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?

Thank you, that's v helpful.

I began thinking along those lines bc I read of this very disturbing case that happened in early 2000s in China recently..As is normal in small villages there, a 13yo boy was left alone by his parents for a week. He was found dead when they got back, hanging, wearing a red dress. Apparently he was dressed as a popular effeminate male anime character.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=thechinaproject.com/2018/05/23/china-unsolved-the-boy-in-the-red-dress/&ved=2ahUKEwiq_6nv-66PAxU_TkEAHVmXGDEQFnoECB0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw31-Y4YDgKa0NzVK7sYwQby

It is thought that he had autogynephilic & autoerotic fetishises, which he hoped to play out when his parents were away & which led to the tragic consequences. 😢

Obvs this is an extreme case, thankfully, tho ofc the implications of fetishises go beyond simply being life threatening. But it's important to recognise that in the worst cases, fetishes can be potentially deadly

His aggression towards young women is a really important aspect of this that we don’t often make explicit. For lots of men who get off on this, it isn’t just that they get off on wearing the clothes - it’s directed at women, they want women to see them, they want women’s reactions and discomfort

It’s this business of getting off on making women uncomfortable that’s the real problem, isn’t it? The clothes don’t matter. But a lot of us have experienced men wanting to see us unnerved or distressed and clearly enjoying it. That makes me a bit sceptical about the ‘just want to pee’ line.

Another interesting point here is that for Transsexuals, and this is from several transsexuals youtube videos, (buck angel, blair white, Marcus Dib and possibly Brianna Wu) the aim of being a transsexual was always to pass. To look like the sex that you want to be.

For Transgender people the idea is to look like a transgender person.

And my understanding was that transvestites just like wearing womens clothes.

For Transgender people the idea is to look like a transgender person

I’ve seen so many examples of this. Some take hormones to make themselves look ambiguous and dress a certain way. I think they like the discomfort and confusion they can cause people.

Also for the fifty year old men who just wear a wig and dress I wonder if they’re deluded to think they can pass or if they again just like inflicting an awkward situation on people.

For those unaware there something called "boy mode" where transwomen (biological males) still present as male part of the time.

Some claim it's because they don't "pass" or for safety which may be the case.

It would also be a very easy way to be a modern transvestite.

It’s never just about presenting as female and enjoying wearing women clothes though. The clothing in question always features short dresses or skirts, tights (another well known fetish), with heavy make-up and lipstick. There is a sexual gratification coming from it. Going out in public dressed up that way, i’m pretty sure fulfills a fantasy of being admired and desired by other men, regardless of whether they pass or not. They never dress as the overwhelming majority of women do on most days, wearing just comfortable clothes (pants and sweaters have no place in the transvestite/gender-fluid wardrobe).
An entire system of thought built out of thin air, with myths like sex vs gender and new language like “cis” or “assigned at birth” has allowed this kind of kink to be protected and its perpetrators to be included in our daily lives. This is about sexual needs and the power to satisfy them, nothing more. It’s an “I’ll do whatever I want and there’s nothing you can say about it” type of mentality.

It’s never just about presenting as female and enjoying wearing women clothes though. The clothing in question always features short dresses or skirts, tights (another well known fetish), with heavy make-up and lipstick.

And fake breasts. The giveaway that it's not just about the clothing. If it was just about wearing dresses they would just wear dresses cut for men on obviously male bodies.

The This isn't Working podcast X account has posted about the City Of London Corporate Queer exhibition (it was in 2023 and 'Pips' Bunce was included of course).

Some of the photos are quite something. It truly astonishes me that kinks that in the not so different past were kept behind closed doors are now lauded as progressive and brave.

FFS!

Indeed, look no further if you want evidence that anyone thinking this is in any way attractive needs professional help.

I have a question, do these men get specially-designed transvestitewear that properly fits the male body? Or are they just buying clothes for women and hoping for the best - or maybe, getting them altered after purchase to fit the male frame?

If they want to be desired by men, why is it always women they sexually harass?

where do they think all the transvestites have gone?

This could explain it! Always knew Marvin was up to no good.

Because they are able to with low risk of response I suppose, it’s about power and it is easier to exercise it over people that are physically weaker. After all, trans activists often threaten gender critical women of rape, not sure they would dare do that to gender critical men.

I wonder if I (a v1.0 boring old woman of the cunty type) went to a gender clinic, said i was a man and wanted a boob job, they'd facilitate it? I mean, how can they deny my identity as a trans-transman without committing literal genocide?

But aren't most of them hetero men? I can't imagine gay men making the kind of rapey comments we see all too often. Gay men can be misogynist, sure, but it doesn't take that sexually aggressive form.

What was that X channel? Listen to transwomen...

I might ask for some lip fillers. So I can live my true identity as someone with fuller lips.

Yes they are mostly hetero men I think

Some quotes that inspired my post

"In my OP, I don't mean these men. I mean the group of men who used to be called transvestites (as opposed to transsexuals) who wore women's clothes for sexual reasons."
"Surely a man who likes to throw on a skirt for fun once in a while is not the same as someone who may have gender dysphoria who undergoes massive surgeries, changes their legal name etc? "
"This may be painful for Chris to admit, but fetishistic transvestites massively outnumber transsexuals with dysphoria."

So it seems like some on here think that in the past there were two types of men in dresses? The "I get a kick out of it" cross-dressing transvestites, and the really unusual, dysphoric ones who had surgery? Is that what people are saying? I am not sure how true that used to be, but I am confident not that true and certainly not true now.

