His/Her-Story Part Three: The Lesson of High School

When I was a teenager there was a brief concern that I might be crazy, or dangerously depressed or otherwise in need of intervention. It was because of something I wrote in a school journal, which at the time I thought, how insightful, how well-written this is, surely they will be proud of me. I learned something about sharing your true feelings with adults that day. Never again would I let it slip that I had any odd quirks that might be mistaken for insanity. The lesson of high school: Distrust and withdraw from human contact, especially adults who think they're helping.

I didn't need help any more than every teenager needs help. In retrospect, it would've been wonderful if they'd sent me to a therapist, and the therapist had analyzed my psyche and said, "Good news! You're a transvestite. It's a really fun and interesting thing to be, and maybe a few people will be rude about it, but you didn't want to be their friend anyway."

I doubt that would have happened. But if someone had said that to me, maybe things could have been different. It's impossible to know. I can't blame society for all my problems. But not enjoying transvestitism in my youth is one of my very few regrets in this world.

Understanding The Transvestite

A transvestite belongs to one gender but likes to wear the opposite gender's clothes, as defined by cultural norms. This may also entail the use of makeup, scents, and adopting cross-gender behaviors.

The transvestite wishes to shift between gender identities on a surface level, unlike a transsexual or transgendered person who wishes to permanently change their physical form to match their identity, and unlike the intersexed, who belong simultaneously to both genders.

The transvestite's motives may have as much to do with fun, happiness and personal expression as with sex or romance, but this varies from person to person.

The transvestite may be young or old, male or female, black or white, rich or poor, etc...

Transvestites may look good or bad in their mismatched outfits, but you should be polite to them either way.

A transvestite is a man who keeps trying to put things in his pockets only to remember that there are no pockets in the dress he's wearing.

A transvestite, until recently, could have been a woman wearing pants and finding all kinds of uses for these things called pockets.

The female who adopts male behaviors is considered strong, capable, and cool, while males who adopt female behaviors are considered weak, foolish, and deceptive. This is because femininity itself is considered weak, foolish, and deceptive. Of course, this is not to say that female transvestites do not have their own hardships, just that there is a double standard, and for once it affects the men more than the women.

The psychiatric community officially believes that all transvestites are narcissistic perverts. The truth, of course, is that all humans are narcissistic perverts, but that doesn't mean we should assume that they aren't nice people.

A transvestite is a person who wants to be accepted and appreciated.

His/Her-Story Part Two

As far back as I can remember I wanted to grow my hair long. My mother insisted on getting me a short boy's cut, and at the time she was well within her rights to override my naive fashion sense. If it was up to me I would've gone to kindergarten in the nude.

I remember liking the cute MacGyver curls that formed naturally along my neck. Recently I've returned to a shorter cut, not so much like Richard Dean Anderson's 80s mullet, but with the cute curls. All my life, I've always seen something pretty in the mirror that I wanted to amplify.

Once the choice was mine to make, I stopped getting haircuts. I went through a phase of being known at high school as "white afro boy." Pretty soon it was shoulder length. Later I would discover that long hair also fits into the Otaku stereotype. I wonder if there's a lot of crossover between anime nerds and transvestites, or if it's just me.

People always asked me why I kept my hair long, cycling through the catalog of relatable cliches to try and pin one on me. Are you a surfer? Um, in interior Alaska? No. Are you a stoner? In fact, I'm about as psychedelic as a person can be without doing drugs - I didn't so much as try a pot brownie until my thirties. Are you a heavy metal fan? Not really. Music is a big part of my life and there is a place in it for metal, but I tend to find the emotional palette limited and too overtly macho.

No one ever asked if I was a transvestite. I suppose if the thought occurred to them, they might have stifled it for fear of offense. Up until recently, I would have resisted the label, which has become rather derogatory. New terms like genderqueer have arisen to cover the middle ground between the sexes. But Eddie Izzard reclaimed "transvestite," which is still a distinct term, if misunderstood. "Eonism" goes further back and has a cooler sound to it that would make a catchy blog title, although hardly anyone knows what it means.

The real failure of "transvestite" is that it presumes that cross-dressing is the whole story. The truth is everyone ends up with a mixture of male and female traits. The key trait that gets misplaced in a transvestite's psyche is the desire to be cute, pretty, or beautiful, to display oneself, and to be appreciated as such. This behavior borders on sexual but is distinct from it, and it involves fashion only insofar as fashion is the means to achieve the desired display of beauty.

Recently, at my first gig with shorter hair, I discovered a small but vocal contingent of fans who liked the long hair. You just can't win.

His/Her-Story Part One

When I was a child, I wouldn't play with G.I. Joes, and I wouldn't play with Barbies. I liked Legos, where all the people were androgynous(this was before each Lego figurine was painted to play a specific character). They explored space and rode on trains, and came back home and had relationships. Often the spacemen would land on the pirate planet and trade clothes promiscuously.

I liked Transformers, too. Transformers are implicitly masculine, and certainly marketed to boys. But I liked them. They could change at will between two forms. I also liked superheroes, who would pretend to be normal during the day, but then secretly dress up in bold, elaborate costumes that reflect their true selves and celebrate their unique abilities.

The "trans-" category is exploding these days. People are realizing that there is only middle ground in this world. There aren't even two distinct forms, just in-between.

Some people feel that they were born the wrong gender. That's not how I feel. If I could have the power to change at will between the two, that would reflect my inner nature. I can't physically be both at once, but I can try to express both sides of my personality.

It's not important to me that other people see me as one gender or the other. I'd rather they were comfortable with ambiguity. I'd like them to like what they see and be satisfied with that.