If I Was Your Girl

I was browsing in an airport bookshop lately, and noticed the cover of this book, If I Was Your Girl, by Meredith Russo. The book was displayed reasonably prominently, and was featured as part of the Zoella book club, as a work of fiction for young adults (which is what they are calling teenagers these days, apparently).

If I were your girl: subjunctive, people!

Normally I wouldn't be too interested in fiction for young adults. When I was a young adult myself, I just read fiction for adults. My sister used to read books by Judy Blume, and she would usually show me the juicy parts. These astonished me in two ways. They astonished me because these were books marketed at teenagers, containing detailed descriptions of sexual activity that would likely cause many parents (including ours) to have conniptions. Second, they astonished me because they were depicting a world where teenagers seemed to have no trouble having sex; lots of sex. This seemed like a glimpse into some alien world. As a teenager who was having real trouble finding someone willing even to snog me, reading the books made me feel envious and uncomfortable.

Now that I am an adult, I don't see any reason to read young adult fiction at all. Unless it seems to feature the transgender flag on the cover, which is what drew my eye.

Naturally I bought it, and read it on the flight, all the way through. And now I thought I would write a review of it.

The book centres around the life of Amanda, an 18-yr old girl in her final year of high school. She joins a new school, and falls in love with Grant, a football player. The hook (at least from a transgender point of view) is that Amanda used to be Andrew. Their relationship goes through some ups and downs, before the big reveal, and the aftermath.

I read to the end of the book before I realised that the author herself, Meredith Russo, is a transwoman. She even includes a page of comments for cisgendered readers, as well as another page of comments for transgendered readers. She explains some of the fictional devices she required to use to make the story work. One obvious one is that nobody ever doubts or guesses Amanda's trans nature, because she is already "fully formed": post-surgery, post-hormones, and with a completely realistic face and body. Russo admits this is pretty unrealistic, and I am pleased that she did; for me it was one of the most difficult parts of the story to accept.

Meredith Russo

Russo was raised in Tennessee, and sets the story in a district she is familiar with. I can't help associating that region of the southern United States with God-fearin', gun-totin', Republican-votin' good-ole-boys. To be a transgender child growing up in that environment would be, no doubt, exceptionally difficult, lonely and painful. Amanda, our protagonist, is exposed to a series of very unpleasant events: parental rejection, violent beatings at school (where she is considered to be gay by the other students), and a failed suicide attempt. These events are described starkly (in a series of flashbacks), and the writing is powerful. I dare say they will resonate with young adults who feel different (for any reason), isolated and desperate. Even I got a few pangs.

I brought my wrist up to my chest and looked down. The identification bracelet said my name was Andrew Hardy. If I died, I realized, Andrew would be the name they would put on my tombstone. I thought of the words I wrote down for the counsellor: I should have been a girl.

Amanda begins to settle into her new school, and begins to make friends. She is pleased and gratified to find that she is accepted, though this pleasure is tempered with the knowledge that, if the truth of her background were known, she would surely be rejected.

The cicadas buzzed persistently in the growing dusk. I had read once that they lived underground for most of their lives, only emerging as adults to live out their final days. Was that going to be me? Was I going to live underground for the better part of my life, never coming out into the world? (...) I wondered if joy could ever be felt by itself without being tainted with fear and confusion, or if some level of misery was a universal constant, like the speed of light.

Trans model Kira Conley on the US cover

The parts of the story with which I found most resonance are where Amanda discovers her trans identity, and meets other trans people for the first time. She is mentored in her early journey by Virginia, who introduces her to members of her local transgender support group.

A woman with broad shoulders and a faint shadow of a beard under her make-up entered next. She looked strong and stout, but the longer I looked, the more I saw the beauty in her--here a light step, here a brief touch of the hair, here a wide, open smile. Boone said, "Evening, Rhonda," to greet her.

This resonates with me because of my preoccupation with how people see Vivienne. Since I started my journey, I have come out to a couple of dozen people, and they have all been complimentary about my appearance, even the ones who met Vivienne face to face. But did they have to make an effort to see past the man in the dress to really see Vivienne? And how much of an effort did they make?

I looked Virginia up and down and saw two separate people. One was the beautiful, statuesque angel who had been there to guide me through some of the hardest steps of my transition. The other was a woman with a jaw just a little too strong, forehead just a little too high, shoulders just a little too wide, and hands just a little too big.

Without giving the story away, Amanda begins to find fulfilment and happiness in her new life. Her relationship with her parents improves. She realises other students have their secrets too: one girl takes drugs; another is a lesbian. For me, Amanda's parents and schoolmates are somewhat simple and one-dimensional. Grant, the love interest, is more interesting, though again he is cast as someone who is all goodness: good-looking, pleasant, sensitive, humble, hard-working, popular, kind to his family. The most interestingly subtle character (Amanda aside) is the villain, Parker, another student, whose complex feelings and motives are explored.

His shadow stretched out past mine. I remembered Mom telling me how frightening men were, all men really, how helpless it often felt to be a woman among men, and for the first time I understood what she meant.

The romantic aspects of the plot are well-drawn: the breathless first kiss, and other faltering steps as the relationship between Grant and Amanda begins to play out. I am relieved beyond measure to report that Judy Blume's intimate depictions are largely absent. Though the book doesn't insult its readers by pretending everyone is a virgin when they leave high school, the sexual content is handled deftly and with subtlety, just as (in my opinion) it ought to be.

So in summary, what can I say about the book? I cannot judge it as a piece of young adult fiction, since I have so little knowledge of that genre with which to compare it. I have a friend who writes romantic fiction for a living, and she tells me there is a remarkably strict pattern that her books are expected to follow. I hope the same is not true of young adult fiction, but I wouldn't be surprised (only disappointed) to find that there is. Overall, I think the story is compelling enough, and readable enough (certainly I didn't get bored or struggle to finish it). I think some of the characters are a bit flat. I think that the story of Amanda's life is told with enough sympathy and emotional resonance that transgendered readers (like me) will find much to resonate with, and there is a reasonably positive ending to look forward to.

Blazing the trail: Luna in 2004

Russo clearly hopes that cisgendered young adults will also read the book and come away with more awareness and more sympathy towards transgendered people (of all ages). And it's this, I think, which holds the book back slightly for me. It just has a hint of being slightly contrived for this purpose; as if Amanda's relationship with Grant is shown to be completely pure and perfect to show just how much of a real girl Amanda actually is.

