personalities of the children involved. I believe personality is innate and cannot be modified, not even by gender-non-normative parenting. We might find that Storm decides quite rapidly whether she wants to play with the trains or whether he wants to play with the dolls' house, and expresses that preference repeatedly. (And the minute this happens, s/he will immediately cease to be newsworthy in any way! Shock: Small boy plays with Nerf Guns!) Likewise, the child in the park might start to assert his masculinity more clearly than his mother wants, especially after he starts school and starts to meet more traditional boys. I do fear for both children how their peers will react: I hope they will react with acceptance (and we raise our children to be accepting of all their peers), but they may react with cruelty or ridicule. That's no laughing matter.

Secondly, whatever parenting does, it can't hold off adolescence. It might be quite hard for Storm to keep his place in the rugby team when his periods start, or her place in the netball team once her voice breaks and she starts sprouting a beard. And the child in the park will declare himself to be a man eventually. No amount of paternal wishful-thinking can overcome the inevitability of adolescence, or the tendency of almost the entire human race to see ourselves as having only two genders.

Further Reading

Georgia at BroadBlogs has blogged about Storm here. The article is interesting and has a different angle from my own, and I also refer you to the wonderful X: A Fabulous Child's Story.

For more about this topic, I have written a continuation post here.

Makeover sparkle

In order to have a good time you don’t have to actually look good; you just have to think that you do. - Andy Warhol

As I mentioned before, I am not very good at crossdressing. However, I am quite encouraged by this comment from The Lazy Crossdresser by Charles Anders:

Looking good in women's clothes isn't the same thing as looking like a woman.

(The last time I read about Charles Anders, I seem to recall him saying that he went out dressed in women's clothing at least half the time, and didn't mind whether his friends called him by his male name or his female name (in the book this was Julia). I basically aspired to this situation, whilst knowing it would never happen: someone invites you to a party not knowing (or minding) whether you will show up in a shirt and jeans or a dress. I see just now that Charles Anders' identity is now Charlie Jane Anders. On her Wikipedia page and her personal website, feminine pronouns are used exclusively. It seems I am now finding Charlie at a different stage of the journey. I wish her well, with the merest touch of envy! Her book is fantastic in every way, and her website is hilarious (the flowchart alone is worth a gold medal)).

Anyway, enough with the pronouns already! For people who are not convincing crossdressers, or who can't do it at home, or both, you go and get a makeover. I have done this about four times now, with an average of once every two to three years. That's not a lot of activity, and I would like to apologise to those businesses right here: I would be round your place three times a week if I could possibly manage it.

My second-ever makeover was in England, at a business which caters for the entire male-to-female transgender spectrum. Naturally they offer a dressing service, where you can turn up and be pampered for a few hours, or indeed all day. They even cater to specific themes such as maid, bride or schoolgirl (those archetypes again!). When I (nervously) went along it was afternoon on a weekday. I had arranged a two-outfit makeover; you get the first one, then sit for a bit and drink tea, then the second one, then drink some more tea, then go home.

When I arrived it was just after lunch. I was met by the first assistant, (let's call her Monica). She showed me to a room full of outfits, and asked me to pick one. All I could see were rows, and rows, of clothes on hangers. In one sense, it was a treasure trove, but I couldn't see any of the clothes clearly, and didn't know what I would find, and couldn't therefore easily choose something without pulling out each item at a time and holding it up. I asked her for some help, and she asked me what sort of outfit I wanted. I don't know, I told her (truthfully). Nothing too tarty. Just a normal, girl-next-door sort of look.

She looked at me a little quizzically, before rummaging among the hangers and bringing out some garments. She asked me if I wanted a corset and I said yes. She showed me to a changing booth, and left me to get dressed. For me, this was a special occasion, and I had prepared carefully, including an all-over shave which was beginning to itch. I started off by putting on the tights, and immediately put a big ladder in the leg. I had to get a new pair. Not a great start. Then once I had the bra and the panties and the tights on, I went outside where Monica helped me put the corset on. Then I went back in the cubicle and put on the rest of the clothes. There was a shiny blouse, a very short skirt, a pair of shoes which had heels so high I couldn't walk (and I couldn't easily bend down to put them on because of the corset). I emerged very unsteadily and not feeling at all feminine. Monica provided a pair of silicone boobs. Again this was a first for me (now I have a pair of my own), and I was very keen to try them, but they were too big.

The makeover wasn't a success either. It seemed Monica put on too much of everything: too much mascara, too much lipstick. When the wig was finally on, I felt like a caricature. What I saw in the mirror was not very attractive, and certainly wouldn't have been manageable on the street. Not to worry, I thought. Give yourself some time to settle down a bit and relax and maybe you will start to enjoy it. But I didn't.

