jitterbugjive:

The reason a man dressed as a woman is ‘funny’ is because people are seeing all things feminine as jokes. The same reason men in pink is laughed at, and why men acting feminine is also often something people joke about. We get movies about men dressing as women for admirable purposes (Mrs. Doubtfire) and it’s a comedy.

Usually, women dressing as men is considered bold, brave, and heroic, even charming at times. Examples like how people admire tomboys and praise them for being athletic while girly boys are called ‘sissies’, and we get ‘inspirational’ movies like Mulan where her dressing as a man is funny for a bit, but still proves she is bold and brave for that action. It’s the reason strong women in media are being praised so much, because we’re trying to say ‘masculinity is good. Masculinity is what makes a woman admirable’. 

And yet we don’t get major films showing men embracing and accepting femininity. 

We as a society have been deeming ‘feminine’ as weak, silly, and laughable, while anything masculine is praised. We try to encourage women to be stronger and more bold, but we don’t encourage men to be more sensitive and vulnerable. 

This is where we have extremist feminists screaming that men shouldn’t touch anything that is meant to be ‘for women’. They don’t realize they are villainizing femininity and embracing masculinity. These women are doing as our society taught them: They are acting in a way they were taught was strong. To act more masculine, essentially. We shouldn’t be talking about man and woman as two binary defined things. We need to start looking at things as masculine and feminine, and praise both as strengths but also be willing to look at the flaws of both as well. 

This whole thing about men in dresses being ‘offensive’. It has nothing to do with transphobia. This is gender misogyny. It wouldn’t be offensive if we just stopped and said ‘there is nothing wrong with a man in a dress’ as a society. And it’s weird because a long time ago, it was wrong for a woman to dress as a man, but men dressing as women was standard in theater which was considered a sophisticated thing. 

Somewhere along the line, that changed. Somewhere along the line, women learned that in order to be strong, they needed to be considered able to do all the things men can do. They are now equals in that they can wear pants, and they can act masculine, they can hold that difficult job and support a family on their own, they can be heroes.

But because they used masculinity to create ‘equality’, femininity was sacrificed. Men could not be equals to women because masculinity for both genders has become so highly praised that they FEAR being anything but masculine. We want men to understand women more, and we want to all be equals, but how can we be when we won’t allow people to embrace feminine things no matter their gender? 

Why can’t we try to encourage everyone to have a good balance of both sides and that either side is just as admirable and just as strong as the other? 

Instead of screeching about a man wearing a dress being offensive to transpeople, maybe you should be screeching about how colors, outfits, and choices on appearance need to stop being so heavily gendered. And fight for the fact that there is nothing wrong in the masculine embracing the feminine.