Thoughts on heteronormativity and doll 'cross-dressing' / the gender spectrum

I would say identifying a "feminine" (which itself is already a part of gender construction) boy dolls as "girly" is not necessarily heteronormative, because in the heteronormative view, males are not supposed to have female traits.

And what are female traits anyway? The only real female traits are biological body components (genitals, reproductive organs and hormonal system etc). The feminine boy dolls
you are mentioning usually don't get their genital area modded. So you probably mean feminine traits - the ones heteronormative society suggests proper females should have (and I am not free from this thinking, sadly, because we all fall into this trap; I also consider certain things feminine).

The influence of heteronormativity is rather seen in the relationships the dolls are depicted to have to other dolls - like the more feminine and/or cross-dressing doll boy being a more submissive, emotional etc. partner in a "gay" doll relationship.

 

Yes, I think it is more this than your suggestion, Ostrich, that BJD fans are more comfortable with themselves. I suspect that many (but certainly not all) of us use BJDs to create an alternative, ideal, safe and controllable alternative world to live in. So, we are not comfortable, at least with the juxtaposition of ourselves with the world as it stands, and we perhaps use the dolls to compensate for that. With their combined realism and customisability, they are the ideal medium for this and have greater immediacy than if we painted a picture of our ideal world or wrote a story about it.

 

Yes, I was talking about the traits that heteronormative society thinks females should have. That's why I put "female" in quotes. By recognizing such traits as girly, are we reinforcing heteronormative ideas? Elizabeth Woledge, writing about slash fiction, says: "It is only as a result of binary thinking that we are able to perceive and describe heroes who can at least combine the binary."

So it's like you said - we all fall into this trap. This is the only way we can think about gender. And according to Judith Butler, it's easy for our acts of "subversiveness" to become cliche and domesticated. The typical gay doll relationship is a great example of this. I'm not saying we shouldn't have gay doll relationships (no way!! ). I'm just saying that, according to Butler, we're kind of trapped by the constructedness of gender.

 

Some like their porn very realistic in order to create a turn on; others want/need their porn to be the absolute opposite, pure fantasy, in order to have the desired effect. I'm a straight woman and tend to fall into the first category, preferring realism. When I was young and naive I used to twit my boyfriends for their taste in porn, since what they seemed to like best was so unrealistic and would never happen in real life. It wasn't until later, through experience and understanding, that I came to comprehend that the unrealistic aspect *was exactly the source of the appeal*. I stopped being disapproving of that and started to see it as simply another way to express sexuality. I see dollplay in the same way. It's ok to have dolls that do things that wouldn't happen in real life, and have relationships that wouldn't play out that way in real life. For some, that's the entire appeal---the joy of creating a world that's ordered according to your own inner guidelines, whether they follow the laws of the universe (or the norms of the universe) or not.

I started to really appreciate this permission to be unrealistic when I began writing fiction and screenplays. There were many times when my internal nanny-voice would say "Oh, that could never happen! People don't act that way! They would do A, or B, or C......if they do X, Y or Z, it's just made up, not real, I can't do that!" And yet when I gave myself permission to write characters that were made up, not real, and didn't follow literary norms---those were more powerful than more realistic depictions because they spoke to something deeper inside.

I don't read yaoi so I can't say whether I like it or not...but clearly it speaks to something in its fans. Is it OK for them to like a way of being sexual that is not realistic? Personally I think so. "Not being realistic" is hardly a judgment that belongs in art or dolls, or any other other expression of self.

 

This is a fascinating thread and I've really enjoyed reading it. I'm new to DoA and I'm delighted at all the intelligent discussion that goes on here! There was one topic in particular on which I wanted to weigh in:

My experience, and possibly that of other manga readers, was that yaoi was the only readily available manga genre that included gay characters in any detail - even if they were unrealistic gay characters. As a gay person, I yearn to see myself reflected in fiction. This was especially true when I was first figuring out my identity, but even now I want to read about characters that have similar feelings and experiences to the ones I have - particularly falling in love with a person of the same gender. Other manga that I came across may have featured gay side characters, but most of them were merely comic relief. Yaoi and shounen ai, I hoped, would provide a way to read about people like me in a medium I enjoyed. Even though I was constantly disappointed by the perpetuation of stereotypes, the lack of quality plots and writing, and the romanticization of rape and abuse, I still picked up every volume I found in the hopes that people like me would be portrayed respectfully in it. There are some manga that treat sexuality and gender issues with respect - Aoi Hana and Hourou Musuko come to mind - but they're not classified as yaoi.

