Sex and Gender - The Development of Masculinity and Femininity by Robert J. Stoller

Author:Robert J. Stoller
Language: deu
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2020-06-16T05:20:57.793403+00:00

Female (Versus Male) Transvestism

The purpose of this chapter is to share some impressions to which a group of unusual patients have introduced me. These people, living permanently as unremarkably masculine men, are biologically normal females and were so recognized as children. In the process of passing successfully as men, they dress completely in the same sort of clothes as do normal men. Thus they would seem, from the obvious fact that they always wear men’s clothes, to be fine examples of transvestism in females. And yet this chapter is about a condition that may not exist—female transvestism.

No one claims that female transvestism is common. It has rarely been written about,1 and ideas about its causes are almost as sparse as is interest in it. Still, it is an accepted condition, a form of behavior that implies a specific character structure and psychodynamics. The least sophisticated idea about it (as with male transvestism) is that it is simply a peccadillo indulged in by certain homosexuals with more than their share of gender confusion.

It is possible, however, that if we look more closely at the behavior of women who cross-dress, we may learn more about the subject of gender identity. Proper clinical data can assist one in distinguishing, from what seem to be only semantics, some different personality types who, since they share a common form of exotic behavior, may mistakenly be assumed to have more similar character structures than they really do.

First, the obvious point made earlier: people who have in common a similar psychodynamic quality do not therefore necessarily have a similar personality (e.g., primary process thinking is found in everyone, artistic creativity requires in part primary process thinking, but not everyone is an artist). Transvestic (that is, cross-dressing) tendencies are ubiquitous (at least in latent, subliminal, or vicarious forms), but not all those who cross-dress are transvestites, though they certainly are transvestic. (See Chap. 16.)

And yet many people take it for granted that there are female transvestites. This may be because they confuse transvestic tendencies with transvestism. Certainly in recent years there has been gross permission for normal women in our culture to wear feminized versions of men’s clothes or even specifically male clothing. In addition, and more to the point, masculine women dress in decidedly masculine fashion—but they choose their apparel carefully so that they do not look unequivocally male: They are not trying to pass undetected as men.

Nonetheless, there are an extremely rare number of females who dress all the time as men, live as men, work as men—in fact, pass unrecognized in society as men. Are they not transvestites? No—and again one must be careful that one is not merely quibbling with words. These women are transsexuals, quite comparable to male transsexuals. They wish to be males, that is to have a body in every way male, and to live in all ways as a man does. They cannot stomach sexual relations with men; they are aroused only by women. Men’s clothes have no erotic value whatsoever; these people have no clothing fetish.

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