Nonetheless, Russo deserves encouragement. I think this book represents one more snowflake in the blizzard of transgender-related material in the popular media, to which we are now exposed, and it can only do us good to get more exposure, more sympathy and more conversations started. This is Russo's first book, and I hope she writes many more. I also hope that she isn't the "token trans writer" when young adult fiction is considered.

And there are very few other similar books out there. One which Russo mentions is Luna, by Julie Anne Peters. Another is a book which I have touched on before on this blog, Boy2Girl by Terence Blacker. To my knowledge, neither Peters nor Blacker are transgendered, and both have had success with many other books; therefore they are not as brave as Russo. They can afford to experiment with new themes, while Russo has put all her chips on this debut novel. Thankfully it seems to have gone down very well, and it has favourable reviews on GoodReads and Amazon, but the Guardian reviewer (like me) had some reservations.

I haven't read Luna, but I will order it and let you know my thoughts in due course. Meanwhile, I recommend that you get hold of If I Was Your Girl and give it a read. Or perhaps wave it under the nose of a nearby young adult for their comments. And yours, of course, are always welcome below.

Galileo's Middle Finger - Part Two

This is the second of my articles discussing the book Galileo's Middle Finger, by Alice Dreger. If you haven't already, it makes sense to start reading at Part One, which discusses intersex individuals.

Dreger: When people ask me how transgender is different from intersex, I usually start by saying that that intersex and transgender people have historically suffered from the opposite problems for the same reason. Whereas intersex people have historically been subjected to sex "normalizing" hormones and surgeries they have not wanted, transgender people have had a hard time getting the sex-change hormones and surgeries they have wanted. Both problems arise from a single cause: a heterosexist medical establishment determined to retain control over who gets to be what sex.

Manly: legs

Here she is, shortly into chapter 2, Rabbit Holes, and characteristically getting right down to the nub of the issue. (For my own, similar take on intersex vs transgender, I refer you to this post, though you might need to scroll down a bit).

Dreger: In the great majority of cases, medical scans won't detect any intersex feature in a transgendered person's body. Nevertheless, many people believe that transgender must be a special form of intersex involving the brain.

This fits with my comment that some transgender individuals look to the existence of intersex individuals to provide justification for their behaviour.

Dreger: Although there is very little science to support it, this has become the most popular explanation of transgender, probably in part because it is the easiest one for uptight heterosexuals to accept. (...) In practice, this story of transgender can function as a kind of get-out-of-male free card for men who seek to become women anatomically. When that card is played, the comforting narrative of "true selves" is preserved.

And there are scientific papers (such as this one) which seek to demonstrate anatomical differences in the brains of trans people. Though mostly their brains are very similar, some studies purport to demonstrate subtle differences in tiny regions of the brain (for example, some regions in MtF transsexuals are less like men and more like women). Most of these studies have small numbers of non-randomised participants, and even if these findings are robust (and I am nowhere near convinced that they are), correlation is not causation.

Science may indeed unlock some of these puzzles in time, but the only thing I am convinced of is that the science is pretty unconvincing so far.

Controversial: Bailey

It's at this point in the narrative that Dreger introduces Professor J. Michael Bailey, the author of the controversial work The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism, published in 2003. Bailey drew on the work of Ray Blanchard, and is therefore supportive of the autogynephilia model, to which I subscribe, as you probably already know. See here for a fuller discussion of this model. In that link, I also discuss how the autogynephilia model makes me feel uncomfortable about myself, because it insists the root of my crossdressing is in sexual desire.

Dreger points out that the French translation of autogynephilia is amour de soi en femme (love of oneself as a woman) which is a much nicer expression.

But where I feel uncomfortable about the autogynephilia model, a lot of people felt a lot worse.

Dreger: Before Bailey, many trans advocates had spent a long time working to desexualize and depathologize their public representations in an effort to reduce stigma, improve access to care, and establish basic human rights for trans people. (...) This is similar to how gay rights advocates have desexualized homosexuality in the quest for marriage rights, portraying themselves in living rooms and kitchens instead of bedrooms, in order to calm fearful heterosexuals.

Indeed, a few retrograde clinicians, like Paul McHugh, a psychiatrist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, still actively use the idea that male-to-female transgender is really about perverted sexuality and mental illness to argue against access to sex-transitional hormones and surgeries.

For Bailey or anyone else to call someone with amour de soi en femme an autogynephile or even a transgender woman-- rather than simply a woman-- is at some level to interfere with her core sexual desire. Such naming also risks questioning her core self-identity in a way that calling the average gay man homosexual simply can't. One really must understand this if one is going to understand why some trans women came after Bailey so hard for naming and describing autogynephilia. When they felt that Bailey was fundamentally threatening their selves and their social identities as women-- well, it's because he was. That's what talking openly about autogynephilia necessarily does.

Lynn Conway by Charles Rogers

It's worth digressing here to make a couple of remarks. Just because a scientific theory makes you uncomfortable, doesn't make it wrong. And just because you insist upon something, doesn't make it right. If you want to convince me, you need to do a lot better than insist. I respond to evidence, not vehemence. This has occasionally caused me to get into uncomfortable debates with other trans people when I dare to question them about their views and beliefs. Sometimes, when they are unable to explain themselves, they resort to some variant of: "Of course, you couldn't possibly understand. You're only a crossdresser, where I am a woman".

But back to the book. Dreger goes on to describe how a prominent transwoman called Lynn Conway, at the University of Michigan, started "what became a war" against Bailey, assisted by Andrea James and Deirdre McLoskey. Together they began to systematically ruin Bailey's reputation. They campaigned to have the book removed from consideration for the 2004 Lambda Literary Award. They cooked up stories about him practising psychology without a licence, doing research without appropriate ethical oversight, and even having sex with one of his research subjects. And Dreger digs deeply and thoroughly into all of this, interviewing as many of the original people involved as possible.

Dreger: As a result of all this, Bailey came across pretty clearly as an abuser, a trans-basher, and a sexual pervert.

After nearly a year of research, I could come to only one conclusion: the whole thing was a sham. Bailey's sworn enemies had used every clever trick in the book-- juxtaposing events in misleading ways, ignoring contrary evidence, working the rhetoric, and using anonymity whenever convenient, to make it look as though virtually every trans woman represented in Bailey's book had felt abused by him and had filed a charge.