I think another facet of people's search for quality in "yaoi" is the dilution of the term itself. I'm not very active in anime/manga fandom anymore, but when I was back in the early 2000's, many people used the term "yaoi" to mean anything in the anime and manga medium that involves males who are attracted to males, regardless of type of relationship and level of graphicness.

The customizable nature of BJDs is one of the reasons I became interested in them, and I think it gives people a lot of opportunity to explore the gender spectrum. It definitely gives us good things to talk about

 

I have not read all of the posts but I will. So sorry if I am repeating stuff. From the few I have read there seems to be a lot of great things being said. Great love for the post above btw.

I will share some of my own humble thoughts.
I am always surprised when I see people "blame" yaoi for crossdressed dolls. I have read a lot of yaoi and on the top of my head can only remember one incident where a guy crossdressed and that was a total disaster. Yaoi is not as full of crossdressing kawaii desu desu bois as people may think.
There are a lot of really good stuff out there if one is interested in finding it.

As a gay guy myself I greatly prefer yaoi before any other kind of portrayal of gay love. In yaoi I am able to find those Cinderella sickenly sweet romantic stories that I want. Of course it is not all that I read but it is something I would like to see more of.
I rarely see that in any other kind of media. If people write those kind of stories and portrait that with their dolls I like reading/watching it. In those cases I don't care if it is between male characters. Anything other than the typical hetero romance I find refreshing and interesting.

For me playing with dolls is suppose to be fun and about escaping reality for a while. I do not mind or care what people do with their dolls. I find it more irritating when people complain about crossdressed or gay dolls than seeing a horde of fangirls squeeing over their kawaii gay bois. Hell, I might even join the squeeing.

The more diversity the better I say. I have several LGTB characters among my resiners.
Don't care why a person is making the trans/gay/crossdressed doll. I am just happy they exist at all.

 

I think, but don't quote me, that what you are meaning is that you like Shounen ai. It's often grouped up in that 'Yaoi' category, but they are different things. Shounen ai is soft, loveable boy love... romantic, Cinderella, as you said. Yaoi is considered more of the hardcore stuff that started the dislike of the 'yaoi fangirl', like rape, pedophilia, ect. There's is quite a difference between the two.

Now, to the topic on hand.

I can see where the idea that crossdressing dolls stem from yaoi can come from. I've seen several 'trap' characters, as they are refereed to, but again it comes down to a difference. I've only seen one yaoi that has a crossdresser in it... most of the crossdressing boys in anime/manga that I've seen don't stem from yaoi, but the softer core shounen ai.

As a ftm homosexual that dresses my boy in dresses and skirts, I'd have to say that I do it not because of the shounen ai or yaoi aspects. I put him in dresses for two reasons... one, because I myself enjoy wearing a dress or two on occasion... and two, because that's simply who the character he's based after is supposed to be. It isn't because he's kawaii, desu desu animu and fabulously gay... it's because that's how I wrote him. Was it influenced by myself and possibly my days of reading shounen ai by a fireplace with a teddy bear? Yes, of course. But it's how he works to me.

 

Actually... I like my yaoi steaming hot and super romantic at the same time. Yaoi = shounen ai with graphic sex.
Sex can be very romantic and still be considered hardcore. I like my shounen ai seasoned the same way.

 

There's actually no such thing as shounen ai the way people use it here to describe manga involving gay relationships written by women for women. It's all boy's love, or yaoi. There is no special word used for non-explicit stories versus explicit, or hardcore vs softcore. Shounen ai as a genre was a very specific one that died in the late 70's and contained just as much messed up relationship material as any hardcore BL manga does - things like Kaze to Ki no Uta which contains rape and underaged relationships.

In reference to traps, there are honestly more of them to be found in hentai or your more ecchi moe/slice of life comedy series that are intended for a male, heterosexual audience. I was surprised it took so long for a Pure Neemo doll of Kinoshita Hideyoshi to be released.

But back to more doll topic on hand, I honestly think a lot of the crossdressing in these dolls is simply fueled by owners finding it attractive. We find these dolls aesthetically pleasing and as we are capable of dressing them however we want, it's easy to dress them in whatever fantastical clothing we want. There's a photoshoot of Joseph Gordon-Levitt where's he's wearing lingerie and it's like a punch to the gut. Kazaky are popular with all of the women I know because their dancing blends masculine and feminine. Hot guys in stilettos?