In a sense, I thought, this is probably what most people want when they come here. They want exaggerations of femininity: the corset, the heels, the thick makeup (if not the actual maid outfit or bridal dress). I notice when crossdressing after a long period of abstinence that I am voracious, and I remind myself of the quotation "All things in moderation-- even moderation" during those times. It was forgivable for Monica to think that was what I was after. But really, it wasn't me. What I saw in the mirror (and there were of course plenty of mirrors) wasn't the image I saw in my mind of myself as a woman. I began to feel quite despondent as I drank my tea, even though I enjoyed leaving lipstick smears on the cup.

For my second makeover, Monica was busy doing something else, and I had Sally to look after me. She looked me up and down. "How do you feel?" she asked. Awful, I replied. This isn't what I had in mind at all.

Sally took me back to the garment room, and had a brief rummage. She brought out some more things. "Let's have the boobs," she said, and she gave me another pair, at least two sizes smaller. The clothes were better: a much more modest and sensible blouse, a much more comfortable skirt, and a short jacket. The shoes were better; at least I could walk in them. We got rid of the corset and my eyes stopped bulging outwards.

Then she did the makeup, but she started by scraping off all the old stuff with a trowel and beginning again. This time it was much more subtle and natural. And we finished off with a different wig, one which I had bought on a previous trip to the far East. It had looked amazing in the shop, but whenever I wore it, it looked like a dead animal perched on my head. With Sally's expert hands, and a long-tailed comb, it became amazing again. I had spent much of the makeover time either with my eyes closed, or looking the other way. When I turned round, and looked in the mirror, my jaw dropped. I looked fantastic. I couldn't believe it. Until that moment, I had not believed it would be possible to actually look like a woman without the help of the makeup artists who work for Peter Jackson. And I didn't look like a tart, or a drag queen, or a caricature. I just looked like me, only as a woman.

I was overcome with emotion. I thanked Sally extremely warmly. "You look really pretty", she commented, and I sensed her sincerity. We walked out into the shop area, where Monica was still working. Even Monica looked impressed. I was feeling so good, I wanted to wave my credit card at them and say "I'll take the lot!" and just walk out of the door. Of course, that was never going to happen: among other things, the business expects a certain level of circumspection from its clientele so as not to frighten the horses. So instead I had a cup of tea. It was a very British thing to do in the circumstances.

I stood at the counter and drank my tea. Other customers came and went. I just chatted with Sally and Monica. I felt relaxed, and the chat went from polite to friendly to hilarious, and soon we were all laughing. I realised something at that moment which seemed very profound. It had gradually gone from being a very polite customer-assistant interaction into a complete girly gossip. I felt more feminine at that moment than I had ever done in my life hitherto. And I like to think that, for them, this was different to how their customers usually behave with them (but here I may be completely flattering myself).

We chatted for over an hour. It was long past the time when I should have been getting ready to go, but they were in no hurry, and I believe that they were enjoying the conversation. As closing time began to approach, I hastened to take off my borrowed gear and put my own clothes back on (what some crossdressers refer to as their drabs, and I know exactly why).

Sally took some photos of me, and naturally I bought them. Good though they are, the image seen through the camera is still not as good as the image I saw in the mirror; I think the flash is unflattering. As with all crossdressing photos (for me at least), the photo is there as a tangible and irrefutable reminder of what happened, to aid future reminiscences.

I drove home absolutely purring, with my emotional energy on full charge. Shortly afterwards, I left to live in New Zealand, so I haven't had the chance to go back there. This experience included perhaps the best and worst of makeovers: since then none have been so good, nor so bad. I hope that my life's most fulfilling experience of femininity doesn't turn out to be one lipstick-smudged cup of tea in England in the autumn.

Crossdressing and advertising

I think advertising is an excellent barometer of society's attitudes. It's not so much about what products people want to buy, but the way in which they are marketed which interests me.

I have seen a lot of television from all over the world, and I think certain patterns can be discerned. The UK, for example, seems to favour understatement ("Try our product. It's actually quite good and you might find you like it."), whereas the US seems to favour overstatement ("Our product will change your LIFE by how good it is!"). Of course, there are many exceptions to this sort of broad statement.

TV ads have 30 seconds to grab your attention, interest you in the product, and burrow into your memory so that the next time you go shopping, the product resurfaces in your mind and you go and buy it. The means by which these goals are achieved is sometimes clever and interesting, and sometimes dull and banal. Agencies seek to associate the product with something attractive: sex, humour, happy children. Advertising jingles are an especially insidious way to drill a brand into your memory: I loathe their irritating jolly little melodies and instrumental stabs.

