“Men” In Dresses
By: Kira Wertz
Tags: Love, LGBTQ, Self Improvement, Life, Transgender

Very shortly after I came out to my wife I sought out my first support meeting. I didn’t know what to expect, but I know I had a million questions and no one with whom to ask them to. Suffice it to say, whatever societal conventions I may have held regarding personal presentation needed to be shut down real quick. I found myself in a room with some women that obviously had some immutable male traits. This juxtaposition which is often hated, and viewed with disgust, quickly became something to me that most people would never believe; beautiful.

My first time wearing a dress outside of the house.

To be completely fair, I do understand why people have so much difficulty accepting the proximity of male and female culture norms. Such things typically are viewed as expressly binary, but are they really?

Women can actively wear men's clothing and pursue an androgynous form of dress without any objective culture clash. They don’t even have to identify with a different gender or sexual orientation in order for this to be completely acceptable. They can typically still use public female facilities without anyone telling them they don’t belong there. But heaven help you if you were assigned male, and dress as a female. Hell hath no fury like those who prefer their men as manly as possible.

But that’s the crux of the whole problem; Transwomen aren’t men! We got dealt a bad hand with a male body and a female brain, but all we’re judged on is our exterior. Oh how I wish I could point to a part of my brain, and say “see, there is it, I’m a girl, always have been.” But since we have no such luxury of proof we continue in perpetuity being judged externally. So there is this lament that while it’s true one need not surgically transition to reach a level of completion, there is a desire to reach a level where we simply won’t be harassed.

It’s just another one of these disgusting dichotomies; we aim to escape the constraints of a box that society says we needed to fit into, only to be pushed into a different box. A box that only exists so that we can avoid persistent and continued denigration for daring to escape from our assigned box.

If that sounds like a total mindfuck, it is. No one wants to be forced into any box. And while our aim is to become the person we’ve always knew we were, we don’t need society dictating what it’s going to take for us to find comfort with ourselves. Regardless, it happens, and it’s going to continue to happen. Accepting the fact that our bodies may never blend is a difficult mental hurdle, and it can take a greater toll than all the rejection(s) we face when we first come out.

Same dress, bigger event; The Nutcracker at the Civic Center Music Hall

I need to confess that I can really only speak from the perspective of one who is transitioning from male-to-female (MTF). Furthermore I must confess great jealousy for my brother’s whom began their lives assigned as female. From my perspective they run free from the “men in dresses” stigma even before testosterone blesses them with all the attributes I’ve grown to hate. As I said, they’ve had the luxury of what constituted cross-dressing without so much as being called a crossdresser or a drag-queen. So please don’t misunderstand me, I realize we face many similar challenges, but there are situations that are wildly different.

Throughout my transition I have encountered issues stemming from my appearance causing anything from innocuous stares, strange comments, to blatant restroom problems. I once had a woman in a department store ask me if I “did shows;” clearly she took me as a drag queen. And in my most recent run in with the potty police, I was told by a store employee “I saw your men’s boots and was going to tell you to use the men’s room.” Now call me crazy, but that’s about the dumbest reason to try and send someone to a different restroom, after all we’ve already established that women can wear men’s attire without issue. Of course by this point in the conversation, I had already done my business and was washing my hands - without speaking I stood erect enough that my breasts were prominent and faced this woman so she could see my makeup; this promptly led to an apology and her swift departure. I no longer have hesitation about goading these people into calling the police. If the situation gets that escalated, they’ll be disappointed when my ID comes out as they will promptly learn a lesson in humility. Though I suppose if they’re somehow literate enough to stumble onto this publication there might be added resistance; I’ll take my chances, I’m not ashamed of who I am.

Instances where MTF persons are met with hostility in society (and yes in the restroom) are no doubt derived from an ill conceived notion that those who appear in a manner of crossdress are sexually deviate and thusly will sexually assault anyone they can. The idea that crossdressing is sexually deviate is strange because, once again, it only appears to apply to those who were born male. And so, the completely insensitive, but FOX-viewer palatable verbiage for Transwomen has become “men in dresses.” As I’m sure you can tell, I just love that. As if I didn’t already know I was stepping into a world where I’d be demoralized, some jackass coined a phrase to further strip me and my sisters of another shred of mental peace we’d found within ourselves. This rando will henceforth be referred to as Captain Jackass!

That being said, we are not the butt of their joke. In fact, the joke is on them. Because the humanity they seek to strip from us is that which (by this action) they prove they are unworthy of receiving unto themselves. You know that whole do unto others thing? It’s such a leftist, social justice warrior, snowflake, liberal agenda designed to convince you to pay for socialist public schools while vaccinating your children against the upstanding values of poor billionaires just trying to scrimp enough to buy their third private island — kind of thing.

Sorry about that; I digressed. Moving on…

What I quickly learned the first time I ever attended a support meeting was that everything I’ve ever absorbed about this community prior to my entry was an interpretation created by people who never bothered to interact with someone who was Transgender. I want to say the stereotypes were born from blindness, but they aren’t. A look around the room and you see broad shoulders, beard stubble, Adam’s Apples, biceps, and you hear deep voices. If that’s all you allow yourself to receive, then yes, you will paint them as a parody. You might be so bold as to call them “men in dresses.” But you would absolutely be mistaken.

Some would see this person and feel total disgust. When I first put this on, I was brought to joyful tears. To me it’s overriding the disgust I’ve had for a reflection that lasted way too long.

I’d tell you to stick around, listen to their stories. When you hear them speak brutally honest about everyone and everything they’ve lost in the pursuit of finding some feeling of completion, maybe that might speak to your pangs of empathy. When you see these people, some of whom are meeting for the first and only time, having no reservations about baring every ounce of their soul to a room of strangers.. When you hear an older generation Trans person speak fully to the next generation; as if passing a torch and begging the next ready, willing, and able person to take it… When you bare witness to all this you will see beyond all that is superficial. You will see into these people’s souls. You will see beauty.

I admit, when I went in on that first day, I saw what society sees. Initially I saw everyone as who they were, but by the time I left that day everything was different, my eyes were open; I saw them as who they truly are. Their body parts didn’t define them, their hearts did.

The naysayers will count me as bias because I went in there knowing I belonged there. But this has nothing to do with belonging. It has to do with opening yourself up to another person’s humanity. The concept isn’t foreign, there isn’t a person on this planet who doesn’t want to be treated with equal respect.

When I go to meetings and encounter people at all stages of their transition, the only thing I really see is beauty. I wish our world wasn’t so cruel and superficial. Perhaps if more people could remove themselves from rigid ideas like the “man in a dress,” we could stop wasting our lives trying to pursue an existence that’s designed to make someone else happy. And that’s not a notion that’s Trans specific. I dare everyone to reject constructs that are imposed upon you. If it makes you miserable, break ties with it and start anew.

Ultimately it’s not “men in dresses” that people find so scary. It’s this idea that people who were expected to conform to masculinity have found happiness by embracing their femininity. I dare society to get to know these women, they are so much more beautiful than the deception your eyes are feeding you. In this we must remember; we do not love a person with our eyes any more than we can love them for their eyes. We love them with our heart because of the love they carry in theirs.

“Your eyes can deceive you, don’t trust them” ~ Obi-Wan Kenobi