CD or TV?

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Jack Williams
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CD or TV?

Post by Jack Williams »

I'm not sure what the difference is in this, but I think CD is less extreme. In women for instance CD does not exist, but get into a tuxdo? A bloke in a ballgown?
Why I broach this subject is that when I put up photos on Flickr I get a bit of feedback from the above groups.
Who are really nice. His wife for instance bought him this dress. And he looks really good in it. Fem maybe, but that's the thing.
I notice they dress better than most men or women I have ever seen. Obviously spend heaps on clothes. I'm impressed.
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Re: CD or TV?

Post by crfriend »

Jack Williams wrote:I'm not sure what the difference is in this, but I think CD is less extreme. In women for instance CD does not exist, but get into a tuxdo? A bloke in a ballgown?
I believe that this is more impression than outright fact. Women do have broader latitude in clothes than men currently do, but that is because as a group the put up a fight to make it so; men have yet to do the same thing. Women can, and do, cross firmly over into cross-dressing; the tuxedo example is one of those where it's taken to an extreme, and frequently meets with negative feedback. Similarly, a bloke in anything other than a suit or jeans/khakis immediately gets (or is widely believed to get) hostility shoved his way.

Men have been, over the years, and through their own inaction, painted into two corners -- that of suits (dying out for the bottom 95% of the population) and jeans/khakis. There's quite a bit of middle ground that could well be fruitful for guys to experiment with and make their own. I suspect that a bloke in a ballgown (unless bespoke) will likely always be looked at askance (like the woman in a tux), but this author's life experience has shown that it's possible to "borrow from across the aisle" and create a look that is absolutely believeable and can be altered to be appropriate in many different settings.
Jack Williams wrote:I notice [CDs] dress better than most men or women I have ever seen. Obviously spend heaps on clothes. I'm impressed.
I think that this is down to the fact that attention is being paid to how they look when they're putting a look together -- whether that look is a costume or whether it's for an out-and-about for the day. Unfortunately, for the "classic" cross-dresser it's more about the former than the latter. For us it's more about the latter than the former.

The moral here, I feel, is that if you pay attention to what your look is you will almost automatically look better than those around you who just "threw something on" to cover their nakedness -- and it doesn't matter whether skirts are even involved. I was guilty of the latter for 40-plus years of my life; it took skirts to actually make me take notice of how things look on me.
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Re: CD or TV?

Post by Since1982 »

Long long ago when I was 17 living in a Motel on Fort Lauderdale beach with 3 other men,(none gay) 2 were Crossdressers, 1 was a Transvestite and there is a huge difference between the labels. A TV looks like an upper class woman, where both the CD's looked more like men dressed as women and not doing a very good job of it. (messy wigs, poor makeup jobs, oversized fake body parts...Mainly the TV's lived as women full time, the CD's did it as a lark. :faint:
I had to remove this signature as it was being used on Twitter. This is my OPINION, you NEEDN'T AGREE.

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Re: CD or TV?

Post by crfriend »

Since1982 wrote:A TV looks like an upper class woman, where both the CD's looked more like men dressed as women and not doing a very good job of it. (messy wigs, poor makeup jobs, oversized fake body parts.
I will posit, however, that all three of your flatmates had the same notion in mind -- to role-play -- and that one just paid more attention to detail. Alternately, the other two may have been actively trying to play up the "trailer-park" notion instead of trying to play an upper-class role.

What sets the SkirtCafe group apart is that we do not seem to want to role-play, but rather want to adopt some of these styles as our own and wear them as we are. For instance, when I put on a skirt, I do not change my name to Carla or Carol; I remain very firmly Carl. I also do not even remotely try to "ape" women's looks; I adapt pieces into a look that I find interesting and conveys a sense of who I am -- and this is the context that is completely missing from the "conventional" CD/TV (same thing) world.
.Mainly the TV's lived as women full time, the CD's did it as a lark. :faint:
If the "TV" did so full time, and he was hetero, how did he find partners? The other two would have been regarded as jokers.
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Re: CD or TV?

