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

Okay, I have been snapped at for remarks that I didn't think about. I'd like to point that I wear Neo-Victorian attire, on a daily basis. This includes corsets, steel-boned not whale, petticoats, and layers of undergarments. I don't find it uncomfortable and I find jeans to be terribly uncomfortable, and t-shirts are just.. ICK!

 

^ THIS. 1,000 times this.


Back on topic... ^^;


What are modern women's fashions but either the purloined men's fashions of earlier years or the feminized adaptations of it? Today, no one thinks twice about a woman wearing pants, or a suit with slacks. Most places of work in the USA, in fact, require pants or slacks, for men and women alike. Granted, in office environments, a woman who wears slacks all the time may be seen as lacking some femininity, but if one were to go to any mall in America, or college/school campus, or anywhere else people congregate, you will see far more many women wearing pants than skirts/dresses.

I'm not trying to bash women's fashions here. But even 60 years ago, this would have been quite outside the norm. 80 years ago, it would have been scandalous, and 90-100 years ago downright indecent! I've noticed the same trend in names, but I digress.

My point is, what was once indecent or scandalous is now everywhere, at least in American society. I think that the "outsider" groups (such as BJD hobbyists) who begin to accept transgender and crossdressing as the norm are slowly influencing the future fashions of the world. Considering how much more prevalent it is in this day and age, and how much more seriously it is being taken, I can only imagine how the future world's fashions would look in even 30 years.



As far as heteronormativity and the idea gender roles, I will speak of myself in regards to doll collecting. I know I collect far more male dolls than female, and tend to have more male characters than female characters, because in many ways I want to thoroughly and safely explore my masculine side, without having to give up all that I love about my female body. I like to explore the different roles a male may take in life (and in fantasy settings). Given that it is my belief that nothing and no one is a wholly unique individual anymore, I cannot help but believe that there are others out there who feel the same as I do.

Perhaps so many of us collectors choose to dress our boys in feminine clothing and/or make our dolls have such a varying degree of sexuality because we want to fully explore the different roles the opposite or even same gender has at their disposal. Or perhaps, we even want to test the boundaries and norms of the genders of our dolls by making them transgendered, crossdressing, and/or non-heteronormative.

I think in a lot of ways, the reason why there are so many "outsiders" to the idea of heteronormativity is the ABJD hobby is because these dolls are so very customizable, and they can be a way we can explore something we either are afraid to explore on our own, cannot explore because of limitations on our physical bodies, or just something we happen to be curious about.

And sometimes, a boy doll in a dress is just a boy doll in a dress.

 

I am perfectly fine with it. How the owner uses their doll is entirely their own choice and reasoning. If it is to jump on the yaoi trend or if it just simply for the love of it, I feel wrong saying that I disagree with how a doll is dressed... If I disagree with someone I don't think it's very nice to rain on their parade, especially is someone obtains entertainment from it.

 

I was so glad to see this thread when I was surfing around tonight!
In an ideal world, or at least my ideal world, there would be no such thing as men's and women's clothing and we would be free to dress in anything that appeals to us. Since I think this is unlikely to become a reality in my lifetime, that is my plan for my dolls.

I find many of the boy sculpts much more attractive, largely because they are less likely to be pouty and sad looking, and am much less concerned with the gender of the body.

 

I would just like to say, that the whole dissing yaoi thing is dissing the wrong thing. Hentai in GENERAL has whole subgenres of rape, pedophilia (lollies, anyone?) & incest - in fact all porn does. To scream just about yaoi, when a great deal of it has NOTHING to do w/the above, is just being PC. Which I can't stand.
Shonen Ai & yaoi, like it or not, DOES make boy/boy relationships more acceptable to your average anime fan. That is just a fact - whether various members here like it or not does not change the fact.

