Blending Genders

Social Aspects of Cross-Dressing and Sex Changing

Richard Ekins, David King

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134820573
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1995, the book describes personal experiences of those who cross-dress and sex change, how they organise themselves socially - in both `outsider' and `respectable' communities. The contributors consider the dominant medical framework through which gender blending is so often seen and look at the treatment afforded gender blending in literature, the press and the recently emerged telephone sex lines. The book concludes with a discussion of the lively debates that have taken place concerning the politics of transgenderism in recent years, and examines its prominence in recent contributions to contemporary cultural theory and queer theory.

Part I
EXPERIENCING GENDER BLENDING

INTRODUCTION

Prior to the categorisation and medicalisation of sexual ‘perversions’ in the latter half of the nineteenth century, gender blending could be written about in terms of simple descriptions of enjoyable experience and preferred behaviour. Medicalisation, however, brought with it new ‘conditions’ and the emergence of new identities. Increasingly, gender blending experiences and behaviours were made sense of in terms of the categories of ‘science’, most notably those of the ‘transvestite’ and the ‘transsexual’. The recent emphasis upon the transgression of gender boundaries and on performance rather than identity, marks a return to experience and behaviour. In such writing, however, the experiences and behaviours are made sense of in terms of the deconstructions of postmodernist cultural theory rather than from the standpoint of the experiences of cross-dressers and sex-changers themselves. In consequence, these writings have yet to make a substantial impact on the subjective experience of gender blending.

Part I approaches the subjective experience of gender blending from three very different angles. Firstly, Peter Farrer opens up a new resource for historical research on gender blending and alerts us to a time before men who enjoyed wearing female attire came to be known as transvestites. In consequence, the experiences he features have a particular flavour of innocence. Secondly, Mark Rees details his own personal experiences as a modern female-to-male transsexual. His quest to ‘become a man’ is shot through with the paraphernalia of modern medicine. And thirdly, Richard Ekins provides the analytical and sociological framework from which to view various experiences of gender blending.

For over forty years Peter Farrer has ploughed a lonely furrow. Throughout the period, he has systematically and single-handedly built up a collection of books, magazines, press cuttings, and photocopied or written extracts covering all aspects of the frocks and costumes of the small boy; boys playing girls’ parts in plays or masquerades; boys dressed as girls for punishment; female impersonation by men; and male cross-dressing in fact or fiction, for any reason, and at any period or in any culture (Ekins, 1992b). For the most part he eschews theorising and critical comment, preferring to document the personal experiences of others and to unearth little-known sources and descriptions (Farrer, 1987; 1992; 1994). In Chapter 1, he provides a fascinating glimpse of the personal experiences of male cross-dressers as described in the correspondence columns of a series of British newspapers between 1867 and 1941.

As Farrer points out, the letters are anonymous, and it is, therefore, impossible to verify the extent to which they document fantasy or reality. All or part of each letter might be the inventions of editors or jokers, or the letters might merely be the fantasies of cross-dressers. The sceptical reader, with no knowledge of these things, may well find it difficult to accept them as descriptions of actual events. However, many similar accounts have been verified. The contemporary subcultural magazine, International TV Repartee, for instance, features a regular column entitled ‘Pampered in Panties’, which details similar confessions from elderly cross-dressers. We, the editors, have verified some of these narratives ourselves. In an area where fact is so very often stranger than fiction, we incline to Farrer’s view that ‘the majority are probably true. There is the sheer quantity of letters and the long period over which they have accumulated. There is the variety of circumstances and incidents described, the diverse nature of the periodicals used and the differing style and status of the correspondents.’

In Chapter 2, we turn to the experience of the female-to-male modern-day transsexual. Although there have been many biographical and autobiographical writings on male-to-female gender blending, there have been remarkably few on those blending from female to male. Ekins (1989) provides the most comprehensive—though by no means complete—listing, but of the eighty or so publications detailed by him, only eleven refer to female-to-male writings. Subsequent writings covering biographical data on female-to-male cross-dressers include Dekker and van de Pol (1989), Devor (1989), Epstein and Straub (1991) and Wheelwright (1989), but these include very little information on sex-changers.

Female-to-male transsexual autobiographies remain a rarity. The autobiography by Martino (1977), Emergence: A Transsexual Autobiography —arguably the most detailed available—was billed as ‘the only complete autobiography of a woman who has become a man’. The autobiography of Chris and Cathy, the ‘first transsexual parents’, appeared in 1982 (Johnson and Brown, 1982). Both Chris and Cathy were sex-changers who achieved a certain notoriety by planning the birth of their child before they both changed over. Of the biographies published since 1989, Liz Hodgkinson’s Michael née Laura: The Story of the World’s First Female-to-Male Transsexual (1989) is worthy of special note, not least because back in 1948 the British subject Michael Dillon was able to amend his birth certificate from female-to-male (Hodgkinson, 1989:63).