But why did Conway, James and McLoskey feel they had to do all those things?

Dreger: "Narcissistic injury," the physician-researcher Anne Lawrence said to me, by way of explanation. "Followed by narcissistic rage." That, she told me, was the only real way to explain what happened to Bailey. The whole thing had been an attempt to kill the messenger bringing a message that Lawrence guessed wounded the accusers' sense of self.

Captivating: the book

By this point, we are barely a third of the way through the book. Several things stand out. First, the book is extremely readable, and the narrative is told in a personal, conversational style. Second, Dreger's scholarship is impeccable: many hundreds of hours of interviews and research have gone into this book (you should see the references), and Dreger seems uncompromising in her search for the truth. Third, it's clear that a great deal of her personal energy has been invested, not just in writing the book, but in sympathising with the people in it, befriending them and becoming part of their lives. Fourth, writing this book has taken considerable courage, and Dreger has herself come under fire, risking her own career and reputation (drawing parallels with Galileo, of course).

Overall, the book is a phenomenal read; gripping as a thriller, scholarly, yet incredibly human. There are so many points in the book where I thought: I can't believe I am actually reading this! I can't recommend it highly enough.

We part company with the book at this point, partly because this blog post is already way too long, and partly because the book leaves the subjects of gender and sex as Dreger finds other (compelling) subjects to sink her hungry scholastic teeth into.

I think the world of gender is changing more rapidly than it ever has before. The emergence of transgender celebrities like Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner has caused mainstream society to become much more aware (and thankfully, accepting) of trans people and trans issues. Nonetheless, I am very uncomfortable about what happened to Bailey: vilified for his views, not because they were wrong, but because they made people uncomfortable. Dreger points out (and I don't know why I didn't think of this before) that as a result of Conway's attack on Bailey, "no one in sex research will touch male-to-female transsexualism with a ten foot pole any more. Which must have been just what Conway meant to do". That explains why there isn't good science: because scientists fear personal retribution if they publish results which are unpopular.

The way to enlightenment is not to silence people, even the ones who disagree with us, but to engage in open, civil, respectful debate; to seek out the best evidence, and incorporate it into the picture, recognising that the picture isn't complete and may yet change as new discoveries come to light.

Dreger's book has inspired me to be a little more upright, a little more outspoken in defence of the truth, a little more questioning of the "facts", than I was previously. And perhaps, therefore, a little more willing to extend my middle finger, just like Galileo.

Galileo's Middle Finger - Part One

My book this week is called Galileo’s Middle Finger, and it was recommended to me by my friend Patricia. You need to read this book, she told me. It took me a while to get around to it, but she was dead right.

Alice Dreger

Galileo’s Middle Finger is written by Alice Dreger, professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at the Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. I had not come across her work before. Her book is a personal account of her own involvement in a series of medical and ethical issues, over two decades of her life. For readers of this blog in particular, the first three chapters will be of greatest interest. The first discusses intersex people; the second and third transgender people. There is so much to talk about that I am going to split this article into two blog posts.

One of the themes of this blog (one I am always going on about) is that, when it comes to the study of sex and gender, hard scientific knowledge is pretty lacking. In its place is often entrenched dogma, coming from people (scientists themselves and their supporters) who insist on a particular paradigm or point of view; and the equally entrenched opposition of the activists and pressure groups, waving flags and making demands.

If someone comes up with a new idea, it can easily fall foul of one or even both of those groups, not because it is wrong, but because it challenges the way people think, and people (even scientists) can find themselves attacked and vilified, especially in this age of instant social media and viral messages.

Dreger is my kind of scholar: the one who is most interested in the truth above all, "a belief in evidence even when it challenges [her] political goals". In her book she describes how she has been on both sides of these debates; at times siding with the activists, pushing hard against dogma and accepted wisdom. At other times, she has sided with the scientists, defending them against unfair or personal attacks from critics.

Let’s cover some concrete examples. In the first chapter of her book, entitled Funny Looking, Dreger comes right to the point on the very first page.

Dreger: This was my stance: Children born with genitals that look funny but work fine should not be surgically altered just because their genital appearance upsets or worries some adult. Big clitorises shouldn't be shortened, and baby boys with very small penises shouldn't be sex-changed just because their phalluses induce Freudian crises of conscience in their caregivers.

Neither fish nor fowl: intersex

She is talking, of course, about intersex children, that 1 in 1000 or so babies who are born with genitalia which seem to be neither quite boy nor girl. In some (rarer) cases, intersex people can possess both testicular and ovarian tissue in an ovotestis. Cases of intersex people have been cropping up in the medical literature for centuries (I recall coming across them as a student) and are depicted in medical textbooks naked, in black-and-white, with a bar over their face to cover their "anonymity".

Originally, of course, medicine had nothing to offer those people. But over the last few decades, increasingly intersex children have been dealt with surgically. Big clitorises (and I'm sorry for wearing my geek hat long enough to point out that the official plural of clitoris is clitorides) were surgically shortened to look more normal (but often causing scarring and the inability to achieve orgasm). Small penises were sometimes completely amputated, and the child raised as a girl. Unfortunately surgery on children's genitals rarely turns out right.

I stress this was usually done with the very best of intentions by most doctors. I believe (and Dreger does too) that the doctors thought they were doing the right thing by these children. They believed that rigidly enforcing an anatomical binary would spare these children growing up different, and make them fit more comfortably. They believed if they did not provide the surgery, the children would commit suicide in puberty.

Dreger: Modern medicine now sought to reinforce the "optimum gender of rearing" by early management of children born with sex anomalies by means of "sex-normalising" surgeries, hormone treatments, delicate euphemisms, and sometimes lies.

This was also the system that led to a lot of really angry intersex adults who discovered that they had been harmed by the medical care meant to "save" them and who knew that the basic system was still being used on children who would likely grow up as hurt and angry as they were. In the early 1990's, a core group of these people formed the intersex rights movement I eventually joined. Some of these intersex adults had been physically harmed--left with damaged sexual sensation, incontinence or repetitive infections. Many had been psychologically harmed--left with a sense of having been too monstrous for their parents to accept as they came, of being sexually freakish, of being fountains of familial shame. All were left with a burning desire to try to save others from going through what they had.