 

Before we begin arguing what is called what, here a couple of definitions (source: Wikipedia... I am too lazy to search for something more scientific now after a hard day's work xD):

a) Boy's love = manga for females depicting romance between male protagonists => this is the actual name for the genre!

b) Yaoi = 1) manga for females depicting romance between male protagonists, but including explicit pornographic content or 2) umbrella term for boy's love specifically in the US

c) Shonen ai = 1) western term for boy's love depicting less graphic erotic relationships, 2) special sophisticated boy's love genre from the 70ies/80ies, 3) old word for "shotacon"

----------------------------------

By the way, in Germany where I live, BL comics are still often called "shonen ai". While in the US, the term "yaoi" more often is used for the same comics.

Well, back to the topic, too: how about, for example, crossdressing female dolls? Noone mentions them. I have three of those here >.> But I only very rarely see some.
All the rebellion against heteronormativity seems to be fought on the ground of male dolls... What is with the lesbian, FtM, drag king, female crossdresser dolls?

 

I think guys dressed as girls are easier to spot than girls dressed as guys, especially for modern-era dolls. What I would dearly love to see is a girl doll from the Victorian or earlier period, dressed in a beautiful morning suit with a top-hat. Because in those days, if you were a girl, you wore a dress, a whale-bone corset, various petticoats, and a number of other garments that were restrictive and uncomfortable and wildly "feminine". It was during WW2, with women having to work in factories, that female workers donned trousers because they were practical. And it seems we rather like them!
Nowadays, of course, a girl can walk down the street in a pair of jeans and a shirt, and nobody would say she was dressing in drag. But if a guy wants to wear a skirt and a lacy top, then he's dressing like a girl and is seen as bizarre and abnormal. It's one of the few double-standards that works against men's favour.

 

I think it's just harder to spot crossdressing female dolls unless the owner explicitly states all over the place that this is a female crossdresser. No one really bats an eye at a woman wearing jeans, construction boots, and a flannel shirt anymore with short hair, to take it to the stereotype extreme.

I own a female doll for lack of a better term probably could be viewed as a female crossdresser. She's a male head on a female body, is supposed to look like a handsome man, and dresses almost exclusively in male clothing. She is, oddly enough, the only heterosexual doll I own. I think a lot of people think she's just a male doll unless you notice her breasts. While they're rather large, she's on an Volks SD16 girl body, once she's clothed you can't really see her breasts all that much. She has extremely broad shoulders so they sort of disappear if you dress her like a guy. I find that all rather funny since people repeatedly say the body is too Barbie.

Harlequin-Elle - you mean like this?

 

I agree with you Kim, my Megu often wears masculine clothing, but because lots of women these days wear trouser suits and jeans and shirts there isn't the same impact for a cross-dressing female compared with a cross-dressing male, unless you attempt to hype up the masculinity. With my doll, she isn't especially masculine and does not want to be male, she just prefers to dress in a masculine way a lot of the time.

By the way, Layla's outfit is awesome! She looks amazing!

 

I am not sure about the crossdressing boy dolls being easier to spot... the boy dolls usually look as feminine as girl dolls do. This is actually a problem discussed a lot here on DoA and also known in other places... I see the "This is a boy!"-disclaimer a lot on dA, for example - without it, the crossdressing boy dolls would not even be perceived as boys. So the fact that the owner has to mention their gender/sex for them to be recognized as a crossdresser that Kim mentioned applies to them as well.

Also, most "contemporary dressed" female dolls I see on the forum are dressed in frills or "sexy-sexy", be it of the goth, emo, scene or dessous-style type (I am guilty of doing this to about half of my female dolls too ), thus very "gender-conform" - wouldn't that make a female in androgyne clothing more "spottable"? And most boy dolls are also dressed in the same clothes - which is not actually gender-conform. Except the Iplehouse guys or Idealians, which are always wearing suits or something sporty - they are the archetype of masculine gender. Hardly anyone dresses an Idealian in a frilly pink dress. That one would be really easy to spot.

P.S.: Seconding the awesomness of Layla's outfit.

