So Andrea got me thinking about what I feel like when I feel attractive.
And the answer is Sting. Or Adam Ant. Some days, Buster Keaton. On groovier days, Terence Trent D’Arby (anyone remember him?).
I’m not copying a look. God knows I can’t walk around looking like Adam Ant; I haven’t got the cash or the innate sense of style he’s got. It’s more this sense of walking and having this sense that I feel like what he feels like when he’s out walking. Or what I imagine him to feel like feeling like.
Except the funny thing about it is that until hanging out with trannies, I never thought of any of it as gendered. I always admired a kind of cocksure attitude, and I’ve always liked suits, and white cuffs, and cufflinks. When Betty and I watch Raiders of the Lost Ark – which we do sometimes – and that scene comes on toward the end when Indy and Marion on are the steps of the Federal Building, and he’s natty in that 40s suit (and fedora) and she’s wearing that great women’s suit, we both know what the other is thinking. I wanna look like Indy, and Betty wants to look like Marion.
But I don’t want to be a man, don’t feel like a man, know that I won’t look like Indy. It’s more a sense of admiration I have for the person, in a role model kind of way, a sense of self that I’ve internalized, and that yes – is symbolically indicated by a suit. And a suit worn with attitude. Ditto for leather pants.
When I was a kid, my brother had these really cool red Levi’s. And I wanted a pair just like them. Eventually I got a pair, but by then I had hit puberty, and I had hips. And when I put them on, I felt really disappointed that I didn’t look like him in them.
I know, I know: everyone’s thinking she’s trans again. It’s hard to explain why I’m not, when I have all this evidence of both gender non-conformity (in general) and what you could call “cross dressing” piling up. But not looking like my brother didn’t make me think I should wrap my hips in ace bandages. It was more that I wanted the jeans to look the same way they did on him – not for me to look like him. If it makes any sense, it was more that my hips were ruining the lines of the jeans; my hips weren’t ruining my sense of self.
I don’t know or care what people actually SEE. It’s this internal rhythm, or internal rightness. I don’t feel disappointed when I look in a mirror & notice I’m *not* wearing spats or that I’m way hippier in suits than any man would ever be. In a sense, it has nothing to do with the way I look, but entirely to do with how I feel.
It doesn’t bother me that people don’t necessarily see what I’m feeling. Some days I think they must see something – a gleam in my eye, perhaps.
Basically, I know I’m not trans because it never occurred to me to want to be a man, and I certainly never thought I was one. I just thought I liked a certain kind of clothes that most girls didn’t like. But you know, most guys don’t like the kind of clothes I like, either. And I never felt like a man walking around in them, and still don’t. When I feel like Adam Ant, or Sting, or Buster Keaton, it’s because I feel a certain way, a certain kind of confidence, or cockiness, or jauntiness, or something like that. Something bookish, and antique, and wearing a good suit.
I just don’t think of myself as a gendered thing. There is nothing odd to me about liking men’s suits. Granted, I’ve got kind of foppy taste in men anyway. (If I were to add anyone else to my list, it’d be Oscar Wilde, but that comes with so much of a sense that I need be clever as well as well-dressed that it’s not a mood I strike very often.)
I was thinking that I don’t experience myself as a gender. Certainly not as male or female. If I were pressed, I might say “Masculine Woman.” (Recently I’ve been using “Phallic Female” because I think the “phallic” bit connotes far more of what I’m after.) But “masculine woman” conjures up: big, blue collar, maybe mean, undereducated, Bertha-type Diesel dyke. German athletes and jokes about women with mustaches, too. No matter what Katherine Hepburn did, or even Marlene Dietrich, we don’t hear “masculine woman” and think “natty dresser.”
Some days I think “feminine man” has better connotations, since it does point at some remarkable femme-y gay men, like the aforementioned Mr. Wilde, or Quentin Crisp.
And then, in an interview in Curve magazine (the same one I’m in) with the new actress of “The L Word, ” Daniela Sea, I find this exchange:
DS: I definitely identify as a tomboy … that’s the first thing that anybody teased me for when I was like 6.
DAM: Some people will interpret that as a lesbian experience and some interpret that as a typical trans experience.
And I think: I must not be alone. I can’t be the only woman who isn’t a lesbian and who isn’t trans who just happens to like men’s suits and feel like Sting when I’m walking down the street on a brisk Fall day.
If it makes you feel better, Anne Hollander’s “Sex and Suits” is in large part a lengthy paean to the men’s suit. She counterintuitively she argues men’s fashions have actually been the innovators (largely because they dealt with underlying structure rather than surface decoration) and that women’s fashion has been stealing from men’s fashion for centuries (more for asethetic reasons than for physical comfort or appropriating symbols of power in the world). So there’s apparently a lot of other women who like suits too.
