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.
Crazyman wrote:There is a difference between cross dressing and transvestitism. A transvestite wants to pass himself off as a woman, whereas a cross dresser does not, just like all the other people on this site.
I'm going to have to (respectfully!) disagree. "transvestite" is just "cross" (trans) "clothing" (vestia) in Latin. Every culture has their own idea of what, if any, difference there is between the two terms. If your definitions work for you, great -- but don't assume everyone else means the same thing that you do by them, or expect others to change their understanding of the terms to match your definitions.
What we lack are more precise terms to specifically identify subgroups of crossdressers. There are crossdressers who do so because they are preparing for physical transition (pre-op transsexuals), crossdressers who do not want SRS at all but do feel that at least some of the time they are fully female and wish to look and act the part as much as possible, crossdressers who want to feel "girly" but make no effort to pass, crossdressers (like most here) who consider themselves fully male inside and out but choose to wear clothes more commonly associated with women... and probably a thousand more subtle shades in between -- I'm not even getting into the group that derives some sexual pleasure out of their choice of clothing or those who believe that they are literally two different people in the same body, choosing their clothes depending on whether they feel the male half or the female half is dominant at any given time.
Crazyman wrote:There is a difference between cross dressing and transvestitism. A transvestite wants to pass himself off as a woman, whereas a cross dresser does not, just like all the other people on this site.
I'm going to have to (respectfully!) disagree. "transvestite" is just "cross" (trans) "clothing" (vestia) in Latin. Every culture has their own idea of what, if any, difference there is between the two terms. If your definitions work for you, great -- but don't assume everyone else means the same thing that you do by them, or expect others to change their understanding of the terms to match your definitions.....
Language evolves and subtly changes its meaning and connotations over time. Differences also occur from country to country and even within different cultures in a single country.
Here in the UK within the LGBT community, the terms 'transvestite' and especially the popular abbreviation 'tranny' are generally taking on a definite derogatory meaning and wouldn't now normally be used to describe such a person. Even though it is simply the literal translation of the Latin, 'cross dresser' is felt to be a more acceptable, neutral, term. 'Transgender' and the abbreviation 'trans' are even more acceptable.