Skirt Cafe is an on-line community dedicated to exploring, promoting and advocating skirts and kilts as a fashion choice for men, formerly known as men in skirts. We do this in the context of men's fashion freedom --- an expansion of choices beyond those commonly available for men to include kilts, skirts and other garments. We recognize a diversity of styles our members feel comfortable wearing, and do not exclude any potential choices. Continuing dialog on gender is encouraged in the context of fashion freedom for men. See here for more details.
Discussion of fashion elements and looks that are traditionally considered somewhat "femme" but are presented in a masculine context. This is NOT about transvestism or crossdressing.
I believe that we all need to accept that we are all Crossdressers. By the definition of the word "crossdressing", we are crossdressing as soon as we put on a feminine garment in the same manner that a women is crossdressing when she puts on a necktie, baseball cap, or other male clothing item.
We need to loose the disdain that some of the folks here have for the term "crossdresser". Being a crossdresser is not illegal or immoral, in fact there is absoutely nothing wrong with being a crossdresser.
So guys, just remember that when we put on skirts that we are Crossdressers my the Mariam Webster definition of the word. Now that we know what we are, let's be proud of if and support each other. We don't need a distinction between male and female clothing in our society. It's all just clothing and we are all happy crossdressers.
I am not a crossdresser,for me objects are not male or female,they do not have gender. Nether women are,nor we. I am an extreme freestyler with gender honesty and fight for equal clothing rights- for me a crossdresser is a transvestite and such I am not!:)
... about definitions and labels !!!
Let's put our prejudices in perspective , and let's have a look to the facts ...
Nancy Friday (Men in love) , says that 10% of males enjoy wearing female garment(s) ... Noting a wide range of behaviours , from simply wearing panties , to complete transgendering ...
Margaret Mead suggest that , men crossdresses mainly , to distinguish themselves from the other males !!!
For myself , I consider crossdressing as a male wearing female garment(s) without having to compromise his virility/masculinity .
And I consider transvesting as a male wearing female clothing , having in mind to impersonate a female .
I am open-minded , and I do not have any prejudices against those who chooses to express themselves the way they want !!!
Crossdressing or transgendering are innoffensive activities that poses no prejudices to nobody !!!
After all , if we want others to accept us , we should be able to accept others !!!
Last edited by CJFMix on Tue Oct 02, 2007 7:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
You are right about acception, I accept you, but this is not the right forum for you,there are many forums for transvestites.Here we DO NOT consider ourselves as such and whatever we wear we do it as males!So please get our idea correct it is about equality abd aesthetics,not impersonating women!
A crossdresser is generally understood to be someone who dresses as the opposite sex whereas I dress as a man albeit that one of the garments I wear our present culture regards as chiefly womenswear. If I can't find my navy blue gloves on a cold day, so I borrow my wife's identical gloves, it would be ridiculous to claim that I was crossdressing.
It is a mistake to rely upon dictionaries to determine the precise meanings of words as they are written by lexicographers and not by semanticists.
Jamie - will you please stop telling this forum what "we" need to do.
I for one am not interested in being lectured to like that. Tell me what you do - or what you think - and that's fine - I am interested. I may even agree with you. But please don't tell me what to think or what I need to be doing.
I am perfectly capable of thinking things through for myself and making up my own mind.
It's never too late to have a happy childhood . . .
A couple comes towards you, both wearing jeans. Who is the crossdresser? Is it him, because she is wearing jeans, or is it her, because he is wearing jeans?
I fail to see why the term 'crossdresser' is popularly applied to only men, when half the population (women) does it without even thinking.
Schools encourage it; it can be difficult to tell the boys from the girls, often the only difference is that the girls clothes are better cut than the boys, and appear less scruffy.
At work, women wear dark suits. Today, I saw four women at lunch; all wore trousers, all were in black, all were dressed more drably than their male colleagues.
Please, lets dump the term 'crossdresser'. It belongs to the last century - possibly the one before that.
I don't consider myself to be a crossdresser. I wear skirts and kilts as a man. To pick a tiny quote from Jamie's post "It's all just clothing"
The terms "crossdresser" and "transvestite" are defined differently by just about everyone out there. It's true, Mirriam Webster has the definitions:
* crossdressing --- " the wearing of clothes designed for the opposite sex"
* transvestite --- "a person and especially a male who adopts the dress and often the behavior typical of the opposite sex especially for purposes of emotional or sexual gratification"
By those definitions, just about everyone on the planet is a crossdresser (which renders the term uninteresting). Also according to that definition, this board is NOT about transvestism.
