Anyways, back on topic.
Cross-dressers:
In entertainment media the only portrayal by one gender of another gender that I ever think wasn't utterly horrid would be Hilary Swank's in "Boys Don't Cry". Even though I knew going in who Hilary Swank was and that she was, in fact, female she did a rather awesome job of acting like a boy. Still, it just wasn't believable. A very good job of acting, true. Just not believable. I'm objective enough that I know if I hadn't been aware of "Brandon" was a girl and had never heard of Hilary Swank I would have copped to that about two or three seconds after seeing the character for the first time.
Why? Because there's a fundamental difference between male and female. It's physical/biological, psychological and spiritual. They're both human, sure...but that's where the similarities stop dead cold. Males and females are as different as night and day. The older I get and the more I get to know the two genders the more I come to realize that they really are completely different. Even those things we seem to perceive the same way we eventually prove slightly skewed in relation to one another's perceptions.
When God took the rib from Adam he wasn't just taking some physical object, some body part. It's obvious to me the bible is describing God taking something fundamental out of the male and creating a whole new, different person with it. There may be some vague awareness of what is missing in men, some undefinable "femininity" but I hold to the belief that this "femininity" is largely gone from men. Taken away and made female. Likewise females have a vague sense of something missing within themselves but are at a complete loss to define or even understand what is missing. We may recognize it but we can't even attempt to describe it accurately.
Actors and actresses can't accurately portray other genders not only for this reason, though. Acting is all about putting on another personality and portraying that. One can observe schizophrenics for a time and, if possessing some decent acting skill, make a believable portrayal of a schizophrenic. It's not just about personality or behavior. The fact is that one gender cannot portray another because they are incapable of it. They don't have the capacity. A woman doesn't have a physical body capable of moving and responding similarly enough to a male body even to convince a casual observer that they're male. Dress 'em up however you like and you can still spot a dyke walk into a room as female.
Same with a man. Forget the old Adam's apple thing. I've met plenty of cross-dressers and have yet to see one who doesn't move like a man pretending to be a woman. With all due respect to those poor guys who've picked these perverts up in bars and been surprised...you had to be seriously drunk or just too eager for a one-night stand to have been paying any attention at all.
I do not believe, as so many today seem to, that men and women both have feminine and masculine aspects of their personality. That's a load of bunk. I think both have a vague awareness of the other but neither have or can possibly ever have anything approximating an accurate understanding of the other nor any innate aspect of it in themselves. I have a part of me that thinks it understands men...it just frankly doesn't and never will.
Gay men:
Gay men are a whole other animal, in my opinion. I've known a few of them, too. I admit they really aren't and weren't in my social circle exactly but they flew close enough that I've probably known a few dozen on a first name basis and had two or three I'd call friends.
Gay men don't act ladylike because that's not their intention. First of all, they have to divorce their behavior from the feminine because to openly embrace femininity calls into question just what exactly gay men find attractive about each other. If it's feminine behavior...then what the heck are they doing having sex with other men?
One would think a true homosexual would find masculine, manly men of firm manliness attractive. They don't. Most like Antonio Banderas and/or Sean Hayes (Will and Grace) types attractive, in addition to the stereotypical well-oiled gay-boys. None of them much cared for Clint Eastwood. My husband and I had a discussion a while back about men and "manliness" and by the end of it we both decided that Clint Eastwood was a manly man. Mostly, of course, the roles he's played more than the actor himself. That might strike you as odd but think about it a bit and you're probably come to agree.
Case in point: "I've killed women and children. I've killed everything that walks or crawls at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you done to Ned.” That's a manly man talking there. I like that. That's the kind of guy I would want on my side when things got nasty. I'd want that guy patrolling my neighborhood as a police officer, at the door guarding my house or in the field of battle fighting for my side. I would say that I wouldn't want to actually know this guy or be bestest buddies with him or anything but I kinda made a lie of that when I married one. Meh, go figure.
Gay men don't find masculine, manly men of firm manliness that particularly attractive. It doesn't necessarily turn them off, I don't think, but it doesn't "do it" for them either. Because they aren't really attracted to men, after all. They are attracted to perversion and homosexuality is just their drug of choice. So when they want to be attractive to other gay men, how do they act? Like women? No, that doesn't work either because they already have women around. What then?
Well, duh. A parody of femininity. It nicely presents oneself as perverse, appeals to the latent heterosexuality of other men, make you feel perverse and is clearly distinguishable from either male or female typical behavior or affect. Behaving in this parody of femininity makes them feel justified in their perversity while simultaneously passive aggressively attacking both genders and setting one self apart from the norm.
Gay behavior is a gay man's lipstick, basically. He does it for all the same reasons that women put that gunk on the faces every day. Women wear make up to be attractive to men and to seem attractive to men to other women. Gay men act gay (not feminine) to be attractive to other gay men and to seem attractive to gay men to everyone else. Women wear make up to combat their own feelings of unattractiveness and inadequacy. Any woman who wears make up will tell you they feel fundamentally better when they're wearing it. Gay men act gay to suppress and even assault their own heterosexuality as well as the sexuality of basically everyone else. To make themselves feel better and feel gay. To feel, in fact, perverse.