None of these biographical writings achieve the range and candour of Mark Rees’ Chapter 2. Rees is particularly well qualified as a contributor. He has been writing about transsexuality for over fifteen years in various contexts—initially under pseudonyms (‘John’, 1977; Mason, 1980, 1980b), and more recently under his own name (Rees, 1987, 1993a, 1993b). His autobiography is forthcoming (Rees, 1996). For Chapter 2 SSS we asked him to write about ‘becoming a man’. We suggested the various headings he has used, but those apart he was given a completely free hand to write what he chose. The result is a moving and courageous account.

Whereas Chapters 1 and 2 remain largely at the descriptive level, Chapter 3 SS turns to the theorising of the experience of gender blending. Ekins utilises the concept of the career path, a concept that is widely used in sociological writings as a means of imposing an analytic order on experiences, actions and identities over time (Abrams, 1982). Its value lies in its incorporation of the ideas of movement, of development, of becoming and of personal history. Furthermore, as Goffman (1968:119) points out, it ‘allows one to move back and forth between the personal and the public, between the self and significant society’, and is, therefore, peculiarly sociological.

Transsexuals were looked at by Driscoll (1971), in terms of career paths, and Buckner (1970) did likewise for transvestites. Levine, Shaiova and Mihailovic (1975) do not use the term ‘career’, but recount the transsexuals’ progression through a series of stages or ‘role transformations’ marked by a mixture of general life-cycle periods, changing self-conceptions and involvement in particular subcultures. Ekins’ use of the methodology of grounded theory (Ekins, 1993) leads him to reconceptualise the research arena of male cross-dressing and sex-changing in terms of the basic social process (Glaser, 1978) of ‘male femaling’.

Chapter 3 considers the major modes of male femaling within a phased ideal-typical career path of the ‘male femaler’ and indicates oscillations between the major facets of sex, sexuality and gender frequently confronted in each phase. This approach enables the proper respect to be paid to the processual and emergent nature of much cross-dressing and sex-changing phenomena. In particular, the approach facilitates an exploration of neglected interrelations between sex, sexuality and gender with reference to the differing modes of femaling; to the categorisations of ‘transvestite’ and ‘transsexual’; and to the constitution of ‘femaling’ self and world as variously sexed, sexualised and gendered.

1
IN FEMALE ATTIRE

Male experiences of cross-dressing— some historical fragments

Peter Farrer

INTRODUCTION

One evening at the tea table my sister read from a periodical called Modern Society about a young man dressed as a girl…Later I had the paper to myself, and, enjoying tremendous excitement, read a page or two of readers’ correspondence on “effeminate men”…By the time I was fourteen I had got hold of another periodical, Photo Bits, which devoted itself almost entirely to encouraging this trait and the pleasures of birching.

(Ellis, 1928:54)

These remarks were made by Havelock Ellis’s subject ‘D.S.’ and were recorded by Ellis in his study of what he called ‘eonism’. No one involved in the professional study of cross-dressing seems to have thought it worthwhile to follow up the references to Modern Society and Photo Bits. In fact, there is a whole series of English newspapers and periodicals from the middle of the last century to London Life in 1941 in which such correspondence appeared to a greater or lesser degree. It is the purpose of this chapter to introduce this neglected confessional material.

In the period under consideration it was the British habit to write to the newspapers about intimate matters of dress and domestic behaviour. Corporal punishment and tight-lacing were favourite subjects for discussion in letters to the editor. The background to, and the nature of, this material has been well documented (Kunzle, 1982; Steele, 1985). What has been overlooked, however, is the extent to which an element of cross-dressing crept into the correspondence. On the one hand, one of the methods of punishment which came to be discussed was dressing boys as girls. On the other hand, some male correspondents not only wore corsets but other items of female clothing, or full female attire.

THE ENGLISHWOMAN’S DOMESTIC MAGAZINE, 1867–73

In January 1867 Samuel Beeton, husband of the famous but recently deceased Mrs Beeton, and editor of The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, deliberately expanded the correspondence columns of the magazine to encompass a wide variety of subjects in some depth. In doing so Beeton introduced a new policy for handling the letters that came in. He gave his correspondents considerable latitude and allowed to appear in print frank expressions of sensual pleasure in such things as tight-lacing.