 

i dont know, this debate gives me alot of thoughts, (now if only i hadnt stumbled across this after just waking up) but honestly...

well let me put it this way, i am a woman and i can honestly say that my real life or rather the inside of my mind has alot to do with the things that are either being bashed here or swept under the rug or semi-not-nessicerily-defended-but-not-bashed-either and well... i dont want to go into it both cus im not sure how much of my personal feelings you guys wanna hear or how much detail i can get into in a situation involving my personal life but i will say this:

i read yaoi, and i have gay friends, but i dont like watching yaoi anime or gay porn...

i dont read or watch hentai but as a grown woman i do from time to time watch porn...

i understand some people's annoyance with yaoi but honestly its all fantasy, its what sells and its what young girls enjoy, honestly if it was all 100% realistic it would be boring and you may as well watch gay porn... (i was an avid yaoi fangirl back in high school but quickly realised i didnt enjoy watching the real thing as much as i enjoyed reading my yaois) if its honestly teaching them something bad like the earlier argument that yaoi teaches young girls that rape is ok then how come these girls are even still finding boyfriends and not just trying to pair together ever guy they see with another guy?

and as for this influence in the doll community well... i do see my fair share of "gay" dollies but i see even more "straight" dollies though honestly these dolls are what we make them, they are just as much a fantasy as the majority of the books we read (or well me anyways but i like my fantasy and sci-fi since i read as a form of escape from reality) and yes i have "gay" dolls, in fact two of my boys are from my webcomic story "lover of the sun and moon" and i love the dolls as the embodiment of these characters but i also understand that they arent really my characters but rather just dolls...

i also have "straight" dolls and this is where i constantly have to correct people cus the majority of my friends seem to thing that because four of my ten dolls are gay that ALL of them must be... and i actually have more straight dolls then gay ones???

and back to heteronormativity i can say that honestly my boyfriend has better legs and walks better in heels than me, yes i know this cus he was a hot-pink mess (as he called it) for halloween (originally he was supposed to be jeffree star but he couldnt finish the costume so at the last minute he borrowed his moms bra and made it a girl costume) and he got and still gets so much flak for it, guys always telling him to "give them his man-card" also my man wears skinny jeans and he looks dang good in them but i cant seem to find anyone who wont tell me he looks "gay" for wearing them, even my own boss tried to tell me he looked like a "fag" and i had to threaten him with a sexual harrassment suit to get him to stop teasing me about it... and its kinda funny too though cus my boy lifts weights and while hes no body builder he does have huge biceps and i didnt see my boss or my co-worker who seemed to have a problem with his tight jeans walking up to my boyfriend and saying these things to my man's face???

at first i drove me up the wall that everyone had to sit there and pick apart and try to de-masculate my boyfriend simply because one article of his was considered "effeminate" by a majority of people, but quickly i began to ignore it (unless people tried to call him a "fag" but then i would usually counteract with something silly like "so does that make me a dyke cus i dont wear skirts?")

the end fact is that there will always be both negative and positive stimulus for everything that is or can be out there in the world... i could even get so touchy as to say while the majority of the world sees murder as evil the people who commit murder (not ALL obviously but the group of serial killers who do it over and over again for some form of enjoyment or enlightenment) probably dont agree?

now i dunno if i just opened a huge can of worms there or not but what im saying is that while we will all always have our own opinions and freedoms to express these opinions what i will never understand is the people who have to revolve their whole lives around these opinions and who all but condemn anyone who doesnt agree with their views...

 

I'm a straight female, and personally I don't care how crazy this gender-bending can get. All of my dolls are straight, because that's how I relate to them. However, I can still admire other dolls who are gay or maybe not have any gender at all. I dress my boys as boys and girls as girls like another poster mentioned, but I've seen some male BJDs in dresses or corsets and thought they looked beautiful.

 

I am FtM, and I know there are quite a few other transmen on here that collect dolls. I see a lot of people genderbending their dolls, and describing it in a way that I often find offensive, ie the 'tranny' statements, but I think that stems from the ignorance on the subject that is rife in the wider community. Most of those people aren't trying to be offensive, and if someone corrects them, then they usually respond by fixing their mistakes.

