TRANSVESTI SM

A Cross-Cultural Survey

Entire books could be written about the psychology of clothes. Dress not only affects one's own personality but also the way that others react to you. There is not a single society existing that doesn't use dress as an identifying symbol; either for sex, or for wealth, class and occupation. In fact, the ancient Incas regarded impersonation of the opposite sex as a capital crime equally as serious as impersonation of royalty. Now it is known that transvestism may or may not occur with homosexuality. It does occur concurrently with inversion when and if a culture defines a homosexual as one who manifests the traits of the cpposite sex. In some cultures such abnormality is institutionalized, as exemplified by the Berdache among the Plains Indians, or the temple attendants among the ancient Babylonians. Yet in the vast majority of those cultures having the institution, the transvestites are men. Knowing that female transvestism is becoming more prevalent in the Western civilization, we must inquire as to what unique cultural conditions are contributory to this.

Almost universally men have held the occupations of greater status in a society, but not everywhere have women desired to be men. Havelock Ellis found the "masculine protest quite lacking in parts of Germany where motherhood was in its own way a position of great honor." On the other hand, American women have freely accepted the masculine definition of "female inferiority" by their envy of male occupations and privileges. The fact that in some states there are laws against men dressing like women but not against the other seems to imply that male transvestism is a degradation into the "lowly role of a woman".

Secondly, we must take into account the greater freedom of women in contemporary Western society. When

10