Boy Meets Girl
Gender bending
For most people, the
image of a cross-dresser is that of a drag queen. Tall and glamorous,
dressed to kill and heavily made up, with impossibly long eyelashes and
spangly, revealing outfits, the stereotypical drag-queen image is powerfully
stamped on the popular imagination.
But the history of
cross-dressing stretches back a long way, to origins far removed from
gay night clubs. In medieval Europe, women cross-dressed to overcome the
gender hierarchy. Historical accounts reveal that abandoned wives often
donned male disguise in order to live independent lives. The literature
of the time reveals a fascination with cross-dressing. Some have speculated
that Joan of Arc was a transvestite — and there is even a legend
of a female Pope.
Theatre and film
In the Elizabethan
period, men dressed as women to play female roles in the theatre. Shakespeare
often used cross-dressing as a comic device, and this led to convoluted
situations in which a man would dress as a woman who would dress as a
man. In Twelfth Night, for example, a male actor would dress as
a woman to play Viola, then Viola would dress as a man in order to infiltrate
the court of Count Orsino.
Shakespeare used cross-dressing
for a good reason. It allows for disguise and deceit, seductions and mistaken
identities. For this reason, cross-dressers have always been loved by
the entertainment industry. From the 'sweet transvestite from Transylvania'
in the Rocky Horror Picture Show to Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria,
cross-dressers never fail to amuse and intrigue us.
However, gender bending
in cinema serves a deeper purpose than simple comedy. In Tootsie,
Dustin Hoffman cross-dresses because it is the only way he can get an
acting job. In Mrs Doubtfire, Robin Williams dresses up as a woman
to gain access to his children. Both films explore and illuminate the
relationship between power and gender at the time the films were made.
Politics and science
Gender politics have
always been a minefield, but in the 20th century they became still more
complex. Transvestites — men who dress as women or women who dress
as men — are just one group in the transgender
community. There are also transsexuals, who have undergone
operations in order to change their sex.
The first sex change
operation was carried out in 1952. Private George Jorgenson, a soldier
in the US army, was convinced he was a woman in a man's body. After leaving
the army, he persuaded a Danish doctor, Professor Christian Hamburger,
to perform a sex change operation and returned to the United States as
Christine Jorgenson.
Since George became
Christine, medical advances have made sex reassignment surgery, as well
as hormone treatments, widely available in the West. Charing Cross Hospital,
which has the largest sex-change clinic in Europe, carries out approximately
one sex change operation a week. However, if funding increases, that number
could rise to three a week: the demand is there.
In addition to transvestites
and transsexuals, there are 'gender transients', those who reject the
idea of strict gender boundaries. They believe that throughout our lives
we are bombarded with gender propaganda which enforces a repressive —
and unrealistic — dual gender system.
Oppression
But those who challenge
that system often find themselves the victims of violence by those who
believe gender boundaries should be respected. In Read
My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender, Riki Ann Wilchins,
herself a transsexual, argues that there is a system of oppression against
the transgendered. She recounts tales of trans-people beaten to death,
stabbed and strangled, mutilated and raped.
One of the most famous
cases of violence against a transgendered person was that of Teena Brandon,
the subject of the 2000 film Boys Don't Cry. Brandon, a teenage
girl who dressed as a boy, was raped and murdered when boys in the town
in which she lived discovered her true identity. A comedian on Saturday
Night Live, a mainstream American comedy programme, passed a chilling
comment on the tragedy: 'In Nebraska, a man was sentenced for killing
a female cross-dresser who had accused him of rape, along with two of
her friends. Excuse me if this sounds harsh, but in my mind they all deserved
to die.'
Form
and content
The
contestants
Boys
will be girls
Girls
will be boys
Gender
bending
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out more
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