Things were made worse by the actions of people like Dr. John Money. Money's most famous case was David Reimer, a healthy (non-intersex) boy whose penis was destroyed during a botched circumcision attempt. Money suggested that Reimer be raised as a girl, and he underwent removal of his testicles as a baby, together with hormone treatments intended to feminise him. Unfortunately, none of this worked: Reimer always identified as a boy (despite a rigid "girl" upbringing). Worse, Money continued to publish fraudulent reports (in what became known as the "John/Joan" case) that Reimer was doing well as a girl, and his reputation and prestige meant that other doctors followed his example of treatment. Money was a charlatan whose harms extended far beyond this one patient.

How do you measure up?

Together with intersex friend Bo Laurent, Alice Dreger formalised the Intersex Society of North America into a non-profit, tax-exempt organisation. Its purpose was to provide solidarity for intersex people, to realise they are not alone; to campaign to the medical profession for better, more understanding treatment of intersex individuals; and for more acceptance from society for intersex individuals.

Dreger: The problem in intersex care wasn't a problem of gender identity per se. The problem was that, in the service of strict gender norms, people were being cut up, lied to, and made to feel profoundly ashamed of themselves. Bo said it as plainly as she could: Intersex is not primarily about gender identity; it is about shame, secrecy and trauma.

Gradually, they began to gain some traction with doctors. One tool they used was the Phall-O-Meter (pictured), a ruler which is designed to measure the size of a newborn baby's genitals. Calibrated in inches, it was a way of showing how ridiculous it is, that one could use a ruler to categorise something as profound, as far-reaching, as a human being's sex. (This example misses out the humorous captions like "Phew! Just squeaks by!" for a barely acceptable penis).

Dreger: When I would ask treating physicians, "What is the goal of pediatric intersex treatment?" I was amazed at how often they could not articulate an answer. ... It would have been much easier if all these doctors had been evil. Instead they were good-- human, scared. They tried hard to write us off as evil, but when they met us, they realized that we were also good-- and human, and scared.

Giving the finger: Galileo

This is my second reason to love the book: that Dreger talks with compassion and a deeply-sensitive humanity. She adds more than a dash of her own personality to the book, so that, instead of reading like a dry academic treatise, it reads like a personal memoir, and is therefore approachable, funny and poignant. Alice, I would love to have dinner with you!

After some years involved in ISNA, Dreger decided to leave. It is here that the next chapter begins, the chapter involving transsexuals. But I wanted to finish this article by pointing out that the intersex community was very fortunate to find an ally in Alice Dreger: passionate, committed, articulate and seemingly fearless.

You might be wondering where the book's title comes from. It comes from the fact that one of Galileo's fingers (his middle one, of course) is preserved in a jar in the Museo Galileo in Florence. The museum insists that the finger is mounted pointing upward to the heavens which Galileo loved so much. But, because Galileo was fearless in speaking out against the Establishment of his time (getting himself in trouble with Pope Urban VIII over his views of celestial mechanics), Dreger impishly points out that an alternative interpretation is that Galileo is still sticking his middle finger up in the air against stubborn orthodoxy and entrenched dogma.

Join me for Part Two.

Why Men Wear Frocks - Final Part

In the final part of this series of blog posts, I finish off discussing Grayson Perry's thought-provoking documentary, Why Men Wear Frocks.

I was wondering when he was going to start talking about bridal dresses, and here he goes. The segment is short, but the insights are quite profound:

Perry: The wedding dress is the last bastion in our society of the fantasy, frilly, feminine, properly symbolic frock. But I had a feeling it was dying out even here. For entirely understandable reasons, many women don't really believe in it any more. What strikes me is that, it's almost like this idea of the feminine, the princess, the bride, is so foreign to the woman's normal every day experience, that it's become theatricalised. For me, for a tranny, dresses are symbols of vulnerability and innocence and submissiveness and things that men don't have access to. There's something about putting on a dress that instantly gives me permission to act out those feelings.

Cecilia Sand

There is a transvestite obsession with bridal dresses. In fact, there are whole social events devoted to crossdressers and the trappings of weddings, such as this one in the UK. Sites like YouTube and Flickr are absolutely stuffed with images of them. My own view is that some transvestites seek out archetypes of femininity (the schoolgirl, the maid, the bride) and attempt to pursue that. If a woman can be pampered and beautified from top to toe on her wedding day, and wear the most expensive dress of her life, to look the most beautiful that she can be, I can understand why a transvestite would want the same. From what I see on the Web, some of them spend a lot of time and money to get the right look, and some of them, it has to be said, look amazing (such as Cecilia Sand here).

On the other hand, I feel vaguely uncomfortable about it all. Though I understand the desire to wear a bridal dress, I just can't help thinking it's a bit too strange for me. And it's interesting to hear Perry talk about his idea that even among women, the idea of the wedding dress is dying out.

For the next part of his documentary, Grayson seeks to explore the idea of crossdressing among the young. I have to say, I tend to associate crossdressing with older men (What is my definition of older? Older than me!) and this fits with the autogynephilia model quite well. What also fits is the idea that autogynephilia is universal; in other words, young men have it too. My niggling suspicion is that they might just get on and do it, but call it something else, in order to spare themselves the discomfort of associating with the established crossdressing scene.

Perry: It's not just traditional femininity that's in decline. I wondered how much the rigid gender distinctions, which transvestites are responding to, really meant to young people today. I spent a night out on the goth scene.

Perry: What do you think about the kind of boys who would wear makeup?
Goth girl 1: We love them very much.
Goth girl 2: We like the boys who wear makeup.
Perry: What do you like about them?
Goth girl 3: They look very pretty.
Goth girl 1: They are pushing boundaries, plus they are much more attractive.
Perry: What I'm interested in, is: are trannies dissolving into youth culture? I mean, would you call yourself a tranny?
Goth boy: I don't think so, no. I'm just a pretty boy.

In this segment, Perry (himself bedecked in ribbons and bows) is talking to a group of young people, more or less identically kitted out in long hair and heavy makeup. And there they are: young men wearing lipstick and eyeshadow and nail varnish, with plucked eyebrows and long hair and ribbons. I am certain they would be horrified to be called transvestites, but from a certain perspective, that's exactly what they are. I think cosplay is another means by which adolescent boys can simultaneously dress up as girls and pretend they are not transvestites.

Gregory Gorgeous; no, he really is a boy

In my email correspondence, I have touched on the topic of whether crossdressing is gradually becoming acceptable, even cool, among young people. I think a reasonable summary of the consensus is that crossdressing is now cool, as long as it's not my dad who's doing it. I think it's easy to talk about "young people" as if they are a homogeneous group; but of course, they are as widely different in their views as everybody else! Still, it seems clear that people like Gregory Gorgeous are raising both the profile and the acceptability of crossdressing for young men.

