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Womanist Musings- The Flip Side (or dose of Positivity) May 21, 2012
- Culture Kitchen
- black girl blogging
- I’ve moved! August 12, 2010
- TransGirot
- Alrashim Chambers Trial-Foster Testifies May 21, 2012
Sep
5
I wanted to come up with the most appropriate title for this blog post. I tried several before I finally opted for Is a Straight Guy in a Dress Considered Transgender?
- Schoolin’ Genia on Transgender Issues
- Are Cross-Dressing Straight Guys Considered Transgender?
- Just Because a Guy’s Wearing a Dress, It Doesn’t Mean He’s Transgender
- Is There Any Such Thing As a Cross-Dressin’ Straight Guy?
- Why Is This Straight Guy in the Girls Bathroom at the Gay Bar?
This post is influenced by something that happens often at our local gay bar. There’s a guy – let’s call him StraightGuyinaSuperShortMiniSkirt – who frequents the bar. He identifies as a straight man who likes to wear women’s clothes. He says he’s absolutely not sexually attracted to men and he says he’s absolutely not interested in changing his gender to female. One thing my friends and I have noticed about StraightGuyinaSuperShortMiniSkirt is that he stalks the ladies (usually the straight girls) every chance he gets. It’s a standing joke that the second an unknown straight girl gets to the bar, he will follow her into the women’s bathroom. You can bet your mother’s life on it. Without fail, when the new girl heads to the potty, StraightGuyinaSuperShortMiniSkirt heads in there after her.
I have so many questions and I don’t even know where to start.
1. Is this guy really creepy or what? Yes!
2. Is it possible that this guy is a closeted transgender person?
3. What’s the probability that this guy really IS a heterosexual male who just gets his rocks off dressing like a girl and stalking women in the ladies room?
4. Do transgender people have to deal with this type of behavior creating negative stereotypes of transgender people?
Some of the patrons at the bar believe I am annoyed because StraightGuyinaSuperShortMiniSkirt uses the women’s bathroom. No, that’s not the case. I often use the men’s bathroom when the Queens and straight girls are standing around in the ladies room yackin’ and takin’ up space. What I have a problem with is the reason this guy is using the women’s bathroom. No one should have to worry about being stalked in a public restroom.
Comments
14 Responses to “Is a Straight Guy in a Dress Considered Transgender?”
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Nah. He's not transgender. He's just a straight crossdresser with a effed up pick up game. Needs to scrap it and get back on the drawing board STAT. Bleah! Any of those ladies decked him yet?
1. I agree with your "Yes!"
2. Possible, but seems unlikely
3. I'd guess the probability is high
4. Yes
Since he identifies as being into women, I'd have to guess that he goes to the gay bar only because if he dressed that way in a straight bar he'd likely get the poop beat out of him. But if he wants to stalk women, I'm thinking he's not going to get very far in a gay bar.
If I were there, I don't know if I'd complain to management about his use of the women's room, but I might confont him about it.
By my terms, yes, he absolutely is transgender – it's an umbrella term, and people who are transsexual, transvestive, cross-dresser, dual-sexed, whatever, "count" under there. He's out and open about his crossdressing and he's doing it in one of the few places he can expect to be able to cross-dress safely. Doesn't mean he isn't a sleaze, though. Just because someone's family, doesn't mean they aren't a dick.
Does StraightGuyinaSuperShortMiniSkirt only dress in women's clothing when he goes to THAT bar? Or does he do it elsewhere too, like maybe at the local Starbucks or the mall? If he does it elsewhere, does he also stalk women in the bathroom there, as well?
The reason why I ask is because there is a good possibility that he might not like dressing in women's clothing at all and just does it to give himself a better opportunity to stalk women in a bathroom without getting himself arrested.
Think about it. What would happen if he stalked women in the bathroom at the mall, dressed in a 3 piece suit or t-shirt & jeans?
He only gets away with it at THAT bar, because the type of bar it is allows him to get away with it, and only because he is wearing a skirt.
I wouldn't label him as transgender at all. I might label him as a sort of "Peeping Tom" though.
4. Yes, yes, yes, yes. It's what people seem to first think, and it's so, so, so fucked up. And incredibly harmful. It's the go-to attack argument.
^^this.
1) yes, hell yes.
2) Meh. Definitions. Closet transsexual or gender queer? doubt it.
3) I'd go with this. That's still transgendered fyi, but with attendant issues.
4) Yes, Hell yes I do. He is why people are afraid of me just going to the damn restroom.
Regardless of if he's trans or not, if he's acting creepy/freaky/scary he should be talked too or stopped. Being a cross-dresser doesn't give you the right to abuse peoples emotions and willingness to be open.
Oh gosh, I hate this. Unfortunately, amongst the transgender community, there is an unfortunately large minority of male-thinking fetishists who prey on both cis and trans women in horribly invasive ways.
Yes, 'transgender' is an umbrella term and sometimes I wish so much I wasn't part of that umbrella.
[...] recent blog post here at SistersTalk had at least one reader (or, umm, former reader?) really ticked off. In that [...]
He's not closeted–he's crossdressing in public. Not all crossdressers want to be referred to in the feminine when Dressed, and many are in fact hetero men.
Regardless, the man needs to stop stalking the ladies. It's inappropriate.
Oh–and part of the confusion here is that we're conflating transgender with transsexual.
Transsexual = person working on changing their body to match their gender.
Transgender = person who expresses themselves in ways that cross stereotypical gender divides.
And I like you.
@LanceWorth:
That's the way I prefer to see things, too, since I see there being a huge difference between a transsexual person and a transgender person (though I do admit that a lot of transsexual people try to live with crossdressing, often hoping that will be enough to hold off transition).
Unfortunately, the world sees transsexual people and transgender people as one group (hence the 'transgender' umbrella term), though the motivations and the path followed are hugely different, which means that acting as he does above paints us all with the same brush and I do hate that.
Well, he is at one end of the transgender spectrum but he does NOT identify as a woman. It is not a safety issue since he is at a gay bar and shouldn’t worry about any homophobic or transphobic violence. If he was using any other restroom, my answer would be different due to the threat of transgender violence towards this crossdresser.
Well milylasouris, I'm a transsexual woman who sociopolitically identifes as transgender. It seems to be that you're looking to highlight differences, whereas I'm looking for commonalities — I'm wanting to embrace broader diversity that includes the intersections of identity communities, and not look for reasons to exclude.
The reality is that when we think about it, there are creepy lesbians, creepy gays, creepy bisexuals — just as there are wonderful lesbians, wonderful lesbians, and wonderful bisexuals. There are creepy transsexuals, crossdressers, and genderqueers; there are wonderful transsexuals, crossdressers, and genderqueers.
As broader communities, we need to get away from the predudice of painting communities with too broad of brushes.