I get up early every morning, I have two children that don't know about who I am. I put on my hair, I put on a minimal amount of cosmetics, and I get dressed in what I like to wear. Now, if I had the body of a woman, this would just be me getting ready for work. However, since I have a male body, this presents some issues, to say the least. I am left wondering, why I feel different when I put on different clothes.
Clothes don't have gender, they are clothes; pieces of fabric sown together to create something that will cover body parts. When I put on a dress, I am putting on a piece of fabric. When I put on a t-shirt, it's the same bloody thing, just shorter. I feel more feminine in the dress. So the labels that are attributed to different articles of clothing are something we created over time. It was used as a sort of power over women, you can't wear pants, you must wear dresses. But also, ultimately limited the very men who wielded that power. Now men must wear pants. So if you have the body of a man, then you must wear pants. So I wear womens pants. That will show them.
I feel more feminine because I am a construct of the society in which I was cultivated. Dresses and halter tops for girls. Jeans and ties for boys, though hopefully not at the same time. Even without those clothes, I would be a woman on the inside. I would have no way of expressing who I am, no way to show that this person you are looking at isn't me.
What I don't understand is why it brings such hate to others. That man is wearing a dress, how dare he, we should beat him to death for trying to be something he biologically isn't. We feel tricked, for a second I wanted to have sex with a man who appeared to be a woman. Anger face, Argh, let's kill what we don't understand. Not a rational, well that person must be either transgender or perhaps transvestite. Let's just assume that this person is wearing a dress and wig for a reason and move on with our days. I mean, that persons act hasn't impacted anything in my world, my paradigm isn't so fragile as to come crumbling down because I see a male body in a skirt. I can't ever visit Scotland if that is the case. Scotland, land of the paradigm crumblers, and yet still very macho, don't get me wrong.
I'm not ignoring the FtM, let's beat this biological woman to death because she chose to wear pants and stuff a sock down her pants. We don't want her stealing our women, or confusing us. That must mean that I can beat her for realsies. And I have the option of raping her and still remaining straight, while getting to fuck a kind of guy, you know to teach her a lesson.
The tragedy is that if you spend your time hating someone for how they appear, or how they challenge your sexual orientation, then you are missing out on some very kind, good people in your lives. All because you think dresses are for girls and pants are for boys, that sexual orientation is the same as sexual identity, and that having been born with or without a penis defines you.
I realize, as I end this, that I am preaching to the choir. And that possibly I have just laid out the plots to a couple of late 80s, early 90s movies.Labels: clothes, hate, sexual, trans, transgender