Perry: It would be great if everyone could act as masculine or as feminine as they felt like, without worrying about the gender divide. And if that ever happened, then perhaps there wouldn't be much point in being a transvestite. In the meantime, there are some lessons I've learned from being a tranny. You don't have to bind to the rigid distinctions between maleness and femaleness we've inherited from the Victorians to see that we could all benefit from sampling a bit more of the whole emotional range.

Perry: I think what I've learned from being a transvestite, over the years, is that it is all about finding myself as a man. It's like there's a part of me, my original male self, that was uncomfortable, so it kind of jumped ship somehow. The way that it manifested was transvestism, a kind of package of feelings and behaviours that had been somehow banished from my kingdom of masculinity, and so they lived in this island off the coast, if you like, called transvestism.

Perry talks of himself here (and throughout the documentary) as being a man, albeit one who (like me) lacks an outlet for his feminine feelings. This ties up quite neatly with similar ideas I've brought up elsewhere on this blog, that crossdressing is driven by masculinity, not femininity.

Perry: I think I've had a fair experience of what is on offer to the transvestite, and it's always kind of like: am I emotionally satisfied with the experience? And I always think it's a crude way of dealing with something that I think could be dealt with more graciously or almost gracefully in my everyday life, and so when I'm out dressed, it's good enough, but often I come home thinking... (pauses) at my core level I'm a little bit unsatisfied with the experience.  

This is another point I wanted to bring out. I like to think of myself as a wholly rational being, whilst also being fully aware that I am not one; indeed probably nobody is. The rational part of my brain asks me, as I am dressing: what possible benefit from this activity could there be? It doesn't solve any problems. It doesn't change anything. Meanwhile the emotional part of my brain says: because it feels absolutely wonderful, it relaxes me, it alleviates my stresses. And afterwards, instead of just looking back and enjoying it, I usually feel a little bit guilty. Couldn't that time have been better spent somehow? I am forced to agree with Perry that, deep down, crossdressing is a slightly unsatisfying activity. What a powerful insight.

Perry: I think what transvestites are trying to do, sometimes in a clumsy, slightly humorous way, and sometimes not with the greatest self-awareness, but often very elegantly and interestingly, are trying to be whole people that show their whole selves. And I think that's a great thing, I think that's an aim for all of us. Maybe transvestites are the most graphic example of the pressures that men are under, and the role that men are expected to fulfil. I think they are showing us something of what men could be. I'm not saying that men should wear dresses, it's just that symbolically they are saying: there's something up with being a man.

Throughout this documentary, Perry has shown great sympathy and tolerance for all the people he has met (with the possible exception of Charlotte). In turn, he has been treated with respect; for example by Dr Oriole Cullen, herself a very beautiful woman. People don't seem to notice that Perry is interviewing them in a dress (in the case of Cullen, a very lavish and elaborate one).

In my very first post about him, I quoted Perry as saying: "Other transvestites think I'm the wrong sort of weirdo because they don't like my dresses". I just wanted to explore that a little more. In this documentary, he has seemingly liked, and been liked by, everyone. Nobody seems to have been bothered by his dresses at any point. In fact, since it was screened he has become even more popular and widely-known.

The themes of this documentary ring out: crossdressing can be sexy; it's a compulsion; it's a symbolic act, it's about escaping the expectations of masculinity, and it's all about the emotion. I absolutely agree with all of that. In this documentary Perry comes across as tolerant, compassionate, sensitive and deeply insightful.

I still struggle with his little girl image, though. If you Google Perry, you can see pictures of him in every situation, but the commonest types of pictures seem to be him dressed like a little girl (even when he met the Queen). If we accept the words of his own mouth; that for Perry, wearing this sort of attire is symbolic, and about emotion, then one can see that he is doing it to express those things to be found in little girls: purity, innocence, cuteness, vulnerability; perhaps even playfulness or mischief. On the other hand, I feel very strongly that those things belong to little girls; they don't belong to grown men. And I guess that grown men need to accept there are some things they just can't have.

I draw a parallel here with Michael Jackson. I accept that, because of his painful upbringing, Jackson spent much of his adult life trying to recapture his lost childhood, partly by reliving it vicariously through small children. Even so, him spending the night with children is not OK, whichever way you cut it. Likewise, I understand Perry's wishes to escape the confines of traditional masculinity (in this, I am right with him!) but to dress up as a little girl is, for me, the wrong way to go about it.

At some point, I will get round to reading Perry's autobiography, and then perhaps I will understand him a little better, and will be able to talk about him a little more. For now, however, I have tried your patience long enough, and I promise to write about something different next time!

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.

Why Men Wear Frocks - Part Two

Tracie's Story interrupted my full flow about Grayson Perry's documentary, Why Men Wear Frocks. Do please read Part 1 first! In this second part of the documentary, Perry considers the relationship between bikers and transvestites, and later, the relationship between dandies and transvestites.

I have realised as I have written this post that most of it comes from Perry himself (or his interview subjects). In a way, that's OK. I think Perry has tremendously powerful points to make, and really this post is about teasing them out a little and exploring them a bit more closely.

Perry: So what is it about being a man today that makes some men so desperate to be women? All men live in a fantasy world, to a greater or lesser extent. It's just that some fantasies are seen as suitably masculine while others are unacceptably feminine. As well as being a transvestite, I'm also a biker. The two things seem to me to have more in common than you might think. I think the two things have in common a sort of adrenaline addiction, really. There's also an element of display as well. I mean, looking at biker leathers, they're quite theatrical.

Biker: I knew exactly what bike I wanted. I knew what colour I wanted the bike. And I guess for sheer vanity I knew I also wanted my helmet and outfit to match. Yeah, maybe it's the whole costume thing, isn't it? You're a bit freer. You've been set loose by the costume that you're wearing, and you're able to be something a bit different. Maybe. (laughs).

Perry: Whatever they say, all men dress to get particular kinds of attention. It's not unique to transvestites. It's just that the acceptable range you can display as a man is quite narrow. Talking to these guys, there's a lot of parallels between transvestism and being a biker. It's just that, instead of putting on a skin of femininity, they are putting on a kind of carapace of masculinity. But it's still for show, I think. It's still about showing the world a role. This time though, it's all man.

