Originally a comment by Arty Morty on A seven-page dossier.
I’m glad the Free Speech Union is defending Colonel Wright. I recently ditched my little canvas New Yorker tote bag for a little canvas Free Speech Union bag that I proudly carry every time I go to the market.
I’m not entirely surprised the army is so hostile to gender-critical views, considering the military is lousy with crossdressers. For reasons still not quite understood, military men are far more likely to become transvestites than men in any other profession. The trope of the secretly-crossdressing general has been around since at least the 18th century. It’s incredible how many of the most famous trans activists of the 20th and 21st centuries were soldiers:
Private Bradley “Chelsea” Manning, famed Wikileaks whistleblower.
Admiral Richard “Rachel” Levine, Assistant Secretary of Health.
Sergeant First Class James “Jamie/Ellie Rae” Shupe, first legally-recognized “nonbinary” American.
Lieutenant Colonel James “Jennifer” Pritzker, founder of the Pritzker Military Library.
G.I. George “Christine” Jorgensen, the first famous transsexual.
Lance Corporal James “Jan” Morris, CBE, journalist and bestselling author; famed for accompanying Hillary on his Everest expedition.
No wonder the “trans in the military ban” was the first major campaign the nascent transgender movement took on. I have a friend who works in a government job that serves veterans — he says you wouldn’t believe how many crossdressers/trans identifying men he has to deal with.
There’s a great scene in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, where the director Ed Wood, played by Johnny Depp, confesses to a film producer that he’s a transvestite (but definitely not gay) in an attempt to win the bid to direct a Christine Jorgensen bio-pic:
Producer: “So, you’re not a fruit?”
Wood: “No, I’m all man. I even fought in WW2. Course I was wearing women’s undergarments under my uniform.”
Producer: “You gotta be kidding me.”
Wood: “Confidentially, I even paratrooped wearing a brassiere and panties. I’ll tell ya, I wasn’t scared of being killed, but I was terrified of getting wounded and having the medics discover my secret.”
Starts at about the 1:30 mark.
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4 responses to “Guest post: Military men dress up in women’s clothing”
In this Military.com post about Chris Beck (Kristine Beck) a psychologist examines the potential connection between serving in the military and cross-dressing: childhood trauma.
Perhaps many of the men in that environment seek to express femininity in response to the extreme masculine environment of war, finding cross-dressing to be an outlet.
Girls who want to transition often do so to escape the pressures, trauma, and demands of being girls. Boys want to seek relief from being boys, and in both cases independently of whether they are straight or gay.
Great article. Thanks for sharing.
There are lots of theories floating around about the military/trans connection. Some others are:
They join the military to suppress their emerging feminine fantasies: in their youth they start experiencing autogynephilic attraction — erotic fantasies about inhabiting female bodies rather than sexually coupling with them — and this leads to an identity panic, so they seek out the masculine-affirming, male-only environment of the military as a means to suppress it in their minds.
Their crossdressing emerges from PTSD and addiction: crossdressing is caused by trauma from battle/military service. Because drugs and alcohol aren’t available on tours of duty, their escapism is channeled into ever-increasing sexual fantasies.
The personality traits that lead men to join the military tend to be the personality traits that lead men to openly express their private crossdressing fantasies: this theory proposes that cross-sex arousal is extremely common among men, but most men never take it past casual fantasies or private crossdressing experimentation. It just happens that we see a lot of overt crossdressing among army guys because they’re by definition a more risk-taking and more thrill-seeking demographic of men.
Crossdressing is a side-effect of hypermasculinity: there’s a biological/genetic/psychological correlation between hypermasculine brain development, and the internalizing of the male sexdrive into transvistism/transsexualism. Hypermasculine guys tend to join the army, so you find more of them there.
Honestly, it feels like there are some kernels of truth in all of these theories. It’s fascinating. I hope people continue to study it. I’d love to see where this mystery leads…
Cross-dressing may be more common than people realize, and even though I am not hypermasculine I did go through a phase when I was an adolescent (difficult as it was to find private time and space in a family of 9.) I never told anyone about it at the time, but I often wonder what would have happened had Tumblr been around for people to confirm for me that this meant I am transgender. Christine Jorgenson and Renee Richards were about the only examples of transsexuals for us.
Don’t forget ‘Hannah’ Graf from just the other day.