Crossdressing 101 A College Course for Crossdressers' Spouses by Mary Frances Fairfax
If you are a crossdresser's spouse or partner, (or a crossdresser, for that matter!) you've probably been bombarded by book recommendations. Each friend you chat with has her own favorite, one she found most useful when she was first trying to cope with crossdressing, or one she found most insightful several years later.
Let's assume you have just been given, as was a friend of mine recently, a "care package" of several such books:
My Husband Wears My Clothes by Dr. Peggy Rudd
Vested Interests by Dr. Marjorie Garber
You Just Don't Understand by Dr. Deborah Tannen
Coping With Crossdressing by Dr. JoAnn Roberts
Crossdressing, Sex and Gender by Drs. Vern and Bonnie Bullough
Crossdressing With Dignity by Dr. Peggy Rudd
The Cross and the Crossdresser by Vanessa S.
Crossdressers and Those Who Share Their Lives by Dr. Peggy Rudd
What a wonderful care package! Just don't try to gobble all those
cookies at once, though, or you'll have an awful case of mental indigestion!
But where DO you start? If I may be so bold as to suggest a spouses'
"Crossdressing 101" curriculum for the 1997-98 school year, it would go
something like this:
Your Fall Semester would start out with the Peggy Rudd classic,
My Husband Wears My Clothes. Take your time and digest this one, and don't be afraid
to enter into your emotions, even the stages you've already "put behind you."
For homework, review the communications techniques Walter Bockting taught us at SPICE,
then practice them with your husband. Schedule some time to talk over some of the
issues with your husband. Take it in very small doses. You will not be graded,
and there is no term paper due this quarter!
Next, I'd tackle Coping With Crossdressing by JoAnn Roberts.
JoAnn is a crossdresser, but this is a practical, down-to-earth sort of book. It's
good to know what an experienced community leader thinks is important for wives to
understand. By this time you and your husband should be talking on a regular
basis. ("Yeah, sure!" you might say, but this is important.
If the two of you don't talk until there's some big bad issue to talk about, you've let
those easily handled mole hills turn into Mt. Everest!)
Now I'm going to assign some outside reading! (I might as well
confess right now..... I'm one of those teacher types. I might have turned
into the "old maid school teacher" my mother herself wanted to be, except my
dear husband came along while I was still in college.) Anyway, get your hands on
Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand, about the different male-female communications
patterns.
The next book in the regular fall curriculum ought to be Crossdressing
With Dignity. Can a crossdresser (can his wife?) move beyond stereotypes,
fear, guilt, shame, etc., to find not only self-acceptance but peace and dignity?
Peggy shows us how in this very practical book, full of personal anecdotes and
hope. Don't skip over the research summaries and tables in the back. You must
have them memorized by the end of the semester! (NOT!)
For light reading over your mid year break, browse through
Crossdressers and Those Who Share Their Lives. You'll meet some interesting people
through the photos and text. And no, that's not Peggy's Melanie on the cover!
The Spring Semester of "Crossdressing 101" takes you into
some upper-level material (If you'll look in the Course Catalog, it's the equivalent of
History 300), but don't let that scare you. Crossdressing, Sex and Gender, by the
husband-and-wife team of Drs. Vern and Bonnie Bullough, is a comprehensive multicultural
history, right down to current explanations of crossdressing and what to do about it.
It's fascinating! This one book will take you all the way to next June and a
college degree!
Now you're ready for Graduate School. Vested Interests is by
Harvard English professor Marjorie Garber. The book jacket calls it a
"tour de force of cultural criticism" - and that's an understatement!
It's best taken in small doses, but you may be unable to put it down, even if
you've never heard of half the books and plays she mentions in which some form of
"crossing" occurs. This one isn't about us coping with crossdressing; it's
about our collective culture coping with "crossings" of all sorts. If you
have another whole summer to spend reading, just start on Vested Interests.
You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned The Cross and the
Crossdresser. I'll get back to it at another time. The religious issues
involved in crossdressing, and the available books and articles on the subject,
deserve a course description of their own!