Perry's custom made motorbike, the Kenilworth AM1

In the documentary, Perry rides a normal bike on the track. But I should have known better! Perry has had a very special motorbike commissioned for himself. There is an excellent and articulate discussion of the bike here, at The Vintagent website. Paul d'Orleans, the author of the website, writes:

Vintagent: With a matched riding suit of bright yellow boots, an outrageous lavender Peter-Pan-collar jumpsuit, and spring-green helmet, Perry's riding ensemble creates a motorcycling image which borrows nothing from anyone or anything...there's simply nobody else on the road with the cojones to wear THAT outfit while riding THAT bike. While custom shops, tattoo parlors, and clothing outlets are busy selling 'individuality', Perry has taken a brave and lonely path, to BE an individual.

I couldn't put it better myself. But back to men and frocks. I love Perry's turn of phrase: "carapace of masculinity" is a very powerful expression. I can't help thinking of people like Jan Hamilton, who tried to crush her femininity by becoming uber-masculine, a special forces soldier. It didn't work; or to be more correct it worked for a while but made her profoundly unhappy. Hamilton is, however, an extreme case. I wonder how many genuinely sensitive men hide their feelings behind badges of masculinity (bikes, trucks, guns, tattoos, football) because they feel they cannot do otherwise?

Perry: I think it's quite hard for men today, because there's an increasingly narrow bandwidth of behaviours which are seen as exclusively masculine. As women have quite rightly encroached on what used to be seen as male territory, all that's left is the negative things. There's less scope for a sensitive man to feel at home. What kind of men do we actually want boys to become?

To find out Perry visits an inner-city school, where he holds a conversation with a group of teenaged boys, who express, in a forthright and surprisingly articulate manner, their views of masculinity as it is today. But then he comes onto this topic, which is very close to my heart.

Perry: Feelings aren't intrinsically male or female. But you wouldn't know that from the imagery we see around us. It is this apartheid of the emotions that transvestites are rebelling against. But it's a rebellion that's open to everyone. I have always wondered whether I could experience some of the things I get from being a tranny without crossing the gender divide.

(There he is again with the turn of phrase: "apartheid of the emotions"). I too have often wondered the same. For the record, wearing a kilt does nothing in this regard. It just doesn't even feel like a skirt. And it's interesting how Perry associates crossdressing with its emotional content and the role of gender. Another strong theme of this blog is that I pursue crossdressing partly to escape from the masculine expectations placed upon me, in part because of the dearth of emotional expression open to men.

Perry visits a tailor in Savile Row to have a suit made, and remarks "It was lovely, but it wasn't quite doing it for me". He then goes on to explore the role of the "effortless gentleman", a man of impeccable good taste and good manners, and laments that much of this has been lost.

Perry: I think we threw out the baby with the bathwater, because there were some lovely things about those men. There's a kind of straight man that I call an "exquisite", although I fear they are a dying breed. They are dandyish men with a love of dressing up and an old-fashioned confidence in gentlemanly virtues. Deep down, heterosexual dandies strike me as transvestites' closest bedfellows.

Perry: When you were drawn to being a dandy, do you think that you were moving away from certain aspects of masculinity?
Nick Foulkes (dandy): Conventional masculinity, at the time, yes.
Perry: And what was it that you wanted to get away from?
Foulkes: The coarseness. I want life to be as Cashmere soft and as velvety smooth as I can.
Perry: You're not split?
Foulkes: No. I thought there was enough there in men's clothes to actually be getting along with. It never really occurred to me to dress up in women's clothes.

I somewhat agree with Perry about dandies, although, to the best of my knowledge, I have never met one. I have possibly met several men who might be considered an "exquisite", the kind of man who unfailingly makes me mind my manners and watch my language, and makes me feel uncomfortably inferior despite my unshakeable self-confidence and reasonable socioeconomic status. I do not aspire to being one myself!

What completely changed my view of crossdressing is the concept of autogynephilia. I think autogynephilia fits Grayson Perry just as well as it fits me. I suppose dandyism could also be a form of erotic target location error: the love of oneself in fine clothing and manners. On the other hand, it might just overlap with all sorts of other "normal" things: genuine good breeding, snobbery, ostentation. So who is to say? I think there is an overlap.

Finally, I think dandies are indeed a dying breed. But what isn't a dying breed, and in fact is extremely popular and fast-growing, is the phenomenon of Steampunk, and here dandies and trannies find a warm welcome. But that will need to wait for the next instalment.

Tracie's Story

This is something I had heard about at least a couple of years ago, when the story came out that Sean Bean, a British actor traditionally known for playing hard men and villains, was cast to play the part of a transvestite in an upcoming drama. (I wonder if they auditioned Vinnie Jones for the role?) You might know Bean from Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, or even James Bond. So naturally I couldn't wait to see it. However, down here in the bottom right hand corner of the map it's just been screened for the first time on terrestrial TV.

The drama in question is part of a UK serial, Accused, created for the BBC by screenwriter Jimmy McGovern. More specifically, it is the first episode of season 2. I haven't seen any of the other episodes, but I was so taken with the subtlety and brilliance of this one that I will be sure to take a look.

Sean Bean as Tracie

Let me say right up front that I think this is one of the best pieces of television featuring a crossdressing character that I have ever seen. It is clever, fresh, compelling and sympathetic. The dialogue sizzles (every one of Tracie's one-liners is a gem), and the characters are rounded and complex. It tackles all the issues you would expect, head on, but in ways you wouldn't expect. I am not going to spoil it for you, because I think it's just too good, but there are some points which are worthy of comment.

Tony: You get that a lot, do you? Aggro?
Tracie: Unfortunately.
Tony: So why do it?
Tracie: Because it's who I am, darlin'!

We join the action as Bean's character, Tracie Tremarco, gets all dolled up for a night on the town (Manchester), in what I wincingly regard as over-the-top drag: the long blonde hair, the short skirt, the sparkly dress, the long nails. But then we see Tracie expertly (if a little wearily) deflect the critical and mocking abuse she gets from the taxi driver and from some drunken lads in the pub. Later she picks up an apparently straight man, Tony (Stephen Graham), and they go back to Tracie's flat where they have sex.

Tony: What do you do for a living?
Tracie: Nothing, doll. Tracie's a good time girl.
Tony: So who pays for this place?
Tracie: Simon, love. The most boring man in the world.