Also above about saying that FtMs have 'female body shapes', that's untrue. There are a wide variety of body shapes, both among cis and trans people. I know a cis man that has 'child-bearing hips' and I personally have a 'H' body-shape, even though I was born female. So buying a boy doll body for an FtM doll character makes complete sense to me.

Also, I'm gay, 95% of my dolls are gay which I suppose reflects me personally, rather than reality, though none of them are effeminate, because I suppose I'm not a camp guy myself.

Also I like yaoi. I don't find it any less realistic than other forms of pornography. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen pornography that reflects what I would consider reality, so... :P

 

I really like that there is gender diversity among dolls. I think it's great that a lot of dolls are androgynous and it's very accepted. At the same time, I agree that it's probably a result of the whole yaoi thing which is frustrating. I feel like a lot of the people who portray transgender dolls are ignorant on the subject. They do it because it's trendy and not because they have any real knowledge or opinions on gender. If people want to have transgender characters then that's fine but they should at least be doing their research..

 

From a fashion standpoint, I am all for cross-dressing in the BJD world. I find myself verily impressed when I see girl dolls in decidedly masculine clothing. The contrast is usually striking (perhaps mainly because it is not widely practiced).

However, I find myself bored of the boys in skirt, mainly because there's always that one look that gets repeated over and over. There are girl shorts, girl pants, girl shirts, girl coats too. Cross-dressing a boy needs not be limited to the frilly frocks and bows and ribbons (and always the long hair >_<).

As for heteronormativity fashion-wise, I'm not really sure myself. I love the boy look as well as the girl look, and the idea of non-gendered clothes do not appeal to me so much (mainly because, for me they will never be able to properly accentuate a particular body's aesthetic). I prefer my girls-in-men's clothing to maintain that feminine look, and the boys-in-girl's clothing to keep their masculinity. And all the androgynous dolls need to have their own clothing line.

 

This entire thread is brilliant. Dollblue I you seriously.

I am a yaoi fangirl! But for me this steams from finding Any form of sexuality kinda hot. A porn fan as well, but real person porn tends to make me uncomfortable unless I know the company/actors etc etc are all 100% consenting and ethical. To me the biggest difference for things like rape or assumed incest is that it IS fantasy and actually consentual. That there is nothing truly bad happening. Though it makes me mad as Hell when those lines get crossed or there is no warning of more offensive or risky behavior or when crap like shota is condoned and romantisized. *coughlovelesscough*

Which is why I'll defend the more extreme versions of yaoi. Erm within limits. Adults please. Yaoi, yuri, fanfiction to me is a way for people to explore their sexuality and their comfort levels safely. Younger or more naive fans might get carried away but it's better than getting carried away in a club they snuck into or at some party.

So my dolls are a little of this as well. I have an insane variety of relationships and back stories, some characters coming from roleplay or fanfiction. I have a tranny. Yes offense meant because he is not a healthy representation of a transexual. I have another planned who Is the healthy representation and also straight wants to get married with children and is a mechanic. Than I have 'butch' lesbians, girly lesbians, butch straight girls and girly gay boys who are dominant and some who are not.
Half the fun for me is trying to figure out these people who are Not me, who do and like things I don't get into or don't personally identiphy with. Or have back stories that are tragic. Again it's exploring humanity without anybody getting hurt.

I think my most challenging character will be the one nobody liked because he's male personality identiphying, female bodied and okay with that, androgynous asexual but prefering nonsexual relationships with women.
I've gotten into trouble with trans people before because they haven't liked his physical body being obviously female while he ID's as male and was not comfortable with sexual attention from others. I was told he Had to ID as female or to have a male looking body to be included in a roleplaying group. They didn't like that I included a struggle with outward physical signs of assumed gender as a problem for him.
I left that group pretty fast as I dislike my characters being pigeon holed by others. So now he's just going to be a doll!
I'm hoping he'll gather more fans here!

But gender norms really do get brought up when you've moving outside of them. Especially when people have preconcieved opinions on your motivations for doing things. Like me getting slammed as only having these dolls as kinks, forgeting or not caring that most of my dolls are cisgendered as I think that fairly represents reality. Most people are male female stereotypes to some degree so my dolls are too,I think that's okay but not all of them!

