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    • #443020

      So!

      I was reading, “Anecdotal v. Scientific!”, by Falecia McGuire at this site:

      https://www.crossdresserheaven.com/anecdotal-v-scientific/

      It claims inspiration from Gabrielle Hermosa, whom I do not always agree wholly with but for whom I have a strong regard and admiration for a number of significant reasons. I strongly recommend reading it. It is not often I get to say to myself, “Thank goodness that some else thinks like that! Maybe I am not crazy after all.”

      Aside about some quibbles on terminology the thesis of the article can be summarized by the statement in it;

      “Because I’ve read Blanchard, Lawrence, Moser, et all, and none of their studies confirm or effectively refute the similarities between mildly-sexualized, but otherwise normal, females and heterosexual crossdressers.”

      This may not mean a great deal to you but it does to me in that others recognized some of the inherent contradictions in the concepts referred to. My concepts would say:

      “A certain set of females are athenists and a certain set of males are athenists. The desire to be feminine and beautiful is not barred by one’s sex. I suspect that in another society the prevalence of female athenising and male athenising would be the same.”

      That is, some females take delight in being feminized through clothing, cosmetics, body language, scents, accessorization, modification of vocal patterns and linguistic patterns, poise, movement, etc. in order to heighten their sexual appeal and in doing so arouse their own libido. Ditto some men.

      The best estimate of the prevalence of cross-dressing men in North America is 3%. Now that females are less required to wear what they are told to wear based on highly questionable reasoning I assume that they are wearing what they want to wear no when they are permitted to wear what they want. The same goes for males. Based on my observation of what people wear the past decade or two, I assume that the prevalence of females who would like to habitually athenise is probably 3% as well.

      I wish someone would find out. I do notice that, in studies of gender in males a comparison of similar behaviors in females is often disregarded. In other words, they seem to miss that a behaviour that appears in both sexes is therefore not a matter of sex but of gender.

      Anyway!

      Read the article.

      Araminta.

    • #443150
      Anonymous

      Hi Araminta,

      Thanks for offering up the article. I’m afraid I got a bit lost in the terminology too. I couldn’t for the life of me find an online definition of ‘the word “athenist” – which obviously didn’t  help.

      Is she saying (in my crude paraphrase) ‘Some people, either gg or cd – or cis male for that matter,  like to look good so they can flaunt it a bit, and be considered admirable or desirable” ? In which case I don’t disagree. But I don’t think that’s a very controversial observation, is it? We all prefer to be accepted or thought well of, even if we all don’t go out of our way looking for it.

      So perhaps I’ve missed the point. Wouldn’t be the first time.

      There’s another thing you could maybe clarify? Please, please, please would you post the source for the observation that 3% of the US population are cd’ers.

      In a post not too long ago, I linked to a UCLA research  paper  from 2016 which came up way off that figure – it was a nationwide study and their data provided a value of only 0.6%.

      How Many Adults Identify as Transgender in the United States? – Williams Institute (ucla.edu)

      I confess I was disappointed in that percentage, I always assumed – or perhaps hoped is a better word – it would be higher  because there’s more strength in numbers and all that stuff. So I’d love to learn about  bone fide research that indicates there’s more of us.

      Marti x

       

      • #443304

        Hi, Marti.

        Getting lost in the terminology is easy to do as the meaning of terms, indeed the origin of terms, has shifted wildly over the past 50-years. I still have yet to see a meaningful definition of ‘non-binary’ especially when the sexes are a binary. ‘Transgender’ has mutated more than any other term and was originally used to indicate that so-called ‘trannssexual’ persons do not actually transit between sexes but anatomically between genders. Almost immediately (about 1969) it was adopted to refer to males who presented full-time as feminine but did not go through a full, transition process anatomically. About 20-years ago it was generally accepted as an ‘umbrella’ term, including anyone who transited between genders. After that it sort of devolved into a nebulous term that nobody agrees upon. Personally I take it to mean what it means, a movement from one gender to another.

        ‘Athenist’ is my own term. It is based on the legends of Pandora, the first human being, created by the Greek goods. She was given a variety of gifts including beauty by Aphrodite and this beauty was enhanced by Pallas Athena through clothing, jewelry, cosmetics, etc. So I thought of the process of creating an enhanced feminine persona as athenising. It was about that time that I realized that this process was not restricted to males but was a generally human process regardless of one’s sex.

        As for the 3% I cannot cite a particular source or sources, just a value that came up several times and seemed relatively consistent, at least as an estimate, with the apparent relevance of males presenting as feminine in a realistic manner. The 0.6% otherwise mentioned depends on the definition of ‘transgender’ and since that is still not settled upon I suspect that they are referring to people who go through HRT, RLE, FFS, GRS, etc., where the prevalence would far, far less than that of male athenisation.

