龍門國中英語資優專區

Most people imagine a cross-dresser is that of a drag queen. Tall and glamorous, dressed to the nines and with heavy make up, with very long long eyelashes and spangled dressed, revealing dresses, the stereotypical drag-queen image is unfotunately stamped on the popular imagination.

However the history of cross-dressing stretches way back a long time, to origins far away from gay clubs. In Europe in the middle ages, women cross-dressed to avoid the gender hierarchy. Historical accounts show that an abandoned wife would often take on a male disguise in order to live an independent life. Literature of those times reveal a fascination with crossdressing. Some have even gone as far as to speculated that Joan of Arc was a transvestite and there is even a legend of a Pope who is female.

### [CrossDressing in the Theater and Films]

During the Elizabethan period, men in the theater dressed as women to play  roles of women. Shakespeare used crossdressing as a comic device, and this led to situations in which a man would be dressed as a woman and a woman who would dress as a man. In the play Twelfth Night, a actor would dress as a woman to play the part of Viola, then Viola would dress as a man to infiltrate the court of the Count Orsino.

Shakespeare used crossdressing with good reason. It allowed disguise and surreptition, seductions and mistaken identitiy. For this reason, crossdressers always have been loved in the entertainment industry. Other examples come from the 'sweet transvestite from Transylvania' from the Rocky Horror Picture Show and Julie Andrews in Victor and Victoria, cross-dressers never fail to intrigue us.

### [CrossDressing in politics and science]

Gender politics has been a minefield, but in the last century they became even more complex. Transvestites - men who dress as women or women who dress as men are just one of many groups in the transgender community. There are also transsexual members, who undergo operations to change their sex.

The first sex change was in 1952. Private George Jorgenson, a soldier in the United States army, was convinced he was a woman in a man's body. After leaving the army, he persuaded the Danish doctor, Professor Christian Hamburger, to perform a sex change operation.