I'm going to stop randomly babbling now and hoping I made sense?

 

This is such an interesting topic to me in many ways. And not just for the sub-subject that has come out of it (namely Yaoi bashing). It surprised me that it's all "BOO YAOI!" but Yuri is left alone. Yuri can be just as bad. As the the yaoi angle, I am a self-professed enjoyer of Yaoi. I know there is trash out there, just like in any visual or literary media. Sometimes, it is hard for those who dislike it to seperate the trash from the treasure. And one person way above mentioned Kurosetsuji in passing. I wonder if they are aware that the series is NOT Yaoi in the least. It's not even classified as Shounen Ai. It is only subtext that certain types of fangirls have interpreted this way. And for every wibbly eyed uke, there is also a series that is far more tasteful. Fake being my personal favorite. It's a police drama before it's yaoi.

Moving onto the gender issue... None of my planned dolls will have other than store designed genders. This might be because I prefer male clothing myself. I'm what is called a "tom boy". Something that is considered deplorable in certain family dynamics. Girls are supposed to wear dresses and have babies, not wear pants and join the army. AKA...a lot of it has to do with how we're raised. If we're raised to think a boy in a dress is "wrong" or "abnormal" then to us it is.

However, I find it wonderful that there are so many different gender assignments and persuasions. And I think they are so prevelent because as someone said before, we are a creative bunch comfortable in our own skin. If we want a boy who rocks a beautiful ballgown, more power to us. If we want to have a girl in 20s style G-men outfits...that is what we will have....(and now I know what I'm doing with the floating head I will be receiving...)

 

I think you shouldn't think so much about what other people think. Go for your own race and do what you think suits your doll.
If you think it's beautiful, cool, cute etc. go for it!

 

Ah, talkin' heteronormativity...

I can't remember if I weighed in on this at any point in the past, but here's what Present-Day Me feels...

In regards to other people's dolls: They can and should do what they want, and I can either look or not look depending on how my tastes and theirs meet.

In regards to my dolls: I enjoy playing with the gender spectrum in my writing sometimes (whether it's creating a science fiction species and playing with sexual dimorphism in semi-humanoids, or writing as realistically as possible about transgendered, bi-gendered, or agendered characters alongside their cisgendered peers), so it makes a certain amount of sense I'd have an appreciation for exploring some of the same in my doll family...

Vince is my first doll, and is androgynous by design. Part of that is that he's on the childlike side, being an MSD. Part of it is his shoulder-length hair, part of it is the fact that he's spent at least as much time in pink sparkles as he had in 'boys'' playclothes. But, you know, he was my first, my outlet for both masculine and feminine dolly styles. He has a short fur wig, and he has superhero t-shirts and baggy tan shorts, but he also has black satin capri pants and a pink sequin leopard print top and a set of purple jammies, and his default wig is one that leads to his being mistaken for female.

I don't mind it. Vince is a doll who enjoys attention and clothing changes, whether those are more 'masculine' or 'feminine', so if he gets called a cute girl, I focus on the 'cute' half.


Pete is also androgynous, but in a very different way. Whereas Vince can innocently cross-dress and basically exists for cute/fun dress up time, Pete is a mature mini-- his current default wig is also shoulder-length, he has a more 'feminine' pair of hands, his paleness reads as 'feminine' to me as well (thanks to an art history class, go figure)... and whereas Vince will wear any colour and I just happened to have a pink shirt his size when he came home, Pete seeks pink out.

For him, it's more of a louche eighties androgyny, less childlike and more theatrical-- playing not with the clothes themselves, but with concepts of what 'male' and 'female' are. This slender, half-dressed creature lounging around in stockings and jewelry, in boxy-shouldered menswear, in Adam Ant or David Bowie-esque makeup...


And then there's Billy, who would happily always be unquestionably male, except he's my only tiny, and therefore the only doll I have who will fit these ADORABLE little kitty cat mary-janes... So he sometimes has to be removed from character, for the sake of cute tiny pictures.


