Cross-dressing means wearing clothes traditionally or stereotypically associated with a different gender, such as men wearing women's clothes, or women wearing men's clothes. It is a form of dress or presentation rather than any particular gender identity, sexual orientation, or motivation, and has appeared in many societies across history for reasons including disguise, comfort, self-expression, ritual, and performance. Cross-dressing is not the same as being transgender, though older writings often used broader and less precise terminology that grouped different experiences together.
The term and its related vocabulary have changed over time. In modern usage, cross-dressing is generally preferred to older terms such as transvestism or transvestite, which were historically used in medical and psychiatric contexts and are often regarded as outdated or offensive. It has also been regulated or criminalised in various places, with laws against cross-dressing historically used to enforce gender norms and to target transgender and gender-nonconforming people.
Cross-dressing has played a notable role in theatre, religion, entertainment, and popular culture, including traditions such as kabuki, drag, and British pantomime.
Socialization establishes social norms among the people of a particular society. With regard to the social aspects of clothing, such standards may reflect guidelines relating to the style, color, or type of clothing that individuals are expected to wear. Such expectations may be delineated according to gender roles. Cross-dressing involves dressing contrary to the prevailing standards (or in some cases, laws) for a person of their gender in their own society.
For thousands of years, people have cross-dressed in order to disguise themselves or be recognised as another gender, for reasons varying from comfort, entertainment, or self-expression. Cross-dressing has appeared in theater performance traditions globally, including kabuki and drag, as well as British pantomime, where it is traditionally utilized for comedic effect.
Terminology
The term "cross-dressing" refers to an action or a behavior, without attributing or implying any specific causes or motives for that behavior. Cross-dressing is not synonymous with being transgender, though the word was once used by and applied to people known to be transgender—and even by sexologists like Magnus Hirschfeld and Havelock Ellis. The shift and clear distinction would occur later as the science evolved, and also as the word transsexual was coined and then made distinct from transvestite in the 1920s; previously, cross-dressers and transgender people were collectively called transvestites in Hirschfeld's studies. LGBTQ activist Jennie June, who made clear her desire to live full-time as a woman—as well as her longing to be a housewife and dreams of becoming a mother—also used this term in the 1922 book The Female Impersonators to describe certain androgynes, a term referring to gay and bisexual men, along with what are known today as trans women.
The phenomenon of cross-dressing is seen throughout recorded history, being referred to as far back as the earliest known civilization. The terms used to describe it have changed throughout history; today, the term "cross-dresser" is viewed more favorably than the term "transvestite" in some circles, where it has come to be seen as medicalising, outdated, or derogatory. Its first use was in Magnus Hirschfeld's (The Transvestites) in 1910, originally associating cross-dressing with non-heterosexual behavior or derivations of sexual intent. Its connotations largely changed in the 20th century as its use was more frequently associated with sexual excitement, otherwise known as transvestic disorder. This term was historically used to diagnose psychiatric disorders (e.g. transvestic fetishism), but the former (cross-dressing) was coined by the transgender community. The Oxford English Dictionary gives 1911 as the earliest citation of the term "cross-dressing", by Edward Carpenter: "Cross-dressing must be taken as a general indication of, and a cognate phenomenon to, homosexuality". The earliest citations for "cross-dress" and "cross-dresser" are 1966 and 1976, respectively.
Today, the term transvestite is commonly considered outdated and derogatory, with the term cross-dresser used as a more appropriate replacement. The term transvestite was historically used to diagnose medical disorders, including mental health disorders, and transvestism was viewed as a disorder, while the term cross-dresser was coined by the trans community. In some cases, the term transvestite is seen as more appropriate for use by members of the trans community instead of by those outside the trans community, and some have reclaimed the word.
and The term en femme is a lexical borrowing of a French phrase. It is used in the transgender and cross-dressing community to describe the act of wearing feminine clothing or expressing a stereotypically feminine personality. The term is a loanword from the French phrase meaning "as a woman", Most cross-dressers also use a feminine name whilst ; that is their "femme name". In the cross-dressing community the persona a man adopts when he dresses as a woman is known as his "femme self".
() is a similar borrowing from French, used to describe the act of wearing masculine clothing or expressing a stereotypically masculine personality. The term is borrowed from the French phrase meaning "as a man". Most cross-dressers also use a masculine name whilst .