But a really good ad makes you laugh, think, or sit up in surprise. And it gets progressively harder to do any of those things because all the good ideas (the low-hanging fruit) have all been seen a thousand times before (and some of them, like brand slogans or jingles, have been done to death). It's no suprise to me that there are now awards for good ads, where someone in a tux reads out the results in reverse order from the back of a golden card.

Ads which speak to women about femininity (whether that be clothes, cosmetics, perfume, or even chocolate), speak right to the heart of crossdressers too: that's how I want to look! That's how I want to feel! Where can I get some of that product? (I might explore this a little further in a different post).

Let's take a look at some advertising featuring cross-dressing. Take a look at this one first:

In this UK commercial for kitchen paper, we meet "Brenda" and "Audrey", two blokes in drag, complete with bristly chins and big square hands. I saw a series of such ads on British TV; though they have since stopped, thankfully. (This was the most typical of the series I could find on YouTube). I suppose the ad agency is trying to get a new angle on the "overworked housewife" archetype. You know the one: youngish, pretty but not gorgeous, struggling to keep up with baby poo and toddler dribble and slobbery dogs with dirty paws and sinks which won't drain properly. Perhaps what she really needs is a big hairy man in a dress to do her chores for her.

This sort of ad is just awful for me. The crossdressers here are figures of ridicule, and this sort of sniggering and poking fun at grotesque crossdressers has never been funny; not even in a 1960's cartoon seaside-postcard sort of way. This exact trope is regularly found in the comedy show Little Britain, where "rubbish transvestite Emily" parades around insisting she is a "laydee" and fooling no-one. I cringe when I see this: I stopped watching the show because I found it so distasteful. Little Britain has a lot of very clever comedy (and is very popular), but this just misses the mark for me. However, the shows creators, Matt Lucas and David Walliams, continue their comic crossdressing in other shows such as Come Fly With Me.

So let's move on. When I first saw this ad, I thought it was my worst nightmare come to celluloid:

This ad works in a whole different way from the kitchen paper one. Once again, I saw this on TV in the UK, and found myself bracing myself for the inevitable slew of ridicule. However, it didn't take place. The young, attractive and cool driver of the car sees the drag queens in the queue for the club. We assume his look of surprise is horror at recognising his father (although he probably doesn't dress like that for the office!). However, then we release a collective "phew!" when we realise the driver isn't shocked at his father's appearance; he just wants in the club.

I like this sort of ad. In fairness, the drag queens in the queue are much too gaudy for my personal taste (though I suppose for the advert's purposes, they need to be unmistakeable; a convincing crossdresser wouldn't cut it here at all). On the other hand, the message of the ad ("We live in modern times") carries (for me) a great note of positivity. Okay, it says. Some men like to crossdress. Get over it. Hey, son, bring your friends and we'll all go partying together.

Here is my third offering. This is one I never saw on the screen, but found on the Internet. Take a look:

Very different in tone and theme this time. This advert makes no attempt at humour at all, but still attempts to surprise us. (Whose idea was that awful music?) If you hadn't seen this before, you would know from finding it here that the girl in the dress was really a boy, but in a bit of a breach of the traditional plot element, you might not have spotted that the boy in the suit was really a girl. And the discussion which follows renders all my careful use of pronouns to be a confusing waste of time. I shall do my best.

Interesting though this ad is, it doesn't quite hit the spot for me. The girl in the dress looks amazing. The boy in the suit looks convincing enough to begin with (he seems to have miraculously acquired a bit of makeup by the time he takes his hair down). Both of these actors make me think of the model Andrej Pejic, a man who is so androgynously beautiful he can successfully model both men's and women's clothing on the catwalk, and is in considerable demand to do so (What does that say about our idealised image of women?).

I am sure the ad agency (and I think this ad has a European pedigree) is trying to show that its Italian aperitif may look similar to other drinks, but underneath it is quite different. On the other hand, I am not sure that the final bit of action, spilling the drink on the dress provoking the big reveal, is meaningful in any way, although I am sure they needed some pretext for it. Does this imply a restitution of social norms somehow? Maybe I am overthinking it. I find myself coming away saying "Hmmm....ok", rather than "Hey! Wow!"

Once again, though, I take some encouragement from this ad. Both protagonists are beautiful, whether as a boy or a girl. Both are enjoying their crossdressing, publicly and successfully. They are not in drag; they are not grotesque or overcooked. There is an undertone of the forbidden or the spicy, but I suspect that's what the agency is trying to associate with the product, and I certainly associate with crossdressing myself. Overall the ad doesn't grab me or make me want to buy the product, but it doesn't repel me and want me to shout at the screen (like the kitchen paper ad).

So the winner for me is the Twingo ad, with Campari in second place. Congratulations. A wooden spoon with two golden raspberries to Bounty. Sorry lads.

The Internet has dozens of ads featuring crossdressing. In a future blog post, I might get on and talk about a few more.