I just got called misogynistic on a crossdreser list because I responded to someone who wrestles as a man-in-a-dress using a woman’s name who said “Who said you can’t be tough wearing a dress?” by saying that I have seen lots of men who get even tougher when wearing a dress to play against their outfit.
I said that I valued those who play into the outfit, allowing themselves to be vulnerable and pretty.
That view, according to a poster, just valued the over-it archetype of the hyper-femme crossdresser or transwoman, and was misogynistic.
I was trying to value what I experience as the core of womanhood, valuing the exposure of intimacy and the attempt to reveal inner beauty, and I got slapped as being “against women.”
It’s my experience that crossdressers don’t really like women, because women challenge their appropriation of the symbols of womanhood while they dismiss the meaning of those symbols. I think that crossdressers do that because they need to hold fast to the notion that the symbols they claim for themselves do not express any meaning that might challenge their status as real men.
And it is also my experience that men tend to like to shout down challengers, even with the ironic twist of shouting down women who defend womanhood by calling them misogynistic.
After all, isn’t challenging the idea that a woman can be just like a man anti-woman?
The poster ended by echoing my line that I was over the comedy of guys-in-dresses by saying that they were over people who were vulnerable and pretty.
That, well, that sounded pretty misogynistic to me.
Is there really much doubt of why women-identified people leave trans space? When tough men challenge those who value the womanhood whose symbols crossdressers claim, then there is no space left for valuing the meaning women hold in their lives.
It’s just, well, misogynistic.
Callan 