How is this not sexual?

[BMMNonsense]

I was at the British Motor Museum today with family. In among the car and miniature railway enthusiasts (mainly families with kids and older men) was a couple in their forties. Two men. Except one of them was dressed as a "woman". 4 inch stiletto heels, sheer tights, a skirt and matching jacket. He was clearly wearing a fake cleavage, complete with fake collar bones and balloon like fake boobs, which visibly shone in the light. The cleavage reached down past where a bra would sit. It was grotesque, completely and overtly sexualised, in a setting where almost everyone was wearing long-sleeved tops and long trousers. How is this anything other than a man living out his own sexual fantasies? I don't need this kind of thing forced on me and even less so on my kids! Before people start: there was another man there who was wearing female clothes/ accessories too. I have no issue with that. Just keep it out of my face and limit your sexual fantasies to the privacy of your own home.

This isn't just wearing a revealing outfit. It's wearing a fetish outfit.
And it's not just wearing a fetish outfit on a train on the way to a fetish event. It's wearing a fetish outfit to a family friendly setting.
It's much closer to flashing than to inappropriate gym wear. The point is other people's discomfort.

It's also a problem in the same way blackface is a problem. It's a grotesque caricature of a group of people based on a protected characteristic.
If the museum let someone in wearing blackface, would it be in breach of its duties under the equality act?

I agree with this. But I think I'd also find it awkward shepherding children around a museum where a woman was dressed in, say, a low-cut PVC minidress with stockings and stilettoes.

Mind you, I'd answer questions in either case with "They're in fancy dress" 😁

This guy I take it?

I hope you complained to the museum. It's bad enough when he does it with students, but as this is a work event and there are children there it's totally inappropriate.

I just signed up for a mixed age orchestra event and was sent a code of conduct for adults present. And that's a hobby.

People are simply too afraid of the backlash from challenging this. Livelihoods lost, court cases, the process being tge punishment, threats of violence. It's a brave person who stands up to these men and they absolutely get off on that power.

So, I wonder if someone in full black and white minstrel parody be fine wandering around too. Maybe that ‘dress up’ person would be their true selves as well, since we’re pretending it is not a mockery or a fetish (both). Or is it uniquely women that have to endure mocking men doing this grotesque dress up, impersonation.

That’s absolutely true.

the governments, charities, human rights committees, corporations, politicians and medical bodies have all pedalled a lie which has parasitically embedded itself into everything.

The rights of women have been eroded to a point where the word ‘woman’ is meaningless …womanhood is a co-opted term….. these men have found a very new and pernicious way to abuse us.

It may not be strictly “against the law” but totally agree with an earlier poster who explained it so well.

It’s on a par with wearing a nazi fancy dress outfit or a t shirt with an obscene slogan. It’s worn to provoke insult and unsettle others. Really not ok.

It’s like how a judge described freedom of speech you have it but it ends with you shouting fire in a crowded theatre. Yes you have a right but only up to the point it negatively impacts others.

Exactly.
As I mentioned before, none of the other women, also working in the well known department store, were dressed like the male, transvestite fetishist.

I am quite sure that if any of the real women working there were dressed and wearing makeup in the same way, they would be asked by the managers to present themselves more appropriately.

That’s absolutely true.

and has happened so often.

girls at school told not to have skirts too short or wear thin leggings in case in ‘upsets’ the boys.
women at work penalised for their workwear as being ‘unprofessional’
girls who have been assaulted asked ‘ what were you wearing ?’

but a AGP males always wearing clothes that look like they’ve been bought in a sex shop with the largest fake boobs…. And nothing is said.

The sycophants always ‘excuse’ these males….. the worse are the fawning women.

I’ve never been a violent person….always want to take the route of least resistance….however…I’m not sure I’d be able to stop myself saying something in I was in the OP’s position……

I might merely just look and laugh….men hate being laughed at as we know!!!

Ha, you didn't include the link but I think I know what it would have been. Yes, he's a 'lecturer'. I have mentioned this experience on this board before. It still creeps me out.

Yes it is sexual, but not sure why you don't consider the other cross-dressing male to not be sexual and are fine with that one?

It is ridiculous that men dress like this in public, but I'm not going to call it non-consensual sexual abuse. Why? Because it downplays real sexual abuse.

I have heard that some AGPs get a kick out of wearing plain white shapeless t-shirts but because the label says for women they find that sexual. So where do you draw the line with cross-dressing?

Yep, that's the perv. I remember saying on here at the time (I mean after I came across him in the Story Museum) that his beard very conveniently disguised the join where his silicone comedy boobs meet his actual skin.
And yes, to imagine having to face THAT in seminars and other close-quarters teaching is almost impossible. Poor young women, socially conditioned to Be Kind in all circumstances. And it's Oxford, it's utterly ingrained.

What would you consider 'real sexual abuse'.