Dr Az Hakeem seems to be the expert on the paraphilia side of this. From what I can remember him saying there is a distinction between transvestic fetishists (80%) who get off on dressing as women, and autogynephiles (20%) who get off on imagining themselves as women. But that's just the paraphiliacs amongst the male trans - there are also the ones with other mental health issues (could include internalized homophobia, gender dysphoria / identity disorder or whatever the best term is, or PTSD from sexual assault). I have no idea what percentage of male trans are sexually motivated - I would suspect at least 30% and maybe a VERY high percentage. (Does anyone know?)

But a key part of I what I wanted to say is that I believe that ALL of these groups of trans people are at risk of ending up with CGSI (Cosmetic Genital Surgery Ideation - my brand new term!) A man with gender dysphoria can convince himself (or be groomed) that surgery is the answer for him (and another can decide to try o manage their dysphoria without taking surgical risks). But so can a transvestic fetishist or an autogynephile get surgeries (or not). It's not like one set of causes of cross-dressing leads to surgery whereas another does it. As Dr Hakeem points out - far from ideal when you wake up post-surgery and it dawns on you that the only reason you liked imagining yourself as a woman is that it made your dick hard.

What I am trying to emphasize is that in old money the idea that there were sexually motivated cross dressers and "proper" transexuals who had or wanted CGS is wrong. CGS can be the end result whether or not the motivation is sexual, and vice versa.

"Having said that, David Hayton describes his paraphilia as so agonising that it was a relief when genital surgery finally both sated it, and brought it to an end."

There is mentally unwell and there is "so messed up sexually that cutting it off is a good idea". Truly shocking. Also, if cutting it off sated it, why does he still need to dress as a woman? Can't he just go back to being a normal man now, albeit with the odd bit missing?

So it seems like some on here think that in the past there were two types of men in dresses? The "I get a kick out of it" cross-dressing transvestites, and the really unusual, dysphoric ones who had surgery? Is that what people are saying? I am not sure how true that used to be, but I am confident not that true and certainly not true now.

Ok, so I mostly defer to Az Hakeem, but some of my spin on it might be different.

On paraphilias I don't go by how unusual the philia is, but by its intensity. This would probably be seen as crude by sexologists, but I do a sliding scale: sexual preference (we all have that, it could be height or hair colour or body shape or any manner of things) > fetish (where the preference goes from a nice to have to a necessity; the difference between liking a shapely ankle and not being able to achieve arousal without some kind of elaborate footplay) > paraphilia (when it becomes so overwhelming that it takes over your civilian life).

I've never believed the story some women tell, that only men have fetishes, but I do think paraphilias are an overwhelmingly male thing. Women are just much less likely to autistically fixate on some specific thing to the extent that it dominates their lives.

Having got that out of the way...

I don't disagree with the distinction Az draws between the transvestic fetishist and the autogynephile, but I see a definite overlap between them. I want to say that I see AGP as a development and escalation of transvestism. I find it hard to think of anyone developing AGP without first going through the stage of transvestism, though most transvestites never pass through to the AGP stage.

I don't think I believe in "true trans", but I'm reluctant to reduce all of it to fetishism because I've known a few old-fashioned homosexual transsexuals who didn't seem to be in it for fetishistic arousal, but simply because - however they came by their body dysmorphia - presenting in a female style was the only way they could feel comfortable. I don't feel that their condition is the same as AGP.

But, in the same way that gay men are massively outnumbered by straight men, your dysphoric homosexual transsexual will be massively outnumbered by heterosexual transvestite fetishists, and it's obvious the latter make up the large majority of TIMs these days. Whereas the #bekinders work on an assumption, or wishful thinking more like, that the dysphoric HSTS is the norm.

And again that becomes a problem because public policy for decades has been based on an idea of the dysphoric HSTS as the norm, which simply doesn't apply today.

Obviously I'm not a clinician and this is just my unscientific way of thinking things through. But I think the key is how fetishes escalate into paraphilias.

On paraphilias... I have some sympathy with your view. It seems to me perfectly reasonable to assume that a "normal man" can try on his girlfriend's dress for the fun of it, and that escalate to underwear, to underwear as part of masturbation, to transvestic fetishism (a paraphilia) to autogynephila. On the other hand I am not sure there is an innocent first stage where attraction to kids is a relatively harmless fetish and not a heinous paraphilia?

"I find it hard to think of anyone developing AGP without first going through the stage of transvestism, though most transvestites never pass through to the AGP stage." Entirely plausible

Do you have any comment to make on my idea that the link between motivation and medical and surgical transition is not there? I don't think that I have ever seen any stats on it either way, but my understanding is that being a post-op TIM gives little to no indication as to whether the motivation was sexual arousal or mental ill health. The start of the thread seemed to suggest there were the pervy transvestites and the true trans who were so uncomfortable that they needed medical transition. I quite simply do not buy that. Instead I believe that all medical transitioners are mentally unwell by definition, but of those some are so sexually motivated that it reaches mental ill health levels and leads to transition, whereas others are simply mentally unwell without the sexual motivation. That latter group would include gay men who believe that they should really have been born straight women.

Something that I really find endlessly fascinating is how men wearing women's clothes was, until incredibly recently, considered such a sinister red flag that some of the most critically acclaimed horror films of all the time were made about the phenomenon, namely Psycho and The Silence of the Lambs. Although the film itself doesn't touch on it directly, if you watch the opening credits of Se7en, Kevin Spacey's character is studying autogynephilia. These works weren't written in a vacuum, everybody knew this was a paraphilia that was often linked to violence against women.

There's a documentary on Netflix about the murder of Lucie Blackman in Japan, she was killed by a man who had kidnapped and raped dozens of women and videotaped them all, a real serial killer like you would see in a film, and there's a bit in it where they say he originally came to the attention of police because he was arrested in a women's toilet in Tokyo wearing a dress. Because of course he was.

And then one day suddenly, the internet decided that not only was all that not true but that it was the most offensive thing on the planet to even say these men weren't women, never mind that they might be dangerous.