What's it actually like to be a transvestite? If you are one, what does it tell you about everybody else?

Turner prize winning artist Grayson Perry explores, in a totally honest unsparing way, what it feels like to be a transvestite. Not only the pain, humiliation and rejection experienced, but also the triumph, the joys of surrendering to erotic compulsion, the thrill of frills, the eyes of furtive men in car coats darting over your body and the liberation of giving yourself license to be a sissy. He clears up the myths about the subject. He distinguishes being a tranny, to being a transsexual, being gay, or drunkenly putting on a pair of false boobs at a stag night. He also explores the deep way that all of these conditions are connected.

Above all, he turns the tables, using what he's learnt from being a transvestite to say some important things about sexuality and gender in our society generally. If, as Grayson argues, cross-dressing is a complicated kind of flight from masculinity and the way it's policed, then it's the masculinity we should attend to, not just the cross-dressing. This is about why some heterosexual men cross-dress, but also why most men don't. Ultimately, Why Men Wear Frocks is about the difficulty of being a man. The pathology it explores is a social, not an individual one.

Grayson Perry, talks about his life as a transvestite and the effect on his family in our inspiring interview. If you'd like some advice, information or support about being a transvestite or would like to know where to find trans-gender products check out our resources section.