Scores of transgender people who are beginning the coming out process have used Halloween as an opportunity to be cross-dressed in public for the first time. The idea is that everyone is dressing up, and many people who are cisgender dress as the opposite sex, making it a safe opportunity for a trans person to express their gender identity while also not fully disclosing it.
Have you or anyone you know used Halloween as an opportunity to explore your gender variance or identity? Do you think this is a good tactic for coming out or do you feel it only furthers the social stigma and fear that trans people are somehow "lying" and "masking" their identity?
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Open Forum: Halloween and the Trans Community
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2 comments:
I'm so fed up with the atempts to impose Halloween in European countries where there's no tradition that I would critize it in the countries where it's tradition. I don't understand how Halloween dressing is, and so I can't answer the question, but we has the Carnival were people do travestite, and it's documented since centuries ago. Most people travestite for fun, as another kind of custom, but I think that it's also legitimate to travestive for transgenderism, in the same way as people who chose customs of their vocational professions or of their idols.
My girlfriend (M to F) used Halloween a few years ago to come out. It was refreshing to her that she was accepted as who she always wanted to be. Now, she used the entire "week" of Halloween to stay dressed... so it wasn't just the holiday itself. I think it gave her courage when she needed it most. Now she's able to come out and tell everyone... Some people need to take baby steps to get where they need to go.
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