My books received a lovely mention in Dan Savage’s Savage Love column this week, when a 23 year old woman wrote in confused by her boyfriend’s desire to be pegged, made-up and corseted. Tristan Taormino was the guest author, standing in for Dan on vacation. & I’m pleased as punch.
Crossdressing Room
What a great piece on identity, crossdressing, and the internet:
I grew up surrounded by the notion that bodies and identities come in 1:1 ratios: we get a body and an identity. But from as early as I remember, I had a body that did not line up flush with any single identity but instead slipped this way and that so that it lined up with Tori at one point, or the hard man of Cameroon at another, or any one of the many selves I’ve deployed throughout my life.The discovery of the personal ad flipped a switch in the dark: the slippage I had experienced occurred not only on the side of body, but on the side of identity as well, so that Tori might slip from one body to another just as I slipped in and out of various presentations of identity. Once recognized, the logic struck me as obvious, a happy and symmetrical discovery.
I don’t mean to pretend that somehow, body and identity have been cleaved free from one another, or that we live in a world where body has no relevant bearing on identity and vice versa. After all, those pictures of Tori showed my arms, my face, my ears, that mole on the cheek next to my nose. Yet, somewhere in the hinterland of the internet, some other person had claimed one of my identities, an identity borne of my body, but one that transcended skin, muscle, hair, fat and bones, as she moved through online space, until she settled upon the imagined teenager, his body becoming hers, her voice speaking through his throat to the anonymous man on the other end of the phone.
Do take the time to read the whole of it. it is so nice to read something about the trans by someone who can really write.
(My thanks to Lea for the tip.)
Sissy!
There are so few articles about sissies; there really should be more. But Brianna Austin gives us a little bit of a rundown:
The sissy, however, doesn’t see himself as a women; in fact he is firmly rooted in the reality that he is not a women, nor can he every truly become one, but no longer a man either. In many instances the sissy sees women as the superior species, and is happy to simply elevate themselves to their highest possible feminine representation of female.
To that end, the sissy acts and dresses as frilly and feminine as possible, but never in a mainstream way. They love ruffles, satin, and lace in yellow, white and pink, anything that accentuates femininity – usually garters & stockings, high heels, and costumes. But it can also include baby girl and little girl attire and actions as well.
Their goal is not to assimilate; thus the frills are both an adoration of feminism, and a reminder that they’re merely emulating that which they can never actually be.
It is then no surprise that most sissies are usually submissive in nature, a soft demeanor that earns to serve. Often when you come upon social profiles of sissies, they are seeking a “strong master or mistress” to train them. This is yet another way of saying, “bring out the girl in me and suppress the male … PLEASE!”
Is being a sissy then really about being and looking feminine, or is it really – at the root – about power, the lack of, and/or exchange of it?
I’m fond of them myself, as is Dan Savage. As I’ve often said, some of the strongest, bravest people I’ve met are sissies, and yes, this is for you PettiPie. 🙂
CrossDresser Humor
Jessica Who makes me laugh. Maybe she’ll make you laugh too.
You can check out her “Best of” videos here, and her channel is cool too.
How to Say ‘Panties’
(There are some other really great ones, like coccyx, synechdoche, and carpe diem.)
Captain Crossdresser
This is fantastic.
So exactly right on, too. There only seem to be three so far, but I hope there are more on their way.
Transvestic Disorder? Really?!
Yes, really. The proposed idea is for DSM V, the same book that wants to change Gender Identity Disorder to Gender Incongruence is also planning on changing Transvestic Fetishism to Transvestic Disorder. (You can see all the relevant proposed changes in a previous post.)
The entry in the current DSM on Transvestic Disorder, like the former entry on Transvestic Fetishism, is authored by Dr. Ray Blanchard of the Toronto Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (formerly known as the Clarke Institute). Blanchard has drawn outrage from the transcommunity for his defamatory theory of autogynephilia, asserting that all transsexual women who are not exclusively attracted to males are motivated to transition by self-obsessed sexual fetishism. He is canonizing this harmful stereotype of transsexual women in the DSM-5 by adding an autogynephilia specifier to the Transvestic Disorder diagnosis.
Worse yet, Blanchard has broadly expanded the diagnosis to implicate gender-nonconforming people of all sexes and all sexual orientations, even inventing an autoandrophilia specifier to smear transsexual men.
For those who don’t see why this is a problem: let me posit the idea that there is no such thing as cross-dressing. That is, you can’t wear/get turned on by clothes of the opposite sex is the sexes aren’t oppositional. That is, a guy can wear a skirt and then it’s a guy’s skirt, just as a woman’s jeans are just jeans.
Luann Comic
Chinese Crossdressers
What a list! China Today has a list of the Top Ten Crossdressers (more like trans-feminine spectrum) and most of them are young and very pretty.
(thanks to Jenny for the link!)
Today: Dan Savage
I’m going to be on the Dan Savage LoveCast tomorrow at 2PM PST, talking about crossdressing & crossdressers. (Hint: that’s 4PM Appleton time & 5PM NYC time.)
Update, 2:44 PM PST: I recorded the call with Dan a few minutes ago, & from what I can tell, this podcast will go up this Tuesday, 12/21.
Correction, 3:09 PST: It’ll go up on the Savage Love website on 1/4.