Post by DALederle »

When I was INTO the TV/CD/TS scene, oh my God, 40 years ago (no-no I can't be that old) and I was what I considered myself to be, a transvestite, my understanding was that TVs tried to look and act exactly like a woman and "pass" as we used to call it. I never came that close to being able to pass but most of the other members of my TV group could, to greater or lesser extents. In other words, we TVs wanted to impersonate women in the smallest detail so no one would know it was a man out in public that was dressed in women's clothing.
Cross dressers (CDs) simply liked to wear women's clothing (or some pieces of women's clothing) and didn't care about their total appearance. Some of these type of men were quite content to wear women's underwear under their male clothing. They didn't want to try and live as a woman.
Most of what I've seen on the internet today is CDs in the old sense of the word. They flaunt being men! They aren't modest and don't try to truly live life as a woman.
Also the so called TSs you see on the internet are not in my oppinion true TSs. That's why they came up with the new term TG.
The TSs I've known, pre and post op, would never draw attnetion to themselves the way the current bunch of TGs do.
TSs used to be "ladies" from the gentile sense of the word.
I am now just an MIS-MIK and no longer find these other groups interesting. Except on a "WOW! Why do they do THAT?" kind of basis.
In fact, right now, it's hard to beleive that I ever did try to dress up the way I used. It seems to futile to me today.
But then, that's just my oppinion!
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Re: CD or TV?

Post by Since1982 »

If the "TV" did so full time, and he was hetero, how did he find partners? The other two would have been regarded as jokers.
The TV had a girlfriend who often helped him with his dressing either at our motel room or his mother's house in town.

As an aside, I was often begged to allow all 3 to "fix" my hair. This was 1963-64, my hair was long shoulder length by then. THey also wanted to "dress" me. I drew the line there tho...the hair they could play with, but I wasn't at all interested in the womanly look. We were all stuffed in a 2 bdrm apt because we were all pretty much broke and no longer able to live at home. :faint:
I had to remove this signature as it was being used on Twitter. This is my OPINION, you NEEDN'T AGREE.

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Re: CD or TV?

Post by Jack Williams »

I've had the comment that my dresses are believable but boring. Can't see me suddenly busting out in a floral number, but maybe there is something in that. I think Mike Spookshow has less boring believable male dresses, but it's a bit of a challenge to avoid fem.
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Re: CD or TV?

Post by DALederle »

Jack:
The real trouble is that men just don't look like women. As an ex-TV myself I know that no matter how hard I tried I could NEVER pass, as they used to say. I don't think I met more then two or three TVs over a 20 year period who could dress up like a women and go un-noticed in public.
Women clothing is also cut and meant for women's bodies and that where it all falls apart. One of the reasons that dresses so seldom look right or fit right on men.
Kilts are made for men (unless it has been made for women, in some cases) and skirts are a sort unisexual. Get the waist and hips right and you are okay.
But most of women's clothing, including pants, shorts, blouses, etc. just don't fit or look right on men.
It's not profitable for large clothing manufacturers to make women's clothing in men sizes or to fit out bodies.
So when you can find a dress that fits you and looks good to you are very lucky.
Like many things in life, it's not fair, it's just the way it is!
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Re: CD or TV?

Post by Since1982 »

Carl said: I will posit, however, that all three of your flatmates had the same notion in mind -- to role-play -- and that one just paid more attention to detail.
That's not really true in this case. At my being 17, the year was 1958 and this sort of thing was not all that accepted in the world. The TV lived the role all the time and his hero in the world was Christine Jorgensen nee( Christopher Jorgensen)who had gone the way of "becoming a woman" the first time It was ever done in the world. He/She had "THE OPERATION" the first time it was done. She was the hero of every TV in the world that was serious. Similar to "our" member Peter V. Who later became Petra V. for real...

I don't know if "our" friend ever went the full way back in 1958 but he certainly was planning it at the time. Of course back then in 1958, just finding a Doctor that "would" do the operation or even "could" do it was rare. :hide:
I had to remove this signature as it was being used on Twitter. This is my OPINION, you NEEDN'T AGREE.

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Re: CD or TV?

Post by DALederle »