        AS for your statement, “‘Some people, either gg or cd – or cis male for that matter,  like to look good so they can flaunt it a bit, and be considered admirable or desirable.” , that is substantially correct except that there is no such thing as ‘cis-male’. I do know where the ‘cis’ comes from and it is a linguistic fallacy at best. They are just male. I simplify it by saying, “Some people like to be pretty and attractive. Some are female and some are males.” Both do so by athenising.

        So, I think you have the general idea of what I am getting at, don’t worry too much about terminology, most of it is garbage anyway, and I also suspect that there are far more male athenists than 0.6% of the male population.

        Araminta.

         

        P.S.

        The article you refer to asks, “Do you consider yourself to be male-to-female, female-to-male, or gender non-conforming?” and mentions “sex-at-birth”. Since transgender is “Masculine-to-Feminine”, not male to female (an impossibility in human beings at this time). Since sex-at-birth is a meaningless term taken from the pathetic practice of ‘assigning’ neonates as ‘female’ when they are born with genitalia deemed to be ‘abnormal’ and it was easier to ‘create’ surgical ‘female’ genitalia (a practice, thankfully, since abandoned as cruel and unethical), and since one’s sex is determined long before birth. I would immediately question the researchers understanding let alone their methodology. Their basic question, “Do you consider yourself to be transgender?”, depends on the respondent’s understanding of the term (most cross-dressers equate ‘transgender’ with ‘transsexual’ and would answer, “No!”) That understanding is so mangled by the inaccurate use of terminology (male-to-female, sex at birth) in studies such as this and the erroneous conclusions drawn from them that such responses would be meaningless. If they had asked questions such as, “Do you like to be feminine?”, “How frequently?”, etc., they may have received a more meaningful response. I may try to read the study but I suspect that it is more an exercise in statistics rather than a reflection of reality.

        A.

        • #443664
          Anonymous

          Hi again,

          (LisaT, for you too. I hope you don’t mind, I’ve bundled up a single response)

          Thanks you both for taking the time to respond. Much appreciated.

          Firstly, I couldn’t agree more that terminology in this area can be a nightmare. I’m far from experienced in its use. I find myself reading something and thinking ‘hang on, that’s not what I read in xyz article, now which is the most widely accepted definition?’ Makes me wonder if  a divergence of opinion may sometimes simply stem from participants using their own understanding of terminology and assuming their opposite had that same interpretation. LOL, not a great state of affairs!

          As regards that 2016 study, I cited, it has some standing in that it has been peer reviewed and  5 years to be critiqued by future studies, but I can’t find any more.  It may well be that they exist, but are hiding behind a academic firewall  (when I had a “.ac.uk” account I didn’t realise how lucky I was!)  . I was hoping you might able to source some for me.

          I agree that the central question set quite a high bar  by asking a question, and then only offering a clarification / definition of its (in my opinion quite high on the spectrum) terminology if respondents asked for one. It could be imagined that the original yes/ no answer produced a ‘not me!’ knee jerk reaction, hence skewing positive responses downwards. But there again, as someone commented on another thread, you wouldn’t want to make the bar so low that anyone who had once thought of wearing knickers was included.

          But that study is the past, I’ remain curious as to what later ones have to  offer. Time will tell. Thanks to both of you.

          Marti x

    • #455757

      Hi Araminta!

      Wow that was some heavy reading….. It reminded me of reading for humanities in college. I wasn’t always 100% sure of the meanings of all the content but somehow I felt improved afterwards.

      How many studies are done as follows….

      Someone comes up with a hypothesis. They decide to do a study. The make up a questionnaire to gather some data. Once date is collected it is presented in a fashion that best supports the hypothesis to make someone feel or seem smart. In fact the questionnaire was designed to ask just the kinds of questions that supported the hypothesis. In fact I would wager there have been plenty of time where some of the data collected didn’t support the hypothesis and was conveniently dropped because someone didn’t want conflicting data to make them look bad.

      Many studies are done with an agenda. Sometimes people are assigned to do a study to “prove” something for someone else’s gain. One study says Butter is bad for you. It will clog your arteries, give you heart disease, and you will die of heart failure. Another study says “Margarine will give you cancer because it is full of carcinogenic chemicals that your body can’t process and it will alter your chromosomes, clog your kidneys, and turn your liver into hamburger. Furthermore butter is from nature and your body is fully capable of processing these natural ingredients. Of course the first study was paid for by the corporations that make margarine, and the second by the united dairy farmers foundation.

      When it comes to surveys and questionnaires, sometimes people just don’t answer honestly. There are many here that wouldn’t fill out a gender questionnaire honestly if their SO were to be sitting next to them while they filled it out. Truth is, data can be quite unreliable.

      I read Felecia’s article that you linked. I think she makes some good points. It’s a good article.

