We seem to be talking about two things which to my mind, are quite different: 1) men wearing women's clothes because they like them or to challenge gender norms. And 2) men wearing women's clothes because it gets them off.
Yes, I think you're right Floisme.
Anyway, here's Grayson Perry on transvestism. I think it's disingenuous to say that he doesn't dress as a woman. Why deny the fetish element, which he himself talks about so freely?
www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/04/grayson-perry-dress-tranny-art-who-are-you-tv
Perry rarely dresses up unless he’s going out, because it’s such an effort. Does he ever get bored with it? Now he tells me I don’t understand the nature of transvestism. “No, I’m not bored with transvestism. That would be silly – I’m a transvestite. The dress is only one element of the psycho-sexual process. Just because you don’t have a dress on doesn’t stop you being a tranny, in the same way as, if you’re not in bed with a man, it doesn’t stop you being gay.”
Does he still find it sexually exciting? “Oh yes,” he shouts excitedly. “Yeah!” But there is a problem, he says, with being a very public tranny. You mean, you couldn’t be seen at the Royal Academy in a nice frock and a stiffy? He nods enthusiastically. “You couldn’t do it. If I could manage it, I’m sure I’d be thinking how to do it. But I can’t.” He pauses. “My days of a spontaneous erection are long gone, anyway,” he adds a little sadly.
As a young man, he dressed as a more conventional woman. Why did Claire change her look? “I had a Damascene moment when I realised that the masquerade of dressing up as a woman and getting away with it, or ‘passing’, as they call it in the tranny world, was a fairly unrewarding experience. I used to come back from shopping in Oxford Street in my Monsoon outfit and think, well, nobody really gave me a second glance and that was boring.” He wanted to be noticed? “I was always slightly envious of those trannies who dressed more flamboyantly and didn’t give a shit.” But why, for instance, the Little Bo Peep look? “It’s a classic look. I used to call it the crack cocaine of femininity. It’s the furthest from the male macho look you could get. It’s vulnerable, it’s young, it’s humiliating. The fantasy of humiliation is a big drug for many men.”
These days, most of his dresses are made by students at Central Saint Martins, where he teaches a course in fashion (“teaching them is pushing it: I expose them to my sensibilities”), and he has to tell them he’s got more than enough Little Bo Peep numbers. At 54, he thinks he is struggling with his look. “Trannies go through this horrible cycle. When they’re really young and just post-pubescent, they can look gorgeous as a woman – you’re fairly androgynous, you’re thin, you just look good. When I look back at the first photographs, I realise what a wasted opportunity it was. I didn’t have the budget, experience or confidence to pull it off. Now I’ve got the budget, experience and confidence, but I’ve not got the features. You go through this cycle where you get older and older, and you get to around 35 to 40 when you’re looking your most manly. Then there’s a little payoff at the end, where, as you get really old, you become androgynous again.” He can’t wait for his 70s: if he’s got his hair, he’s going for the lilac rinse. “I’m going to go the whole way. I’m looking forward to being an old artist and not giving a shit.”