Skip:
I really think you friend was a true transsexual, not a TV! He wanted to BE a woman, not just dress like a woman or impersonate a woman.
In 1958 I was fourteen and just a freshman in highschool. But I was going through a stage of wanting to be a woman myself. The teen years are condusing enough but to feel that you are the wrong gender in the wrong type of body is a cause of deep confusion.
My father confronted me about a year earlier, with my "dressing" up in my mother's clothes and asked me if I wanted to become a women. I was so freightened that he knew about my dressing up that I said no, even though a small voice inside my head was shouting "Yes!" "Oh, my, God, yes!" It was one of those times that I, today, deeply regret. I don't know if I would have gone ahead with a full scale change. The thought of surgery so freightened me that I could hardly even think about that part of the transsexual life. I wanted it so bad but it scared me so much. So I went on with my life and tried even harder to keep my true feelings hidden.
That, of course, pretty well doomed my high school years and kept me from being either good in sports or being good academically. It was also to cloud most of my adult life and my first marriage. I sometimes feel sorry for my ex-wife, for what I now know I put her through.
But back then we had no concepts of dressing in kilts, skirts, etc. and still being men while doing it. I thought that I had to dress up and "pass" in order to wear something other then pants. And I was to big to pass as I was unless I actually became a woman so that no one could question my "rights" to being a female out in public. At least I didn't know that it was even possible for a man to just wear a skirt. I only vaguely knew about kilts, but thought of them as some oddity that only Scots wore, and didn't know I was part of the Furgeson clan.
It is a very confusing thing when you caught between genders in your life.
Neither fully a man nor fully a woman.
But I still think that what we are now calling "transgendered" are just a cop out to PC correctness, a way to lump everything under one roof, so to speak and it no longer means the same things that the older terms meant. It is now an excuse to be "kinky' on the web and is no longer truly reflective of the people who really need help with their personal indentities today.
All the more to pity in the way our modern culture has mis-handled concepts and idea.
I am really glad for the internet, that let me find MIS-MIK sites and has shown me I could have worn a kilt or skirt and still have been a man if I had wanted to. That would have made a big difference in my life 50 year ago!
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Re: CD or TV?

Post by Grok »

For many years I thought I must be a TV. But I just could not get interested in the female impersonator thing.

A couple years ago I came to the conclusion that I must be - to some degree - TG. But trying to fit myself into that category was confusing.

I recently came across (this web site) the concept of "Skirtonian." It fits.

The root of the confusion is the sacred dress code of Western Civilization. With unbifurcated garments being almost entirely associated with females, and men being confined to trousers.
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Re: CD or TV?

Post by skirtyscot »

So are you saying, Grok, that wearing skirts is at least partly a sexual thing? I've often wondered about that myself. Most members say they wear skirts because they are the most comfortable garment on a hot day, but we have members in countries where high temeratures are rarely a problem - not least Scotland of course, but also Ireland and Sweden. Most men cope just fine with a loose-fitting pair of shorts and it wouldn't occur to then to put a skirt on to keep cool. So what is it that makes us want to defy social convention?
Keep on skirting,

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Re: CD or TV?

Post by Since1982 »

If you wear a skirt because it gives you a sexual thrill, I think they call that being a crossdresser. or CD. A Transvestite is something else. One that is thinking of becoming transgendered or having an operation to become a woman.

At least every CD I've ever known, did it for the sexual thrill. Dressing up and looking in the mirror for the thrill. Most CD's dress only inside the home. Not in public. Dressers that don't look like real women or TV's but dress to shock and go outside are mostly known as Drag Queens. At least, that's what I've been told in my 50 some years of knowing all three since I was 17 and met the first ones I ever knew. :faint:
I had to remove this signature as it was being used on Twitter. This is my OPINION, you NEEDN'T AGREE.

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Re: CD or TV?

Post by SkirtRevolution »

I think there is a lot of difference of opinion among the transgendered community about these terminologies as well, but among the transgender community you will find that the general consensus is that a crossdresser and transvestite is one in the same thing, although a transvestite is used more as a medical term and carries a negative connotation that is often rejected by the transgender community. The word transgender is a “blanket” term to describe anything from a crossdresser to a transsexual or anyone suffering from “gender dysphoria”. Some prefer to use one term more than another depending on their person preference or what describes them more accurately.

But as I said, you will find different opinions on this amoung crossdressers. important to note, is that concerning the braveheart community e.g this forum, we would not be classed in any of these catagories as we are not trying to emulate and take on the persona of the opposite gender, rather we are simply refer to mens fashion as men.
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Re: CD or TV?

Post by Grok »

skirtyscot wrote:So are you saying, Grok, that wearing skirts is at least partly a sexual thing? I've often wondered about that myself. Most members say they wear skirts because they are the most comfortable garment on a hot day, but we have members in countries where high temeratures are rarely a problem - not least Scotland of course, but also Ireland and Sweden. Most men cope just fine with a loose-fitting pair of shorts and it wouldn't occur to then to put a skirt on to keep cool. So what is it that makes us want to defy social convention?
No, not a sexual thing. More like an individual having a preferece, such as a favorite color, or a favorite genre of music, or a preference for which hand to use (left handed versus right handed). But the insistence by society (specifically, Western civilization) that only females may wear skirted garments...confuses the issue. Or confuses the individual.
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