Adventures in Crossdressing (part one)

(I cropped out the guilty faces…)

I figured I’ve written enough blog posts in the past few months dealing with some very general, weighty issues and it was high time I got back to talking about just having fun dressed as a girly.

I think it helps a lot if you can take a potentially nerve-wracking experience and regard it with some slight detachment. In some ways, I’ve found it can be like operating like an undercover agent, gauging people’s reactions to you. Acting cool and glib can work as well – if challenged, telling people you’re crossdressed “just for the hell of it”, “because it seemed like a good idea at the time” or “hey, don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it” can be quite disarming.

For some reason, people keep wanting to touch my boobs, especially women. When they ask, I just say, “Go right ahead; they’re not real and I won’t feel a thing.” When men ask it tends to be a ‘what the hell are those things made of’ sort of inquiry, with a tentative prod or squeeze. Women tend to approach it more from the ‘but if you’re completely flat chested, how do you get it to look like that?’ angle, and confirm that my chest does not move or feel real after all.

Helping out at the IgNobel UK tour…

Still, it’s better than the time after I took an impromptu part in the Ig Nobel UK tour’s visit to my home town in 2012, when a complete stranger grabbed my arse. It turned out to be a middle-aged woman whose first pint of beer of the evening was so far in the past it wasn’t even a memory.

“I wanted to talk to you but I didn’t know how to start,” she explained.

“You could always say ‘hello’,” I suggested.

After that, I just answered her questions. Once we’d dealt with what, how, and when, she asked why I was cross-dressed. I gave her the ‘Just for the hell of it’ answer. She seemed satisfied with that, thanked me for my time, and staggered back to the bar.

This is the expression I have when I’m put on the spot and asked to summarise the differences between ‘transvestite’, ‘transgender’ and ‘transexual’ in less than 60 seconds…

I don’t mind answering people’s questions as long as they don’t monopolise my time when I’m out. The way I see it, if they’re asking, they want to know more and I’m happy to help. I have a talk on cross-dressing I gave to a couple of UK Skeptics In The Pub groups, and figured I was well-prepared with a handful of Frequently Questioned Answers at the end, before the audience Q&A got going.

Having dealt with the obvious ones already, I was less prepared for questions about where, precisely, I shaved – once it was established that the question wasn’t about ‘which room in the house’, but ‘where on the body’, I said anywhere that was likely to be seen by the general public. I was also asked if I’d ever had sex whilst cross-dressed. I said I’d answer the question if they could explain why they wanted to know, and what they were going to do with this information?

There are ways of avoiding answering questions, and There Are Ways Of Avoiding Answering Questions…

Frequently questioned answers…

One of these days I really should take the talk around the rest of the UK…