A crossdressing academic, you say? Whatever next?

By day, Tracie is Simon, a bored and lonely English teacher, plodding through his lacklustre life, trying to interest his disengaged students in poetry. The writer makes a reasonable effort to weave the poetry into the narrative, particularly the Lady of Shalott, Tennyson's romantic ballad of a lonely and beautiful lady who looks out of her tower window and falls in love with "bold Sir Lancelot".

Tracie is surprised and delighted when Tony turns up at her flat unexpectedly, and the two embark on a relationship, somewhat hesitantly at first. Gradually, Tracie begins to fall in love with Tony, and wants him to take her out:

Tony: I haven't got the balls to be seen out with you. But shall I tell you why? It's because you make no bleedin' effort to look like a woman. A real woman!
Tracie: I never claimed to be Cheryl bloody Cole!
Tony: I never expected you to turn into Cheryl Cole. But you're going to have to do a lot better than Old King fucking Cole if you want to be seen out in public with me. So just have a go. Eh?
Tracie: What, and you'll take me out?

As the relationship deepens, Simon gradually rediscovers his zest for life. His students look up in surprise as he reads the poetry with fire and passion. Later there is a powerful scene where Simon, walking along the street, sees Tony coming the other way, and realises Tony does not recognise him. Simon's distress is played out perfectly by Bean, without a word of dialogue being spoken.

Did anyone ever tell you you look a bit like Cheryl Cole?

Later still, Tracie visits a shopping mall for a makeover. A beautiful young woman leans in close to apply the makeup, and we follow Tracie's eyes looking at each feature of this young woman: her pearl earring, her eyes, her lips, her figure. Though we, the audience, know what's really going on in Tracie's mind, the expression on her face mirrors a recurring feeling I have often had when I compare myself to real women: how could I ever possibly hope to look half as good as that?

The theme of the series Accused is legal drama. In each episode, there is a different lead character, and we see scenes from their life as they become involved in something illegal, interspersed with tense courtroom scenes. So I am not letting any cats out of any bags by letting it slip that Bean's character ends up in court. But here is where my revelations end: if you want more, you will need to see it for yourself! It seems to be available on YouTube here. Trust me, though. You won't see all the subtlety on a single viewing.

Reviews have been extremely favourable. The Huffington Post said "Bean has rarely been better, showing a vulnerability and complexity many miles away from his usual tough-man". Metro said the show "could have played out like a cliché but thanks to a gritty, chip-on-the-shoulderpad turn from Bean, matched every uneasy flirt of the way by Stephen Graham as the tightly wound Tony, these characters worked their way under the skin. It was a little heavy on the melodrama but these emotional wounds were palpable".

Bean's performance is a triumph, especially given his background playing hard men and villains. The British tabloid press breathlessly reported that Bean had gone out dressed as a woman to research the role, as if this was somehow a surprise. However, the broadsheet press was a little more enlightened in its reporting. The Independent interviewed Bean and quoted him:

Bean: I got pretty good at [walking in high heels], walking on cobblestones and all sorts. I had a full body wax, the high heels, short skirts, bras – everything – it was proper full-on. I became totally absorbed: it was wonderful being involved in it, I just didn't want to leave it, the character. I became very close to Tracie. It's a brilliant script: very moving, very dark humour.
Who would have thought I'd have been dressing up as a woman and embracing that? It just came out of the blue and it was one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done, one of the things I'm most proud of. I just think I could never have invented that.

I congratulate Bean on his courage taking on this role, and for his ability to bring it to life. He manages to avoid the obvious farcical elements and provides us with a character which is portrayed sensitively and with subtlety, but with moments of wry comedy nonetheless. His performance won him the title of Best Actor at the Royal Television Society Awards.

I mean, do I look like a man in a dress?

So finally, what do I think? First, this programme is seriously bleak. Manchester is dull and grey and hostile. The only places which have light, colour and warmth seem (perhaps deliberately) to feature cosmetics, clothing, or transvestites. The character of Simon-Tracie is sordid and pathetic: a transvestite who looks ridiculous and brings home a series of men for sex. In a very real sense, Tracie had to look grotesque: we, the audience, just wouldn't have bought it if they had cast a pretty man (or a less accomplished actor) in the part. It speaks tremendously of the production team that they were able to bring this off and make us sympathise with the characters.

Second, there are aspects to the character of Tracie which don't quite sit comfortably with me, though it is plain that the writer has tried extremely hard to do his homework on the subject (hitting several nails squarely on the head with powerful lines about married men who are "curious" about transvestites). There is an odd separation between Simon and Tracie: each talks of the other in the third person, as if they were separate people. For some crossdressers, this might indeed be how they compartmentalise their lives; for me, I know it isn't.

Thirdly, Simon dresses as Tracie because he is a gay man.

Tracie: Young Simon... realised he had to tell his parents he was gay, or kill himself. So he decided having a dead son was slightly worse than having a gay one, so that's why he told them.

One of the main themes of this blog is that crossdressers are not gay, and there is plenty of justification for this view. On the other hand, I have a DVD of a 2002 documentary filmed in Manchester's gay community called The Queen's Wedding. The crew interviews several gay crossdressers, some very attractive, and some very unattractive, and the documentary culminates in the wedding of two men, one of whom wears a bridal dress for the occasion. In any case, a theme of that documentary is that some gay men do crossdress for the purposes of amusement and sex. So Tracie certainly seems to fit into that mould.

Finally, by bringing the character of Tracie to a mainstream audience, the writers are belting out a powerful and welcome message: you might find them repellent, but transvestites are human beings too.

Why Men Wear Frocks - Part One

Sorry it's been such a long time since my last post. I have been extremely occupied with (what I laughingly call) my life. You might have thought I had given up this blog: not a chance!

On the other hand, this blog has continued to do very well. In the last three months, the hit count has doubled, to more than 20,000. And I've made contact with some lovely, insightful and interesting people through the blog. Thanks to all of you for posting your comments, and sending emails, and do please keep dropping by.

One of the most successful of my posts has been the one on Grayson Perry. It has attracted well over a thousand hits, and still seems to generate a lot of traffic. Perry is one of my crossdressing heroes, a prize-winning artist, and flagrant transvestite. I finally got hold of a recording of Perry's personal crossdressing documentary, Why Men Wear Frocks, filmed in 2004, and I thought I would share my thoughts on it with you. It's full of honesty, insights and sometimes uncomfortable self-reflection.