From November 1867, his new ‘Conversazione’, as he called it, included letters from men. Initially, these letters concerned men who told of the great pleasure they, too, derived from wearing corsets. Letters then began to appear that extolled the virtues of other female garments. By 1870 letters on ‘petticoat punishment’ were appearing. The first example I give describes the pleasures of wearing ladies’ boots. The second example is from the first account of a petticoat punishment. It was printed in the Supplement from April to December, 1870 which was devoted entirely to correspondence about corporal punishment. ‘Etonensis’ wrote opposing physical punishment. In its place he proposed ‘love’ and ‘shame’. He had experienced ‘love’ in the kindness shown to him by a master at Eton, and shame when his governess dressed him in his sister’s clothes for failure to learn his geography lesson.

Example 1
Robin Adair—The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine

Having myself a small and rather ladylike foot, I got Mr. Nicoll to make me, as an experiment, a pair of fashionable ladies’ boots, with heels 2 1/2 inches high. I was astonished to find how delightfully easy they were to walk in, and how much smaller and neater my feet appeared than in my own more clumsy foot-gear.

(September 1870:190)

Example 2
Etonensis—The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine

Stays were easy, but now came the fight again. The first petticoat I clutched hold of, and I think for ten minutes I held on, till at last that too was accomplished…They now easily accomplished the rest; shame overcame my courage, and I had no strength. My trousers were now entirely removed. I was made to stand up, under more slaps and thumpings and threatenings of birch, while my dressing was most leisurely completed with a stiff starched petticoat, a blue frock down nearly to my feet, stockings and sandal shoes…I know not if this punishment is more cruel than the birch; this I do know, that it put an end to it at home. The mere threat, the ‘shall I send for some petticoats for you?’ — always set me to work.

(Supplement, April 1870:2–3)

THE FAMILY DOCTOR AND PEOPLE’S MEDICAL ADVISER, 1885–94

The Family Doctor and People’s Medical Adviser, which began life on 3 March, 1885 was intended to give practical medical advice to families and it printed articles attacking the practice of tight-lacing. It also opened up its correspondence pages to opinions on a variety of subjects, including arguments for and against corsets. From 1886 men were writing letters describing their pleasure in wearing entire outfits of women’s clothes. The first example I give appeared in 1888 and is from a man who has adopted female attire permanently. His letter was a reply to one from ‘Misfit’ (9 June 1888:234), a female who wore male clothes and offered to send an ‘entire outfit’ of female clothes to any man who would show himself in the full dress of a woman in Regent Street at a pre-arranged time. The second example is from a married man who wishes to tell people about himself and encourage others to write to The Family Doctor.

Example 1
Josephine (formerly Joseph) —The Family Doctor

I have always suffered from a weak throat, and during a great part of the year am obliged to keep my neck and chest well wrapped up. Returning home rather late once, a lady friend lent me her fur boa. I found so much comfort in its use that I decided to get one. I did this, and wore it, with the result that I became an object of ridicule. I then reasoned that if so much comfort was to be obtained from one article of female attire, how much might I expect from assuming such entirely? I tried it, and was more than satisfied, and decided for the future to discard male dress.

I confessed my feeling in the matter to a friend of mine, an elderly lady, who approved of my plan. For the last four years I have been living with her as her niece, a quietly-dressed and modestly-conducted young lady.

Example 2
A would-be Petticoat—The Family Doctor

Some time back, when so much talk was made as to whether woman’s dress was healthful and convenient, I determined to practically test the fact for myself. I accordingly encased myself in lady’s full costume for one month, at the end of which time, whenever an opportunity presents itself in the privacy of my own home, I don female attire. In order to gratify my wish I have a complete lady’s wardrobe of my own, of which I am very particular, especially of my underclothing, which I cannot have too nice; although when fully dressed it is not seen, still the consciousness that it is there is a source of great pleasure to the wearer, a statement many ladies, I know,...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PLATES
• THE CONTRIBUTORS
• FOREWORD
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• BLENDING GENDERS
• PART I: EXPERIENCING GENDER BLENDING
• PART II: THE SOCIAL ORGANISATION OF GENDER BLENDING
• PART III: THE MEDICALISATION OF GENDER BLENDING
• PART IV: GENDER BLENDING AND THE MEDIA
• PART V: GENDER BLENDING AND GENDER POLITICS
• APPENDIX 1 A CHRONOLOGICAL LISTING OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SHORT STORIES AND NOVELS FEATURING CROSS-DRESSING AND SEX-CHANGING
• APPENDIX II A GUIDE TO RESOURCES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY