A Man in a dress- how would you feel?

Men wear dresses all the time

No, they really don't.

High heels also don't usually work with men's legs and usually much bigger feet.

And yet high heels originated as male attire, specifically for riding in stirrups.

I don’t feel high heels look good on anyone

but yes, lace , heels, figure hugging clothing has all been male attire at one time or another

Sealion derails thread, then points fingers at those who participated in said derailed thread. Same old, same old.

I wasn't presenting an argument. I was expressing my opinion, in response to OP's question, "how do you feel?" about men wearing women's clothes.

I didn't say what I thought about women wearing women's clothes.

Yet somehow you interpreted my post as an attempt to body-shame women.

He’s hardly likely to have told you that putting on women’s clothing and stilettos gives him a massive erection, is he?
Think about it - you might like wearing a thong and vest top around the house when you’re in the privacy of your own home. Wearing that same garb down Tesco takes a whole other level of chutzpah. You know people will stare, people will comment, people will feel uncomfortable seeing you dressed like that, but the thrill of wearing that outfit in public and ignoring social norms overrides the feeling of embarrassment most people would feel if they found themselves wearing the same out for in public. That’s what’s happening when men go out dressed in women’s clothes. It gives them a thrill because they’re involving other people in their fetish.

If my DH put a dress on he'd look bloody hillarious.

If he wanted to go out in it i'd assume he was having a mental breakdown.

If a guy i didn't know well was down the pub in a dress ..... i'd think it was for a dare. I live in a village and pubs are full of farmers.

If i was still living in London i'd be less surprised.

Yes, like today's cowboy boots. But not what I'd call high heeled.

I think this sums it up!

So if men wear female coded clothing but remain men, then surely TW *who are men) wearing female coded clothing also remain men….

There is a lot to unpack here.

1. Men don't wear dresses 'all the time, especially LGB guys' (no L, because lesbians aren't guys). By 'all the time' I suppose you must mean, sometimes at nightclubs.

2. Most of us in the UK don't regard Scotsmen in kilts, Saudis in white robes or David Beckham in a sarong as being 'female'. Western men also routinely wear loose bathrobes, with no loss of 'maleness'.

3. Arguably, the most homophobic and misogynistic people are men. So it's bizarre to claim that men wear dresses and skirts to challenge 'homophobic, misogynistic myths about clothing'.

4. Totally agree that men who claim to identify as women can and do wear what they want, including silicone prosthetic breast plates to look like a pornified drag queen or 'doll'. It's insulting to women in the same way as black-face is insulting to black people.

I think the reason men usually look ridiculous in dresses particularly is they are completely unsuited to the male body, much like we have male and female tops, jeans etc. Doesn't matter if they are trying to look like women (never successfully of course) or just making a male style choice. Skirts are probably more forgiving and I have seen some men pull off the look eg. a modest knee length skirt loose enough to not show male contours.

As long as men are dressed modestly and still in male facilities it doesn't really matter what they wear though if it was a man in my own family I would worry what others think of them.

Slippery slope. He’ll be borrowing your brightest make up and telling you that pegging is routinely practiced in households up and down the country next.

I think designers are missing out on a whole new market. They could design tops, dresses and skirts for male bodies. If a man wants to wear a dress, and it’s appropriate for the occasion , not a lycra minidress for work etc, he should have at it.

A man wearing a dress who knows he's a man and doesn't 'identify' as something else? Cool beans.

I'm a child of the 1980s and the most beautiful men all had something a bit stereotypically 'feminine' going on. Into the 90s men like Nicky Wire looked fabulous in a dress. I met DH in the early 90s and he often wore dresses on nights out. We were goths and it was pretty common for men to do so.

TIMs reckon they're busting gender stereotypes by wearing women's clothes when in fact they're reinforcing them - spinny skirt and lippie is what maketh the woman apparently. Men chucking on a dress and not claiming to be anything other than men is far more of a challenge to sartorial gender norms imo. Like Annie Lennox's androgyny in the 80s was for women.

People should wear whatever they want. You don't need a penis to be able to operate a trouser suit and you don't need a vagina to rock a dress. As long as you know that wearing either doesn't magically transform you into the opposite sex, it's all good.

You lost me at lesbian guys.

Just had a very pleasant ten minutes looking at photos of Nicky Wire thanks to this thread. There are worse ways to spend a Sunday morning.

It's not bizarre at all, it's just that you ignore the nuance. And as part of that, you are deliberately (?) mis-understanding the historical power imbalance between men and women even today, and the dark-side of the "sexual revolution", where womens empowerment to make sexual choices has been bastardised and sold back to us in a form that continues to sexualise us and objectify us while telling us we are the winners here, at the population level, without actually emancipating us to be truly free from the male gaze, and entrenched male power and norms. Hence porn that "empowers" women while it actually degrades us, and "sex work is work", which is actually majority desperate women with no other real options for survival, or even "just" believing that your real value lies in appearing attractive to men, and thus dedicating hours and days and weeks and years to attaining beauty standards that you have been conditioned to believe are your own. This is not where feminism wanted to lead us. But here we are.
Selling us empowerment through cheerleading for all of this is male domination with a potential dose of capitalism and is what the radical feminists fought against.

Oh right, racist (blackface upheld an organised system of rape, enslavement, torture and murder - trans women wearing lippy isn't the same thing) as well as enjoying making misogynistic, transphobic comments about appearance. Yeah, exactly the kind of comment I'll reply to in detail.

Ugh.

On another thread, @TransParentlyAnnoyed, you voice your vehement support for a known racist. Yet when it suits you, racism is abhorrent.

As a Black woman I find this absolutely appalling. Please stop invoking people of colour and our struggles to suit your agenda when you are happy to condone and support racist people. And racist misogynists at that.

“These days, after years of misogyny from the trans industry, I would feel very different. I would suspect all cross-dressing men of being potential voyeurs or exhibitionists who would trespass in women’s spaces.”

Exactly this.
I would (now) see it as the thin end of the wedge, leading to unwilling involvement in someone's paraphilia.

I'm sorry, are you suggesting Patriarchy wasn't - in fact in some places still is - an organised system of rape, enslavement, torture and murder?

Have you seen the trafficked women in German mega-brothels? The socially embedded levels of MVAWG in every country in the world including ours? The domestic labour expected and exploited from women?

And before you get all eye-rolly, what this has to do with "trans women wearing lippy" is that "trans women wearing lippy" is part of the same structural system that defines female people purely from the male perspective and in so doing reduces female people and female lives into resources to meet the needs of male people.

I dont care as long as he uses the Male loos and doesnt think he has magically turned into a woman just because he is in a frock. Give no fucks. Not terribly uncommon in the 90s or indeed the 70s. Bowie looked fabulous!