At first, I tried to put it all in one blog post. However, there is so much material that I have decided to split it into segments.

Perry took his first outing as a woman at the age of 15. He narrates the documentary in his own distinctive voice.

Perry: You've probably glimpsed us on TV. Shy, exotic creatures of the night, stumbling to bus-stops under cover of darkness. We're one of Britain's oldest subcultures, already well-established in Victorian days. You probably know some of us already. Most of us are still in the closet. Look out for over-groomed eyebrows.

I've been a transvestite all my adult life. But I've never seen a programme that gets close to what it feels like to be one. This is what a life spent wearing frocks has taught me.

Grayson Perry (right) at Harmony Weekend 2009

Perry begins his documentary at the annual Harmony Weekend, (2004) spent in a hotel in Scarborough, a seaside resort in Britain, "for me, the quintessential way of enjoying dressing up... there is a kind of etiquette about how everyone is received. It's always very sensitive and supportive. It's very easy to forget you're in the company of blokes, ordinary blokes". He talks to several of the other girls about their occupations, and indeed they are just ordinary blokes: engineers, payroll clerks, managers.

I was amused (but not especially surprised) to hear him talk of etiquette, in a country whose two national sports are forming queues and apologising. Having been (on one single occasion) to a transvestite dinner-dance, I can see how etiquette would be essential. Some of the girls (no doubt about it) looked absolutely amazing (this is also true of the guests at Perry's weekend), but some looked obviously male, and some were very strange-looking indeed. Each of them, though, is there to be accepted regardless, and I can understand why the etiquette is that (I presume) everybody says nice things about one another's outfit, and (I am prepared to bet) everyone is required to use feminine pronouns at all times.

Perry: It's exciting dressing up as a woman, but there are problems with it. The first is: everyone thinks you're gay... or twisted... or ridiculous. There's clearly something more at stake here than dressing up to recreate historic battles at the weekends.

I slightly cringe when people say "Oh, it's just a bit of fun", because these guys are risking often their marriages, their careers, their relationship with their children and their neigbours-- not to mention their bank balance sometimes, with the size of their wardrobes. So I think it is definitely a compulsion.

Perry and the other girls take a walk along the sea front. There is a very telling segment where a large group of transvestites emerges from the hotel, and all walk down the steps and across the road. Some of them are dressed appropriately; from a distance, you wouldn't notice them. But some are dressed quite outrageously, and stand out a mile. Taken as a group, I feel there is something defiant about them ("Here we are! Out in force! Dare to stand in our way! Hear us roar!") but also forlorn: the weather is grey and gusty, and these people need to travel to this cold seaside resort in winter so that they can strut their stuff in public.

Just for the avoidance of any doubt: if it were me, in that group, I would feel excited and stimulated, and I wouldn't even notice the cold, or the wind, or the stares. For his part, Perry seems quite at home. He behaves like he belongs, and he revels in it.

Perry: Being a transvestite is a complex cocktail of motivations. It's different for everyone, but there's often a strong sexual component to crossdressing, although trannies sometimes find it hard to admit this. I feel it's like the elephant in the room. I feel it's really there, but nobody's talking about it.

Maybe it's this erotic dimension which is the hardest part for others to accept. Some wives in particular find it difficult to deal with, although others come along on the weekends.

Perry: What do you think wives think about the erotic stimulation of dressing?
Di (Jim's wife): First of all, it's all about me, isn't it? About my femininity. Am I good enough as a woman? Is he doing this because I'm not good enough? So of course, what do I do? Over the top: more eyeshadow, more lipstick, higher heels. Also because the sexual balance changes, women will describe the lesbian element. It's like, well look, I'm heterosexual. It's like asking someone who's right-handed to be left-handed.

Here we are, barely ten minutes in, and already Perry is talking about crossdressing and sexual arousal! This sets the tone for the whole documentary: Perry pulls absolutely no punches.

Perry: The high point of the proceedings is the Miss Rose Beauty Pageant, on the Saturday night. That's when the fantasies take flight. The first time I ever came on one of these weekends, I looked across the room, and there are all the kind of slightly wonky wigs and nylon and dresses, and I thought: ooh, there's a lot of pain in this room. They've all been through the mill a bit, and been on a bit of a journey to get there. They were doing their best to meet their own very emotional needs.

I could be wrong, but I think there is a person inside this.

Perry is right: the fantasies really do take flight on Saturday night. Some of the costumes in the beauty pageant are absolutely outrageous: paper parasols, white fur, and the sort of showgirl costume one might expect on stage at the Folies-Bergere. This is the sort of thing which makes me uncomfortable about being a crossdresser. I completely understand the desire to wear costumes of that kind, but the reason I don't is that I would feel more foolish and ridiculous and grotesque than attractive. If I were there, I wouldn't enter the beauty pageant, but would be content to wear a simple evening dress and sit watching from a corner sipping gin and tonic.

Perry's comment about "a lot of pain in this room" is extremely powerful and insightful. It says a lot about him that he can see past the "wonky wigs" to the people behind; I expect I would have some difficulty doing this. Without doubt, he is right. They have all been through the mill. We all have.

"Doing their best to meet their own very emotional needs". I couldn't sum up my attitude to crossdressing better in a single sentence.

Perry: Sunday morning. Time to pack the frocks away again. It can seem quite cruel going back to the toughty-roughty world of men after being in the company of some rather lovely ones. And I think it's painful that we do invest such a lot of emotion in often rather brief glimpses of [pauses reflectively] ...happiness.

In the next part of the documentary, Perry visits a motorcycle track day, and interviews some of the bikers. We will cover that in the next blog post.

But my final point is this one (touched on in my correspondence with Georgia from Broadblogs). It's not a question of why men wear frocks, but why women wear frocks? Quite a lot of women's clothing and accessories are impractical, uncomfortable, and amazingly expensive. Manicured nails are lovely, but some women have them so long they can't easily use a phone, or a keyboard, or open a car door. Women's clothing can, of course, be practical and comfortable as well as gorgeous, but quite a lot of it isn't. Why should this be? What's going on there?

For the next in this series of posts, click here.

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The image of Grayson Perry from the Harmony Weekend 2009 was taken from Flickr here. The other person in the image is Jill Kaylee-Yvonne. The image of the white dress from the Harmony Weekend 2004 was taken from Flickr here, and belongs to Saralegs.