[Sca-cooks] trans-gender clothing

[Stefan li Rous]

Glenda.commented:
> (still can't understand why Western society as a whole has no problem with
> women wearing traditional men's clothing, but has major 'issues' with the
> other way around that even extends to the traditional male kilt)

Well, through most cultures and times we study, trans-gender
clothing for either sex was looked down upon. There appear to have
been a bunch more women who dressed as men than vice-versa though.
There were probably a number of economic and cultural reasons for
this, but the main one was that throughout period women generally
had a second class status and trading up made a lot more sense
than trading down.

In late 16th C./early 17th C. England, it became a fashion
statement for some women to cross-dress.

I know there have been some articles/class notes on this done in
the SCA, since I've taken one or two classes on this. But I don't
have them in my files. There is a small amount of info in this file
in the Florilegium:
cross-dressng-msg  (4K)  8/29/00    Cross-dressing in period.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/CLOTHING/cross-dressng-msg.html
--
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris            Austin, Texas          stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****