History
Non-Western history
Cross-dressing has been practiced throughout much of recorded history, in many societies, and for many reasons. Examples exist in Greek, Norse, and Hindu mythology. Cross-dressing can be found in theater and religion, such as kabuki, Noh, and Korean shamanism, as well as in folklore, literature, and music. For instance, in examining kabuki culture during Japan's Edo period, cross-dressing was not only used for theater purposes, but also because current societal trends: cross-dressing and the switching of genders was a familiar concept to the Japanese at the time which allowed them to interchange characters' genders easily and incorporate geisha fashion into men's wear. This was especially common in the story-telling of ancient stories such as the character Benten from Benten Kozō. He was a thief in the play cross-dressing as a woman. Cross-dressing was also exhibited in Japanese Noh for similar reasons. Societal standards at the time broke boundaries between gender. For example, ancient Japanese portraits of aristocrats have no clear differentiation in characteristics between male and female beauty. Thus, in Noh performance, the cross-dressing of actors was common; especially given the ease of disguising biological sex with the use of masks and heavy robes. In a non-entertainment context, cross-dressing is also exhibited in Korean shamanism for religious purposes. Specifically, this is displayed in chaesu-gut, a shamanistic rite gut in which a shaman offers a sacrifice to the spirits to intermediate in the fortunes of the intended humans for the gut. Here, cross-dressing serves many purposes. Firstly, the shaman (typically a woman) would cross-dress as both male and female spirits can occupy her. This allows her to represent the opposite sex and become a cross-sex icon in 75% of the time of the ritual. This also allows her to become a sexually liminal being. It is clear that in entertainment, literature, art, and religion, different civilizations have utilized cross-dressing for many different purposes.
Western history
In Ashkenaz Moses Isserles (1520–1572) writes, "There is a custom to wear masks on Purim, for men to wear women's clothing, and for women to wear men's clothing." clearly he saw masks and cross-dressing as common enough to be mentioned as standard custom.
In the British and European context, theatrical troupes ("playing companies") were all-male, with the female parts undertaken by boy players.
The Rebecca Riots took place between 1839 and 1843 in West and Mid Wales. They were a series of protests undertaken by local farmers and agricultural workers in response to unfair taxation. The rioters, often men dressed as women, took their actions against toll-gates, as they were tangible representations of high taxes and tolls. The riots ceased prior to 1844 due to several factors, including increased troop levels, a desire by the protestors to avoid violence and the appearance of criminal groups using the guise of the biblical character Rebecca for their own purposes. In 1844 an Act of Parliament to consolidate and amend the laws relating to turnpike trusts in Wales was passed.
A variety of historical figures are known to have cross-dressed to varying degrees. Many women found they had to disguise themselves as men in order to participate in the wider world. For example, it is postulated that Margaret King cross-dressed in the early 19th century to attend medical school, as universities at that time accepted only male students. A century later, Vita Sackville-West dressed as a young soldier in order to "walk out" with her girlfriend Violet Keppel, to avoid the street harassment that two women would have faced. The prohibition on women wearing male garb, once strictly applied, still has echoes today in some Western societies which require girls and women to wear skirts, for example as part of school uniform or office dress codes. Cross-dressing practices existed within both an evolving social and cultural environment up until cross-dressing laws became a prevalent part of controlling gender normativity and expression.Sears, Clare. "Instant and Peculiar". In Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco. pg. 23-40. Duke University Press, 2015. .
Transvestism
The terms transvestism and transvestite were coined by Magnus Hirschfeld in 1910. In the early 20th century, transvestite referred to cross-dressers, and also a variety of people who would now be considered transgender.
Though the term was coined as late as the 1910s by Hirschfeld, the phenomenon is very old. It was referred to as far back as the ancient civilization of Sumer. It was part of the first homosexual movement of Weimar Germany in the beginning, a first transvestite movement of its own started to form since the mid-1920s, resulting in founding first organizations and the first transvestite magazine, . The rise of Nazism stopped this movement from 1933 onwards.Rainer Herrn: Die Zeitschrift Das 3. Geschlecht in: Rainer Herrn (ed.): Das 3. Geschlecht – Reprint der 1930 – 1932 erschienenen Zeitschrift für Transvestiten, 2016, , p. 231 ff.
Etymology of transvestite
The use of the term meaning cross-dresser was already common in French in the early 19th century,, Volume II, p. 896 from where it was imported into Portuguese, with the same meaning.Porto Editora – travesti no Dicionário Infopédia da Língua Portuguesa [em linha]. Porto: Porto Editora. Accessed on 2024-05-02 20:58:24.
Magnus Hirschfeld coined the word transvestite (from Latin trans-, "across, over" and vestitus, "dressed") in his 1910 book Die Transvestiten (Transvestites) to refer to the sexual interest in cross-dressing.Hirschfeld, Magnus: Die Transvestiten. Berlin 1910: Alfred PulvermacherHirschfeld, Magnus. (1910/1991). Transvestites: The erotic drive to cross dress. (M. A. Lombardi-Nash, Trans.) Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books. He used it to describe persons who habitually and voluntarily wore clothes of the opposite sex. Hirschfeld's group of transvestites consisted of both males and females, with heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, and asexual orientations.Hirschfeld, Magnus. Geschlechtsverirrungen, 10th Ed. 1992, page 142 ff.