Inviting a Crossdresser on your Hen Night

[rachelmonday1]

I'm actually a guy that enjoys crossdressing and am very fortunate to have a number of female friends, one of whom is getting married and has invited me to join her friends on her Hen Night. I don't look too bad when I'm dressed as Rachel and often go out with the girls with no problems.

I'm happily married and my wife understands the "Rachel" side of me, but thinks it's odd that a girl would invite a crossdresser on her Hen Night.

Any views out there?

Sexist men who post here often do I think. Often they want to know from other women what is wrong with their woman and how they fix it. You seem to want us to tell you whether rachel is really acceptable to women or just tolerated.

I don't know that I WOULDN'T be accepted

But earlier you said you wouldn't be welcome as yourself. That would indicate that you don't think you would be accepted.

I think you would do better to repost in AIBU.

'AIBU to go out with my female friends, dressed as a woman, with my wife's full agreement?'

That seems to be what you are looking for. I don't think you will get many saying YABU.

As Offred said, this is very similar to another crossdressing poster who asked for women's views. FWIW OP, women have varied and differing views, being as they are, you know, individuals.

I've never thought about this previously , now I am it's making me increasingly uncomfortable .

Fast loris that was a good post btw, meant to say earlier.

I used to share a house with a cross-dressing man. He had very odd ideas about what it was to be a woman, and the longer I lived with him the more uncomfortable I became.

In the end the only way I could deal with it was by accepting that he wasn't pretending to be a woman, he was pretending to be a certain type of person - an old-fashioned, man's version of what a woman was.

Anyway, away from the ideological issues with cross-dressing, from your photos I suggest you go with the brunette look, as you look less like a man than in your blonde picture. However I suggest you wear trousers and a nice top if you want to fit in with the others.

Men and women ARE different. There is no getting away from that. We are not one big androgynous gender and I am very glad about that!
One gender is not better than the other, they are just different.

I like being a woman, I like being feminine when I feel like it, other times I wear men's clothes.

Blacking up is not a reasonable comparison because the aim of blacking up is to take the piss, not get closer to or become a part of. Belonging is a basic human need, and we meet that need by finding similarities and things in common. That is what Rachel is doing and I do not understand how she does womankind a disservice by being a man most of the time and a woman at other times.

I am different with different friends. I share a different parts of my personality with different groups of friends, I don't get called different names, but so what if I did? I just don't see the problem.

Men and women ARE different.

PEOPLE are different. I'm more like some men than I am like some women. There are some men I am very different from. There are some women I am very different from. There are some men I'm similar to in a lot of ways. There are some women I'm similar to in a lot of ways. I'm not exactly the same as anyone else.

I do not understand how she does womankind a disservice by being a man most of the time and a woman at other times.

Rachel is not ever being a woman but she is aping what she views as female. You wouldn't get it because you also adhere to sexist stereotyping as evidenced here;

Men and women ARE different. There is no getting away from that.

And here;

I like being a woman, I like being feminine when I feel like it, other times I wear men's clothes.

I generally identify more with things which are considered to be typically male. I have interests and skills and a manner which are considered to be more typically male. I'm still female though and I don't feel the need to deal with this by looking at it as though it is some kind of conflict.

By contrast I'd say Richard is also most likely aping typically make behaviour as much as rachel is aping female behaviour. Cross dressers can't deal with being whatever sex they are whilst still having a mix of gendered traits because they are fundamentally sexist. They have to be either a man or a woman, can't be a person because that would be the ultimate demonstration that this stuff is just constructed bullshit.

most - no, blacking up wasn't understood to be purely about 'taking the piss'. If you look at how white people at the time saw it, they thought it was a perfectly acceptable way of performing a 'character' - just a way of having some fun.

It's only now we see it as a cruel form of parody.

Because we realize it's not just innocent entertainment.

Sorry to use a simplistic example, but you look at Laura Ingalls describing her dad dressing up as a 'darkie' to entertain the town. She doesn't have any idea it's 'taking the piss' out of actual black people.

ebear covered what I think is true about men and women being 'different'.

Is what I think/believe.

Also agree with EBear's response to 'men and women are different'. Non biological differences between us are socially constructed, not innate, and there is ever increasing amounts of research to support this.

