Crossdressing history comes in two parts, one is the personal crossdresser’s history. The other is part of the collective history of crossdressing men wearing dresses over the ages.
Younger crossderesser’s will have a relatively short history but, are none the less part of the collective history of crossdressing. The younger crossdresser’s are the inspiration for this post. It also pertains to others regardless of their age that have recently made the leap to explore crossdressing.
CROSSDRESSING FEAR AND TREPIDATION
Crossdressing in public isn’t what it used to be and the young and newly launched gurlz benefit from the efforts of those who came before. Long before Caitlyn Jenner drew so much attention to the subject when she came out to the world others were pushing the envelope. Some at great personal cost like divorce, job loss and in some cases jail. The farther back in history you go the worse it was.
30 years ago I would have been extremely uncomfortable going into the 555 Steakhouse dressed as a woman. It is an upscale restaurant in downtown Long Beach near the convention center. The 555 is always crowded liquored up convention folks. Getting the cold shoulder from the management and frowns from the customers would have been my expectation and that would be the good part. Fearing being asked to leave or having customers request being moved were also a consideration. My worst fear though would be to have had some dunce pull my wig off and play catch with his boozed up buddies.
Please understand my paranoia of the 555 Steakhouse was in no way based on the establishment but, my fear of society in general in those days.
Last month I made a reservation at the 555 online for 10 people on the Friday night before our club (CHIC) Christmas Party. I did not notify them in advance that we were going to be crossdressed. I did years ago out of consideration for the restaurant. The reason being that they know me there. Micki has eaten their many times in large and small groups being treated as a lady every time. I think I am in their computer system so they know what to expect when we arrive. That Friday night the place was really crowded but our food & service were exceptional. Other than we were dressed better than most of the women there nobody paid us much attention.
MATURE CROSSDRESSER HISTORY
I have posted before on mature crossdressing history when I wrote about a book my friend John C. Gunn authored called I’m Dressed Your Not. John went by the name Lane when we met at a CHIC meeting about 30 years ago. She is in her 90’s now and I and others learned a lot from her especially the fingernail technique I use. Another post I did was about Laverne Cummings who would be about the same age as Lane had she not passed a couple of years ago.
I recently came across some information on the internet that took me back to the early stages of my crossdressing history. It along with seeing how different things are nowadays for younger and newly launched crossdressers are what inspired this post. Possibly after reading it those with less crossdresser history will gain an appreciation for those who came before and blazed the trail.
CROSSDRESSER DOCUMENTERIES
I came across a series of YouTube crossdressing videos by JoAnn Roberts from the mid 1980’s along with a tape from the Phil Donahue television daytime show.
JoAnn passed in 2013 but not before making a significant impact on the crossdressing history of many of us.
She started her own publishing company and began producing LadyLike Magazine.
In 1985 she wrote and published Art & Illusion, A Guide to Crossdressing.
She was also one of the founders of the Renaissance Transgender Association, Inc. This was all done in an era where you could easily lose your job on just the rumor that you were a crossdresser.
Her courage and others like her eased the path for others by educating the public on crossdressing. In 1995 she was a partner in the online website Trans Gender Forum later named TG Forum.
It was TGForum and JoAnn that hosted the 1st CHIC website that I built almost 20 years ago. JoAnn was very patient with my lack of knowledge of websites back then.
