I know what you wear under there…

It seems that in everything there is a balance. For every point, there is a counterpoint: every thesis has an antithesis; for every yin there is a yang. This holds true with the human condition as well, including that of gender. There are gays and lesbians. There are M2F and F2M transsexuals. There are transgendered males and transgendered females. There are drag queens and drag kings. There are heterosexual crossdressing males and… well here the analogy falls apart. The exception to the rule seems to be the ambigendered heteroxesual male in that there is no female counterpart. There are lots of husbands with a feminine side they like to express, at least in part, by wearing feminine attire; but how many wives are there out there who like to come home, put on guy clothes, maybe a fake beard, bind their breasts and either take pictures of themselves or go out with the other part-time guys?
Sure, there are women who engage in all sorts of traditional masculine activities, even boxing and tackle football. But they engage in these activities as females wearing female athletic clothing for the most part. OK, the women’s full contact football teams may well wear uniforms made for men, but I bet underneath they aren’t wearing a jockstrap to “complete the illusion.” But, what self-respecting ambigendered male is going to get all dolled up and NOT wear panties? Who wants to wear boxers under even the least clingy skirt? We want to be as authentic in our presentation as possible even to the point of temporarily obliterating any trace of our true biological identity.
I recall reading in some psychological study of a group of females who with some degree of frequency adopted a masculine gender image were asked about wearing some an item to create a bulge simulating male genitalia. They all laughed and thought the idea was ridiculous. Of course, these were all masculine lesbians who were interested in gender presentation, not disguising their sex.
It’s puzzling to me that I’m this weird mix of masculine and feminine, but where are my female counterparts? Where are the heterosexual women who basically enjoy being female but also like to adopt as authentic a male persona as possible. And by authentic I mean dressing fully in male clothing and trying to hide all primary and secondary female characteristics, including letting your body hair grow, adding fake facial hair and padding to ensure you have the right angles and bulges. I may be wrong, but I just don’t think such people exist.
I’m not sure that there is a point here, other than to try to spark discussion and thought on the subject of being ambi-gendered. It may be that it’s all nurture “” gender is, after all, socially constructed. But, if so, why can’t we ambi-gendered males just be content with traditionally feminine activities like cooking, needlepoint or nurturing children (the first and last of which I certainly derive satisfaction from but I still feel the need to crossdress). I mean hetero women get their kicks from engaging in masculine activities as women; why can’t we be satisfied with engaging in feminine activities as males?
I think it goes deeper than nurture. I think nature is involved here. I think that in the complex hormonal bath that is required to turn the default in utero female into a male, something can get out of kilter so that the switch isn’t completely thrown. The end result is a male who has lingering feminine tendencies, longings, impulses, etc. A guy, who in spite of all rational calculations, has the need to express “right down to the last controllable detail” the woman that he might have been. Weird notion? Yes, perhaps; but if you think so, then you explain why some of us XY guys are so compelled “in the absence of any social conditioning towards femininity” to want to express ourselves in as thoroughly feminine a manner as possible.

Category: Blogroll, Transgender Opinion