This is a really interesting thread, I have particularly enjoyed Offred and LRD's thoughts. So glad the 'get a life' brigade seem to have gone to bed!

Also agree with EBear's response to 'men and women are different'. Non biological differences between us are socially constructed, not innate, and there is ever increasing amounts of research to support this.

This is a really interesting thread, I have particularly enjoyed Offred and LRD's thoughts. So glad the 'get a life' brigade seem to have gone to bed!

Op what's the general reaction from men ? Do you often dress up when socializing with other men ?

Also agree with EBear's response to 'men and women are different'. Non biological differences between us are socially constructed, not innate, and there is ever increasing amounts of research to support this.

This is a really interesting thread, I have particularly enjoyed Offred and LRD's thoughts. So glad the 'get a life' brigade seem to have gone to bed!

I fail to see a problem.

It's just another case of feminists projecting history on the personal choices of individuals today.

I'm well used to adapting my dress and behaviour to different situations. These adaptions all express different aspects of my personality, even if the very feminine, careful, dressy, professional perfectly mannered side of me is a very small aspect, whilst the casual, more brusque side of me is overridden by a need to be something I would not normally chose to be for the vast majority of the time.

My choices and adaptations are MY choice. I get very saddened by people who project history on to why I should not be happy with the choices I make because they suit me.

How is it history, joy?

I mean, it has to do with 2014. That is the present day, isn't it?

Not everyone has freedom of choice today. Of course, it is sad when people who do have freedom of choice judge others and circumscribe their choices, and I don't think anyone disagrees with that. But we're not talking about that situation here.

Interesting thread. I don't necessarily agree that differences between men and women are purely biological, would we apply this same logic to the animal kingdom where males and females are recognised as having distinct patterns of behaviour in most cases? where they tend to perform vital but different roles?
Of course I recognize that we are all individuals but I feel that dismissing the differences between men and women does both genders a disservice.
Is there something wrong with identifying feminine and masculine traits?

Also agree with EBear's response to 'men and women are different'. Non biological differences between us are socially constructed, not innate, and there is ever increasing amounts of research to support this.

This is a really interesting thread, I have particularly enjoyed Offred and LRD's thoughts. So glad the 'get a life' brigade seem to have gone to bed!

Sorry, crazy phone!

I think we would all recognise that people do adapt their appearance in order to manipulate their environment but what's the argument for doing that without thinking?

Tbh I think there are a lot of problems with people's expectations of appearance which lead to various types of discrimination but we're not discussing other types of appearance modification (although I certainly could spend a long time talking about things like beards, ties and uniforms) we're discussing crossdressing on a crossdressing thread.

You don't have to join in if you don't like but you equally can't tell us we can't discuss it.

The op wanted women's views on it after all... It seems views about whether rachel is being accepted or tolerated after the wife threw his previous belief about that into doubt by intimating he might still be seen as a man by some women.

Mmm.

What do you mean about the animal kingdom? Male penguins incubate eggs, male seahorses get pregnant. Dogs of both genders mount each other. And none of them (so far as we know) have the consciousness it takes to make active decisions about identity and behaviour.

So, given animals don't give us a clear picture of 'males do this and females do that,' surely it is ok for us to accept who we are?

If there were demonstrable masculine and feminine traits, I would have no issue with them existing ... but what I do have an issue with is testing the current population, which is in a skewed situation, and claiming the resulting trains must be innate and cannot be conditioned.

For example, some (very poor) scientists decided to 'test' for the feminine trait of preferring pink ... they believed this must be innate because, of course, at the dawn of time women needed to spot pink berries in their role as gatherers.

Another test found that female babies were 'instictively' nurturing and preferred 'feminine' toys ... though the researchers knew which babies were boys and which were girls while they performed the tests!

It is extremely hard to perform tests that would demonstrate innate gender differences. If we lived in a world where gender didn't matter, that might be ok, and no more than an interesting difficulty for scientists to ponder. Given that we live in a world where women suffer purely for being born female, it matters a lot and therefore, the fact the results can only ever be very uncertain is something that's important to recognize.

I don't see how it's possible to accept someone as something they are not. Whether he dresses as a woman and impersonates a woman , he's still a man. I would struggle to accept him as a woman because he's not one. And to be honest I would only tolerate it.

I wonder in general whether men are as accepting of it