More commonly, "transvestite" and "crossdressing" are taken as synonyms, with both of them meaning "transvestite" above.
However, this board is not in the business of accepting the wider society's definitions. Rather, we are working to re-define language, perceptions and social norms. Therefore, we are not crossdressers because we say we are not, and we have a good explanation to back it up. In the future, maybe Merriam Webster's definitions will change because of us.
[Moderator Cap]
Either way, threads with titles like this one are obviously inflammatory. I have moved it from the forum called "Skirts and Kilts for MEN" because it was obviously not about that topic. While people may not always agree with the premises of this forum, it is only polite to at least show them some respect.
[/Moderator Cap]
Ther's a big job ahead for us, to redefine terms from foregone times and even invent new ones. The times they are a changing, so the words and their meanings need changing too. Maybe a new page alltogether, just for serious debating on the meaning of related words, so as to be better able to describe what is going on today, with regards to our activities as free, liberated men, wearing skirts.
Words like cross dresser, travestite, even Homo, transgender and so on, they need to be newly defined, and what we do needs to be named and be described, so as to break loose of the irrelevant terms listed here.
Call us the free men if you like. Freestylers is here already, but I don't know how it's officially listed in dictionarys. Skirt wearing men is too specifik.
Many people I ask when I talk to them, say that as of that moment they would call me a travestite, although I dont do anything to hide my masculine face. If I don't ask them, they often don't have a problem with what I do, but don't have a fitting name for it either, so when asked they reach for what is at hand. Like travestite, that is just for the want of a better fiting term, and for the want of education about such things, as men wearing skirts, or for that matter any behavior other than the black and white image people hang on to is not deeply understood.
The drive to achieve this, a better understanding from the general public and of course first of all ourselves, could come from us, or similar "brother " forums.
We can all benifit from a better description and understanding of what is really going on, and with that also be able to put the whole skirt wearing theme in a better prospective.
Peter v.
A man is the same man in a pair of pants or a skirt. It is only the way people look at him that makes the difference.
Bob wrote:The terms "crossdresser" and "transvestite" are defined differently by just about everyone out there. It's true, Mirriam Webster has the definitions:
* crossdressing --- " the wearing of clothes designed for the opposite sex"
* transvestite --- "a person and especially a male who adopts the dress and often the behavior typical of the opposite sex especially for purposes of emotional or sexual gratification"
By those definitions, just about everyone on the planet is a crossdresser (which renders the term uninteresting). Also according to that definition, this board is NOT about transvestism.
More commonly, "transvestite" and "crossdressing" are taken as synonyms, with both of them meaning "transvestite" above.
However, this board is not in the business of accepting the wider society's definitions. Rather, we are working to re-define language, perceptions and social norms. Therefore, we are not crossdressers because we say we are not, and we have a good explanation to back it up. In the future, maybe Merriam Webster's definitions will change because of us.
[Moderator Cap]
Either way, threads with titles like this one are obviously inflammatory. I have moved it from the forum called "Skirts and Kilts for MEN" because it was obviously not about that topic. While people may not always agree with the premises of this forum, it is only polite to at least show them some respect.
[/Moderator Cap]
I never use the Marriam Webster dictionary - how can anybody take notice of a dictionary whose publisher can't even spell their own name correctly...
For me the definitive English dictionaries are the Oxford or Cambridge versions; whilst for Australia we have the Macquarie Dictionary, and their Thesaurus as well..
David...
Lake Macquarie (aka paradise..); NSW; Australia.
To dress in clothing typically worn by members of the opposite sex
Now if you’re strict with this definition that makes just about every female who wears trousers a crossdresser. But then that depends on your definition on what constitutes male & female clothing? Its society at large which makes these kind of definitions not us because most of us here want clothing to be gender neutral or gender blind. Those who of us though consider still considers themselves crossdressers should be aware that society at large attaches fetishistic connotations to the term crossdressing & the average image of a crossdresser is something like this http://www.tvmistressmaria.com/.
We need to start writing accessible articles about these issues for the wider public.
Yes I'm because I'm fed up of singing alone & getting kicked by many around these parts from doing so.
It's being worked on. In the admins' copious free time, that is. There is full intent to graft a Wiki onto SkirtCafe where well thought out and carefully written articles can be posted and refined to professional-level standards. We just haven't got all the infrastructure in place yet.
Retrocomputing -- It's not just a job, it's an adventure!
