Where do people think the transvestites have gone?

[ItsCoolForCats]

I remember a time when a distinction was made between transexuals and transvestites, and there was a recognition that the latter category often cross dressed for fetishistic reasons.

But now everyone is just trans. So regarding those who advocate for any man who says he is trans to access women's single sex spaces, where do they think all the transvestites have gone?

Just my own thoughts:

Reduce boys' exposure to sexualised content. And I don't mean just porn, but advertising, movies and tv, and maybe even just people around. None of which would be popular, especially saying the sexualising of women's clothing and fashion is problematic for society.

Also something that might prove problematic in other ways - I do wonder if delaying "normal" sexual experiences so that young people are mainly sexually inexperienced until quite late may impact this kind of thing - I think a lot of younger people are relying an awful lot on their imaginations, or pornography, or in the case of girls smutty books, to a really significant degree for years. And because there is no real person involved to remain interesting and compelling, and because it's unfocused, that tends to move toward some odd and abstract things.

I'm not really thinking that teens being promiscuous is the answer, but maybe more real dating, and getting away from the long extension of adolescence that has people marrying and having kids quite late.

It seems to me fetishes start weak, and can potentially be out-competed at an early stage by something better. They get stronger over time and the more they are indulged.

People recognising fetishes as something that will grow and are a problem from early on may also give some tools at that stage to repress them. But they will need to have some kind of practise at sexual self-control, and an awareness that not all fantasy is healthy, and not all sexual expression is harmless as long as there is consent.

All of these are things our society directly contradicts constantly, so I think we are now maximising the number of people developing these kinds of sexual fetishes. (Mainly men, but if you read over at the reddit/detrans you will see some young women describe experiencing something similar to AGP.)

Do you have any data to support your claim that trans abuse of women in 'private spaces' as increased since this cultural distinction has been made?

Yes, misogyny has been in existence for thousands of years. We know that.

And your point is?

He lied to the gender identity clinc about having "life threatening" gender dysphoria. There are many forums online which school people in what to say and how to act to be convincing. Although not routinely offered clinics can advocate for nhs funding.

Errr are you saying transwomen are just men in drag who just wear women’s clothes as a costume? Wow! But if a turn around for you there.

Not sufficiently brainwashed?

Do you have any data to suggest that allowing men into female spaces will benefit women? Anything? Or are you just another bloke banging on about women should #bekind and bullying women if males with a trans identity feel unsafe in male spaces, that’s on men to sort out. Go and tell them to be kind and make their trans brethren welcome.

@ItsCoolForCats I have also been wondered about this. In my youth I worked in some of the luxury beauty halls in London and high end fashion retail. We used to go out a few nights a week to Soho nightclubs and a large part of our group was made up of men who worked in the beauty halls - some fem gays who wore makeup, majority were basically full on drag (those who worked for MAC) and two transgender. These night clubs were full of gay men in ‘drag’, very few transgender people there as there wasn’t as much hoo-has about it all. Two are still my friends, they got married to their husbands and have abandoned the experimental makeup of youth and dressing like women. Yes they do feel like they became lumped in with the new transgender movement and actually things were simpler back in the day when they may not have been to everyone’s taste but there was certainly a lot of them around being accepted by their social circles and community.

But on the fetish side I absolutely agree and imagine they are still out there. Men would come into stores dressed as women with photo books - show the books to the staff (usually young women) who worked there and give some story about finding feminine clothes for the person in the book who was always them (badly dressed and made up like a woman, but they would claim is not them) They wanted to try in very girly things and always lingerie. I knew about 4 regular men who would do this, saw them repeatedly over the years in different stores I worked and and so did other colleagues/friends in different shops. They definitely got a kick out of it and always wanted you to either help them get dressed and would come out and ask how they looked. It was very uncomfortable and we never asked them to leave because we were worried about complaints so we never said anything to management.

Before anyone jumps on and says ‘oh they’re just a trans person who wanted help’ No, they were not. There’s a clear difference, these men had fetishes and they just wanted to make young women feel uncomfortable. And as someone who had a lot of friends in that community at the time, going out together, getting ready together - helping trans people pick out clothes is not something I would have felt awkward about.