 

[emphasis mine] That's the thing about a lot of these styles, especially rocker/goth/emo/rivethead/glam looks... Both men & women share the same clothes & makeup & general style-box, so much of the time it really ISN'T "cross-dressing". Anybody who's spent any time at Goth & Industrial Nite at your local neighborhood club recognizes a man in a long skirt and combat boots as being fairly butch. A guy in PVC skinny-jeans and a sheer fishnet pullover isn't considered to be cross-dressing. A girl in a neoprene tanktop and cargo-pants and engineer-boots is usually considered hot. Context makes a big difference... Things like corsets, striped tights, skirts, crop-tops, a lot of the garments that would be considered "female" in another scene just don't read as cross-dressing when these guys wear them.

And remember how David Bowie answered the charges of transvestism from critics of that slinky dress of his? He said that it was a man's dress, because it had been made for him, and therefore it wasn't cross-dressing. ^^ Hard to argue with that logic.

I dress my SD17 in leather catsuits, which isn't really the same thing, but still. ^^

But people do put their EIDs in frilly frocks for comedy value... which is yet another branch of the crossdressing discussion to explore and ponder... a woman in a suit is cute, but a man in a dress is slapstick?

 

Guilty, but I don't actually think a man in a dress is slapstick per se. But a certain man in a certain dress can definitely have comic value. But my EID also owns a corset and skirt. They were made for him and I think they are very masculine and very sexy, in a way that most traditional male clothing just isn't. So, echoing David Bowie, they are man's clothes, just in what is traditionally considered a female style because that is just sexier.

I suspect a lot of other apparent transvestite or crossdressing dolls on here are doing the same thing, using traditionally female clothing just because it is sexy and not because they want to look like women. These boys are generally dressed in sexy underwear or something equally erotic. I have never seen a boy doll in a frumpy, floral frock or nice, sensible blouse and skirt. I don't think one could even view it as transvestic fetishism, given this apparent lack of desire to appear female.

So, perhaps we have a little wish-fulfulment going on here, using the dolls to represent something exciting to the owner, but taboo generally in society.

 

First of all... have I already said how much I love this debate topic? It gives me so many ideas ^^

I have spent many, many, many nights at the local Goth & Industrial Nights. For years. That is, if I wasn't at a metal concert or bar at the time. LOL.

I know less of emo and glam, and metal actually is either really androgynous look-wise (pants, band-t-shirt, long hair for everyone) or the same as goth (for gothic metal in particular) so I will focus on goth/industrial style in the following. A small disclaimer: I am talking about the German gothic, industrial and metal crowd, not the worldwide. But maybe it was similar everywhere?

There is a difference in male and female gothic fashion that came up somewhere in the end of the 90-ies and then from the year 2000 and up. When I entered the goth scene in the middle of the nineties (woah, I wasn't actually even allowed into the discotheque back there, I somehow got in anyway), the goth look was androgyne and reminding of the original 80-ies goth. Everyone sported mohawk, turm or teller hair, or at least a crow's nest, skinny pants, torn clothing, leather corsets for both males and females, long black coats, pikes or dr. martens... and was hardly distinguishable gender-wise, playing with the androgynous look.

Then there came the romantic, Middle Ages or fantasy inspired look, and women and men suddenly became very different. To the mohawk, the teller, the turm and the crow nest came the long silky locks, of course dyed black, often with a white streak, or red. I remember flowing robes for girls and leather pants with pirate blouses for guys. And cloaks. Lots of cloaks. The corset slowly left the males and clung to female waists.

And all of a sudden - bam, anime and techno invaded the goth clubs. The industrial and cybergoth trends appeared, and the fashion got a bit more androgynous again... The man-skirt, the corset, the cyberlocks, the fluffy neon leg warmers... Androgynous?

Just... the man-skirt was "masculine" fashion. It IS butch. It is cut differently to a "feminine" skirt, long, not at all revealing, narrow at the hips but out of rather rigid fabric and getting wider towards the floor, hence showing nothing of the legs, and adorned with "martial" or BDSM-hinting symbols, like metal spikes, rings, belts... Girls don't wore man-skirts - except they wanted to be read as male. Meaning they crossdressed (I have three of these skirts - still love those things, they are pretty comfortable and look flattering - and I was often read as male and/or butch, because wearing a man-skirt WAS read as butch in the goth environment a couple of years ago).

Most females wore extremely skimpy dresses and skirts that rather reminded of a belt. Corsets were sometimes worn by males openly being - or at least openly pretending to be - gay or bi. Other than that, about 90% of corset wearers were female. And only very rarely did a guy wear a short skirt. Even the cybergoth guys who had their hair in neon-green cyberlock ponytails and wore fluffy neon leg-warmers were actually rather few.

