Cross-dress is a noun defined as the act of wearing clothes usually worn by the opposite sex. People wear clothing for warmth; style; to cover up their nudity; to signify position, status and to identify their gender. Around the world, the clothing people wear for their gender are different from place to place. Men wear pants, woman sear skirts. There few exceptions where men wear a dress like attire. The Evzones, or Evzoni is the name of several historical elite light infantry and mountain units of the Greek Army. Their uniform, the most widely recognizable Greek military dress, is derived from the dress of the depths and the fighters of the Greek War of Independence.
In the area of South Asia, Southeast Asia, Arabian Peninsula, Horn of Africa and many Pacific Island men wear a large tube or length of fabric, often wrapped around the waist and called a sarong or sarung. The fabric most often has woven plaid or checkered patterns or may be brightly colored by means of batik or ikat dyeing. Many modern sarongs also have printed designs, often depicting animals or plants.
In Scotland, men have been wearing kilts a knee-length garment with pleats at the rear, originating in the traditional dress of men and boys in the Scottish Highlands of the 16th century. Since the 19th century, it has become associated with the wider culture of Scotland in general, or with Celtic(and more specifically Gaelic) heritage even more broadly. It is most often made of woolen cloth in a tartan pattern.
In most western dress, men and women shirts are identifiable different as to the way they fasten. Male shirts button left over right and woman shirt (blouse) button right over left. Some historians suggest the button convention was for men modeled after the latching designs of armor, which were designed to stop a right-handed opponent from jamming a pike through the seam. For woman garments, the convention suggests that the left-side buttons on women's clothes may have been intended to facilitate nursing an infant on the side closest to the woman's heart.
The phrase cross-dresses was first coined from the Latin in 1910 by Hirschfeld in his book The Transvestites: An Investigation of the Erotic Desire to Cross Dress. Transvestite literally means, "Wearing clothing normally attributed to the opposite sex." To cross-dress or to be a transvestite has a negative connotation by western society as being connected to homosexuality activity, or being a pervert, or being mentally ill or having a dysfunction. The majority of men that cross-dress are not gay, are not pervert, are not mentally ill or can be diagnosed as a dysfunction. All of these connotations are wrong because cross-dressing has been grossly miss-understood for the last one hundred years.
Are you a Cross-dresser? Do you know a Cross-dresser? Do you want to learn about the Art of Cross-dressing? First, let us make sure we are talking about the same subject. What is cross-dressing?
A common statement today is cross-dressing for men appears to be more popular in 2012 than in 1912. It is not that it is more popular just that the media of today, newspaper, books, Internet has brought the topic to public attention. In 1969 the Gay Rights Movements brought to the public attention that a part of society was different but still had rights. Cross-dresser, transgendered/transsexual persons were all lumped into the same group as Gay and Lesbians.
To cross-dress is to wear the clothes usually worn by the opposite sex. A cross-dresser is a person who cross-dresses for any reason, wearing the clothing of a gender other than to which assigned at birth. Cross-dressers may have no desire or intention of adopting other behaviors or practices common to that gender, and particularly does (currently) not wish to undergo medical procedures to facilitate physical changes. One misconception regarding cross-dressing is men that cross-dress are gay. To the contrary, most cross-dressers are heterosexual. The 1992 survey of over one thousand cross-dressing men showed 71% to be heterosexual and sought sexual relations with woman
The Internet has enlightened cross-dressers they are not alone in their personal and private activity, there are other people out there that share their interest. The attitude of the public is slowly changing, many businesses are becoming cross-dressers friendly. The ability for businesses to make money on the small segment of the population that cross-dress may have also allowed more men to indulged in this harmless activity. Men typically do not talk about cross-dressing much because if they did, they may be considered a fag, queer, or a pervert. Women who cross-dress are sometimes referred to as "butch" or "dykes". It is true that society permits women to wear pants and jeans and other masculine clothing such as tank tops, while condemning any man that chooses to wear clothing that can be strictly identified as women clothes, such as pantyhose, stockings, corsets, bras, and negligee.
Cross-dressing is a behavior that runs counter to the norms of society and is associated with transvestic, transsexual or transgendered behavior. For most men cross-dressing is not necessarily a transsexual or transgender identity disorder since most men that cross dresses not always wish to live full-time as a female or that they have to have an operation to achieve the goal of their inner identity as opposed to the gender to which they were born.
Out of the population that cross-dresses more men than woman practice cross-dressing. Men may feel that dressing as a woman allows them the ability to express a hidden side of their personalities. There are no good statists on how many men cross-dress but the numbers range from 2% to as high as 25% of the male population participates in some sort of cross-dressing activity. Cross-dressing crosses all types of professional, social and psychological barriers.
Throughout history and modern times, cross-dressing has been used for disguise, by the performing arts, and as a literary trope. See the history of cross-dressing. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cross-dressing
Nearly every human society throughout history has made distinctions between male and female gender by the style, color, or type of clothing male and female are expected to wear. Most societies have defined what type of clothing is appropriate for each gender by the setting of norms, views, guidelines, or even laws defining what type of clothing is appropriate for each gender. Remember cross-dressing does not mean there is a transgender identity problem. A person who cross-dresses does not always want to be the other gender only to look like the other gender.
Definitions can be misleading by the publisher for their own prejudges, misunderstanding or other motivations. A few of the definitions from the Internet are listed below along with the reference source.
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