The world is a million miles away now and there’s definitely a part of that group who feels like they got pushed out for not been extreme enough and banging the trans drum. Many of these men have also grown out of this phase and that is a genuine concern for the young trans people of today, they feel like they have to stick to it and go to the extreme. If they change their mind and want to revert it’s like they are betraying the community.

Fo they just call themselves queer now?

A lot of people have been 're-educated' by their more enlightened friends or colleagues or children, and now they are too afraid to state the obvious.

Older people's 'lived experience' of this before trans became the cause du jour and a social contagion counts for nothing.

It’s such an excellent question OP. Eddie Izzard is an example isn’t he? I’m sure he called himself a transvestite in the 90s. But now he’s Suzy who uses women’s loos.

I'm really sad about Eddie Izzard. I used to think he was both hugely funny and dead sexy. Suzy who uses women's loos bleurgh.

It's fetish-laundering. Plain and simple. Bundle the middle-aged AGP males in with the teenage, self-loathing females and pretend it's all one, equally vulnerable superset. Farcical. And anyone with a brain and a moral spine can see it.

This is one of many things that people don’t consider. I think as well if you bring it up with trans supporters they immediately just hear you calling all trans women deviants and get defensive.

If they were honest they’d have to acknowledge that there are men with fetishes that are connected to dressing as women.

“Transvestitism, also known as cross-dressing, is the practice of wearing clothes and adopting the behaviours traditionally associated with the opposite sex or gender. This behaviour can be for various reasons, including personal satisfaction, an expression of cross-sex identification, or sexual gratification. The terms were coined by Magnus Hirschfeld in 1910. While it involves adopting the appearance of a different gender, it is important to distinguish it from gender identity or sexual orientation, as most transvestites identify as the gender they were observed at birth.”
Drag is the very antithesis of ‘entertainment’. It’s akin to blackface.

Where did the transvestites go? They simply walked out of the privacy of their own homes and into the sunny uplands of being stunning and brave. Such an historic journey.

I think part of the blind spot around this is that we aren't supposed to consider anything sexually deviant now.

Yes, drag is a form of bawdy entertainment - e.g. Dame Edna Everage, - and Barry Humphries was famously a straight, non-transvestite male who did drag merely for comedy. He saw through the trans brigade facade, saw it for what it is - a fiction and a pretence.

Nevertheless, over 90% of so-called trans-identifying men don't have 'bottom' surgery - they have penises. And I've seen enough videos on X, of such men, wearing a laughable approximation of women's clothes, filming themselves in women's public toilets, masturbating. It is most definitely a fetish.

Same here. I used to live in London and remember once seeing Izzard walking down a street in Soho in heels and a mini-skirt (circa 2000), - striding like a catwalk model - and I thought he looked brilliant, and just really admired his confidence.

How different the world is now.

Eddie Izzard shows that a man in a dress is a man in a dress just as well as any other men in dresses do.
We're just not supposed to state facts but he can tell us that he's a man in a dress or lie and say he's a woman and we have to accept it.
The trans label is a golden ticket to say what you are and to tell others to obey.
Much more exciting than the old labels so they've died down.

WTF

A man can claim he’s a woman and get free electrolysis and a boob job.

It really is a man’s world.

I agree - it really is misogynistic. And I hate the fact we are not allowed to say so, except on an anonymous forum.

This is a matter of language rather than transvestites no longer existing. They still do. The term transvestite literally translates as "across clothing" and is nothing to do with gender identity. We hear so much in the media about transgender that the excepted term for any man appearing to present themselves as female are thought of as being (and referred to as) transgender which is, in my opinion, doing a diservice to many men who still want to be men but like wearing women's clothes. It must be terribly confusing for a young man who discovers they enjoy wearing women's clothes. They must end up thinking that they must be transgender and perhaps this is why some end up detransitioning. I've known several women with transvestite husbands who have enjoyed very happy and loving marriages.

I loved Eddie Izzard in the 90s. Saw him live every tour and always admired his stance on 'equal clothing rights' but then he drank the transgender Kool aid and his pronoun and name change is just laughable.