The most part of the male goth population was wearing... yes, combat boots. With cargo pants. And a black vest. Or simple t-shirt. Mimicking military style. Maybe context is important - but even inside this context there are certain gender norms. And if you look at it now, with all the steampunk fashion being popular... it is even more gendered than everything before.

So, I guess what I want to say is that I didn't mean the general gothic male doll out there. I meant specifically the frilly and "sexy" clothing that is usually perceived as "feminine" in our culture, and only mentioned goth, emo etc. to show that there are different versions of it. Of course, like I have just tried to show with my TL;DR rant , wearing gothic doesn't necessarily mean to crossdress, but it is possible to crossdress when you are gothic. But just like you mentioned, JennyNemesis - chances are you'll be considered a crossdresser by a hip-hopper anyway in both cases

This, I have to say, is absolutely brilliant - and actually somewhat gender-norm-challenging.

Leather catsuits are love. Need a "like" button for this.

Is a woman in a suit always cute? I am not sure it is always perceived as that. Sometimes a woman in a suit is also perceived as "unfeminine", "unattractive", "aggressive", "virago" - expecially if she is not wearing the suit in a sexy/curve-flattering way and is not looking according to the "ideal" otherwise. The gender train goes both ways. And really, I want to see an EID in a dress. A beautiful dress. Or a Mega Gem. If I ever get a Shoshon, I will make him a magificent dress (and no, I am not saying this for comedy).


EDIT:

One of my two male crossdressing dolls does wear only "sensible" feminine fashion though (longarm and high-neck blouses and knee-length skirts or dresses, often with a short jacket, and opaque tights as well as simple shoes mostly without heels - except he goes to a party, then of course he is dressing more festive). He is not crossdressing to be sexy.

I do think that there is a fetishistic component in the sexy underwear on boy dolls - though I agree with you that it is not necessarily transvestitic fetishism. We should keep in mind that many people who dress their boy dolls like that are female themselves, so them liking the "sexy feminine underwear" is not transvestitic.

 

No, of course not per se. I was more referring to the vaudevillian shortcut of getting a laugh by having a man put on even 1 article of women's clothing-- likesay Benny Hill and Monty Python and that ilk, or Bing Crosby & Danny Kaye lip-synching "Sisters" in White Christmas. I.e. as a burlesque of femininity, but sorta on the opposite end of the spectrum from the drag way of burlesquing femininity (drag goal = make man look attractive & glamorous in dress; comedy goal = make unattractive man look funny in dress). Even in modern comedies, having the hero don women's clothing-- usually for disguise or subterfuge reasons, with ensuing hijinks-- is generally guaranteed to get a laugh.

Laughter being a way to camouflage nervousness, of course.... Since these guys are so ridiculous that they'd never be considered sexy, they're safe to laugh at. If there's even a chance of the observer finding him attractive, it's no longer funny. Which is why David Bowie in his sexy frock got way fewer laughs than John Cleese in a housedress & curlers.

(John Cleese and Graham Chapman screeching away in housedresses & curlers, btw = Still the funniest thing in the world. Ever. I don't care how incorrect. XD)

It's generally viewed as less threatening than a man in a dress, yes. The weaker sex assuming the trappings of the stronger sex, fine; the stronger sex decking himself out like the weaker sex, disturbing and threatening to the masculinity of anyone who even looks upon him. When women "cross dress" enough to have it recognized as such, it's usually framed as sexy-- cf. Marlene Dietrich-- or else as childishly endearing, sorta "aww, how cute, she thinks she's people".

Here you go! Again, due to the androgyny inherent in his fetishy-gothy style of dress, I don't really see Shinji as crossdressing here (even if the catsuit was made for EID women). I suppose it's because I have spent so many years hanging out with guys who wear this kind of thing, but it barely even reads as 'feminine' to me. To me, he just looks like a guy in a catsuit.

 

I've not seen a lot in the way of girls crossdressing in the mainstream, but they do occasionally pop up from time to time. Chain Gun from the Evolution series is a tomboy in every sense of the word:


Female characters like Chain have always appealed to me in the sense that we don't see them so often, if at all. I think the 'girly-boi' trend is much more popular these days, but who knows. Perhaps as time goes on we'll start seeing some more tomboy characters like Chain, even in the doll hobby (At least, I hope so).

 

I have a mtf-girlfriend, in flesh and blood.

My Johnny is as girly as any other DoD Camine, I've had him a week and he's already tried on girls' clothes. Maybe it has something to do with all the bjd boys that look like girls?