The irony, as you’ve noted, it than crossdressers (including myself) have looked longingly at women’s fashions for the apparent style that we feel men’s clothing lack. I wonder if it were as acceptable for men to appropriate women’s fashions as it is for women to appropriate men’s, whether some crossdressers wouldn’t feel the need to cross gender lines. For myself, if I were a bit bravier and society were a bit more accepting, I’d be tempted to do the Eddie Izzard “pretty masculine” look at least part of the time instead of crossdressing.
Hi Helen,
That was a very intense blog entry
I know I can’t describe you when it comes to gender. I can understand why you have yet to put your finger on where you are in the gender spectrum. I don’t think you need to because we’re all unique.
The weird part for me is I don’t see you as trans. The female CD’r thing kind of made me go, “Hmmmm?” That fits because when I met you I feel I was a female. However, you dress had masculine undertones. Your caring for Betty was most definitely feminine. You reminded me of my wife. The time that stood out to me the most was when Betty went to visit the restroom and you didn’t know where she was and it was time for your class to start.
You were so like, “Where is she?” It was cute and you could see you needed her. Another thing I remember was when your body language completely changed when she came into the first seminar. Again that reminded me of a female. Why? Because I have women friends who do the same thing. I have men friends who look up in the stands and see their wives and they change too, but it’s different. They stick their chests out more. They don’t look like they just got into a hot bath.
When you’d talk you were soft spoken in the public area, but in the classes you had masculine qualities in your delivery.
It’s all very cool and it’s one of the reasons I told you I can’t wait to read your next book. In your first book I read it as 100% female… your writing I mean. That could be just me because I thought of my wife’s feelings so much when I read that. Since I’ve been a member of the forum though, I don’t see you that way anymore (exclusively representing a gender).
I do know that you and Betty are a great couple and I wonder if you two being around each other helps to bring out the opposite gender in the other person more because you are so comfy around each other. For me the picture on the homepage sums up the way you two are. I’ve tried to type out what that picture means, but all attempts haven’t succeeded at conveying what I mean. Dom, femme, masculine, female had to be used and none of those words used in a sentence reflect what that picture says about your relationship. If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit. (sorry. .couldn’t help that)
I guess that’s why pictures don’t have words, eh?
Thanks for opening up and inserting this blog entry it truly was intense to me.
Gracie
When we talked at DO in the trans session, I identified as agender. This is exactly what I think about when I think about the word “agender” and I classify it as a trans expression. When I use the word “trans”, when I self-identify in certain circles as “trans”, the trans in transgender expands to “transcends”. When I look in the mirror, I don’t think of myself as “man”. When I wish I could look as good as Marion in that suit, I don’t think of myself as “women” or anything in between. I am just me. To the outside, gendered, world, it looks like my gender is fluid, dynamic, transient. To me, this is all just personality, mood. I use the word “trans” to indicate that I’m something different, something apart from the “traditional” concepts of gender and gender expression. Do I want to be a woman? No. Do I want to be a man? No. Do I want to be free from binary gender comparions? You betcha.
Anyway, those are my thoughts at 8:30am
everyone’s thinking she’s trans again
Nope! There are all sorts of people who will sample boldly from the vast range of expression available to humankind. It would be a sad, dull world if you had to take an Officially Trans label in order to do that.
My wife is like you in some ways. In some ways, she’s a cocksure Top Gun flyboy, and she’s proud of that. Our Godson keeps saying she’s “like a boy”, but really, she’s just too big a personality to be like any one single thing.
She doesn’t like everything about my CDing, but she definitely likes the ways it flouts gender and gives us one more way to be defiantly different.
I have met you twice Helen. I had no sense of you as being Trans. Yes, you had some subtle masculine characteristics but that in an of itself is not “transness”. Your forwardness, jauntiness (but not cockiness), confidence and even “take charge” attitude may give that impression, but your femininity and womanliness was always intact and in the forefront as is pointed out above. If you were really trans, Betty might not have been attracted to you. She as a feminine man obviously liked your more open gender style, but as a masculine man also needed your basic femininity.
Ellen Degeneres is much more masculine in her style. She reminds me more of a gay-guy than a gay-woman. Her body language and dress style are very “gay boy”. She exhibits “transness” in my opinion. You don’t. I sometimes feel that she is a closeted trans-man and is in the closet about it because she doesn’t feel the world is ready for a trans-man as they just got to the point of accepting her as a gay woman.
That said- I am sure you know well that transness is a spiritual quality that most trans people experience within themselves early in their lives. You either have it or you don’t. If you truly had such a feeling in you- you would surely know it. I understand when you say you are similar to Katherine Hepburn and Marlene Deitrich. Their underlying womanliness was never in question no matter what they wore. I often wonder whether George Sand was like them (wanting to break out of the gender clothing box as you seemingly do) or more like Ellen Degeneres.
Best wishes and Hugs to you both and good luck with the new book
Hugs
Mandee Fine, Ph.D