Does the man have to insert part of himself into the woman's body? would grabbing her count? or rubbing her? exposing his penis while masturbating? exposing his penis without masturbating? masturbating without exposure? talking about sex to a woman who cannot walk away? acting out sexual situations to a woman who cannot walk away? while wearing a fetish costume?

They are all sexual abuse, they are all real, and they are all part of the pattern of escalation. And women should be permitted to say NO and be heard.

Well perhaps you've realised that counting seeing a man cross-dressed in public is a form of sexual abuse you're now having to remind people of real sexual abuse.

I don't like seeing men cross-dressing in public, but I'm not going to pretend it's the equivalent of being grabbed or masturbated over.

Same men, same abuse, just different stages of their career.

It is not a case of seeing a man cross-dressed, it's a case being compelled to be in proximity to a man wearing fetish costume for sexual self-stimulation.

You have no right to tell another woman that she has not been 'really' abused, or that she should stay silent about her distress and outrage and fear.

I used to agree with you but, sadly, there are more than a few men who dress in Islamic modesty wear for sexual reasons and they video/document themselves doing it on various social media/internet forums. I've seen various examples of them doing it and their reason for doing it is that they get off on the associated humiliation and control of women. They're sexualising the fact that some women are treated as second class citizens.

Honestly, there is no type of female-coded clothing/behaviour that some men won't sexualise and find erotic - some of them get erotic thrills from knitting/crocheting or wearing 'School-Mom' clothing. And they put it all out there on the internet for us to see. So I'm very much no longer of the 'wear what you want' persuasion, I distrust men who wear female-typical clothing nowadays, whereas I wouldn't have in the past.

Part of the problem might be #bekind women underestimating the sheer intensity of men's sexuality and how often it's liked to a sense of power - NAMALT but this has been lavishly referenced in the arts for thousands of years, so it's hardly a fringe theory.

Vanishingly few women get more than a gentle frisson from perceiving ourselves as sexy in other people's eyes and, if we experience this as a kind of power, it's power to influence rather than to dominate. For one thing, we're excruciatingly aware of how easily being super-sexy can tip into being raped. For another, I just don't think female sexuality works the same way.

For women who've been lucky enough to escape unwelcome exposure to men's urges to 'express their needs' at random female witnesses, this can sound paranoid. I wasn't being paranoid when a bloke masturbated over me on a crowded tube or the numerous other times strangers have proudly shown me their penises, starting when I was 8.

As a teenager of surprising naivety, given the frequent sexual assaults and attempted rapes I'd already experienced, I was shocked by my dad's self-defence tuition (he had professional expertise). He explained what would be going on in the minds of rapists and also of men who may not have got around to raping anyone. His advice has saved me a few times but, back then, I found it really hard to believe. I can imagine that some women manage to retain an idea that men are pretty much like women in this regard, so the aggression inherent in male exhibition just wouldn't make sense to them.

I didn't look for cross dressing burka porn when I posed the question, because who wants to do that search, but it certainly occured to me it's likely to exist.

I think there is a way to get to "wear what you want" and I'm happy to support men getting there, but like "just treat men and women the same", it has to start with a recognition of why here and now, living within a context formed under historic sexism and sexualisation, it ain't that simple.

Any movement for openness, tolerance and removal of barriers that ignores this complexity, no matter how well intentioned, is going to end up harming women.

I'm sorry, but I have seen men cross-dressed in public and I don't consider myself to be a victim of sexual abuse and I think it would be highly offensive of me to say to a victim of sexual abuse that I've experienced the same because I once saw a man in a dress.

Most people know the dress code. Turning up to an event where children will be present dressed like a prostituted woman is inappropriate in a woman let alone a male, who is obviously showing off his fetish and getting a sexual kick out of it.

I've been groped by a stranger. It would be offensive for me to say that I've been through the same as someone who has been raped.
I've still experienced somebody using me for his sexual gratification without my consent. It's not as bad as some other forms of sexual assault/abuse/misconduct, but it is a form. So is flashing. So is a man deliberately making women uncomfortable for his own sexual gratification.

You wouldn't be saying you'd experienced the same. You'd be saying something like 'a kind of sexual abuse'.

Most people who recognise that they've been sexually abused have some awareness that it wasn't about them personally, but rather the man's imposition of his sexual impulses on 'women' - that it's selfish and self-serving, misogynistic, objectifying, aggressive. Your remarks might start a conversation around the various manifestations of these behaviours and what to do about them, or at least to empathise as women.

I hope you wouldn't shout down a woman who'd been subjected to sexualised verbal abuse because she hadn't been 'really assaulted'? You don't get to demarcate some forms of abuse as acceptable.

I would find it inappropriate, but it wouldn't be a fetish. Others have already explained why the two scenarios are different .

The other person was wearing clothes that were appropriate for the social occasion. Might have been sexual to them, but would not generally be perceived that way.