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Transvestites – (Acault-Burmese, Berdaches-male who performs role of wife in some tribes, Eonism, Gynephonia-effeminate voice, Transvestophilla-arousal from transvestism, Virmimism-adoption of masculinity). Transvestites are people who find erotic pleasure in cross dressing. This does not include women in history who have passed as men simply to obtain a better paying job, or higher social status. Nor does it include drag queens, female impersonators, or those involved in petticoat or Victorian lace discipline. In other words, cross dresser who are not sexually aroused by cross dressing are not transvestites.
Cross dressing was practiced in may societies. Balboa was appalled by it among “Chiefs at Quarequa in Panama. He said, was “the most abdominal and unnatural lechery,’ practiced by ‘the Kynges bother and many other younger men in women apparel, smoth and effeminately decked, which by report of such dwelt abowte hym, he abused with preposterous venus.” Balboa dealt summarily with other offenders, throwing forty of them to his dogs” (Sin In History, by Reay Tannahill, p 293, citing anglerius’ Opera…Oceani decas, pp. 89-90)
Cross-dressing sometimes had religious significance. An American Indian tribe believed that if a man dreamed of the moon goddess he must dress like a woman, perform those duties, and have sex with men. In other tribes the medicine men had to cross dress as a condition of this office.
One of the more notorious transvestites was a Roman name Heliogabalus, who would dress as a woman and evict prostitutes from their bordellos, taking over their clientele. He eventually fell in love with a slave and at the wedding dressed in a gown, afterward going through defloration scene. Heliogabalus was assassinated by his soldiers upon discovering his plot to abdicate and make his husband the emperor, declaring himself empress of Rome. Others included the harem of the 17th century Spanish nun who left the convent dressed as a man, became a soldier, and fought in South America before being discovered. A century later two female cross dressers fought on a pirate ship until they were captured by the Jamaican government and sentenced to death in 1720 (The Mysteries of Sex, Women Who Posed as Men and Men Who Impersonated Women, by C.J.S. Thompson).
European men dressed in elaborate costumes, bright colors, and wore wigs and makeup until the end of the 18th century, when they adopted dull colors and simple styles. Crossdressing allows men to a least temporarily break with this tradition and experience some pleasure in their appearance. This is referred to by some as fashion envy.
Transvestites primarily wear opposite-sex clothes for the purpose of sexual arousal. For this reason they tend to choose items they associate with sexy women, such as lingerie, stiletto high hills, and bikinis.
Male crossdressers often have the attitude that womena are pampered. When these men crossdress they are able to foreget the stresses from the office and to relax. Their rigid male persona does not normally allow for this type of pampering. Transvestities frequently exaggerate sex-role sterotypes by assuming very masculine roles (truck drivers or construction workers) in their careers. One transvestite was not able to be sexually submissive to a female partner in his male personal but insisted on being submissive in his female role. He chose to go without sex rather than submit to a whipping in his male character; a whipping that he asked for in his remale role.
A transvestite seems like the perfect date for a bi-sexual female. However, several who have attempted dating transvestites have stated that while their date looked and acted like a female they still had strong male energy. Therefore, instead of becoming aroused by being with a female (or male) the sexual response became confusing and dissipated because one felt more like they were with a man who was dressed like a woman. Here are many wives of such transvestites who adjust to the crossdressing in their sex lives; however, similar to fetishes a partner can often feel they do not rank in first place.
Websites and newspapers with personal adds, magazines videos and businesses cater to this preference. Note: transvestism is illegal in the Untied states if one is found loitering or soliciting. However, the support groups for transvestities such as ETVC in San Francisco provide social opportunities for desiring to crossdress away from home. Most of the S/M bars and bondage clubs also welcome crossdressers. (See Adolescentilism, Androidism, Andromimetophilia, Costumes, Drag Queens, Female Impersonators, Petticoat Discipline, Transsexuals, and Victorian Lace)
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