I do have plans for non-androgynous dolls-- the girl I'm saving for right now is... not exactly one of them herself, but her fiance is. She's every-inch-the-woman, and sometimes that woman has her hair down in soft waves over pale shoulders, and lies around in lingerie or puts on a nice dress... And sometimes that every-inch-the-woman puts all her hair up where it can't be seen and puts on a suit that hides every trace of her curves and wears sensible shoes. And in her case, the changes are based on self-preservation in a dangerous line of work, instead of on personal preference. Personal preference is sometimes 'ugh, do nothing with hair, put on a shirt I guess'.

Her fiance is just... a man. He cooks and sews, but he wears masculine clothes and has a masculine build and facial structure, and he doesn't have any thoughts about heteronormativity because their time period is one where it's just not an issue that's talked about, and the fact that he's the kind of man who wants to cook and sew for a wife would be enough to be called 'not a real man', if he wasn't also the kind of man who was an army sniper...

And then within their planned group, there's another 'cross-dressing is for work not for play', though this time a man putting himself below notice/suspicion by dressing as a woman, instead of a woman making herself look less desirable/more intimidating by dressing in menswear. It's 'work', but he's very comfortable with it.


Well, I could talk about how my planned 'family' falls all across the spectrum, but I really should stay focused on who I have at home-- three boys who fall into androgynous spaces in different ways or for different reasons, from 'cute in any clothes regardless of gender norms' to 'fashion statement and mode of self expression (and sexual expression)' to 'usually a boy doll with a specific character, sometimes shedding that to become a totally different little girl'.

 

Not just Yaoi, Anime industry itself is about sexualizing children. Actually, when when little girls are sexualized by a guy "otaku" it becomes much vulgar compare to littlie boys sexualized by a girl "otaku". It seems to get worse these days. Anime industry wasn't as bad as of now compare to 2005~2007 when I was really in to Anime.
To be honest I think the BJD culture in Japan is very much effected by that. As a result, there's a lot of underaged BJD models. I'm not against it as they are not real children and isn't hurting anybody but as a straight women, when I see them sexualizing little girls it makes me want to puke all over my laptop -_-

 

Excuse me but what on earth has sexualizing children anything to do with heteronormativity? And generalizing yaoi and anime, saying it is all about that nowadays is just... what the hell?

 

I was replying to a guy above me. Perhaps that would make you understand better.
Also, cross-dressing underaged boys is very popular in shotacon (which basically means pedophilia) anime and manga.

He just deleted that after I posted that. Basically what he said was that he didn't like how Yaoi sexualizes little boys.

 

Ah, I see! That explains it. I still disagree though. Shotacon is not the same as yaoi but I digress.

 

A large part of my characters/dolls are bisexual. I have some dolls who are male that specifically spend most of their life pretending to be female. They are not M2F but instead find enjoyment in the feminine socially constructed role and attire. I have those who are against the idea of cross-dressing in themselves but not for others. I have at least one character/doll (oh to have him complete) who ignore social gender roles completely and wears whatever he decides he likes. I've often been confused by people who think a boy in a dress wants to be a girl or that his clothing attire is a statement of his sexuality. I have quite a few "cross-dressing" guy friends who are perfectly straight and just enjoy looking "pretty" - usually when they aren't in a professional setting. I do have a F2M character/doll planned and I see nothing wrong with that at all.

I like the diversity inherent in the doll community. Like the world's population: dolls/characters can come in many different shapes, personalities, social and sexual norms. I also feel that heterosexuals, masculine males, and feminine females have a very good place here as well. All are welcome!

 

the anime industry sexualizes everyone, but thankfully most watchers of anime are not that shallow as to judge it solely on the perceived visual age of the characters, a good anime is a good anime regardless, in fact some of the best stories i have ever come across in anime have been loli based, seems they put a whole lot more effort in creating an original story and interesting characters, follow the story not their age.

but getting back, transgendered and cross dressing dolls doesn't really effect me and people can do whatever they want, its not something i am into though, i see girls as being pretty so i love feminine dolls