      You are soooooo right about terminology. Definitions change not just over time but also from one place to another. Sometimes that country to country and other times just across the street.

      Thanks for giving me a lot to consider. The similarities between CDs and GGs is as interesting as the differences. I find wearing a bra a treat to be relished. My wife finds wearing a bra as a burden that is absolutely necessary until she comes home and frees herself from it. A wise man once said about similarities…. “My wife and I are similar, it’s the differences that count.”

      I will say this. I will never challenge you to a game of scrabble. I have two reasons for this. First, you have a wonderful vocabulary that would make you a formidable opponent. Second, you make up words??? No fair! Like Marti, I spent time searching for meaning of “Athenist” and “Athenising”. Next time I expect proper footnotes or annotation. 😛

      Hugs

      Autumn

       

      • #455911

        Hi, Autumn.

        Your point that, especially neophyte academics, many tend to seek confirmation of their own expectations or hypotheses is important. I probably do so as well but I have come to doubt my own conclusions and constantly question them. My problem is that over the years, I keep coming to the same or similar conclusions in contradiction with ‘experts’. This has caused me to question my sanity. I don’t mind being weird, just not delusional.

        There was a book that attempted to use ethnocentrism to prove that the sexes (both of them) were equivalents to the genders (all three) but proving that you could determine a person’s sex by looking at rather childish drawings. This book influenced a lot of thought and led to the belief that one can change one’s sex even to the point of calling medical professionals nazis because they insisted that the objective state of sex was immutable in humans even if the objective state of gender could be modified. They actually failed to use ethnocentrism properly (which is based on how people see themselves and not on how others see them) and their methodology was putrid. The only question asked (can this person get pregnant) that was actually indicative of sex was not allowed to be answered because that would ‘give it away’.

        I see similar works again and again sometimes by doctoral candidates who seem to be operating at a junior high school level.

        I dislike ‘cross-dressing’ because the ‘cross’ leads to the inference of abnormality. To me it is just ‘dress’. Some people like to be pretty. Not all of the time. Some are female and some are male. Being pretty I associate with femininity including personality and other behavourial aspects. But ‘dress’ is a too-common term that is hardly to the point. When the gods created Pandora (‘all-gifts’) they gave her gifts such as beauty, intelligence, etc. Pallas Athena ‘dressed’ her, clothing, jewelry, etc. So to be ‘dressed’ is to be athenized (athenised?, WHATever) and your sex is immaterial. What is the point is whether you are pretty and feminine. I wanted to indicate that one’s sex is irrelevant to one’s gender; mostly anyway. No boundaries are ‘crossed’, it is just that being androgynous, masculine or feminine are different formats, states, styles, collections of attributes or, I as I put it to be brief, gestalts.

        Sometimes I do not want to wear a bra either. I would want breastforms that actually stay in place and have had some brief success with glue, but it is more of a hassle than simply holding them in place with a bra. And why do they not make adjustable straps adjustable all of the way?

        Thanks,

        Araminta.

    • #443665
      Anonymous

      Thanks Lisa,

      – I’ve bundled up a single reply to you and Araminta, see above.

       

      Marti x

    • #444008

      Hi, Marti.

       

      To me your statement:

       

      “I find myself reading something and thinking ‘hang on, that’s not what I read in xyz article, now which is the most widely accepted definition?’ Makes me wonder if a divergence of opinion may sometimes simply stem from participants using their own understanding of terminology and assuming their opposite had that same interpretation.”

       

      is more than conjecture but is established fact. It stems from two phenomena. First that people tend to subjectively select points-of-view or statements that fit their own perceptions rather than applying an objective examination of those principles put forward. Secondly it derives from the failure of academia in general to avoid turning from, “Knowledge for Knowledge’s sake!”, to the practice of simply feeding post-secondary students the ‘accepted’ believes and terminology (i.e., jargon) deemed acceptable to a particular field or discipline of the time. Two examples from my university days (ca. 1968-9) were the concept of Orogenesis (how mountains develop) in Geology and a valedictorian address by an acquaintance.

       

      I was taught that, as mountains wore down the silt accumulated on ocean floors pushing the floor down and subsequently pushing up mountains at the side of the depression. It seemed rational at the time as clearly the heights of the Rocky Mountains, for example, had once been seabeds. There were fallacies I did not recognize at the time, such as, why was the land on the seaward side of the depression not raised as well? This was about the same time (1967) the concept of Plate Tectonics, although proposed as early as 1915, was widely accepted. The instructor for Geology 101 simply accepted the prevailing theory and disregarded the newly published evidence.

       

      At the same time, the address given by my friend pointed out that universities had become less places of learning and knowledge and simply diplomat factories where one could receive accreditation permitting them to make policy and decisions of varying magnitude of significance by simply reiterating prior errors and misconceptions.

       

      In other words, the condition of contradictory observations and linguistic usage is not only evident but has been with us for some decades.

       

      In matters of gender, what I find most disturbing is the borrowing of terminology from other disciplines by people lacking experience or training in those disciplines thereby applying a meaning to those terms that as not only not originally intended but is at odds with that original meaning. For example, gender as a ‘spectrum’. Do they even know what a spectrum is or means? Bem’s work offered the proposition that (as per earlier researchers) femininity and masculinity should not be regarded as the endpoints of some sliding scale but as separate constructs based on a collection of socially defined (and significantly different as a whole) attributes, each with their own variable degrees of intensity. (Think of the difference between a number line and an orthogonal grid (graph) created by two, but distinct, number lines in which the genders (masculinity and femininity) are ‘measure’ separately. What Bem overlooked was that her concept should have been 3-dimensional, including prevalence, in which persons who score low or high on both genders would be relatively rare and that most persons would score more within a central field of the masculine-feminine 2-dimensions.

       

      However, unlike in Algebra, a variation in femininity does not necessarily define a change in femininity. There is no relationship such as x = y (squared)) If gender is a spectrum then what is being measured? What are the units of measurement? What instruments are used to make those measurements? Since each spectrum is a range of contiguous, measurable values, there would necessarily be infinite genders just as the colour spectrum has infinite colours as expressed by varying wavelengths. Name 100 of that infinity of genders! Name 20 genders! Name more than three genders! Masculinity and femininity are not variations of the same thing and they are not the opposite ends of some range. Colours are a range defined by the visible portion of the electro-magnetic scale of energy. That is what ‘spectrum’ means, the objectively visible. Masculinity and femininity are usually judged by what is visible, but the determination is subjective. Two shades of orange can be differentiated by accurate measurement but ‘measuring’ either masculinity or femininity has no objective scale or values. In fact, the objective measurement of gender has been a huge problem (due to varying definitions over time) for at least 120-years.

       

      What gender ultimately means is ‘type’, ‘kind’, ‘classification’ or ‘style’. While taxonomy can include a series of progressions or variations as in what as used to be known as the Linnaean system of classification (in which ‘genus’ lied between ‘Family’ and ‘Species’, this linear model is not necessary to the general concept of gender. In the modern, North American, ethnocentric view of gender we have so perverted the usage of the term that we have to borrow a foreign word, genre, (which is just French for gender) to use in describing artistic variations such as in Literature (variations of fiction such as historical, fantasy, romance or variations of nonfiction such as biography, history, science) or cinema (sand and sandal, western, drama, historical drama, etc.) The word, gender, was itself appropriated from the English Language, again influenced by the largely degenderized, ethnocentric usage of the time (ca. 1900-1930). In English Grammar there are three genders, masculine, feminine and neutral. This has been true since the beginnings of Old English.

       

      So, motion pictures that are classified as ‘terror’ or ‘comedy’ are actually genders and nobody assumes that ‘terror’ and ‘comedy’ are variations of the same thing although both can be, in varying degrees, present in the same work. “The Abominable Dr. Phibes”, seems to be an example.

       

      In languages in which gender is still a significant and active element of Grammar, the distinction between sex (apparently from the same origins as ‘section’ referring to the division of the species into the binary that permits species propagation and continuation as well as evolution) and gender (any form of typology of forms that have some degree of relationship) is, by those expert in that language, strictly emphasized.

       

      So, to say that something is masculine is to say that something is of a ‘type’ associated within our immediate culture with males but not necessarily applicable to males. The use of the concept of ‘female’ clothes emphasizes the more egregious misuse of this association; as clothes are not living beings, do not have offspring let alone sexes. However, clothing can be feminine as defined by the more immediate society in which they are worn. In the early 19<sup>th</sup>century military (therefore masculine) uniforms were ‘feminized’ by the Fashion of the day.

       

      We are just beginning to think of professions, such as the Law, as not being wholly masculine domains and only beginning NOT to be surprised that a female could actually be a lawyer. Even today law enforcement is so male-dominated that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is under severe scrutiny for blatantly evident, misogynistic and sexist practices of an almost barbaric nature. When one thinks ‘football’ (even in Britain, the USA and especially in Brazil) one rarely thinks of female athletes. To say that football, in our perception, is masculine is true but to say that it is solely a male sport is false. Yet we still make that conflation and equivalency and the supposition that male = masculine is still a prevalent premise today.

      I had intend to write a lot more but find that I have written too much plus I am getting bored with writing. Also I found that the bulk of what I wrote was irrelevant. If you made it this far, I applaud your persistence and patience.

       

      Araminta.

    • #444198
      Anonymous

      Sorry Araminta,

      – that’s too much of a smorgasbord for me. I’ll pass on that, if you don’t mind.

      Marti x

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